Undead Full list

Ok we knew Abom would be amazing, but this is even better. 31 DR? 8 Speed, 29 AR? Chase card.

Undead Arbalister is kinda squishy. I was expecting a 80+ range, and we end up with 60...

Undead Archer is a 2CP unit. 23 AR 25 DR, kinda weak, but the snare makes up for everything. 65 yard range means this is actually usable. Undead has a serious range issue when 65 is the longest they can shoot. What no muscles on zombies?

Death bringer has a placeholder graphic, but overall its a massive card. 31 DR and 9 speed? Its a permasnare.

Diabolist is what I assumed it would be. A nuke like a fire elemental. 7 speed is good enough, but overall this unit is pretty much PvE.

Creeping Dread is the first spell of the five. 25 Godfavor snare, but only 25% snaring per card. With a stack of 4 cards we will see what it can do. Long duration, good for tourneys.

Earth Fire is spell #2. Damage over time, decent. Costly GF price.

Forsaken Dragon is a beast. 35 DR makes it impossible to hit with many archer units when buffed. These will rule the skys.

Horror is spell #3. Nice debuff, cheap and long duration.

Humongous is still the beast we thought it would be. 31DR is better than I expected, but 9 speed is pretty slow for a speedy unit. HP is low, if you can hit this, it will die. I really like the Aboms more.

Undead Knight has a 30 DR. This is massive for capping towers. 8 speed, but overall a solid unit.

Lich is like Humongous. If you get on him, he dies. Large radius fear though, 25 radius is very big.

Necro has a large radius heal too. I like how this will work. Hard to say if they can take a pounding. 24 base DR is low.

Pikeman are as squishy as human archers. I definitely like them for early tourneys though.

Raiders are a weird look at anti ranged. I hope they work out, but I can't tell from the stats.

Reapers were one of my early favs. I like 9 speed infantry, very useful for my playstyle. And 27 DR is enough to make them useable as a 2 CP unit.

Riders are great tourney cards. I will love using these.

Fell Trace is a stun. We love stuns for PvP. Funny to see the undead get one.

Visions is a castable Fear. Seems a little low, probably only dropping 70 morale. But combined with your Lich and warriors... Very combo intensive.

Bone Wagon is a chase card. Nothing but awesomeness here.

Finally we rap up with our third chase card. Wight is so awesome, its hard to find anything to complain about. 31 DR is massive on a flyer.

You can Play all 5 Nations at once...

"Explanation of new ticking system:
This new system has been implemented to allow you to PLAY ALL 5 OF YOUR NATIONS AT ONCE. (Yay!) In order to activate ticks for your nation though, you will have to actively do something with that nation in terms of battling.
Ways to get ticks:

• Do a Quest. Successful completion of a quest will give you 12 hours worth of ticks. If you lose a quest, the same equation which determines whether Gods are Satisfied in PvP is brought into play. If you legitmately tried and lost, you will get your 12 hours of ticks.
  
• Fight a PvP. If the Gods are Satisfied, you get 12 hours.
  
• Raid or be raided. You get 12 hours.
  
• Play a tournament. You get 12 hours per round. Basically, you get 12 hours of ticks per battling action. You can store up to a total of 7 days worth of ticks. If you are offline more than 3 days, you only get those 3 days worth of ticks all at once though. (An improvement on our current system where you only get 2 days worth.) " - Source the Patcher notes

I personally think this is hot. I was going to play my Undead army and retire my light, but now, I guess I will play all three.

Where's the Undead?

A guy at my work told me if "he" had a blog, his post today would be, "Where the F is the Undead?"

So, in honor of Ed, that's all I will post today.

Saga wants your card ideas for main armies

Saga wants CARD IDEAS again for when the undead army releases.

It looks like each normal army will get 4 troops. Help them fix the tournament scene by putting in more good pvp troops.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=21544022054&topic=5906

They are taking feedback in this facebook dicussion thread.

Tournament Strategies - Rushing

I've played only about 40 tournament games so far, so I'm no expert.

However I have done 2 good games with Illian, and fought 38 other people.

Here are some tricks I would recommend keeping in mind doing tournaments.

1. People tend to get cocky when they draw expensive troops in their army. I fought a guy that had a treant/longbow, and rushed right at my keep in the beginning with 5 troops. I kited him through the center of my side of the board and spawned a heavy cav troop that I used to pretty much wipe his army.
2. YOU CAN'T LOSE THE OPENING BATTLE WITHOUT TAKING A SPAWN POINT. This is a big rule. If you rush the opponent you had better win the overall damage number or gain a watchtower to spawn reenforcements at. If you WIPE on your assault and you are down in terms of points, then you HAVE to assault again. You can't go defensive, the opponent can just wait for the clock to tick out.
3. Save your big cards until the first battle has begun. Rush with commons. If you are going to push, bring your commons. You will need those big cards later. Just be afraid of AE troops.

These troops are some of the BEST to use early:

PIKEMAN - Slaughters any cav that attack your troops
HEAVY INFANTRY - Kills annoying machines
HUMAN JAVELINEERS - Kills cav
HUMAN XBOWS - Long range makes opponent have to fight you
HUMAN ARCHERS - Kills the dragons that come to AE you.

If you rush, use as big a pack as you can, you need to be able to sit on your watchtower and cap it. Target opponent that can counter cap your watchtower first. Ignore the ranged. You may want to fient to one watchtower and send a light cav to another for a cap. Sending 4 infantry to a watchtower and 1 to another is a good strategy.

Once you TAKE the watchtower set your spawn point and GARRISON all your hurt troops and bring out your factional troops. The opponent will have been trying to kill your commons, and now have to deal with fresh factionals.

Now pound him with your factionals.

This is for you Ironforge!

Official Answer to all of Ironforge's emails arrive:

"Upon close inspection, the Espionage system is difficult to exploit in any practical fashion. Any given nation can only sustain a few successful espionage attempts in one day. After each successful espionage attempt, the chances of an ensuing success against that nation decrease by 15%. This means that the standard number of possible successful espionages that cause damage is 4 per day. University upgrades and the size of the nation’s Police force can cause the exact number to fluctuate. After a point, it becomes impossible to successfully espionage a nation for the remainder of that day. Also, as further attempts become increasingly difficult, opposing nations will likely fail several times before their attempt succeeds, costing more in resources than the damage they will inflict. Players can increase the likelihood of thwarting espionage attempts by purchasing university upgrades and increasing the number of peasants assigned to be Police in Peasant Management.

Similarly with raiding, once a player has been raided and their buildings damaged, it becomes less and less effective to raid them (because they have nothing to steal!). Also, as wilderness territories are an opt-in system, players should carefully consider the advantages and consequences of moving their territories to wilderness.

After long and careful thought, we have decided that the system works well in its current state – though changes will continue to be made, particularly with regards to world conflict. Claims of “excessive” raiding and espionage will no longer be entertained when they are conducted in the normal spirit of the game. (Given that this is a combat game, “normal” spirit certainly involves destroying one another’s armies, cities, etc.) We will continue to monitor abusive behavior, and act on specific instances of bullying, harassment and poor sportsmanship (including retaliation against game moderators)."

Let me translate into English:

Don't whine about getting attacked either through Espionage or Raids.

Sure wish they would leave the free tourneys in game...

Wouldn't it be nice if Silverlode would leave free tourneys in for awhile, or possibly offer them once a week? Paid tourneys M-Sa free on Sundays?

Tournaments fun continues

I got my first win. Besides alot of crashs I did pretty well.

Had a couple EPIC battle I wish I could have fraps.

Sadly I had to play while at work.

Crashing to Desktop on 2/3s of my PCs:

So since the last patch I've had a couple PCs I play on have an issue with launching Saga. It patches fine, but when the patcher hands off to the launcher, it dies.

Hopefully YOU don't have the same issue, but if you do, here is the post that helped me.

https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=39953#39953

I installed this, fixed everything.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/thankyou.aspx?familyId=200b2fd9-ae1a-4a14-984d-389c36f85647&displayLang=en

Monday Tournaments 4PM EST

"TOURNAMENT TEST MONDAY •
11 August 2008
Tournaments will be turned on for further testing at 4PM EST or shortly after a mini patch scheduled for today to put in some additional tournament code. We expect the event to last 4 hours but may take it down early to fix any problems that arise."



More free tourneys.

Basic Tournament Strategies

After yesterdays test, it probably good to do a short article on how to WIN tournaments based on the new system.

Here are some of the strategies I liked for discussion:

1. 3 Offense 2 Defense: This is one of the best generic opening strategies. You send your 3 Maraders to take the opponents watchtower, and you have 2 troops on defense to stop them from taking one of yours.
2. 5 on Defense, run the clock out. This is a strategy used against me. It's VERY defensive, and personally I find it pretty boring to play against. Basically you run the clock out after beating back the assaulting force. The best way to beat this is to split your Offense into two forces. MAKE SURE you cap one of the watchtowers. After that you should be able to reenforce.
3. 4 on Offense, ignore your backcourt. This is a good opening strategy with a decent spell. Send 4 troops to assault their KEEP, burn the spell then disband it. When the opponent comes to take your towers use the last troop to countercap their caps. Illian used this well with using a battering ram to stop caps.

More Tournament Tests

"We are going to run another test on Monday or Tuesday, keep checking the news page for the announcement. This time the tournaments will be in trial mode. They will cost neither event tickets nor boosters to play, however no prizes will be given. Think of it as practice."

If you didn't get a chance to play, you should try it when it come up again. It's MASSIVE FUN.