Battle against Karador on impossible

[Razorflame]

or be lame and use vampirebats+insivibility+poison cloud ^^

[BB Shockwave]

Well, I just beat Karador on Hard, with a mage and an all - well, mostly all - undead army, without losses, by round 11.

(Of course, I was playing with a mod that gives me a spell "Animated dead" which lets your resurrect fallen undead, as the Necro Call spell should work in the first place, but that's barely cheating - it costs the same amount of mana as Resurrection, only it's Chaos magic).

See the screenshots - I was level 27, 12 Attack, 17 Defense, 32 Intellect, 172 Mana, 16015 Leadership. I used several items (Dead Skull, Archimage Staff, Mantle of the Wizard, Old Skull, Royal Snake Ring, Sorcery Picture to boost my mana, and the Silver Chain to protect my troops from undead. I had Chaos and Distortion maxed out (Order is quite useless for me as most of its spells do not work on undead, not even God Armour). My wife was, of course, Zombie Rina, and I had Dark Commander maxed.

My troops (see pictures):

-10 Green Dragons (normally I use Bone Dragons, but their poison attack is not great against undead. Plus the mana stealing really helps here).
-88 Necromancers (great ranged attack, enemy debuff and of course, for Necro Calling enemy troops)
-87 Ancient Vampires (in this battle, mostly tanking in regular form as life stealing doesn't work)
-105 Black Knights (my main tanks, very resilient and can deal good damage as well once they get into 'swing' thanks to Increasing Anger. Not to mention raising undead morale.)
-123 Cursed Ghosts (while they cannot use their ability here, the 50% physical resistance+silver chain makes them very durable in this battle)

Karador's troops:

-6 Bone Dragons
-102 Necromancers
-50 Ancient Vampires
-116 Black Knights
-92 Cursed Ghosts
-111 Ghosts
-474 Zombies
-654 Skeleton Warriors
-881 Skeleton Archers

(Little note - did you know Karador's Zombies and Black Knights have a speed of 3 instead of 2?)

I used a little trick - with the help of the Crown of Blackthorn - to drink from the fountain of rage next to the Book of Death in the Great Forest and then run all the way to Karador, thus starting with 46 Rage.

1. round - Two well-placed Fire Rains greatly decimated the ranks of Karador's troops in the middle, including both stacks of necromancers. I followed up with a Black Hole, killing off the Bone Dragons (that is important). My necros fired into the crowd, decimating the Skeleton Archers too. My cursed ghosts took out the front plank barrier, then waited... Predictably, Karador used his magic to raise the bone dragons again, then his ghosts took out the cursed cross. His Black Knights charged in, attacking my ghosts - and blocking the entry to my troops thankfully. I quickly ganged upon that troop, then had my dragons fly out behind them and use mana source to great effect (20 mana back) on the ghosts and knights.

2. round - One more fire rain to kill off more troops for Karador to raise, then I blinded the zombies - they should not be underestimated. I then used my dragons as bait and killed off his vampires, parking them in front of his right side necros. The ghosts took the bait, and my other units ganged up on the knights.

In the following rounds, Karador only cast Necro Call (I always left him some troops to raise) or for some reason, Slow, while the dragons and necros killed off his smaller troops, and I used Doom to quickly finish off his knights in one round. I then used Pygmy to kill off the zombies - raising his necros with mine to prevent more troop raising then needed. Of course, I had to use Lina's chargers once to re-fill my mana.

By round 9, all of Karador's troops were dead(er). I simply raised the too dangerous ones and parked my units on the rest. I used my mana to raise the few units I have lost (4 knights, around 30 ghosts, 1-2 vampires).Then my knights killed off the crystal in 2 rounds... goodbye Karador!

Frankly, I had a much easier time here then with my mixed-army Paladin. I think the fact that this battlefield is considered a cemetery, giving +1 morale to all my troops, also helped.

[Fromage]

Well, I just beat him myself at 22 on hard...simply armageddoned over and over again untill he had no troops left and then rolled the ice ball all the way across the map into his stone.

...of course, nearly all o' m'troops died, but mission accomplished!

[ludak021]

5 black dragons, ~90 black knights, zombie wife, +15% physical boots, some intellect items since I was a mage. I had no ice shards ability (I only use zarock's poison spit, glot's armor and rage drain and timeback, sometimes ice ball, I found all other abilities quite useless to a mage since they are too weak or expenssive rage wise).

it goes something like this:
1. round magich shackless on skele archers, stone skin BK's (enter battle with 20 rage at least), then just wait for bone dragons to fly in, attack them with BK's so to block entry with BK's. Do what you want with BD's as long you have timeback on maxto bring them back next round, you are probably going to use them to finnish those bone dragons so karador will cast necro call next round

2. round. timeback black dragons if you lost any, if not, and if you are full of mana, and you should be, demon portal on good place, block entrance further or place it where you will be blocking (standing on) some dead enemy stack later on (you should have demon portal spawning 3-5 lvl units and with 7000+ leadership by now) and phantom BK's (they become targeted in 99% of cases, thus saving your BK's (notice that with boots + stone skin BK's have 85% physical resistance, so enemy does zilch damage to them, 500dmg at best with his 100 BK's, witch you will now be hitting with your phantoms and then with your real BK's, reducing their number from 100 to preferably ~70 in one round )
use BDs carefully, try to park them near necros if it is safe, shower those ekleton archers in the process)

3. round. demon portal again, mana spring on phantom BK's (by now ghosts, BK's zombies etc. are all near them and will hit them, kill them all), your demons come from previous portal. use poison spit on enemy BK's to reduce their attack and give them nice 100dmg per turn next four turns, reduced attack is the key here), kill bone dragons ofc, this goes for every turn

4. turn. magic spring on demons from first portal, or wait for the new ones then magic spring them. (if you don't have stoneskin maxed out then you will have to stoneskin your BK's again!) Use rage abilities depending on situation you are in, you can timeback something again or cast ice ball to distract something/lure enemies away (if you cast it near crystal some stacks will move towards it, zombies and skeletons probably), your BD's are playing with skele archers and necros, it depends on their movement, but you should have killed them off by now (archers)

.... later rounds keep your BK's stoneskinned, use magicspring and demon portals (cast them on dead stacks), when you reduce enemy numbers enough, start casting broken armor, have your black dragons pick on the crystal, your BK's and demons picking off things arround the map, karador should be out of mana by now from resurecting dragons. If you placed magic springs well you should even have enough mana to "sheep" somthing anoying or cast more demon portals

You could go with demons stack instead of BK's (demons demons furious ones ) but you have to take care of ghosts and vamps as quickly as possible then, also stoneskin them asap and magic spring them, then divine armor them, then eventually teleport them in the crystal, keep them buffed up, timeback them, whatever, just keep their numbers high, use their pentagram (use gift to repeat), I found that only 50 of them in pentagram do cryticals like crazy (5000+ dmg for only 50 of them!) if you phantom them you can cast pentagram and more demons which stay after phantom is dead etc.

using lot's of units in these kind of battles is complicated. Less is more. it is easier to buff one stack than 4 stacks and you know what is going to be attacked, by whom etc. even you, in this case with karador, don't kill bone dragons, karador can't cast hypnotize on BD's or BK's. He can cast "doom", but I never saw him do it, perhaps he dosen't have maxed out doom?! (if however he does cast doom on BK's then I guess you have to dispel asap )

I had many problems in KB AP and in KB TL until I started tossing units, bringing only essential ones (later in the game ofc), for example, for suppressing items: demon portals and single BD stack and you are good, just be carefull, I bring green dragons (for invissibility tactics), demons, BD's and BK's. I have stashed ancient vamps and red dragons, so I usually go with two stacks on battlefield (one BD stack can win almost any battle, probabbly it can win every battle, but it is too slow and frustrating sometimes, I can't get my self to play 20+ turns every battle, brainstorming portals and traps to hide the dragons etc. but it is doable. I finnished that tournament in the castle as a level 15 mage, 3 BD's only against level 30 dragon (finnal battle), but I lost one dragon :/ demon portal level 3, trap level 2, magic spring lvl 2, stoneskin lvl2 (I cast magic spring and stoneskin on summons when facing all physicall units, saves me from casting another portal later and doing something else instead).

in KB AP single BK stack with mordor as companion and a shard + mask you are unstopable, just cast elvin to res BK's, and if you have 100+ BK's later on, they criticall 20.000+ dmg all the time (with mage! I can't imagine what they do with warrior class )

hope this helps

[Metathron]

Originally Posted by Fromage

Well, I just beat him myself at 22 on hard...simply armageddoned over and over again untill he had no troops left and then rolled the ice ball all the way across the map into his stone.

...of course, nearly all o' m'troops died, but mission accomplished!

LOL! I like your style!

[ludak021]

that's how I beat Haas in the end single BD stack, glots armor, 2x armagedon, next round 1x armagedon, timeback, finnish that one BD of his that was standing