Undead Cookbook - A Strategy Guide for My Brother

[UK1]

Ok I was addressing the fact that clashers do not get slowed by hills. Furthermore with clashers you get more bang for your buck. Because yaknow a 6-4 attack isn't nearly as good as a 7-3 one. One more reason i like clashers: Less luck dependant

[Caphriel]

I'd probably go all-fighters against a pure dark adept recruit. Maybe a skirm or two to finish stuff off? Non-quick clashers can get caught by quick DAs unless they cross two hexes of hill, etc. My strategy would be to basically attack at morning every day (instead of dawn, to minimize possible counter damage?), and then flat out run away, I think. Not sure, really. I'd have to run the numbers on just how effective the DAs are against the drakes at dawn and day. My general strategy would be the same as my general anti-undead strategy with drakes, which is to abuse my maneuverability advantage to guarantee I get the first attack, and to make it a good one, and to be nowhere in the area when night falls, using pressure to keep the undead from pushing too far forward. The drakes should gain ground over days of push-pull, and hopefully gain more experience than the undead, so the goal would be to level some fighters and eventually catch the undead with no room to retreat, and squash them, I suppose.

[UK1]

That's nice. This thread is not about drakes. I shouldn't have replied at all. That was a serious mistake. The Wesnoth forum is equipped with a mediocre to decent search engine. It will suffice to find drake strategies.

[Yogibear]

So maybe drake fighters and saurian skirmishers? Fighters do the damage, skirmishers help and make cheaper fodder (can ZoC too, when needed). Saurians will die more easily than fighters, though. But they'll hit harder at night: drakes may need to start off the at attack early, at 2nd watch, specially if P2 and if DAs are spread thin after night time push.

Fighters are the way to go. Skirmishers won't have enough attack potential at day and if you are forced to fight undead at night as drakes you can just give up as well, no matter if you got saurians or not. You don't want to fight at night, you want to run, even if it means giving up villages.

I also wouldn't count on burners against adepts. They might have their uses, but they are expensive and (relatively) slow. With average luck, it will take 3 DA's to get down a fighter and they will even take retaliation - no need to get a burner for that in my opinion.

[Eskon]

UK1 - You want to discuss the Undead-Drake matchup without discussing Drake strategy? Isn't that oversimplifying things?

[UK1]

Eskon the all adept strategy is not in the guide. I'm talking about faction strategy and how you counter it. I can't talk about how to counter their counter against your counter. That would be... endless.

[Eskon]

That's precisely it. The clasher/fighter comparison is a pretty important part of Drake strategy against undead, whether the undead recruit all adepts or not; the fact is that undead will have a lot of adepts and figuring out how to strike at them is quite vital for the drakes, since this matchup is, after all, all about the adepts. Consequently, I'd think it quite appropriate to discuss here which is the better choice, since this is what the undead are likely to have to prepare against over the course of the game.

Fighters appear the better choice to me as well; at day they can kill adepts at least as effectively as clashers can (and they can reach them), they retaliate against adepts (4-3) and skeleton archers especially (6-3), and naturally ghouls too (at day, 8-3 I think). Fighters are also cheaper than clashers. Clashers have trouble reaching where they want to strike, so the strategical disadvantage outweighs the damage advantage overall. Fighters will pretty much always be able to engage at the time of day they want to.

[5dPZ]

A recent game drake vs undead taught me that the match up is all about DAs hitting 1/2 or 2/2. If UD got 80% time hitting 2/2 instead of supposed 50%, Drakes would get pwned, even during day. If the 2/2 rate is 50%, then the game is decided by players.

[Skrim]

A recent game drake vs undead taught me that the match up is all about DAs hitting 1/2 or 2/2. If UD got 80% time hitting 2/2 instead of supposed 50%, Drakes would get pwned, even during day. If the 2/2 rate is 50%, then the game is decided by players.

Well, the baseline probability is a 49% chance to hit 2/2, a 42% chance to hit 1/2 and a 9% chance to hit 0/2. If the Drake player is getting hit 2/2 80% of the time, that's just really bad luck.

[Yoyobuae]

I've seen a ladder game by Cackfiend where his drakes where hit ~24 times by DAs with only 2~4 misses. It was just horrible, even more so when his drakes were continually converted to zombies. It makes it rather hard to reach adepts as battle advances.

But I agree it's rare, but not impossible.

[5dPZ]

I've seen a ladder game by Cackfiend where his drakes where hit ~24 times by DAs with only 2~4 misses. It was just horrible, even more so when his drakes were continually converted to zombies. It makes it rather hard to reach adepts as battle advances.

But I agree it's rare, but not impossible.

DA 2/2 hit is much more devastating to drakes than to any other factions. Why?

1. The most obvious -50% cold resist
2. Drakes got low def, max 40%. that means after a 2/2 hit with DA, due to their cold weakness, the unit is weakened so much that UD player can pick up the kill pretty safely with a non-magical unit such as skeletons. Whereas vs elves, for example, UD would secure a 60% def elf kill with yet another DA. Thus, two 2/2 DA hit means two dead drakes, whereas vs elves, for say, would only mean 1 unit loss (maybe even less for dwarves).
3. Drakes are expensive, so less in number compare with any other factions. Losing 1 unit weakens it more than other factions, compared with 14g in loyal/elves etc. So once a couple 2/2 DA hits, each means a loss of unit, it's hard to pull an effective counter attack, even during days.

Let's say during Dawn, 1 round of 4 DAs all hitting 2/2 (yes, i know he is lucky, but..) would means game over for drakes (even followed by 2 day turns), but would be less devastating for a loyalist player. It is a comparison of losing 4 drakes (68g) vs 2 spearmen (28g). For a 120g worth of army, drake now only has 60g to counter attack (about 3-4 drakes), where as loyalist has 90+g to counter (equiv of 4 spearmen and 2 mages), so the counter strength is much different after the unlucky turn.

By the way, undead is usually given the option to offense at Dawn, because if the drake player leaves a huge distance between the drake army and undead army, the day turn 1 offensive won't be effective if UD player decide to fall back more. All I am saying is that IF the undead player decides to fight AND gets lucky, he could win the game by waste away a very significant portion of the drake army. However, if he makes the same decision vs loyalist, then he would still be much likely to lose even he got the same amount of luck.

[CodeMonkey]

Uh, where is the guide?! Tried reading it, but it seems to be deleted?!

[Caphriel]

"Last edited by UK1 on 24 Jan 2010, 01:42, edited 6 times in total."

Looks like he deleted it last month. Don't worry, you didn't miss much.

[Cackfiend]

I've seen a ladder game by Cackfiend where his drakes where hit ~24 times by DAs with only 2~4 misses. It was just horrible, even more so when his drakes were continually converted to zombies. It makes it rather hard to reach adepts as battle advances.

But I agree it's rare, but not impossible.

That was a brutal game (not one of his DA's went 0/2) and before I had edited my Drake vs Undead tactics to go along with the changes in that matchup in the last year or two

Basically Drake Vs Undead nowadays forces Drakes to be super super cautious... which unfortunately has made the matchup quite boring imo