how do you dealing with black dragons as a mage ?

[Ryastar]

Originally Posted by jwallstone

My impression was that Lake Fairies are better than sprites too. They are more attack oriented (4/2 vs 3/3), have higher damage range (1-3 vs 1-2), better inititative and speed (6/5 vs 5/4) and are not vulnerable to fire. To top it off, they require less leadership (7 vs , so you can get more of them. The only downside is less hp (6 vs , but everything seems to more than compensate for that.

You've got it backwards, sprites have the 1-3 damage, and 4/2 att/def. You are right about the init, speed, hp and leadership, and fire vulnerablity, though. If you can get both (and are willing to give space to both), do so, but if only one, sprites are superior.

The cherry on top for sprites is their dispel ability, useful in tight spots to remove a dangerous spell effect once you have already cast a spell, or need that spell for something else.

[jwallstone]

My mistake. Why are my eights being turned into smiley faces? Test: 8

Edit: I think I got it. It's because there's a parenthesis right after the eight. Test:

[MaelstorM]

I think we are talking about hard or imposible difficulty here

OK you see Black and Red dragons from valey of death
Theres few army there with (on hard) ~20 Blacks or ~35 Reds and ~1-2k level 1-2 monsters
You have 1 Dragon Sword, your best anti fire units highly probably dragons, demon, knight
With normal luck your leadership is 15-18k

Skeleton archer? what if your wife is mirabela / neoka and you dont have enough might rune to get the 1st round initiative bonus?
Black hole? at most you kill 3 Reds from each stack
Armagedon? if your spell does 2500 dmg, you'll lost your own Black
Trap? how about the other 2 dragons stacks?
Timeback? most probably you use this on your tank, but your archer also alredy left 4/5th by 2nd turn, and will not available again until the next 3 rounds
Phantom? you'll want to phantom your strongest unit, but the dragons will pound on your weakest

How can you win with no loss? On impossible?

[Ryder]

Trap is a great spell against Blackies. I always set my army up in a way that they will always land where I cast trap. They cant resist landing somewhere where they can attack two of my army at once. At the moment it is doing between 3200 and 4900 damage (Impossible Mage). I just wait with my Sprites and Lake Fairies and then attack them after their turn. At the moment I am travelling around Demonis with Lake Fairies, Sprites and Dryads with my Black Unicorns and Elves in reserve.

The enemy hasnt had a look in.

[jwallstone]

There's one really useful tactic against Dragons that I haven't seen mentioned that I used for most of the Land of the Dead fights. I set up all of my ranged/magic/weak troops in a corner, then cast Ice Thorns to completely surround these troops (or Stone Wall if it happens to work with the terrain, but this happens less often). Surprisingly, most of the Dragons will never try to touch these troops, unless there's nothing else good for them to attack on the outside. I used Green Dragons usually and sometimes Lake Fairies on the outside of the "turtle" formation to inflict some hard-hitting melee damage. You only have to worry about using Time Back on these outside units. On the inside, I used some combination of Elves/Hunters with Dragon Arrows to take down large stacks of dragons, Inquisitors with Resurrect to recover losses, or Dryads with Sleep to disable dangerous low-level stacks. This worked extremely well, as I had zero end-of-battle losses for all of the fights.

The one trick to all of this are Red Dragons. If they see a tasty line of two or more "turtled" units, they WILL use their fire breath. What you can do about this is to position your turtle formation to reduce the possible positions from which they can use fire breath, which is usually possible. You can cast Trap in the locations they will land on, which are usually easy to predict. They will land on the closest available spot to use fire breath on two or more units, except when it will hit one of their own troops. You can also use your outside melee units (Green Dragons) to take up some of these spots, use Phantoms to take up more spots, or even use them to Drag some of their units into the line of fire, preventing fire breath from that direction.

Sometimes, they will be able to get off a Fire Breath at your units, you just have to do some resurrecting at the end, and it's no problem. But it's a world of difference from the chaotic dragon battles I had before this tactic, where you're seeing flights of dragons coming in and toasting your units that are dropping like flies all over, and trying your best to stop a stack here or there with Trap or Dragon Arrows, but losing tons of units in the process.

By the way, a final shout-out to Lina's Ice Thorns. I never thought it useful before, and haven't used it much after, but it's saved my hide in many tough dragon fights (including Ultrax).

[Zonc]

Originally Posted by jwallstone

By the way, a final shout-out to Lina's Ice Thorns. I never thought it useful before, and haven't used it much after, but it's saved my hide in many tough dragon fights (including Ultrax).

Exaclty! it's just one step behind the Timeback, but together they're like
Timeback>Ice Thorns>>>>>>>>>>any other spirits' ability
This saved tons of my units against Dragons and tough siege battles (Baal etc.)

Still, pack of annoying Red dragons is an issue, but Skeleton Archers with Dragon Arrows kills a full stack of 25 dragons. This is why I find initiative boosters so damn useful - whats better than killing enemy stack before he even had his first unit move.

[Leind]

Another little trick I found useful is that while Blackies are immune to magic, they still can be freezed. When I use Ice snake on an adjacent troop (generally that big stack of red dragons), the blackies take no damage but are slowed down by the freeze effect.

Usually that mean that they can't attack during the first turn, and as I use high initiative units two full turn are enough to do a lot of damage.