Trouble with Bass Azz Beholders in the Mines

[jfp3]

Ok so now I'm doing the Creighton Mines...and there is a nasty horde of High Level Beholders in there. Can anyone enlighten me as to the best troops to use to go after them? My humans keep getting put to sleep. Are Thorn Warriors and Bears suitable? Snakes and Fireflys maybe?

Help!

[Quelthos]

What are the best units you have access to? You listed a lot of melee units. Archmages, cannoneers, and beholders are probably good choices because they can hit from range, have decent health, and shouldn't be as likely to fall asleep. You could also put glot's armor on a ranged unit if you have it. You could use something like fireflies + haste to cross the map quickly, but you risk them being isolated vs. any enemy ground troops. Gryphons with some form of shield spell might be a better choice.

[jfp3]

Thanks for the input. Can't get the Griffons until I find more of the red ore in the Mines to complete the quest. Was offered them when the crown was returned, but when I went back to get them (I thought they'd be good here too), they were no longer offered. Nice but frustrating twist in the game.

Yeah I'll try non-human units for this one. They are harder to defeat than the damn Ahey castle with the same force make up (mine).

[Vilk]

Beholders attack with magic and evil beholders has their special talent that can be disturbing. That's probably not a tactic available to you but target level 3 plus stoneskin at first round with Archimage shield is a good tactic to use on Archimage that are magic protected from base. You could even try this with stoneskin at second round if you cannot cast two spells.

If you face only normal beholders then target level 2 is enough.

If you already has lena ball a good move is also use it in this way: has a unit that wait end of turn and take care to let open some long straight path to enemy unit. Then before moving your last unit throw the ball where it is the best to damage highly one Beholder stack. I like combine this, when possible, with the tactic mentioned above against beholders. The lena ball does 100% more damages for each square run until enemy unit is hit.

EDIT: A secondary option against evil beholder is to use mass haste to have all your units moving before a large stack of them so this pack cannot use its special attack against one of your units. You probably didn't organized you character to be able to do all of that but that's definitely possible to have at this point of the game and quite sooner, except the lena ball.

[jfp3]

Yeah good tactic to try there V. I don't have the Lena Ball spell yet but looking forward to it

I did however get in there with a maxed out stack of high level Snakes, and Spiders - Bears, Wolves and a huge stack of Lake Fireflies. I took out the Beholders easier than I would have thought....and raced with the Rage to take out 2 more large enemy stacks. The last fight was rough though and I ended up with only a handful of bears & snakes, and about half of the Spiders left over. All in all it was a great, but costly run. BTW, Beholders can put pretty much anything to sleep. So it was good to find that out for the future.

Having cleaned out the Mines and gotten the Ore for the Dwarf Gilt - I went back and finished the Griffin Painting quest and ....it was nice to see he once again offered me a huge stack of Griffins for sale.

I now head to Upper Hadar at the head of a huge Human Army with Griffin support. This will be fun

[Razorflame]

human armies are the worst to have

you might reconsider taking humans
the only 2 god human units are(and ONLY b/c of their abilities) inqi's and archimages