Knight of Dawn's The Reincarnation Simplified Guide

=WIP Updated 06/08/2011 08:12am=

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--Knight of dawn 02:50, 6 August 2011 (CEST)

TR Terminology

http://wiki.the-reincarnation.org/index.php/Section_11_-_Terminology

Use this when you're unsure of the terms used in this guide.

Searching: Ctrl+F and type the word you're looking for in the pop up window.

Basic Concepts

The Game

This game is drived from the "Five elements" (Wu Xing). It is very similar to Magic The Gathering in many ways. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Xing

The five elements are:

• Fire (Chinese: 火, pinyin: huǒ)
• Earth (Chinese: 土, pinyin: tǔ)
• Metal (Chinese: 金, pinyin: jīn)
• Water (Chinese: 水, pinyin: shuǐ)
• Wood (Chinese: 木, pinyin: mù)

Rival element

   * Wood absorbs Water;
   * Water rusts Metal;
   * Metal breaks up Earth;
   * Earth smothers Fire;
   * Fire burns Wood.

However, the "Colours" in the game don't really follow this trend.

Understanding the human side of this game

• The remaining players that play TR have reinforced a type of RoE that suit this smaller player base of around 500 people. That is no over-targetting on any particular mage.

• NDs are usually new players and have to be respected. For NDs, I will personally advise to join a guild.

• There will be people that camp infront of their computers and do online attacks. This is the sort of people that do opportunistic attacks on weakened mages. The player base is too small to see lots of attacks on any particular mage for them to be weakened when you're online doing your run.

• There will be people that look at the black market non-stop for any good bargains or uniques/heroes/items/spells. You will see a frequent over-bid on your bid in the market just when your bid hits the last minute and this will continue till you place a much higher bid.

• There will be people that immediately resummon, when they're attacked, to protect their land. That's why opportunitic online campers exist, this is to counter this resummoning trend.

• There will be people that tie their emotions to this game and counter you with whatever they have. Such as spells,multiple attacks and hate mails.

Understanding the game

This game revolves around the concept that you have to gain more land than you lose. All stacks are breakable and there are no perfect stacks but there are ways that you can make your stack unbeatable to attackers by using items/spells/uniques/heroes/enchaments or even skills. Losing lands to attackers doesn't mean much, if you can gain back double the amount of land that you've lost.

• In a nutshell, a positive land income will let you rank higher; while a negative land income will drop you down the rank list. If you don't gain land, you will stagnate and you're just waiting for someone to counter stack you and drop you down the rank list.

Understanding TR's Wiki & TR's UBB

TR's Wiki

TR's Wiki is updated by players like you and me. Its access is granted for anyone who wants to do some contribution or simple editting or updating. Therefore, some of the guides in Wiki are out-dated and some of the things posted are no longer relevant.

• If you are willing and have the time, do consider updating the Wiki for the TR community.

TR's UBB

The UBB is the forum. The posts in the UBB are from players like you and me. Many of the things posted in the forum are just opinions from people without any supporting facts. In reality, some of the posts are even biased. There are also some people that post in the UBB without a clear knowledge of the game at all or some of the posts are misleading or some of the post are just there to confuse newbies. However, there are still posts from the real veterans, who have tried out many different things and are willing to share their information. On the other hand, there are also so called "veterans" that want to continue to have their edge over newbies, so whatever posted by these "veterans" tend to mislead, sometimes wrong info are being passed around .You have the responsiblity to test the concepts out and determine who are the ones telling you the truth and the accurate information.

• You have to be the judge for whatever you read, including this guide that you're reading now.

• "Even though sometimes misinformation is spread, it could be a genuine mistake on the part of the knowledge imparter, as much of the knowledge regarding TR is based on speculation, experience and hearsay." - tornado

My personal quote and belief...

• Some things posted on the UBB have to be taken with a pinch of salt. That's what I believe. - Knight of Dawn

Understanding the Colours

Look at this Pentagram, there are five colours in total, the two colours beside a chosen colour are the adjacent colours. The remaining non-adjacent colours left on the Pentagram form the opposite colours to your chosen specialty.

Red

Adjacent Colours:

• Pros: Units with high AP Fire based attacks, with resistance reducing spells and synergy with Oil Flask.

• Cons: Units with vulnerable holes in resistance such as weakness to Cold attack and lower HP/NP ratio (in exchange for damage). Units with high gold upkeep.

Black

Adjacent Colours:

• Pros: Units with Paralyse,Magic,Cold,Poison based attacks. Units with steal-life,fear & double strike abilities.

• Cons: Undisbandable pop-sucking units. Possible pop-spiral if you don't keep a careful watch on your pop. Difficult for new players.

Blue

Adjacent Colours:

• Pros: Access to all complex spells and units with various abilities and attacks. Uses ranged units with magic or psychic attacks.

• Cons: Mana-intensive when you're casting off-colour spells.

White

Adjacent Colours:

• Pros: With units that have Holy based attacks and Healing & Large shield abilities. A specialty with access to various enchatments. Access to Love & Peace and the Holy Light that boost white units trememdously.

• Cons: High Gold upkeep, weaker AP/NP units and mostly ground based units with melee attacks. Rely on THL or SOL to add holy attack type.

Green

Adjacent Colours:

• Pros: Access to units-enhancing enchanments such as Enlarge Animal and Plant Growth. Melee based units where their attack type can be altered by Flame Blade, Sword of Light , Vial of Venom or amplified by Rust armour. Have high HP/NP units with strong resistance to most attack types.

• Cons: A specialty that rely heavily on enchaments. Mana-Intensive. Units have a low attack initiative of 1 and can be stopped by Web of the Spider woman or Slow. Melee attacks can be greatly reduced by Brooch of Protection.

What colours to attack?

Now that you have chosen a specialty and finished researching your spells. What colours to attack depends on the units that you intent to summon. Having a specific specialty allows you to summon specific units easier compared to some other units. You have to focus more on on-colour units to be efficient.

For example, black is your specialty and you intent to summon Liches.

Liches have Cold ranged & Magic ranged attacks with the fear ability.

Looking at this unit strengths: attack type, abilities, attack resistance, spells resistance, attack initiative and Health point. You have to determine which unit liches will be efficient in killing. In this case, Red Dragon will be the easiest for Liches to kill.

Reasons:

• Fear ability are negated when a unit with Fear attacks another unit with Fear.

• Liches have ranged attacks that can hit flying units.(RD is a unit with flying)

• RDs have weakness to Cold. This means Cold attack deals twice the amount of damage.

• Liches have high resistances to most attack type.

This whole process of choosing your units for your stack continues till you're satisfied or reached the 10 combat stacks limit.

In a nutshell, attack depends on your units and the target you're hunting not on the colour you're using. Combat item & spell may help and change the battle outcome but don't rely entirely on them(these need to get through 75% barriers to work).

How do I defend?

The advantages of defending

• You have forts HP% boost. Defending against regular attacks recieve half of the HP% boost. Defending against siege attacks recieve full HP% boost.

• Your defend assignment (spell & item) triggers all the time.

• You determine the final NP that attackers start attacking you from.

• Sieges on you have a 10% accuracy penalty. There is no accuracy penalty, if the attacking unit have the abilities Flying or Siege, or they are attacking units with Flying.

• You can have 75% full barriers(Even higher if you have Barrier proficiency).

How do I defend?

You have to look at your units' strength & weakness and predict what colours and type of units will be attacking you. The most common colour and the stack that will deal most damage and gain land from you, will be the one that you have to stack against with usage of items and spells.

For example, you're using mono-RD.

Weakness: Undisbandable, Flying, weakness to attack type cold and Fear gets negated when RDs are attacked by units with Fear.

Looking around at all the colours and the units that they will likely be using, the most damaging colour will be black with heavy liches. Look at the liches' stats and profile, you will see that the cold attack has an initiative of 1. This can be blocked by any initiative reducing spell/item. Web will be a good choice here.

So what spell to use? Now, what else will likely be damaging to RDs? Another unit with cold attack is Demon Knight, with double strike and an attack initiative of 2. However, this unit can't reach RDs as it's a ground based unit. What if the attacker comes in with Carpet of flying/Flight and did a siege on you? Can the RDs hold the attack? Yes, if no item or spell passed barriers. What if DKs gain Flying, Can the RDs hold? No. So how do you negate the flying ability? Gravity Pull.

Final decision on Spell & item

Spell: Gravity Pull

Item: The Spider's Web

In a nutshell, this is the thought process of defending. You use item & spell that benefit your stacks. A good awareness of the Metagame is crucial in defending. Heavy DKs are uncommon in the current Metagame as they're high pop eaters and undisbandable.

Strategies

Starting Strategies

1) Rushing

• This is done when you want to climb as fast as possible and gain as much land at the start of the set. The main aim of rushers is to gain land AND research at the same time. They plan to complete their research faster than other mages.

• Rushers depends on barrack,simple,average and black market units from Sword of hires and Spawning Hatchery units. Some rushers will tend to research their own color spells till all complex level are done before rushing. Some rushers will rush and use whatever units they have at their disposal as they climb higher.

2) Geld start

• This is done when you want to gain items, spells or heroes at the cheapest prices available. This is usually done to buy cheap high level heroes, off-color complex spells and uniques.

3) Low-land research

• This is done when you want to research by abusing the P protection status. This is done when mages stay at the 1.5k - 1.6k land area.

• The P status will trigger when you have zero units (you can disband) andyour total amount of land drop below 1500. P status last till you use a turn

4) High-Land research

• This is done when you climb to 2k-3k land and complete your research with a mono denfensive stack.

Enchantments for different colours

White

Basic : THL,L&P,RE,WS,Conc

Optional enchantments

• Cast MB when you have reached above 5k land and when you have the mana to support it.
• Cast Heavenly protection if you have the spell bought from the BM.
• Cast Sunray only if you want to have additional spell protection.

Green

Plant based green

Basic : PG, NF, WS ,Conc, SR

Animal Based green

Basic : EA, WS, Conc, SR

Loring Green (Abusing D status)

Basic : NL , NF, WS, Conc , SR

Mixed Green

Basic : PG, NF , WS , Conc, SR ,EA

Optional enchantments

• RE for additional red spell resistance to your units.
• PfE for additional kingdom spell resistance.
• MB for additional kingdom spell resistance.

Red

Basic : BC,WS

Optional enchantments

• Cast Shroud of darkness when you want additional protection from White's spells.
• Cast SR when you want additional spell protetction.

Black

Basic : BS, SoD, Conc

Optional enchantments

• Cast Mindbar when you want additional spell protection.
• Cast BC when you want to have a higher AP to out-damage attackers.

Blue

Basic : Conc, Hallu , MB, AC

Optional enchantments

• Cast SoD when you want additional spell protection.
• Cast RE when you want to have additional red spell resistance for your units.

Knight of Dawn's The Art of War

Killing a mage

A mage's death all revolve around the fact that all your forts are destroyed.

There are four ways that a mage can die

• 1)Battle Kill

Being killed in battle when the last fort is destroyed. Enemy (#000) was slained on the battle field.

• 2)Gold crash Kill

You've a negative gold income and you took a turn that destroyed all your forts.

• 3)Spell Kill

Your last fort is destroyed by an enchantment such as MS/DND/Laziness.

• 4)Volcano Eruption Kill

Your last fort is destroyed by the spell VE.

Enchantment kill messages

MS Kill

Sat June 6 06:06:06 2011
Enemy (#000) was slain by your spell Meteor Storm.

DnD Kill

Sat June 6 06:06:06 2011
Enemy (#000) was slain by your spell Death and Decay.

Laziness Kill

Sat June 6 06:06:06 2011
Enemy (#000) was slain by your spell Laziness.

Building Through Spells

What is building through spells? This means that you will RUN the 49 turns of the enchantments on you. Running 49 turns of DND/MS/LS/Conf will drain mana from the casters. Knowing how to do this well will make your mage invicible and immortal. Nothing can really kill you except a "Quad Zero kill" (This is when your mana, gold, items and units are 0).

You have to know the risk of running the spells. Eg. If you run 49 turns of conf on you, nothing is done on you. There will be no damage, it just hinders your summoning.

Why is this done?

It's the LAST RESORT when you're out of any other options. This is not for newbies ,who are still learning the game, or for the faint-hearted. This needs to be done with care and you have to have a CLEAR knowledge of what you're doing.

This is done when you're spell locked, without mana to dispell, your casters are all higher powered mages compared to you and you don't have good units to pillages or attacks off the spells.

Basic requirements

1)300+ workshops minimun (Having more Workshops will help you to rebuild faster)

Building formula

   * Farms and Barracks: ( Workshops + 1) / 5
   * Workshops: ( Workshops + 1 ) / 10
   * Guilds: ( Workshops + 1 ) / 20
   * Towns and Nodes: ( Workshops + 1 ) / 30
   * Fortresses: ( Workshops + 1 )/ 300
   * Barriers: 1 

Workshops: ( Workshops + 1 ) / 10 eg. 299 WS (299+1)/10 = 30 WS per turn

How to do this?

Only do this when you're in D status or when you know that there are no snipers online to spell snipe and recast the enchatments again.

You have to be able to do this comfortably. You have to run 49 turns of all the spells in roughly 5 mins. You have to do this fast or people will start to see that you're running the spells and counters or re-spells will be on you again.

The way to do this is...

• 1) Only if possible, try to use some mana to get rid of MS/DND.Fewer damaging spells will make this easier to be done.

• 2) Build 1 turn of max possible WS at the start of the 49 turns of the spells

Look at the before and after, look at the amount of WS after the turn is used. eg. before it's 299 WS; you built 30 WS; after it's 316 WS instead of 329 WS due to spell damage (random number) So what do you see? It's a lower POSITIVE building rate.

• 3) The key to using this strategy is to have this POSITIVE building rate. You have to countinue to build WS until a certain and amount and keep a close look on your FORTS. once it hits 5 to 10 you have to start building the max possible forts per turn.

• 4) When you know that you have sufficient amount of WS, you can start rebuilding farms/towns/nodes. Bars will be the last thing that you rebuild, top priority is to build nodes.

• 5) As you use your turns, your mana pool will start growing. When you see that you have sufficent mana for dispell again, do give it a try at dispelling using mana. This will cut down the damage done on you.

• 6) Continue doing this until you have ran all 49 turns of enchaments or all spells have been removed either by dispell or some other means.

• 7) Start rebuilding ASAP. You will have a huge amount of wilderness to rebuild.

Risks?

Keep a close look on your GOLD, you don't want to GOLD CRASH when you're running the spells.

• Eg. A blue mage casted Fool's Gold on you and you have 0 Gold, a blue casted Laziness and a green casted Locust swarm on you that reduced your gold income.
• Start running the spells when you have sold some items in BM to get around 30 mils.
• Selling items in BM or dibanding your army don't use a turn at all.

Surviving War

The 4 resources

• Mana

Mana Crash will disband units or enchatments that need mana for upkeep

• Gold

Gold Crash will disband units or forts that need Gold for upkeep

• Turns

This is the resource that allows you to regain the other resources

• Items

This is your resource storage: Items can be sold for Gold, Mana Crystal can be used for mana, MI can be used to dispel, War items can be used to cause damage

Preparation for War

• Have around 2.6% Bars

This is to ensure that you'll still have max 2.5% bars when you are attacked,lost land and put into D status

• Have around 1% fort to block pillages and to make sure you don't die easily
• Have sufficient items (around 300 items or more)
• Have sufficient mana crystals for instant mana replenishment

These give mana to dispel spells, when you're drained by Mana Vortexs

• Optional : Have Minor Indulgence for instant dispel

Minor Indulgence: Increased limit to 7

• Ensure that you have around 200,000 mana minimum when you log off.

The risks of spelling from below

When you cast an spell enchantment on a mage, you will give him a counter. When you see the message "The Goddess of Revenge winks at you", this means that the targetted mage had gained 1 counter token from you. The targetted mage will have counter tokens as long as your spells stay on him.

When you're spelled by a mage,

• If you dispel the spells on yourself, you will only have 1 counter token that last 24 hours from the time of your dispel.
• If you DON'T dispel the spells on yourself, you will have the counter token as long as the spells remain you. So you will have the option of countering multiple times till the spells get removed through battles.

About Counters

The Counter token can be used in attacking you. Countering someone ignores the NP of that mage. The mage can counter attack you as long as your enchantments stay on him. Meaning he can hit you with full sieges till that spell is removed.

Eg. If you gave a mage with 30 mil NP a counter and you're a mage with 8 mil NP. The mage with 30 Mil NP is around 4 times your NP and one siege from this mage will be a free win to him. You will definitely lose your land and you'll be pushed down further. Imagine the first attack doesn't remove your spell, he will CONTINUE to full siege you till that spell is removed.

Eg. 4 full sieges, on the last siege the spell is destroyed. You're a 3k land mage.

• 1st attack on you, 3k -10% land = 2.700k
• 2nd attack on you, 2.7k -10% land = 2.430K
• 3rd attack on you, 2.43 -10% land = 2.187K
• 4th attack on you, 2.187 -10% land = 1.968K

Total land lost in this example is 1031 land. Around 1k amount of land lost through counters from a single mage. Imagine you casted your spells on multiple higher NP mages.... Need I say more?

War Enchanments

Enchantment Efficency

The efficiency of war enchaments is based on your specialty and the type of enchantment you cast on the mage. Eg. Red's MS will be more damaging compared to a Black's MS. While a Black's Dnd will be more damaging compared to a Red's Dnd.

An extreme example will be a White's Dnd on a mage, the spell will practically do nothing much to the victim mage. (The white bought Dnd from the BM)

   Mana cost for spell casting
   Spell Type	On-Colour    Adjacent Colour	Opposite Colour
   Simple	100%	          125%	              200%
   Average	100%	          150%                350%
   Complex	100%	          200%	              600%    
   Ultimate	100%	       not possible       not possible
   Ancient	100%	          125%	              200%

My theory on the effects... The likely effect of the enchantment casted by a off-colour specialty will like be similar to the difference in the mana cost.

• Eg. A white casting Opposite colour complex spell cost 600% mana for that spell. In this case, White casting Dnd. The effect likely will be 1/6 of a Black's Dnd.
• Eg. A Black casting Adjacent colour complex spell cost 200% mana for that spell. In this case, Black casting MS. The effect likely will be 1/2 of a Red's MS.

I have personally ran off-colour enchantments before and I feel that they are around 40% to 50% the effects of a on-colour spell. Which is true to my theory. Off-Colour War enchantments are not as strong as on-colour enchantments. The effect is likely to be similar to the efficiency of a White's MindBar compared to a Blue's Mindbar.

Spell Lock

A perfect example of a perfect spell-lock will be:

• Red: MS, CL
• Blue: Conf, Laz,Tsf
• Green: SLS
• Black: Dnd
• White: This colour has no offensive enchantments

Having all possible offensive enchantments on the victim means that more Serens are needed to remove the spells. This means a higher possibility that he will still have some enchantments on him when he moves.

Serenity & Seren Bang

Serenity is cast to remove beneficial enchantments and offensive enchatments on the target mage. Serenity can be used to save a mage from a spell lock or to remove beneficial enchanments from a mage. Enchantments such as Green's PG, White's THL & L&P, Blue's Hallu & Mindbar, Black's BS , Red's BC.

Seren Bang

• Removing a Green's PG means that the victim's treants/mandrakes are significantly weaker. This will allow your mage to gain land from the victim without having the trouble of facing PG treants or mandrakes.

• Removing THL & L&P on White mages means that the white's troops HP and AP are reduced. The white's melee troops Holy attack attribute maye be removed as well.

• Removing Hallu & Minbar on Blue mages means that attacks on the Blue mage will not suffer -10% efficiency and less turns will be used in getting through hallucination. Removing Mindbar will make it easier for offensive enchantments to fall on the mage.

• Once the beneficial enchantments are removed from the victim, a blue mage will start to cast conf on the victim to reduce the victim's success in casting his spell assignment in battles and the banging begins!

How to use your counter token the right way

Things to know:

• Counters last 24 hours from the time of occurence of the incident
• Countering a mage can bypass the NP difference barrier or limitation in your attacks.
• You CAN gain land from a mage during a counter, as long as the mage doesn't fall below 50% of your NP at the time of your counter.

Normally, mages can only attack other mages within their 125% to 75% of their CURRENT NP. Meaning a 10,000,000 NP mage can only attack people at from 12,500,000 Np to 7,500,000 NP range, mage at 15,000,000 NP or 5,000,000 NP will be unreachable to him. Unless, his CURRENT NP changes to be within the 125% to 75% of his targets. Therefore, the most advantageous position you can put yourself in is to attack him while he's at 50% of your NP and when he's been weakened completely by your guildmates.

Couple of things you have to ask yourself

• Are you at war & in a guild?

If you're at war, the best thing to do is to do a coordinated counter on the attacker. Coordinated counter is having a few of your guildmates attak the attacker to weaken his army, drop his NP down further and make it easier for you to gain his land or wipe his troops off.

• Can you beat(Regular/Siege) that attacker and gain his land?

If you can beat the attacker and gain his land go for it. If you can't win against an attacker and knows that you will suffer more losses that him and get your army wiped, DON'T attack. Don't attack if you see that he's above you at a much higher NP.

Eg. Mass chims red attacked you and you're a Treants/EE/Mandrake. Should you siege and counter the attacker? NO. It will be easier for you to use your army to GAIN from other EASIER TARGETS. The cost of countering him outweighs the benefits.

• Do you want to pillage him?

Always try to pillage him at 23 hours to 23 hours 59 mins before the counter expire. Why? As most guilds on the server has a RoE that goes, 1 s/r/p in 24 hours or 1 attack in 24 hours equals 1 counter. So by attacking him at just before the counter expires, you delayed his next visit by 24 hours. If he counters your pillage while your counter hasn't expired. He has broken his guild's RoE and if you're in a guild. You will have the rights to bring him down on your guild's terms.

As countering a counter is called REBOUND.

War targets - Who to focus on?

So you're about to war a guild full of mages of different colours but you don't know who to focus on?

1) A simple rule to follow is to aim for the most active people in that guild.

• Why?
  • Most of the guilds have inactive and active members, active members are the ones that will likely to commit their time and efforts to bring down a mage. Focusing on them and making it a hard time for them to move and do their tasks will give you the advantage in war.

2) Aim at the few mages with lowest forts

• Why?
  • Killing these mages fast will mean less mages can contribute to the war from their side. Less mages to contribute will mean the active mages have to share the load and this wil put a strain to their mages.

3) Aim at the green mages

• Why?
  • These are the "Seren" people. They are the ones that will aid other mages to get out from their spell locks and get out from their near death situation. Removing the "medics" from the enemies will mean they will suffer the full force from your war effort with no means to "heal". This will give you an advantage over them.

Controlling the Black Market

Do you want to have all the war items for yourself?

• How to control the Black Market?
  • This can be done by mages in your guild with a large amount of gold. The mages have to spend their gold on the items to raise its cost price. This can be done by bidding on the items with a much higher gold amount instead of bidding for a 5% more. Eg. If you see the voodoos are going for 1mil each, you bid on it with 3 mils for all the voodoos. After a few bidding done by your mages, the price of voodoo will start to grow higher till no one can afford them.
  • For this to be achieved you'll need lots of gold and mages to contribute to get the price up. This is like inflation process in TR, you'll help to push that inflation faster with your guild efforts.

Advanced Concepts

Lady Luck

How to get lucky?

• There is a vote for our game at the top of your main log-in page. Click on the 3 links and vote for the game. You have a 35% chance to get luck with each vote. There is no message, just check your status report. You'll get luck sooner or later.

• There is an unique item called the Lucky Charm. Having that will grant permanent favor from Lady Luck. However, this unique does not give the higher exploration benefit and the favor is permanent until you lose the Lucky Charm.

What are the benefits?

• Luck benefits only starts from turn 300 onwards.
• Luck favor last 24 hours from the time you got the favor.
• Increased chance of a higher exploration land gain.
• Increased chance of a higher random modifier unit's attack.
• Increased battle accuracy.

All possible stacks for green

Deep stack

Flying stack

Short stack

Counter stack

Fire burst stack

Tree stack

Animals stack

All possible stack for white

Ground white

Flying white

Deep white

Short white

Unicorn white

Uniques, heroes and skills abuse

These are the ways to get a Unique: Bid, Steal, Pop, Science's MF

Bid:

• In early set, you can geld up and wait for the unique that you want to appear on the market and bid for that. Bidding on uniques in BM will give you the unique that you want. However, you have to wait for a long time before you get any unique as the BM generation rate for unique is pretty low. If you're unlucky, the unique that you're looking for may already be taken by a mage.

Pop:

• Popping chests will give you nothing, a few other less important rewards or if you're lucky a Unique. The unique you're likely to get is random.

Steal:

• In early set, if you're sure a particular mage has a unqiue that you want. You can war that mage and "letter" that unique from him.

Science's MF:

• This is the hardest of all the ways to get an unique. Becoming Science's MF will grant you a unique out of a pool of remaining unique that are not owned by any mages.

In early set, I'll advice to Bid and Pop for uniques

Nate's topic & WT's answer

How to see who's likely to hit you

- This can be done by varying steps but to speak in generics. First step I look at is my stack, how would I beat myself. Secondly are there many of that particular color above me for most people this is yes. Do I want to block or damage(depends on color/stack). But basically most colors have generic assigns

Black FW/Carpet, DoS/carpet - Why: blacks hardest hitting units hd for example are slow/grounded use ash or carpet to fix one problem. White bf/satchel bf/carpet - Why: LNP increases HP so take away accuracy for more blocks. White units are also weak to trees/demons, have them fly to avoid. Green rust/carpet, rust/ash, ch/ash - Why :Green units are slow/melee based/grounded. Fix 2 of the problems and pray the 3rd item doesnt pass barrs. Blue slow/web slow/candle slow/carpet - Why: slow is a probably top 1 -2 battle spells(other being stun) item varies, para is very limited. Red Stun/flasks, fb/flasks - Why: flasks = more dmg = out damaged = D status without land loss

Do any of these assigns look like they will work for me? If so why not. Do I have the items/what items do I have. If you cant find something better for your stack/situationgo with one of the above.

Judging which targets can net you most land per turn

Ahh the most fun part. My method is thus and my apologies to any offended. Alot depends on my color but I choose the fattest mages/thinnest mages first then I review. Thin reds = bad, fat greens=bad, thin greens = good, thin whites = good, fat whites = bad in generics. I avoid ND's when I'm unsure, if a ND is top 80 they have barrs and most likely a good assign easier targets. If going for land and not top locking I go for massive guild mages, ie guilds with 40+ members. Why? Because better chance of someone with low barrs/crap stacking squeezing high. I look for normal/thin mages that have small chronicles(exploring = low barrs at times). I look for people that have giant chronicles(lots of hitting = low barrs at times). I avoid super super fat blacks, means devils of fallens neither of which can usually be beat or are worth the time.

I'll hit a 4k green at 14 million, before I'd hit a 3k red at 14 million. I'd hit a 3k red at 14 million before a 7k black at 14 million. I'd hit a 3k white at 9.4 mill power b4 a 4k white at 9.4 mill power. I'd hit a mass guild member before small guild/nd guy. I guess assigns alot based on the assigns above. People that explore usually = better assign, people that hit alot = crap assign.

Picking a stack that strikes a balance between the above 2

I'm not gonna tell you what to stack. What I'm going to say is here is my checklist.

- Am I gaining land? - What range 100-200, 300-500, 500+ - Why am I gaining that land, target choice? Bad matchups? etc - Am I losing land? How many hits till D? Why am I losing?

Barrs = chance. If I lose cause someone passes spell/item I dont mind. If I lose 1-2 battles a day with no spell/item passing I'm doing someone wrong for the environment. On offense you should be able to win a reg against many mages without spell/item in. For a seige unless lucky you need spell or item. So am i losing too many regs(insuff/outD), or and I losing too many seiges with spell/item or item/spell alone in. If so then pick something else and try it, there are enough "experts" that have posted stacks before to learn.

Deciding if it is better to lose land more easily and gain it back quickly, or defend solidly at the cost of slower land gain

As per above, this is a color based option at times. Either to extreme sucks, go middle ground. Defend but win land. You learn more that way. Only difference for me isnt stacking but assign. For Green Rust/ash = offensive assign, rust/carpet = defense. Sol/candle = offense for white, bf/satch def etc.

Predicting how long your stack can work for

This is hard and typically you need to be in the top 20 to have it affect you at all. But once in the top 20, see who your main target colors/stacks. How many are there, how big, how powered etc. Dont wait until you run out of people to hit to change. See it coming, watch the ranklist before you move each day how many whites in range to demon or greens to flasks etc.

Learning how to anticipate a change in the metagame and react accordingly. Look out for indicative signs

I cant really explain how to do this but here are some things that happen on blitz often. Watch the BM every set the hero price explodes at around the same turn count 5-6kish, same with items even more. Watch guilds in the top and if they target anyone or are warring or are being overly aggressive. Watch the biggest 2-3 mages in any other top guilds for their attacks. Who are they hitting, how many, etc. Not hitting can be the most telling at times. Are all the whites/greens/reds etc using the same stacking all of a sudden, ifso why and how can i abuse this.

Look at who's controlling the top and how long you think the situation will stay

How big is the guild? Why are the dominating? What guilds are warring in general? Is top guild being overly aggressive? Easy questions obvious answer.

Depending on the above, decide if to climb now or whore first

If the situation on top looks dire, whore. If there is an opening make a run at it.

Estimate how long your items will last you and if you need to switch a strategy

Rotate assigns, it avoids using up all of one item and helps keep land.

Weighing factors to determine whether to sit fat, run or summon

Gut.

Determining if your color and stack is good for the current meta

Generally addressed above, and with whoring comments. If you are white and top is 30% greens then whore for awhile. Greens will either fall from war or wont. But you having them run into you 3x a day wont help.

Judging when it is better to reincarnate rather than play on

Personally I dont reincarnate, I adjust.

Evaluating if your current actions will affect your future resets

People are sheep. Hatefilled sheep. Not to mention this is the internet folks, people have grudges for zero reason. Everything affects that hatred and future politics. Keep this in mind when operating. Hatred/Friendship determines far more in this game then it should, abuse it.

Planning how you want to play in arma as early as realistically possible

Do you need peaches? Do yo need ashes etc? If you get to the point you think you need to consider arma 1-2 weeks out, find me on mirc or pm in ubb and i'll try to help. Its not something I can really explain without more information on each circumstance.

Explanation of EV for players to decide which is the best course of action to take

Bleh. Ignore mode on.

WT's comments

Overall I will comment this. As above my method is consistency, dont get too high or too low and keep on trucking. This means if you lose a seige or reg from spell/item passing dont get that upset. It happens, there is a 40%+ chance of spell or item passing on 75% barrs, there is a 12% of both passing. Review barriers to make sure it is bad luck and not your own fault. Pick a strat and ride it for more then 1 day. If you want to go rd/chim/wraith then ride it for 2-3-4-5 days to see if it works, it if suits the meta. 1 day or 1 run good or bad does not determine anything. 1 bad run could be passing 1 spell of item out of 16 tries, or just bad target selection. Learn more then one color for goodness sake, all the colors intermingle. General play strats/turn management affect them all virtually the same. Even if your beginning with say green is to block reds cause you always played red, thats fine! Or if you pick white after black and think how would I beat my black etc. Different colors/ideas will only benefit you in your target selection. I know mage X is aa/uni/kt/sw last I knew, how would I beat that, what assign would I be if I were him. Experience in situations/colors helps immensely.

FAQs

Magic/Psychic Random modification

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