User:Requi3m1001
Dominuiem's Guide to Nether
First Edit: 01 / 04 / 12
Introduction
First off, let me say this this guide is probably one of the most unconventional way to play TR (as it does not conform to the hit/grow rule) but instead grow slowly through Nether's ability to whore with their town/farm ratio while summoning a very diverse stack which is almost close to impossible to guess and crack with Nether's Ultimate defense. I believe that Nether shines at very large land (above 6/7k) and having the proper money to buy out heroes will make Nether tough on offense as they are on defense. The reason I am writing this guide is that I have finally decided to retire from this color as I have considered to achieve enough know-how to play this color masterfully, and even though I've never halled (this is mostly due to the lack of time I actually put into this game) I generally limp around in the top 20 every set in Blitz and Beta. The concept that I will share I do not know exactly how this will play out on other server, but they have been proven very successful in my time. I've played with multiple hallers in my guild, many whom have shared their knowledge of this color with me and they were great contributions and much of it I will share here. If you want the basic of how to play nether, what unit is good with what pairing, what spells to use on what occasion I believe its better you visit other guide first. This guide is meant only for players who are already familiar with the general mechanics of the game.
Attack Run vs Exploring
The conventional way that most people are taught to play this game is that with Nether you have to be doing alot of attack. Although true that attacking can give you alot of land fast (and albeit one of the main ways to gain land apart from exploring and Magical Compass), it does leave you with a fundamental problem which eventually will become the reason why nether finds it hard to grow above 4k land.
Lets consider a very usual Nether turn cycle: At 200 turns available, first 60 is spent attacking, another 50 building, 40 turns charging, and 50 turns summoning.
I will not go through the detail of this scenario but consider this: Many turns are spent attacking, then charging, then re summoning the lost army. On a good run, one may win 15/30 attacks, or 10/30 on a normal day. At a 3k land range, assuming a 50/100 land won/destroyed after a regular attack (30 sieges would land you much less win) that will result in more or less 750 acre land maximum at this range, or 500 acre otherwise. Lets say this mage started at 3k today and finished at 3.75k at the end of his run. While waiting 16 hours for another full run, it shouldnt come as a surprise if you get hit by 3-4 ascendants (below 4k range is a typically dangerous one). Loosing 1-2/4 sieges here will already cost you to drop to 3375 then 3037 land respectively after each loss. On top of this (after loosing lands and considerable amount of troops), you just gave out 30 counters!! In this time if anyone outgrew you, they will take their counters, and after taking more counters you will end up probably with less land than what you started with.
The lesson of the story is that giving out alot of counters are dangerous, this is a game of repercussion so opening yourself up to alot of counters will result in alot of wasted time when they see you get dropped and take their chance to hit you back.
Instead, if you had explore in the first place, you could have easily gained 300-500 land, and not giving out any counters. Instead, you focus on a solid defense to keep you through the few hits you get a day (instead of wasting many of it on runs), and if you get lucky, those few hits wont cost you land and with no one to take counters on you then you are safe and free to explore again on the next day. Essentially, its abit difficult to break through 4k (this is because of the vast amount of people above you) but the rules of thumb is that the higher you go up in rank/land the less hits you get per day. Below 4, 4.5k mono lich with solid defense assign (satchel, staff of illusion, strange metallic can) is a very difficult defense to break, but against any color with a more diversified stack above you this becomes easier to break as you go up in land. At 4.5k land, you switch to a more versatile and nether's ultimate defense, I cant stress this enough but only at these lands can Nether really shine. The idea from here on is the same, you keep exploring (which is still very doable at 4k, difficult at 5k, boring to death slow at 6k, the limit in my opinion is around 7k) and prevent yourself from giving out counters.
Sidenote: What occasionally happens also is that if you hit someone that is in a guild, sometimes they are online (even with chrons you cant always tell unless there is activity) and with few coordinated players they will soften you up while the person you hit will heavily summon to take that counter. At low land you can almost careless but at high land loosing a big siege means 400-500 land for each loss.
