A Few Thoughts on Necros

[Juriel]

Wight skills (after Guard): It depends, surprise surprise.

Even if your Wolves have rolled doubles for MB, a Wight with MB is still useful, because often you don't want Frenzy getting you into trouble on a blitz. And when they're stuck in a scrum, an extra stun can turn things around.

But that depends on being able to take the opponents down. If you know you're going to be facing blodgers, Wights are the obvious players to give Tackle to. Guard/Tackle may take a good while to get to 31 SPP then, but on the other hand, do they really need anything more?

[narg]

Just to keep the discussion fresh, here's a recent question I've run into with Wight development:
Should the second skill after Guard be Tackle, Mighty Blow, or Stand Firm?

At the moment I'm trying mighty blow as a first skill on wights. It's not as useful as guard but it helps to level up faster.

I'm also pondering giving piling on as a second skill, before guard.

[swilhelm73]

At the moment I'm trying mighty blow as a first skill on wights. It's not as useful as guard but it helps to level up faster.

I'm also pondering giving piling on as a second skill, before guard.

Since you will spend a lot of time with only 2 guard players - the wights - do you really want PO on them as an early skill?

I think you can only make the case for first skill MB if you play in a league with a lot of squishy teams....without dodge.

Potentially going up against bash teams with no guard is a tough match up.

[narg]

Since you will spend a lot of time with only 2 guard players - the wights - do you really want PO on them as an early skill?

I think you can only make the case for first skill MB if you play in a league with a lot of squishy teams....without dodge.

Potentially going up against bash teams with no guard is a tough match up.

To be honest I don't have much experience with Undead, my main race is Norse. But I recently started an Undead team and I'm trying to transfer my Norse experience. I used to think that guard first was the way to go on berserkers and ulfwereners until I saw that Carnis preferred to start with mighty blow and piling on on ulfwereners (yes before block and guard). Given his track record I thought that it was maybe not as stupid as it seemed.

Played orcs in my last two games (game 7 & 8 ) and won both so it's manageable. But the point of taking mighty blow first is that it accelerates your SPP intake and gets you faster to guard AND mighty blow, whereas guard alone gets you nowhere - it helps the team but doesn't develop the player.

I still haven't made up my mind on piling on, it's great at inflicting damage but it's somehow not very popular on wights.

[swilhelm73]

To be honest I don't have much experience with Undead, my main race is Norse. But I recently started an Undead team and I'm trying to transfer my Norse experience. I used to think that guard first was the way to go on berserkers and ulfwereners until I saw that Carnis preferred to start with mighty blow and piling on on ulfwereners (yes before block and guard). Given his track record I thought that it was maybe not as stupid as it seemed.

On Berzerkers, I'd definitely take damage skills first. On Ulfs I don't have enough MP experience playing as them - my opponents have mixed guard and MB as second skills.

Played orcs in my last two games (game 7 & 8 ) and won both so it's manageable. But the point of taking mighty blow first is that it accelerates your SPP intake and gets you faster to guard AND mighty blow, whereas guard alone gets you nowhere - it helps the team but doesn't develop the player.

I still haven't made up my mind on piling on, it's great at inflicting damage but it's somehow not very popular on wights.

The coaches I play against don't generally give up many free hits, so the value of lots of MB gets a bit muted on your non-blitz pieces. Not that I wouldn't take it, but guard gets a lot more use.

Looking at my wights (I still have my originals after about 70 games) I believe I went: Guard/Tackle/MB/SF and Dodge/Guard/MB (with +ag or the first and +2ag on the second thrown in).

And looking at the numbers, WW1 has 82 CAS (Block/Dodge/MB/PO/SS/JU) and WW2 has 62 (Block/Dodge/Daunt/Tackle/SS/MB) vs 32 and 10 for the wights - I almost always blitz with the WWs.

Of course if you don't get MB on your wolves, your ability to injure opponents with them is weakened a lot...so that might make a wight as your killer more of a choice...but then you have 3 pieces that are designated blitzers...

[Chris]

The dream is of course MB/PO on the wolves... But regardless I couldn't not give guard to the wights first (and FG's second). I can see why MB can make sense for a MM environment where in effect you can 'burn' games just looking for skills and not be fussed about winning but in a league where every game counts MB just isn't reliable enough. 2nd and 3rd skills are MB and tackle, the order depends on your opponents.

Sidenote on tackle - it does seem to be an environment specific skill that you either want lots of or only ona couple of pieces. My OCC team was nicely developing into its 3rd season (after 2 unremarkable ones...) until I realised that there were a fair few dodge teams int he same league as me! Sadly the only things skilling have been ghouls and a wight, but I have managed to get 3 tacklers in the team in short order. Hopefully it will be enough to avoid an embarissing defeat at the hands of the halflings!

On playing other underdog teams - dealing with Zara the ghoul slayer?

My god I have had fun using her in the past, now I dread facing the dear lady. Should I be doing my best to get her, or should I concentrate on halfling removal?

[Digger Goreman]

On playing other underdog teams - dealing with Zara the ghoul slayer?

My god I have had fun using her in the past, now I dread facing the dear lady. Should I be doing my best to get her, or should I concentrate on halfling removal?

Meh, last year I turned her into Zara the Slain... Nice to have the witch as a zombie!