How to play - The undead vs Rebels - Huumy

[Huumy]

How to play – undead – Huumy


Undead as faction:
When you are playing with undeads the thing you might be asking yourself is what this faction is good at and not so good at? Here are some stuff that comes into my mind.
---> Dark adepts, these units are the biggest damage dealer in every single matchup with 10-2 magical attack. The reason why dark adepts are so viable is because their high HP for magic user and relatively low cost of 16gp. At night adepts are DEADLY.
---> Bats, they are flying units with 8 mp, cost 13gp, have no upkeep, and need low amount of xp to level. When used right your opponent starts to wonder why he's still playing wesnoth.
---> The biggest downside of this faction is its slow movement.
---> Double-edged sword, skeletons resistances/vulnerabilities. It makes them to take less retaliation damage, but when defending they usually take more dmg.


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Undeads vs Elves

You want to attack at night and retreat during day because woses they will destroy you at day. Luckily for you they have one weakness, they are even slower than undead army. Other things to look out for are shamans, elvish fighters, and mages.

Units you are using:
---> Skeletons: meat of your army it's maybe vulnerable to woses, mages, and shamans during day, but don't think that too much, at night skeleton can attack any elf unit, even woses. In tough games there are casualties and these guys should be first to fall protecting the dark adepts.
---> Dark Adepts: the unit that makes elves hiding in forest useless. You will be killing everything that you come by. Only thing that might give you slightest trouble are woses.
---> Bats: It's important to always know where woses are. Bats are also useful to have around in battle, finishing enemies from hex no other your unit could reach or blocking an important hex. Always keep 1 bat around your bigger armies, no more is needed. Also good in larger maps or maps with lots of water.
---> Walking corpses: Several of these are good way to strenghten your army in longer games but don't over do it. In this matchup the greatest virtues of this unit is no upkeep and the fact woses have low defenses. Yay for zombie trees.
---> Skeleton archer: When you have good amount of other troops, you might want to recruit one of these. They can be used as frontline ranged defender. Elvish archers and mages need to think twice before attacking and elvish fighters dont kill these like they kill adepts.
---> Ghoul: These guys are good for holding ground. They dont have any vulnerabilities but are more easily taken down by elvish fighters thus spreading the poison. You can have 1 or 2 these with your larger army. But don't over do it because too many ghouls will weaken your army.

Basic flow of the game:
In this matchup elves are lawful they kill you during day, you are chaotic you kill them during night. So it's lots of going forth and back. The player who loses less units when retreating is going the get advantage. Woses are they key of this matchup. Elves have to recruit woses. So it's all about how can you abuse the slowness of woses and how your opponent can overcome the slowness. Yes there are other units that are good vs undeads too but theres not just enough muscle in elf army without woses. Bigger the map the better for you.

When attacking:
---> Make sure you kill units or steal villages during night. The units you will mostly likely to catch or get free hits are woses and elvish fighters
---> Be careful not to push too far. Here your skill is tested. Can you push your attacks just enough to make it harder for elves to attack or are you pushing too much.
---> Be careful, if you havent scouted there might be woses hiding in forests.
---> Not getting your experienced units killed is important.
---> Kill order? Make sure you don't put yourself on bad position to retreat and just kill everything you can. If your opponent has lined all his units in equally bad position I would say mages and woses first.

When retreating:
---> Keep your skeletons, ghouls and skeleton archers at front, adepts at back.
---> Always move away from enemies range rather than moving on good terrain.
---> Be careful your opponent might be using shamans to slow your frontline units, if this happens it's almost always better to leave one unit to die than try to rescue it with rest of your army.
---> Losing units permanently is worse than losing villages temporary.

Leveling units:
1.Adepts, makes killing everything so much easier.
2.Skeletons, I always choose revenant but I guess deathblade would help you get more free hits on retreating elves. Either way make sure to keep your lvl 2 skeleton safe during day.
3.Rest of your units.

What units you don't want your opponent to lvl:
1.Mages, white mage has 9-3 magical arcane attack and healing.
2.Shamans, 7-4 magical arcane attack. (dextrous 8-4).
3.Elvish fighters, leadership.
4.Woses, did you think killing wose is hard? Try killing a elder wose.
5.Rest of his units.

Basicly letting your opponent level up is baaad thing in this matchup.

[Caphriel]

You didn't mention the ghost, which is a pretty okay unit in this matchup, in my opinion, and worth trying to level.

Some other things that are worth mentioning:
Even if poison isn't that great against the Rebels because of the shamans' healing ability, the ghoul is still the best blocker the Undead have during the day.

It is often worth it to sacrifice a dark adept to kill a mage even during the day. Dark adepts are cheaper, and mages are more of a critical element of the enemy army, although not as much as against the Loyalists.

[Yoyobuae]

*applauds*

I like this format for a "How to play..." guide much better. Specially the "Basic flow of the game" and "When retreating/attacking".

[monochromatic]

This looks really good, the only thing, as Caphriel has already mentioned before, is the importance of ghouls. Not for the poison, but for the resists. Look at it this way: if you place ghouls at the frontline when you are retreating during the day, and the rebel units are hacking at them to get through, the rebel player would have to keep his shamans behind the lines to stop the poison, making him lose the opportunity to slow your units so you cannot make a good retreat. And it is the unit, IMO, to counter Woses along with DAs. Skeles will take heavy damage unless at night, and ghosts are very expensive. Ghouls resist the impact attack, damage it, and poison it so it doesn't regenerate. Don't underestimate that, it's like adding 8 points of damage to the attack.

[Huumy]

For ghouls they are more easily taken down by fighters and archers. Still they are useful in some situations, I'll edit my post for the ghoul part.

[monochromatic]

For ghouls they are more easily taken down by fighters and archers. Still they are useful in some situations, I'll edit my post for the ghoul part.

The thing is, the rebels player wouldn't recruit that many archers because the archers are virtually useless in the match, ie they don't have many uses for a 17g unit. Fighters get poisoned in attacking, which means they need to be supported by shamans. Think about it. You need 14+15=29g to take down a 16g unit?

That leaves using mages and woses to kill them. Mages have low hp and ghouls resist fire. The woses I discussed in the eariler post.

So basically, ghouls have a very strong defensive role. True it's not that useful in attacking. But IMO it's the best defense unit undead can offer, at least in this matchup.

[TheGreatRings]

This looks really good, the only thing, as Caphriel has already mentioned before, is the importance of ghouls. Not for the poison, but for the resists. Look at it this way: if you place ghouls at the frontline when you are retreating during the day, and the rebel units are hacking at them to get through, the rebel player would have to keep his shamans behind the lines to stop the poison, making him lose the opportunity to slow your units so you cannot make a good retreat. And it is the unit, IMO, to counter Woses along with DAs. Skeles will take heavy damage unless at night, and ghosts are very expensive. Ghouls resist the impact attack, damage it, and poison it so it doesn't regenerate. Don't underestimate that, it's like adding 8 points of damage to the attack.

Maybe, but I still like Woses as a counter to Ghouls. After all, the Woses won't stay poisoned.

Of course, the best counter is a ranged unit, but when that's not an option, better Woses than Fighters.

[Bormotun]

I saw several rly good and fun Ud vs Elf games, where ud use hevy wc onslaught and win. With 1-2 ghouls/Da support and several ghosts for killing woses, this strat can be devastating...

[Pentarctagon]

Ghouls resist the impact attack, damage it, and poison it so it doesn't regenerate.

ghouls actually have 0% impact resistance.

[monochromatic]

ghouls actually have 0% impact resistance.

Whoops. I guess with the skele hordes it almost feels like ghouls have impact resistance. But still, ghouls are the best tanks undead can offer.

[StandYourGround]

You said that elves are "lawful", which is partially incorrect. All elf units are neutral, while the Mage, Wose, and Merman Hunter are lawful.

[Caphriel]

I think he's using "elves" to refer to the Rebel faction.

[Huumy]

Actually by saying elves are lawful in this mathcup. I was trying to make clear that you should not be fighting undeads at night or just before the night.

[Huumy]

Bumping and adding more useful stuff to this thread --->
This is from high level player "neki's" youtube channel. A game where he plays as the undead vs elves.

I think the commentary is great for all the new players, neki explains lot of the way he thinks as he plays the game which is almost impossible do in a simple forum thread. There is lot to learn about the game in general not only the matchup.

It's kinda short and unusual game but shows good agressive play as the undead.

http://www.youtube.com/user/brutalwesno ... WMtO-sDySE