So I have owned the game for a little over two weeks, and have played it four times so far. In this limited amount of playing I have had the Undead involved in two games, a two player and a three player game. In both games the ability to summon in combat went off very often. It went off so much that undead never lost a single battle with two or more necromancers involved, and were often stronger in force coming out of a battle then going in. My question is was this just random luck (I suppose maybe the circle/special cards were just coming up really lucky) or have other people noticed this too? One of my regular players has become, er, phobic of the Undead now.

Average results for necromancers are 40% chance to gain 2 reanimates.

With e.g. 5-necromancers you would averagely gain 4 reanimates. An opposing force of 5-triangle or circle units would average only 3 hits. So your net +1 unit. But that small gain could easily be lost:-depending on the special effects of enemy attacks. e.g. Elf archers will obviously target necromancers on special hits.

I suspect it's a mix of random luck & only attacking if you have superior force in the first place. I've noticed that players using undead, tend to include enough escourting units to ensure they won't take casulaties from the necromancers (which are very fragile & hard to replace). And the early undead strategy is to mass necromancers against small stacks of nuetrals. Which gives the undead a numerical advantage for later battles.

your suspicions are correct. Nothing can defeat the undead. The world will fall to the ravenous hordes of the dead, as the zombie apocalypse consumes us all. Kill your self now, or be devoured later... it matters not .

Keep in mind that the ability is balanced by the fact that the Undead have no 3-initiative units (meaning the other races' 3-initiative units could potentially do some damage before the Reanimates get a chance). And the Undead have no Rectangle units.

Triangle units and Circle units do the least damage overall of any units (especially the Necromancer circle units, who's Orb ability doesn't do any damage directly). Their only powerhouse figure is the Dark Knight. Their strength lies in swarms.

Hrm well those are all fair answers (yes even the we're all gonna die and join them anyway post, it's true!). Like I said I have only played two games with the undead involved. I can see how the lack of a third initiative unit and the lack of rectangles would balance it out. I Probably just need to play it more. And maybe play with someone with better luck (my friend always gets screwed)

First game I played was a short (3 year) 2P game to learn the rules. My opponent's Necromancers drew probably 15 Fate cards in that time. He got 2 Reanimates the entire time. So luck certainly plays a role.

bcwMD said:

Wow, that's pretty bad luck; Do you mean "2 orbs" for 4 reanimates, or 1 orb for 2 reanimates? If the latter, that's pretty bad. With 15 Fate cards, statistically you should expect about 6 orbs for the Necromancers, for 12 Reanimates!

1 orb. 2 Reanimates. Nearly had a table-flip.

I had a game against my brother a few weeks ago where he was the Daqan Knights, I was the Undead. I seemed to be pullin an inordinate amount of Orbs - my Reanimates especially! Doing 4 and 6 damage per battle with them was nasty!

Yea, it's a bit ridiculous. I had pushed my opponent back, and forced him to retreat two Giants. I had a single Necromancer I could attack where the Giants went too (to destroy them since they were already routed.) But the space had a fortress on it, nothing else. Since I took Conquer I figured i'd give it a shot, hit the special and win. Hit anything else and lose, retreat the guy back to the rest of my army. Nailed it, one card. Took down his fortress (and lost it with a tactics card of his but i didn't care, was too close to his home land anyways.) and took out the giants (which is good in itself because they're bastriches. Good as well because I had the Objective to destroy all giants.)

niarBaD said:

I think I'm misunderstanding this situation. Were the Giants with the Fortress? If so, they would have been allied with that player (since the player controls the space, any neutrals there are controlled as well). Or in a different area? If the latter, even with a Mobilize you cannot battle the Giants in the same order as the Fortress - that would be two battles!

The giants were allied with my opponent. In Spring I did mobolize which hit his army where the giants were, and forced him to retreat. He split his retreats between a city and a fortress putting both giants on the fortress. The City had probably 3-4 standing units as well as 3 or so routed units after the retreat.

In Summer I played Conquer, which allowed me to bring the Necromancer from behind the army that attacked his to his fortress for the second attack. Yes, they were still allied with him however they were routed from the combat in spring and being forced to retreat. Thus, they didn't help in the combat any and all it came down to was if I drew a special or not. Since with Conquers supremecy bonus his fortress was only a strength 2, with the 2 reanimates i create it became 3 vs 2 strength and destroyed all his routed units.

Combat was over two seasons

niarBaD said:

You are only allowed to retreat to a single area, even if that would take you over 8 there.

Was our first game We missed a few other small rules like that as well.

broken said:

For what it's worth, not only can you retreat only to a single area, it MUST be to a friendly area - even if the only friendly area would put you over 8. (You can only retreat to an Empty area if there are NO friendly areas to retreat to).