Setting up Undead to counter PvP openings

So I was thinking about the standard counters to 150CP PvP battle opening with undead.

Alot of players tend to open the same way in PvP, then adjust as the battle proceeds.

For example Christian's the "PACman" opens with phoenix's and clerics.

Illian tends to open with Treants/stone giants/eagles.

Slobboik opens with heavy cav/ravens/dark elf bowman.

Kheldara opens with chariots/giant bows.

The question is what is standard opening going to be for Undead Players? Figuring this out both lets you plan which troops are crutial to level first, and what other armies need to counter them from the jump.

I think the most successful opening will be Bone Wagons heading to cap opponents buildings and Wights in the sky.

Bone Wagons are counter for heavy cav. They are one of the few ranged units that can deal with heavy cav and trade damage for damage. If you are capping the opponents outer buildings and hopefully shrines, he HAS to bring the battle to you.

Wights will stop the early rush of Air, and force the opponent to go to the ground. If the opponent has Air and rushs your Bone Wagons, the advantage of the Wagons and Wights is they will be slowed and attacked by every unit. Bone Wagons have an advantage over Heavy Cav due to the fact they are still ranged and able to shoot at flyers.

Once the opponent goes to the ground, and fields something to deal with your Wights, like strong ground based ranged units, now you go to your Abominations. Garrison your Wights and bring out your pack of Abominations. I wouldn't suggest rushing their ranged, but instead capping more buildings. With the Abominations hps, passive defence, and speed, they will be able to rush and cap opposing buildings.

And anything, even Lancers that rush Abominations will not make short work of them. They are not squishy at all.

If they go to the sky to deal with your Abominations, then its time for the Wights again. Garrison your Bone Wagons, and bring up your 2nd set of Wights.

In terms of counters, Nature brings alot of long range shooters to the party. However if you concentrate on capping buildings with Abominations, only the elven longbows will be a threat. Treants will have a harder time hitting Abominations through their armor passive. Luckly Elven Longbowman are pretty squishy. One unit of Heavy Cav can make a Elven Longbowman retreat.

Machine brings Wooden Tanks and now the new Improved faster Mech Giant to the table. Machines are definitely a bane of Abominations capping, but luckly you can field 5 behemoths now to counter any heavy machine army, with 3 armored behemoths and 2 regular. 5 level 10 behemoths are frustrating to machine players.

Magic brings the overwhelming dps upgrades of the Dark Elf bowman and Ravens. Sadly the DE bows have little AR, so they will miss Abominations pretty frequently. I would say ignore them. Ravens are no match for Wights, so you counter the two best units of Magic from the beginning. Magic will have to dig in their bag of tricks to counter undead, which means you have the opening advantage.

Light has Heavy Lancers, and Knights, both excellent counters to Abominations. Undead has little to counter those strong mounted units, except for a mounted range units and Wights. If the opponent is good you will need to roll over to Arbiters to counter his lancers. I would include the Death Bringer snares for help with that battle. 2 Arbiters, 1 Death bringer, and 2 Wights will give you a chance at battlefield superiority, long enough to cap his buildings.

Orc has Snipers, which in a pack of 3 troops can shred Abominations. However Rock Smashed Scissors, and a troop of 3 units of charging Heavy Cav will shred Snipers.

Undead vs Undead is a good matchup. You need to counter wights with wights, and Abominations with Death Bringers. Death Bringers counter with Humongus's. Bone Chariots with Humongus's.

So looking at the above Theorycrafting, here are the units I think I would need:

• 6 troops of Bone Chariots
• 6 troops of Wights
• 6 troops of Abominations
• 6 troops of Heavy Cav
• 3 troops of Armored Behemoth
• 2 troops of Behemoths
• 3 troops of Arbiters
• 6 troops of Death Bringers
• 3 troops of Humongus's

This is around 1000 CP, but it has counters for most armies.

Defending your Territories - Based on Ironforge Nation

So I wanted to profile a couple armies each week to analyse what people are doing vs raiding.

This was started BEFORE the massive raiding nerfs in the free-build patch. Nerfs that we assume eventually will be fixed in a future patch but for now take raiding out of the game.


These nerfs I have referred to before: http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/raiding-and-several-pvp-features-are.html

• To start off, I sent spys to look at the main army and territory of the opponent. I picked Ironforge because since the raiding nerfs he's been rather chatty all of a sudden.


• Lets see why raiding shut him up for so long:

First of all, it looks as though he is in love with his Iron Tanks. This unit is a good PvE unit, but with it's horribly slow movement in PvP, it is pretty avoidable.




On his territories he does a little better. He stacks two troops of Bombardiers with one troop or heavy Cav.

Now ranged defenders are very buggy in raiding defense, they often don't agro on the attacking armies. But if they do agro, bombardiers woudl at least have a long agro range.

Ballistas are also talked about as good territory defense. This is incorrect except on a territory that is flat, with few rivers.

How would I change his defenses?

First,

If I were doing machine for territory defense I would use units that had awesome passives. (Specials don't fire well for the AI)

• Hunters for anti mounted. Auto Ballistas for anti infantry. Dwaven Axeman for living forever vs ranged.


• I would mix in the awesome commons like Light Cav.
• Light Cav with speed gear is FAST to attack. And cheap! 60cents a unit. http://www.sagaunits.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_6&products_id=125

• Get together a ton of speed gear and stick it on every unit. Speed is better then anything for defense. See above this light Cav has a 23 base speed. It will run in fast enough to prevent a cap, if the attacker is spread out trying to cap multiple buildings at once with single units on each.


• Make sure you have enough units in the territory. They don't die, so the more that swamp your opponent the better. I like about 600 CP in each territory.

Finishing your Army Training?

So when do you call a unit "TRAINED?"

ie ready to PvP with.

Obviously if you are playing in end-game PvP, most players will have level 10 troops that they will fight you with. Especially the Beta players.

PvP in most MMO games is a combination of Gear/Skill/ Strategy. You don't want to be completely undergeared vs your opponents, that's where training or leveling your troops is important.

My theory is level 8 is a fine place to stop leveling a troop, and concentrate on a different unit.

The difference between Level 8 and Level 10 is 10% more Defence Rating, 10% more hitpoints, more morale and 10% more attack rating. In terms of numbers here is a level 10 and level 1 Treant

As you can see the Level 10 has many more hps and defence rating, making it live much longer.

Gear still plays an important part, as you can see looking at the same Level 1 Treant with great gear.

So my answer for this is Level 8. A Level 8 troop is good enough to fight with. After you get to level 8, you should move on to other units, and getting gear.

Deck Profiling - Nature CCIE - Part 1

So I promised to profile my working army:

• "Human Heavy Cavalry", - 7 troops


• "Behemoth","2"


• "Armored Behemoth","1"


• "Ballista","5"


• "Trebuchet","3"


• "Green Dragon","3"


• "Wood Giants","10" - 2 troops


• "Treants", - 5 troops


• "Fire Elementals", - 6 troops


• "Earth Elementals", - 2 troops


• "Elven Druids", - 4 troops


• "Elven Longbowmen", - 2 troops


• "Eagle Riders", - 3 troops


• "Lightning Elementals", - 6 troops


• "Elven Bear Riders", - 1 troop


• "Elven Sabretooth Riders", - 2 troops


• "Elven Saboteurs", - 2 troops

Here are my reasoning for this build. I am heavy Elementals with near 6 of each. I love my elementals, and now with the LACK of an anti elemental card in undead they are still very viable as a theme deck.

I don't run more then a full compliment of eagles. My longbowman are only a set of two, and I use primarily for PvE boss kills. I plan on combining Summon Behemoth, Behemoths, and Elven Sabs for heavy Machine kills.

Unlike Illian, I prefer Fire Elementals to Bear Riders. Mostly a theme difference.

Elven Sabertooth Riders are my counter-cappers.

I only have 2 Ballistas that matter, and only 2 Trebs, the rest are 1s and 2s.

With 7 Heavy Cav troops of various levels, I can throw them away if needed.

And 5 sets of Treants. I will probably go to 6 before I'm done, but I'm probably not worried about it for awhile. Treants aren't squishy really, they live along time.

In terms of levels I try to get everything to level 8 for my main army. Anything lower I keep training in PvE.

Gear, I go mainly for speed, and I've enchanted about 10 items or so, using mostly 16%.

With all the Elementals, I go for Wards of Dragon Might and Boar's Tooth Charms. I have most of the Wards done, now finishing the Charms. On Longbowman and Eagles I use Justice like everyone else.

Undead Planning - How many to Collect?

So I read the the previews:

"Tentonhammer.com Has a Preview of six of the ranged units. Featuring the Lich and Death Bringer.
Rpgvault.com is showing off four mounted and two flying units including the Undead Dragon.
Tcgplayer.com is featuring five of the Undead infantry units. ." - https://www.playsaga.com/saga_index.php

For this blog I decided to profile what I would be looking to collect.

Several units do not meet my playstyle. (Although I reserve the right to change my mind multiple times.) If you don't see it listed here, I don't see me using it for my core army.

Here is initially what I'd like to see in a 1000 CP army for PvP.



This give about 925 CP in troops, leaving 75 CP for spells or substitutions.

I obviously am not going as dense in the Wights as I probably would for a 100CP battle, but I tend to try to build towards a 225 CP fight. I personally like the amount of units on the field in 225 vs 100 CP.

I am iffy on fielding Abominations. They are so slow that I doubt they will be worth the CP, but as they are a passive counter troop, we might see us with them vs a Magic army that is heavy summoners.

Obviously I love Diabolists fielding 6 in a army. I love Fire Elementals, and Diabolists are even cooler.

Deck Profiling

I plan on sending out my spies to figure out what people have in terms of armies. What they are keeping in their main army, what they like defending with etc etc. I plan on starting with the Level 35s, then moving on down the list.

Like always I will be using my spies and literally espionaging the entire server. If it make people mad, it's a sacrific for science.

However: If you care to volunteer to be profiled, and want to show off your army, or a subset of units, let me know, and I can arrange an interview.

I am also interested in Wall Designs.

I will be profiling my OWN army first, listing every unit I own, and how I have them setup for raids, just to be fair. (Not that I care about fair.)

And yes, if I put a bullseye on your head, wear it with pride. If you feel froggy then jump.

How many units is too many?

So collecting units and training, equiping, building units is part of the end-game at 35.

There are other end-games, but that is the one I'm stuck on right this second.

So how many units is enough?

• Above are my six lightning elementals: Probably the best counter unit in the game for Nature.
• Eats up so many different type of troops. If you wear chain/plate, you are in trouble if these are nearby.
• And being a 6 CP troop they last along time doing near max damage.
• They aren't infantry or mounted, or machine, so until an anti-elemental card comes out, their counter is Heavy Cav, which they have a good chance of swapping damage with.
  
  
  
  Obviously to farm certain missions for gold or items I can get by with a very few number of each unit. There also is a cap on units, 1050 CP for 5 armies so 5250 CP.
  
  Twonstermonter recently noted in Conflict that he had "24 eagles". Or six units. Assuming one unit per each of his four wilderness, that leaves 2 in his main army, unless he cycles them in.
  
  I spend alot of time cycling troops in to try to find the optimum unit composition for each mission. Or if one levels, to bring in a lower level troop for exp.
  
  Six units of your favorite types seems like a good number for complete overkill. Even in a giant 225 CP PvP game, you probably won't have the CP to cycle more then 6 of any one type. You are limited to 3 on the deck at one time, so that's 3 more in spare.
  
  
• Above are my six Fire Elementals: Easy to level up with a AE, and easy to gear with twelve trials. http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/wards-and-farming-for-treasure-from-ex.html
• Get a nice Ward of Dragon Might on one, and a charm from the boar, they can be a good screen for your Lightning Elementals.
  
  
  
  
  Which leads me to wonder if I can play with only the all 6 CP elementals? Treants/Fire/Lightning?
  
  

  I never liked those nasty elves anyway.