How do you beat Super Boss fights with no losses?

[lostkiwi]

I'm a warrior on Medium diifculty, so far I've managed zero losses at level 24

My current setup is:
Green Dragons (primary tank). I have enough leadership for 5 of these guys
Paladins (secondary tank, rezzer)
Shaman (healer, utility)
Archmages (Magic Shield, damage dealer)
Inquisitors (damage dealer, rezzer)

This setup has done pretty well for me so far. However in most fights my dragon does quite a significant amount of the damage, I usually open with Fiery Phantoms, and throw a couple of Dragon Dives in a fight as well.

This is meaningless in super boss fights though, because you can't use your dragon. I had a go against the Enormous Spider, and I had quite a number of losses in the first round alone, and that's not even considering the poison damage that I would have in the following rounds.

Usually I can out last normal bosses, by surviving the initial onslaught, thinning out their troups, and in the end rezzing all of my units using Phantom on my rezzers in combination with Mana Accelerator / Magic Spring when they only have a couple of units left. However that strategy is not possible with Super Bosses, because usually they get harder as the fight goes on, on account of throwing out larger and larger stacks.

So, is it even possible to beat these guys with no losses? If so, could someone please give me some advice?

Many thanks

[DGDobrev]

It's a bit early for you to take on the bosses, for starters. you have 5x1900=9500 leadership for the green dragons, so you're between 9500 and 11399. That is way too low for now. I recommend doing them after you've past level 40 (at least).

Cheesy ways of doing the bosses without a loss is this:
- Use only 1 Black Knight stack with Stone Skin on all the time and have the evlin spell ready to resurrect the losses
- Use only 1 stack of Trolls with stone skin on against underground bosses - Spider, Driller, K'Tahu
- Make sure you use units with good resistance against the boss' attacks (refer to KBAP info thread for types of boss attacks)
- Have Stone Skin lvl 3 on all your units and prepare items that will boost the resistance that conforms to boss' attacks damage
- Make sure you have Phantom lvl 3 and enough mana to cast it (by the means of Calm rage you can convert rage into mana) on your Paladins to resurrect the losses promptly.

But in any case, I looks like a bit too early for you to be going against the bosses right now.

[dashcunning]

Level 40 seems quite a long time to wait, especially on medium. While he could certainly wait a bit, I think his biggest problem is a lack of damage. Shaman, Archmages, and Inquisitors have nice utility but crap damage. Green dragons are tough but crap damage. Paladins have utility and are fairly tough but below average damage.

What units you choose depend a lot on what skills/spells/items are available to you and how you want to play so it's hard to make specific recommendations. But a no brainer in my opinion would be to swap the shamans out for a damage dealer. Royal snakes perhaps, good damage and no retaliation, not terribly fragile (very tough vs. poison). Lake or forest fairies maybe, excellent damage (absurdly so with assasin's dagger), no retaliation, fast flyers, very fragile however.

Try swapping the dragons with royal griffins. Phantom them and have the stacks of angelic guards attack the boss while the original griffins help clear the summoned spiders.

Hell, if you go with lake fairies, forest fairies, and royal snakes, you might be able to hurt the boss so quickly he doesn't have time to summon spiders. I don't recall how much leadership you need for that though.

[DGDobrev]

Well, I guess that (Royal Snakes, 2xFairies, Dryads and Paladins for emergency ress) may be possible on normal. The biggest problem is that if they can't kill the boss straight away, he's in for some trouble, because the boss has a very high chance to hit with both his feet if there are available targets, and that would devastate any Fairies, Dryads and Snakes, because his damage is physical-based in that case and is well over 2k... Lostkiwi wants a no-loss, which may be a problem is such case, because if you're left with some mediocre spider stacks, there is the danger of killing them before you ress properly.

[lostkiwi]

Thanks for the posts guys.

DGDobrev, you raise an iteresting idea that I have never considered, which is to have only a single stack that I can concentrate on keeping buffed.

As you mentioned, I might be able to work it with a single stack of Trolls, since they regerate their health every round. So long as I keep Stone Skin / Magic Spring and possibly even Divine Armour, maybe I can restrict each round of damage to under 780. At worst I can only be attacked by 4 stacks of spiders plus the boss.

It would be a long fight, however if they were able to survive each round, I wouldn't have any mana issues due to keeping Level 3 Magic Spring up on my stack.

I've probably only got enough leadership for 9 or 10 of them at the moment, which may not be enough. Maybe I'll come back to the boss later.

Thanks again

[Mystic Phoenix]

Another tactic which worked for me on Impossible Warrior at Level 30 (could have worked some levels before) was to bring Dryads and Royal Thorns (along with Paladins, Red and Green Dragons) to the spider fight.

With Time Back you have 3 huge stacks of spawned thorns, the first wave of spiders are nor problem to kill, so you can have 6 stacks of thorns very soon. With some thorns attacking the spider, additional spiders are generated not too often, and in case there are you might have no problems to kill them (attack with thorns first, so you take no retaliation) and so you can spawn even more thorns.
My troops didn't cause any damage to the Giant spider itself (red dragons used their breath ability from time to time), just leaned back and watched the show.

[Zechnophobe]

You can likely do the spider now, but not the frog. You are going to have a hard time though with your current lineup against spider because of his retaliation against ranged units.

General strategy against spider: Do not attack mandibles, or you'll get poisoned seriously bad. Attack with one stone skinned tank on each side of him, and use other 5 stacks to kill summons. Keep mana up, and health of tanks (Ress if necessary) and you should do okay.

If you are having a hard time killing spider summon stacks fast enough, it means you are trying this too early.

[Hento]

I think the best lineup for frog and spider would be Repair and Guard Droids(20% physical and 80% poison resistance,and 1 stack of trolls).
You can just phantom Repair Droids to repair them. Also I think in every game you have an item that reduced leadership for droids by 20%, which equals 20% more damage.

[Zechnophobe]

The engineer badge isn't ALWAYS there, but as the only (maybe one of two) level 1 dwarven items, it is very common.

Also, Frog and spider rarely will actually do casualties against good sized and managed armies, so I don't think ressurrections strats are the best way to go.

[BB Shockwave]

Khatu,the frog and the spider are easy to beat. Just make sure you leave one summoned stack alive, keep blinding/slowing it and use Rage to Mana spells to resurrect your losses.

With the Driller, even easier. Just inflict enough damage so that he will retreat next turn. In the next turn, he won't attack you but collapse the ceiling. Rinse and repeat.

Bhaal is another matter. I tried numerous times before finding the correct strategy... his area attacks and summonings will always damage you, but they are so-so bearable. However, never get hit by his sword. What I did was (I was using a warrior with a Lizardman army) to only take one stack of Gorguls with me. First round, I casted Phantom on them and sent them in first, then used both stacks to attack Bhaal through his summoned units - due to the two space attacks, he will not retaliate. Then, just have Bill Gilbert's units take the damage, and only attack Bhaal with your phantoms. Use Rage to mana for resurrection/time back and put lot of protective spells on your troop. Items that increase fire resistance help a lot too.