Orcs on the March thread

[Zhuangzi]

I spent a couple of hours on my Paladin game this morning, and managed to get up to level 7 very easily by clearing out most of Scarlet Wind. A lot of people don't like Glory but as a Paladin you have a lot of green runes to spend, so I've maxed that out already, and with the second level of Grand Strategy, I'm up to 2700 leadership already. Consequently I'm ahead of what I think of as the 'difficulty curve' in that the enemies on this island are mainly listed as Weak or Slightly Weaker, which is not something you'd normally see on Impossible.

I've had in with the Blood Shaman so I've switched them out for good old Inquisitors. The Engineer on the other hand is a very useful unit for strategic play. Coupled with Paladin's Second Wind ability, you can get two stacks of droids out on turn 1, and then Shock Grenade on turn 2. Orc Trackers are my only orc unit now due to their toughness and ability to summon. Royal Thorns are always useful and you can turn 50 of the green thorns into 1 on Debir. This is a kickass team for the early game and there's little or not chance of ending up with losses. I've discussed how to play this style before so I won't go through it all again, but suffice to say that Engineers are a very welcome addition to the mix.

Scarlet Wind has about 4-5 of the harder fights left on it, and I'm nearly at level 8. I'll mop up all but 2 of those fights easily (the map fights will be left) and then it's on to Bolo for the easier fights there. Then it will be necessary to take on the map guardians for access to Rusty Anchor/Verona.

[Zhuangzi]

A couple more things I should mention for those of you who are newer to the game.

- You should always be using the baby dragon's Treasure Searcher ability twice per turn. You'll need the gold on Impossible and you might dig up an Ancient Scroll or two. You also get the Treasure Hunter medal for this over time, which is nice.

- As soon as you get the Trap spell (not until level 6 for me) you should start trying to work toward the Trapper medal. This is harder for the Paladin than it is for a Mage, and it can be frustrating too, but it's useful once completed. Again, this is better for a Mage because of more mana and higher Intellect.

- You can manipulate rage and mana using a number of easily accessible spells and abilities. Inquisitors are great for creating rage, Mana Spring is a godsend for increasing mana, and Mana Accelerator turns rage into mana. I use all of these all of the time. In my current game I've got Distortion 2 and it could even have been Distortion 3 had I wanted (in hindsight maybe I should have gone for it - I picked up the trap spell shortly after).

[Kings Bounty Hunter]

Just starting our with Paladin on hard, hope to find some lvl 5 units as soon as poss

[jake21]

I just finished warrior on impossible but only did 92 quests; does anyone know total number of quests ('m pretty sure I missed at least one contract by killing first and asking questions later). I did not notice so many new quests (just 4 - guy in scarlet; orc sequence (probably counts more as 4) mage tower and trainer training after first stone.
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I never kite but I might try it in bolo with my mage on impossible. I think long ago I tried once to get the stone without a fight but couldn't get the fellow to chase without fighting.
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With warrior I played rune mage until the end (when i get the stone in Rhea). Not so sure I like rune mages that much. They had two nice attributes I guess (lots of hp and if you have enough mage runes they can turn victims into sheep). But to be honest they did not pack much of a punch. Even with 200 unused warrior runes I found them a bit lacking.
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Bit unhappy with how the orc campaign progressed. It was very anti-climatic and I kept looking for a diplomatic solution.
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Major thing I noticed is that Baal was nerfed in a *big* way and Ulsua was a lot harder.
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I did not use any of the new troupes other than run mages - just didn't find a use. Went the old route of a stack of summoners (thorns and d's) and by end game I was piling on the thorns. Hum. I guess only other disappointment was lack of being able to complete a set (sort of wish the randommizer would pick a set than guarantee that all the pieces load) and the item from the mage tower didn't do much for me.
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Hum two things I did a bit different - never used blacknights this game and at the very end picked up the paladin for the fight against Baal.

[shqiponja_hayabusa]

I also finished the Orc campaign. It was a tough run. Used alot the new Rune mage but only when I had 16 of them they really started getting useful.

I found Baal stronger than in AP though.

I managed to have 2 sets of items for my mage. The lucky set, with 20% critical. and the 20% physical resistance.

The new shamans are freaks, 3 astral attacks in a row than a ranged one targeting my stack of archemages killing all of them.