How to Play Isar's Cross

[anakayub]

An Isar for your delight.

[chains]

Discussion only No guide material here


". I did some tests against elves and dwarves and in all cases I was able to fight drakes off with acceptable loses."

"Acceptable losses" is the whole point to the Drake start. By the time you start "fighting them off", they have already retreated. You want to cause some fighting to happen while your damage is double and use your high movement to get out before they can kill you, that way the night will not be so long for you. You go in for a single kill and almost always get out without losing a unit in return. I find I can almost always accomplish this attack. Sometimes I score 7-8 misses and don't get the kill, but It still allows me to claim the water village without taking shots at 20% defense in the opening turn as drake... most players do not manage taking water villages with drake very well.


IB makes a great point loyalist fish can make GREAT defense if you can take the tower. However, try that same picture as Rebel or Northerner, and it will hurt ALOT. Loyalist have the strongest fish, but the other two races aren't so well served by extra fish as loyalist. With loyalist I'll still prefer a spearman over that fish because it gives me the choice of being offensive if I desire. It also has equal defense, much higher damage, is 1 gold cheaper, and has faster move over most terrian on isars.

I think for most players who need to use an isars cross guide two fish will be quite hard for them to use as they will often place them onto land hexes to take attacks. Pro players can play with just about any mix of units and still hold up a decent game.

[alpha1]

Discussion only No guide material here

"Acceptable losses" is the whole point to the Drake start. By the time you start "fighting them off", they have already retreated...

Acceptable losses means 2 drakes + injured leader for 3 elvish units or dead leader for 2 elves. Nevertheless elves had heavy losses in the 3rd game, so i came to conclusion that its better not to take the north-east village if you see (with the fish) that your opponent is drake and can reach you with 3 units. If he is stupid enough to take this village and hold it for more than 1 turn or even to continue the attack you can slow and easilly kill him.

2 IB: i thought we were talking about recruiting 2 fishes if you are on the northern or southern keep. But recruiting more than 1 fish in the beginning of the game if you are on eastern or western keep makes even less sense to me. I mean there is no village to steal and the 2nd fish can only be usefull if your opponent rushes you with drakes and throws all his units on your water village. Even than you can just move your fish few hexes towards your keep and if the drake takes it he will soon die on 20%. Of course you can put the 2nd fish on the castle hex but it will only stay there and take beating, while a spearman can actually move all over the map enjoying higher def than a fish.

[anakayub]

I think talking based on replays everyone can see will help everyone. It's difficult to talk about ideas on approach without seeing them in the game. I guess I'll have to post all Isar's games I play, but that's all I play at the moment.

I have seen players use 2 fish on the lateral keeps and win decently, although I personally don't use this strategy when playing Loys. But I don't have replays of these matches (it was in the 1.3.16 time if I'm not mistaken).

[IB]

The point is you secure the water village. If he tries to take the village you have 2 fish to attack with so you can take it back. This game is all about gold, that village is more important than the extra damage a spearman does.

[anakayub]

Specific matchup question here.

How do you deal with Northeners as Undead on this map?

The main problem I have is that they all have cheap counters towards my units (both grunt/whelp against DA, and whelps against skelies). I find ghouls less useful especially once the opponent masses whelps, for which Ud has no impact resis units.

Here I've posted a replay of a recent match. I wonder if at turn 5, I should've positioned my ghoul in the central ruin rather on hill.

On 1.4.10

Thanks in advance.

[Sapient]

adepts vs trolls... adepts win.
skeletons vs grunts... skeletons win.
orc archers can be weakened with ghouls then killed by other units if they don't retreat.

another point to consider, if your opponent doesn't recruit any orc archers then he won't have any good way to counter ghosts.

And on a constrained little map like this, magic is more useful than usual. Keep that in mind.

[anakayub]

The only problem being that in a constrained map like this, what would be the best unit to defend against a group of whelps to hold the line for 1 turn like in the replay? The problem was that I was side 4, it was difficult to initiate my adepts against his whelps. I was too far back to attack effectively, yet holding a line further away would've given side 2 more advantage. Maybe I could've started differently in that game?

Thanks.

[bert1]

Two things jumped out at me when I watched the replay:

1. The nagas, especially the first one should have been killed or scared off immediately with your leader and DAs IMHO. On your very first move you moved your leader out of range of the water village - big mistake, I think. Your ghost could have captured the village afterwards. It would not have been too risky for your leader to jump in the swamp from time to time to blast the cold-weak nagas.

2. You recruited about 4 skelly archers in total. I'd say that was 3 or 4 too many. Vs the high hp, low damage trolls and grunts, I'd say you need to dish out plenty of damage, and not worry too much about receiving a few troll-punches or grunt slashes. DAs vs northerners should do well on Isar's, as they have more concentrated damage across a shorter battle front.

All that was significantly compounded by some bad luck.

[anakayub]

Ah thanks.

I didn't want to recruit archers, but considering how badly I got shredded, I was just trying to churn out as many units before getting completely overran.

About the first part, yeah I definitely need to change my opening maneuver for Isar's as side 3/4. I wonder why I changed to that, you're not the only one who pointed that out...

[IB]

Bert#1 for sure, big mistake not being able to kill the naga.

You had a lot of bad luck.

Ghost placement sucked.

Your ally really doesn't want to use his leader for some weird reason all he does is sit there and take arrows.

That ulf was kinda keeping whites leader at bay. Also red blocked you from attacking.

Footpad 11,11, I called it, reds a newb.

[Lim-Dul]

I could show you a replay how undead crushed me playing Northeners an Isar's - the whole match lasted 19 turns, though, so it wasn't a very fast victory.

It was Loyalists (W) & Northeners (S) vs Loyalists (N) & Undead (E)...

Basically the undead player was spamming DAs and ghouls - NOTHING else. The Northeners can do quite some damage, true, but DAs and ghouls have better EV if you want to use trolls in the center and the Northeners suffer from the "too few strikes" syndrome. Basically you have to keep pushing against the DAs BUT the ghouls poison you and sooner or later you must retreat or you'll start trading units 2to1 or worse. The ghouls are resistant to EVERYTHING except impact and whelps can't do crap to DAs and are weak to arcane on top of that. Poisoned archers don't really stand a chance against ghouls either.

The player I played with (quite a good one, we won a previous matchup by a huge margin) agreed that ghouls seem to be quite the uber-unit on Isar's... They're basically like poisonous dwarves. True, they have no ranged attack but a 30% (!) res to piercing damage and even fire - what the heck? So basically you can only attack them with impact and get poisoned in turn? Bah... Add some human-like EV, 5 MP and the fearless trait - all for 16 gold - and you got yourself a pretty nice response to the Northeners - maybe even TOO nice. I mean - just spamming two units of the whole faction shouldn't be a winning tactic. ;-)

Before I'll formulate some rushed theories I will try that tactic against another Northener and see what he'll do...

[Sapient]

The ghouls are resistant to EVERYTHING except impact

so you are saying that Northerner's lack BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA?

[AI]

I'd say trolls on the ghouls (regen, impact), grunts on the adepts and GOBLINS, most other units are pretty useless here.

Then again, I'm a bit of a newb at MP.

[anakayub]

The ghouls are resistant to EVERYTHING except impact

so you are saying that Northerner's lack BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA?

Where have we all heard that before?