Alzorath's Verdant Guide

Placeholder (green's my weakest color, but it is also severely lacking in actual guides, so it will be my focal project - this will be based on pre-skill Verdant)

Introduction

As with the other color-specific guides, this guide is not intended as a 'instant hall' guide, but instead to serve as a tool to help you gain basic and intermediate abilities and understandings of a color. Also much like the other color-specific guides, this guide is intended to be a 'general green guide' and I will not dive into the more specific or complex specialist strategies available to verdant. Even though this guide is written after the introduction of "Skills", they will not be discussed during this guide (as it is written based on 'pre-skills' information), this is for consistency and simplicity among these color guides.

About Verdant (green), it is based around the power of nature. Verdant is perplexing due to its extremely strong offensive AND defensive power, yet fragility in that it is easily brought to a screeching halt through some fairly simple tactics (which counter-tactics to will be mentioned in this guide). Green's power, while daunting, is heavily centered around its powerful enchantments (Plant Growth being the most well known) and battle spells (such as Call Hurricane and Rust Armor). Verdant also has the extremely versitile, yet often misrepresented, Serenity - which will remove some enchantments from the target mage. Verdant units are notorious for extremely high mana upkeeps, this added to the reliance on enchantments leads to a bit of a resource management issue that may deter some new players. Despite this mana issue green is one of the two colors I will usually recommend to new players due to the fact that mana is a fairly easy resource to manage, and this color is able to be played in a straightforward manner (much like white), that doesn't need any particularly special attention until higher lands.

The Basics

There are several options for the green to gain land with in the beginning, I will focus on 'bottom feeding' (fighting to gain land), but with all colors there is the option of exploring up to the 3500 land mark, and with "Nature's Lore" green is able to do this fairly quickly compared to other colors.

Unit Advice

Verdant Units

Special Note: Animals vs Treefolk. People ask about which to focus on, and in general the best answer is "treefolk" the only exception is when at war. In general, with "Plant Growth" running treefolk are insurmountably more powerful than animals and still have your battle spell and item to augment them without diminishing their potential strength. The "when at war" comment deals with the spell "Serenity" which dispels enchantments of target mages - if it hits a green's plant growth, the trees become kindling and die horribly (animals are not affected by serenity because their only boosts come from heroes and spells).

Phoenix: Green's flying ultimate, and a powerful one at that. They have decent resists, and most notably a high fire resist. In addition to that they are also blessed with the ability "Bursting FIRE" - which will devistate any non-magic, non-ranged units attacking them. Phoenix are a vital unit for greens on ultimate servers, granting them a non-plant, with high fire resist, flying, and still a fairly powerful attack. Avoid heavy ranged non-magic attacks, as these can hurt the phoenix, luckily there is a counter to this: Missile Shield. Busting a Myth: Unfortunately, many people mistake them for Animals, when in fact they are Elementals. Basically this means that NO, Enlarge Animal does not boost them AT ALL.

Earth Elemental: Green's ground ultimate, their primary is nothing to really write home about, but their secondary Magic Ranged attack is extremely powerful. They have a weakness to lightning, but so few units have this attack type it's not much to worry, and EE can oftentimes outdamage most pairings. Phoenix and EE are very often central to a high green's stacking, although I'd recommend hiding them behind Treants so you don't lose a LOT of them (all elementals are geared towards 'outdamaging' - which means they'll lose a lot of power, especially up top).

Griffon: A fairly durable flier, but expensive to upkeep (like many of green's units). Griffons are many times used to either serve as a 'soaker' or to push other stacks down. This is due to their standard moderate durability. They can also be used with the item "Ring of Animal Command" and the spell "Enlarge animal" to make them fairly large units. Personally I only occassionally use them for very specific reasons, there is usually something much more efficient to run in a green stacking after you reach 4-5k land.

Treant: The big dog of the treefolk, the Treant, is easily the most powerful common unit in the game when paired with an on-color plant growth. They get massive life & AP boosts from the spell "Plant Growth", which allows them to even outdamage high fire damage units DESPITE the treants' weakness to fire. These are a must-have for most verdant armies.