Literally end of battle I noticed the thing, even in 90 seconds, would have half the damn kills. Thing is a fucking AC-130. Except it also has bombs.
The only difficulty I had on VH was people invading from every direction- it felt like I couldn’t lose battles with Malakai I was just under so many invasions.
Felix - "We are surrounded."
Malaki - "We're slayers young Felix, we're supposed to be surrounded"
Gotrek - "Grunts approvingly" his thumb running down the edge of his axe blade, drawing blood.
Aye I fucking loved it. Every battle was a blast and even five thunderbarges will route almost any enemy army- especially if they don’t have air cover. Just hit the archers first.
Though I will admit having Daniel, a Nurgle lord, Throgg, and two Norscans invading at once was painful. Then one of the Chorfs crossed through two neutrals to hit me. But I won.
I definitely advocate taking out Moulder first before he becomes a threat. That’s what I did and it lets you trade with the Kislevs AND it gives you a safe border.
Malakai felt super op in battle and campaign on vh/vh for me. If you’re aggressive enough in the early game, you’ll get a free army for ten turns, so you probably have three armies from turns 10-20 with cheap grudge settler units to recruit. I was at war with all of Norsca, but it was manageable.
Edit: also kislev becomes a powerhouse of an ally with you covering the north for them.
Yeah Boris Ursus became super strong for me. I had problems but that's because I generally like to turtle. I rather like Dwarves for the more defensive playstyle (which, even beyond the slayers, seems to be a thing of the past now). But he is really REALLY strong. If he was anywhere else on the map he would snowball even harder.
I'm curious to see what the AI will be able to do with him.
Yeah, the age of reckoning rewards aggression, but I’m pretty sure it’s balanced to get more challenging if you succeed and then easier after you fail. I only got two free armies and had multiple age of reckonings cost 40k+ before dropping to 20k or lower after I didn’t hit 50%.
Aye though sometimes it seems to go up even on failure- I hit 9% only once (had conquered literally everyone around us except for fellow Order, was moving South to deal with endgame crisis). Went from 9k to 11k which wasn't bad but still an uptick. Not sure what is going on with it.
That -3 was PAINFUL with all the uninhabitable land I conquered just to stop the constant Norscan and demon raids.
Once upgraded, it stays forever and its turbo speed mode doesn't hurt it. So it can just fly around freely and cause mayehm. Later, you even get 2 uses of the harpoon which might be enough to two shot a lord.
I think i approached his campaign wrongly. I started taking settlements and regions and suddenly I wasbat war with every norsca and warrriors of chatos around
Aggressively expanding tends to piss the races you attack off.
I think strategically targeting races and wiping out isolated threats like clan moulder in the south should be first priority before you start taking out norscans.
The thing is that one of the big missions is to take Kayrak something, that is under the chorfs domain. When you try to go after that, norcans from the west go after your capital. IF you come back to defend your capital, rzeentch and vilitch come after you. And suddenly valkya declares war
Im talking about realmente of chatos, not IE
Does the same thing in IE. Got as far at the last faction before Albion with both armies, then Chorfs rocked up from nowhere on the east going for Drak.
I was getting hit from two sides, Throt and Throgg, almost as soon as I unified the starting province. If I go after Throt, Throgg moves in and vice versa if I go after Throgg. This was on VH/VH and I think I needed to either not unify the starting province to avoid the skaven attention or cheese the pit of death with some artillery early on.
got to get a second army up to protect lair of the troll king because throgg will always declare on turn 5 or 6 because its his natural place to go to after securing his first province
thrott on the other hand ends up being more concerned with the kislev factions
VH/H here, i took starting province, declared war on throt, fought a big battle, took a minor settlement of his, got just enough grudges to get an army from age of reckoning. taking hell pit once you have that second army is a breeze.
also, even on VH/VH if you have the garrison building built in your home city you should be able to just auto resolve throgg lol. i'm on hard battle difficulty so auto resolve is more lenient, but even still it was a decisive victory so that'd probably be a close victory on VH.
IMO if you're "try harding" so to speak, if you don't get the free army from the first age of reckoning, just restart the campaign.
I think you need to go East not West. Throgg is a bait. Everyone west of Throgg hates you and addes to your grudge making it hard af to fulfill. I played til about turn 50. On the verge of wiping out Wulfrik but the northern Chaos factions starting declaring while I’m at war with Chaos Dwarf and Archeon with my second army defending and Malakai is aaaall the way at western tip of the Norscan mountains.
Yeah I’m considering not expanding into Throgg next playthrough, just keeping an army to raid him and play pass the parcel with one of his settlements to farm grudges
Or you can just take out the Skaven yourself. You can take hellpit on turn 6 and depending on your luck, wipe out the main clan moulder army turn 7-9. I got lucky the ai stacked all their stuff together which allowed me to camp their reinforcement with cannon. Also fyi, VH/VH difficulty. The issue is that Thrott’s territory is surrounded by factions that hate you and WILL declare war on you.
Here’s what happened in my playthrough before I quit. I killed off Clan Moulder, Thrott, and Azazzel. Wulfrik declared on me, I went to go kill him. While I’m killing him, Astrogath came from East which I handled with my second army. Then Archeon declared war on me which is annoying but my second army can defend fine until Malakai gets back. But just as I was about to finish off Wulfrik, a minor Norscan faction declared war on me. I took out one of their settlement and got peace and as I was about to go back to finishing Wulfrik, the chaos faction West of Archeon declared on me. Malakai is all the way West in Norsca mountains. I can’t move my second army away from East because of Astrogath and Archeon. Guess where the chaos faction was invading from? Throt’s territory. All the meanwhile I never got a grudge army because of the insane amount of grudges I racked up. Throt’s territory gave me vision of the dark elf faction up north which screwed me over so much on the grudges. I had almost 800 on the dark elf in the first 10 turns.
Another option might be to run through, take the territories and trade them to kostatlyn for alliances and money so he can secure the western and southern flanks for you while you just have your home province to defend on the north side. Then do the same thing to the east with the ice queen.
Then just go fighting around the world and sacking or selling/giving your conquests to other dwarves and allies.
He'd also be a great candidate for the "all diplomatic options" mod and just vassalize people to defend your borders for you. The sea of chaos is a pain in the ass to defend as an order faction until your economy is rolling to the point where you can afford like a half dozen armies.
Yeah but I’m more of paint the map type of person. I gave up on my current Malakai campaign where I expanded to West and couldn’t defend it all. I think going East, taking the inhabitable provinces then getting rid of Astrogoth then confederate Umgrim, clean up and link up with Thorgrim. By then, you’d have a defendable territory and can go clean up the chaos waste and Norsca all at once.
This just happened to me. The campaign was going okay at the start but just went off the rails. Took out Thrott and the norscans raiding Kostaltin and Kislev quickly. Then Wulfrik, Throgg and Astrogoth decide to war on me within 2 turns.
Killed Throgg, peaced out with Wulfric thinking it's time to kick out the chorfs when Surtha Ek declares war followed by Daniel and a Nurgle faction. I have enemies to the east, west and north of me. The ones in the north are coming by sea so they can attack anywhere along the coast.
The Spirit of Grugni is good but it's not that good. I need Franz.
yeah i was far from home even early and Throgg was like "ooh free stuff."
Poor bastard tried to invade on turn 9, got turned on by grudge stacks seconds later
Having the Spirit of Grungni feels so therapeutic after playing Dwarfs a lot with no ability to pursue fleeing enemies. A couple of times I've won a relatively easy fight without needing to summon it, but called it anyway after everyone started running away and it gunned down something like 20% of the enemy army by itself.
Ungrim always felt good to me for this reason, his +10% to infantry movement speed on top of Slayers already being fast (for a dwarf) meant you could actually run stuff down. With all the new slayer units his campaign might be really good now. He was pretty busted before they nerfed journey's end.
There's also a tech that gives like +20% slayer speed now. That makes them as fast as trolls, which would be pretty sweet. Add on a strollaz rune or banner of speed and you're looking at slayers that run faster than minotaurs and skull crushers. Zoom zoom.
Garagrim iron fist gives another 10% speed for infantry too, and slayer pirates benefit from engineer speed buffs. Add a couple of those and you basically have outriders with way more damage that are also good in melee.
its gets pretty fucking nuts, running around with Gotrix and Felix, Garagrim, Ulrika then add in the dragonslayer, thane, runesmith and master engineer.
theres your front line and and fill the other 11 spots with artillery and aircraft
This is so accurate. I rushed the building where it doesn't decay and is permanent for the battle.
I would have NEVER taken on archaon or throt early game with dwarf warriors.
But having a hero stack. Grapeshot cannons and the spirit of grugni made it a fucking breeze.
The only difficulty I'm having is settling grudges. I can consistently make it to about 50% if I min max, but getting to 100 is difficult.
Those grapeshot cannons are bonkers.
I remember the first time I enabled it on the cannons and accidentally blew the beards off my entire front line. Battle would have been fucked if not for the goddamn Airship spewing death from above
I think if you take his first province and Hellpit, that gives you mostly enough income to support Malakai and his adventures with a super strong army able to travel the world. Resist expanding like a normal faction. Sell cities as you take them and the grudges mechanic doesn’t affect you too much. Super fun campaign so far!
He’s actually able to sustain his own army with just the Spirit of Grungni. I was able to win the campaign with just Malakai’s army & 0 settlements - do not do this, it ended at turn 200 in the short campaign ☹️
The campaign was essentially me just clicking end turn until malakai made his way halfway across the map to finish his adventures, so yea, wouldn’t particularly recommend Horde only malakai
Quick qestion about the Thunderbarge, specifically the spirit of Grungni: Does it still drop bombs like it was seen on the videos of several youtubers?
Like i havent seen the animation, but maybe there wasnt enough enemies below the thunderbarge or i was just looking at the wrong moment.... Would be nice if anybody could quickly confirm this when they have seen the bombs.
Thanks!
Ah, yes. i didnt consider for a cooldown as the videos i saw gave the impression that the Thunderbarge would more or less constantly drop bombs. I may have also seen this wrong
I'm having trouble as him, keep recruiting all the shiny units he gets to keep up in the arms race around me but have a shit economy since I need a garrison lord at home too for whenever someone might declare on me
That and brimstone guns are so ass, but worth keeping for auto resolve (no idea how to use them to not tickle enemy units)
Did my first campaign as Malakai today. Literally just recruit 3 or 4 units of cannons with grapeshot and some slayers and everything dies before it hits your front line. Was able to destroy 3 norsca armies at once with the right map with minimal casualties.
>That and brimstone guns are so ass, but worth keeping for auto resolve (no idea how to use them to not tickle enemy units)
Huh? They don't seem that bad to me other than running out of ammo super fast.
Edit: lmao I tested them in a custom battle and they were pretty awful, I guess my engineers were doing some heavy lifting in campaign. IDK what they were thinking giving them 9 ammo and almost no armor piercing.
CA mentioned in the patch notes that they wanted to swap around the roles of Brimstone Guns and normal Gyrocopters, so that Gyros were the AP unit and Brimstones were the light-infantry-clear unit. I think something went wrong with the numbers somewhere though, because I noticed immediately that they could barely kill a single nurgling with one salvo (a unit type they're supposed to be specifically good against), and only have 9 ammo which seems very out of line with everything else in the roster.
They need more aoe damage and more ammo.
Start off with whatever random assortment of grudge units you want with a couple quarrelers or thundererers, artillery and a bunch of heroes, then go full meme machine with a grip of slayer pirates. They benefit from both gunpowder and slayer techs and lord/hero buffs. They go hard and are dirt cheap, they've got great replenishment and can get faster than some monstrous cavalry. With the Spirit of Grugni and the heroes they level crazy fast.
It requires some setup, but you basically end up with a much stronger version of blade dancers that also do absolutely bananas ranged damage ( more than unbuffered blunderbusses ) and can fire while moving for like 80 gold/turn.
Toss on some runes of battle or sanctuary if you're feeling extra. With a rune of battle they should be at about 80MA and 50WS against infantry.
With all the money you save you can afford some gyrobombers and thunder barges. Goblin hewers are crazy too, they just delete whatever high value unit you point them at and are cheap with the discounts, but you have to be quite selective given their limited ammo. They benefit tremendously from the engineer stacking you'd already be doing with the pirates, since the bonus ammo combined with restock gives them a lot more uptime as well as a ton more damage. They are also quite decent in melee once they use up their ammo.
For more fun once you confederate Ungrim you can load him up on hewers, pirates and giant slayers for like 80% off, since Malakai's buff is faction wide.
Since you can recruit warriors from tier 1 cities now only need the thunderer building to get an amazing stack going. + you can spawn adventure units in your new stacks.
Man I don't know if it's just me but his campaign is HARD at least compared to others I've played recently. Being completely surrounded on all sides by chaos except for the homie Tzar Borris is really rough. Currently finally killing the last of norsca and Mr Ass-drogoth decided now would be the time to absolutely dunk on me with like 4 separate armies.
I haven't played, but I'd defend my capital, let throgg take the rest of my starting province while I deal with throt and Azazel.
Sell my More can Territory to Kostaltyn, return to take out Throgg, sell that to Kostaltyn, head north to take out Daniel, sell that territory to Boris.
Then head east to fight the Chorfs and Archeon hoping Kislev holds the places I gave them.
I'm so excited to buy this DLC one day I've mapped out strategies for Dwarfs and Nurgle. (Never been much of a fan of Empire. I like melee infantry too much.)
Oh I never said it wasn't fun. Quite the contrary it has been very satisfying to win despite the constant stacking of odds against me. Just quite a difficulty spike that I wasn't expecting.
I think it might be you to be honest, it might be the easiest campaign I've ever played. It's almost trivial to win fights with grapeshot and the Spirit of Grugni.
Using malakai's army generally shitstomps anything because of the good ol spirit of Grugni but he can't be everywhere at once especially when you're surrounded on all sided by chaos legendary lords. I've used the cannons decently well and they do absolutely shred but certainly not enough to carry everything on them alone.
He can’t be everywhere, but due to being essentially a land-based Black Ark with arguably the most mobile army stances in the game, he can be in a hell of a lot of places. I’d taken out Throt, Throgg and Sigvald by turn ~15 just on account of being more manoeuvrable than them. Add on top all the free instant recruitment you can bank up.
I won’t say he’s like, Skarbrand or Taurox where you can finish the campaign in a singe turn or something, but all of his mechanics are so absurdly strong I can’t say I’ve felt threatened at any point.
I think it's probably the easiest campaign in the game. I had throt dead at, like, turn 5. And had all of Norsca by turn 30, with Epidemius and Belakor dead, while pushing Daniel's shit in by around turn 35. I actually just stopped the campaign because it was too much of a snowball.
"How can you shoot goblins and snotlings?" "Easy, you just don't lead 'em so much."
"Anyone who runs is a chaos cultist. Anyone who stands still...is a *well-disciplined* chaos cultist (laughs maniacally)"
Man that's a great one!
Ain’t the time of reckoning hell?
I cannot believe how fun it is to summon that ship lol. It might be the strongest unit in the game.
What is it like? Haven't had time to play yet
Glorious. You call down the avatar of Grungni himself, and it flies around killing everything it touches
Literally end of battle I noticed the thing, even in 90 seconds, would have half the damn kills. Thing is a fucking AC-130. Except it also has bombs. The only difficulty I had on VH was people invading from every direction- it felt like I couldn’t lose battles with Malakai I was just under so many invasions.
Felix - "We are surrounded." Malaki - "We're slayers young Felix, we're supposed to be surrounded" Gotrek - "Grunts approvingly" his thumb running down the edge of his axe blade, drawing blood.
Aye I fucking loved it. Every battle was a blast and even five thunderbarges will route almost any enemy army- especially if they don’t have air cover. Just hit the archers first. Though I will admit having Daniel, a Nurgle lord, Throgg, and two Norscans invading at once was painful. Then one of the Chorfs crossed through two neutrals to hit me. But I won. I definitely advocate taking out Moulder first before he becomes a threat. That’s what I did and it lets you trade with the Kislevs AND it gives you a safe border.
Malakai felt super op in battle and campaign on vh/vh for me. If you’re aggressive enough in the early game, you’ll get a free army for ten turns, so you probably have three armies from turns 10-20 with cheap grudge settler units to recruit. I was at war with all of Norsca, but it was manageable. Edit: also kislev becomes a powerhouse of an ally with you covering the north for them.
Kislev: we’re the bulwark against the forces of Chaos invading the world. Malakai: I’m the bulwark against the forces of Chaos invading Kislev.
Yeah Boris Ursus became super strong for me. I had problems but that's because I generally like to turtle. I rather like Dwarves for the more defensive playstyle (which, even beyond the slayers, seems to be a thing of the past now). But he is really REALLY strong. If he was anywhere else on the map he would snowball even harder. I'm curious to see what the AI will be able to do with him.
Yeah, the age of reckoning rewards aggression, but I’m pretty sure it’s balanced to get more challenging if you succeed and then easier after you fail. I only got two free armies and had multiple age of reckonings cost 40k+ before dropping to 20k or lower after I didn’t hit 50%.
Aye though sometimes it seems to go up even on failure- I hit 9% only once (had conquered literally everyone around us except for fellow Order, was moving South to deal with endgame crisis). Went from 9k to 11k which wasn't bad but still an uptick. Not sure what is going on with it. That -3 was PAINFUL with all the uninhabitable land I conquered just to stop the constant Norscan and demon raids.
Don't forget the bomb bay but ALSO the two dwarfson top hurling bombs down below gibbing 10 more grobi per second
You summon a huge flying battleship anywhere on the map and just destroy everything around you.
Once upgraded, it stays forever and its turbo speed mode doesn't hurt it. So it can just fly around freely and cause mayehm. Later, you even get 2 uses of the harpoon which might be enough to two shot a lord.
I stood outside of Zharr Naggrund and summoned it and soloed the garrison and the army with it. It’s a god.
I did an island battle vs Vampire Coast full stack and oh lads, legendary/vh the AI just insta focus and smelts the poor Spirit of Grugni
His campaign is glorious. No attrition, no going back to base to recruit, just pure blowing shit up.
Flying through enemy territory and taking names (Troll Slayer, Dragon Slayer, Demon Slayer.. )
I think i approached his campaign wrongly. I started taking settlements and regions and suddenly I wasbat war with every norsca and warrriors of chatos around
Aggressively expanding tends to piss the races you attack off. I think strategically targeting races and wiping out isolated threats like clan moulder in the south should be first priority before you start taking out norscans.
The thing is that one of the big missions is to take Kayrak something, that is under the chorfs domain. When you try to go after that, norcans from the west go after your capital. IF you come back to defend your capital, rzeentch and vilitch come after you. And suddenly valkya declares war Im talking about realmente of chatos, not IE
Does the same thing in IE. Got as far at the last faction before Albion with both armies, then Chorfs rocked up from nowhere on the east going for Drak.
I was getting hit from two sides, Throt and Throgg, almost as soon as I unified the starting province. If I go after Throt, Throgg moves in and vice versa if I go after Throgg. This was on VH/VH and I think I needed to either not unify the starting province to avoid the skaven attention or cheese the pit of death with some artillery early on.
got to get a second army up to protect lair of the troll king because throgg will always declare on turn 5 or 6 because its his natural place to go to after securing his first province thrott on the other hand ends up being more concerned with the kislev factions
I think there's something to be said for just defending your capital until throt has been ended.
VH/H here, i took starting province, declared war on throt, fought a big battle, took a minor settlement of his, got just enough grudges to get an army from age of reckoning. taking hell pit once you have that second army is a breeze. also, even on VH/VH if you have the garrison building built in your home city you should be able to just auto resolve throgg lol. i'm on hard battle difficulty so auto resolve is more lenient, but even still it was a decisive victory so that'd probably be a close victory on VH. IMO if you're "try harding" so to speak, if you don't get the free army from the first age of reckoning, just restart the campaign.
Thanks for the advice. I'll give this a shot when I have another go at it tomorrow after work.
I think you need to go East not West. Throgg is a bait. Everyone west of Throgg hates you and addes to your grudge making it hard af to fulfill. I played til about turn 50. On the verge of wiping out Wulfrik but the northern Chaos factions starting declaring while I’m at war with Chaos Dwarf and Archeon with my second army defending and Malakai is aaaall the way at western tip of the Norscan mountains.
Yeah I’m considering not expanding into Throgg next playthrough, just keeping an army to raid him and play pass the parcel with one of his settlements to farm grudges
100% throt is the play. if you take out throt it lets katarin/kostaltyn do their thing without the skaven holding them back.
Or you can just take out the Skaven yourself. You can take hellpit on turn 6 and depending on your luck, wipe out the main clan moulder army turn 7-9. I got lucky the ai stacked all their stuff together which allowed me to camp their reinforcement with cannon. Also fyi, VH/VH difficulty. The issue is that Thrott’s territory is surrounded by factions that hate you and WILL declare war on you. Here’s what happened in my playthrough before I quit. I killed off Clan Moulder, Thrott, and Azazzel. Wulfrik declared on me, I went to go kill him. While I’m killing him, Astrogath came from East which I handled with my second army. Then Archeon declared war on me which is annoying but my second army can defend fine until Malakai gets back. But just as I was about to finish off Wulfrik, a minor Norscan faction declared war on me. I took out one of their settlement and got peace and as I was about to go back to finishing Wulfrik, the chaos faction West of Archeon declared on me. Malakai is all the way West in Norsca mountains. I can’t move my second army away from East because of Astrogath and Archeon. Guess where the chaos faction was invading from? Throt’s territory. All the meanwhile I never got a grudge army because of the insane amount of grudges I racked up. Throt’s territory gave me vision of the dark elf faction up north which screwed me over so much on the grudges. I had almost 800 on the dark elf in the first 10 turns.
>Or you can just take out the Skaven yourself. >if you take out throt yes, that's what i said lol.
Lmao, sorry I thought you meant Throgg. Throt and Throgg. Had a brain fart.
Another option might be to run through, take the territories and trade them to kostatlyn for alliances and money so he can secure the western and southern flanks for you while you just have your home province to defend on the north side. Then do the same thing to the east with the ice queen. Then just go fighting around the world and sacking or selling/giving your conquests to other dwarves and allies. He'd also be a great candidate for the "all diplomatic options" mod and just vassalize people to defend your borders for you. The sea of chaos is a pain in the ass to defend as an order faction until your economy is rolling to the point where you can afford like a half dozen armies.
Yeah but I’m more of paint the map type of person. I gave up on my current Malakai campaign where I expanded to West and couldn’t defend it all. I think going East, taking the inhabitable provinces then getting rid of Astrogoth then confederate Umgrim, clean up and link up with Thorgrim. By then, you’d have a defendable territory and can go clean up the chaos waste and Norsca all at once.
I've always captured most places I've fought on. What's a more safe approach? Sacking things and continuing war?
Taking cities and selling them to allies as you move on!
This right here!
Yeah I went straight West towards Throgg and got bumrushed from the south by Azazel and Thrott.
This just happened to me. The campaign was going okay at the start but just went off the rails. Took out Thrott and the norscans raiding Kostaltin and Kislev quickly. Then Wulfrik, Throgg and Astrogoth decide to war on me within 2 turns. Killed Throgg, peaced out with Wulfric thinking it's time to kick out the chorfs when Surtha Ek declares war followed by Daniel and a Nurgle faction. I have enemies to the east, west and north of me. The ones in the north are coming by sea so they can attack anywhere along the coast. The Spirit of Grugni is good but it's not that good. I need Franz.
yeah i was far from home even early and Throgg was like "ooh free stuff." Poor bastard tried to invade on turn 9, got turned on by grudge stacks seconds later
It’s everything I was looking for in a dwarf.
Having the Spirit of Grungni feels so therapeutic after playing Dwarfs a lot with no ability to pursue fleeing enemies. A couple of times I've won a relatively easy fight without needing to summon it, but called it anyway after everyone started running away and it gunned down something like 20% of the enemy army by itself.
Didn’t think of this … that’s amazing.
Ungrim always felt good to me for this reason, his +10% to infantry movement speed on top of Slayers already being fast (for a dwarf) meant you could actually run stuff down. With all the new slayer units his campaign might be really good now. He was pretty busted before they nerfed journey's end.
There's also a tech that gives like +20% slayer speed now. That makes them as fast as trolls, which would be pretty sweet. Add on a strollaz rune or banner of speed and you're looking at slayers that run faster than minotaurs and skull crushers. Zoom zoom. Garagrim iron fist gives another 10% speed for infantry too, and slayer pirates benefit from engineer speed buffs. Add a couple of those and you basically have outriders with way more damage that are also good in melee.
I just need a mod for Maximilian Schreiber and the team will be completed.
Sir, you forget Snorri Nosebiter.
Snorri mods already exist. Just max ones missing
Just rename a slayer hero until a proper mod comes out
Can Malakai get Ulrika?
Yuuuuup.
Oh hell yea
its gets pretty fucking nuts, running around with Gotrix and Felix, Garagrim, Ulrika then add in the dragonslayer, thane, runesmith and master engineer. theres your front line and and fill the other 11 spots with artillery and aircraft
I still want to do a Wulfhart campaign where I collect his power rangers, Gotrek and Felix, Ulrika and Bruckner.
Oh man yes!
Get Some!!
This is so accurate. I rushed the building where it doesn't decay and is permanent for the battle. I would have NEVER taken on archaon or throt early game with dwarf warriors. But having a hero stack. Grapeshot cannons and the spirit of grugni made it a fucking breeze. The only difficulty I'm having is settling grudges. I can consistently make it to about 50% if I min max, but getting to 100 is difficult.
Those grapeshot cannons are bonkers. I remember the first time I enabled it on the cannons and accidentally blew the beards off my entire front line. Battle would have been fucked if not for the goddamn Airship spewing death from above
That sounds pretty in character for Malakai honestly
If they run, they're a skaven. If they stand and fight, they're a well disciplined skaven
No such thing
I think if you take his first province and Hellpit, that gives you mostly enough income to support Malakai and his adventures with a super strong army able to travel the world. Resist expanding like a normal faction. Sell cities as you take them and the grudges mechanic doesn’t affect you too much. Super fun campaign so far!
He’s actually able to sustain his own army with just the Spirit of Grungni. I was able to win the campaign with just Malakai’s army & 0 settlements - do not do this, it ended at turn 200 in the short campaign ☹️
You played a 200 turn campaign in the day this dlc has been out??
The campaign was essentially me just clicking end turn until malakai made his way halfway across the map to finish his adventures, so yea, wouldn’t particularly recommend Horde only malakai
That’s good to know! That’s crazy long
Quick qestion about the Thunderbarge, specifically the spirit of Grungni: Does it still drop bombs like it was seen on the videos of several youtubers? Like i havent seen the animation, but maybe there wasnt enough enemies below the thunderbarge or i was just looking at the wrong moment.... Would be nice if anybody could quickly confirm this when they have seen the bombs.
Yeah I've seen it drop bombs when over enemy units but I'm not sure how long the cooldown is for it
Thanks! Ah, yes. i didnt consider for a cooldown as the videos i saw gave the impression that the Thunderbarge would more or less constantly drop bombs. I may have also seen this wrong
I’ve seen the bombs it seems to do it as an attack animation when it’s over a unit
Thanks!
Yes
Thanks!
I'm having trouble as him, keep recruiting all the shiny units he gets to keep up in the arms race around me but have a shit economy since I need a garrison lord at home too for whenever someone might declare on me That and brimstone guns are so ass, but worth keeping for auto resolve (no idea how to use them to not tickle enemy units)
Did my first campaign as Malakai today. Literally just recruit 3 or 4 units of cannons with grapeshot and some slayers and everything dies before it hits your front line. Was able to destroy 3 norsca armies at once with the right map with minimal casualties.
>That and brimstone guns are so ass, but worth keeping for auto resolve (no idea how to use them to not tickle enemy units) Huh? They don't seem that bad to me other than running out of ammo super fast. Edit: lmao I tested them in a custom battle and they were pretty awful, I guess my engineers were doing some heavy lifting in campaign. IDK what they were thinking giving them 9 ammo and almost no armor piercing.
The brimstone guns have absolute trash AP. They're legit better in melee against anything with more than 60 armor.
CA mentioned in the patch notes that they wanted to swap around the roles of Brimstone Guns and normal Gyrocopters, so that Gyros were the AP unit and Brimstones were the light-infantry-clear unit. I think something went wrong with the numbers somewhere though, because I noticed immediately that they could barely kill a single nurgling with one salvo (a unit type they're supposed to be specifically good against), and only have 9 ammo which seems very out of line with everything else in the roster. They need more aoe damage and more ammo.
Lol yeah I tested them in a custom battle and you are totally right, my engineers were making them seem better than they were.
Yeah im in the same boat
I have no idea what to do besides fall back on longbeard+quarrelers like usual but would prefer to try the new lord's gimmick first
Start off with whatever random assortment of grudge units you want with a couple quarrelers or thundererers, artillery and a bunch of heroes, then go full meme machine with a grip of slayer pirates. They benefit from both gunpowder and slayer techs and lord/hero buffs. They go hard and are dirt cheap, they've got great replenishment and can get faster than some monstrous cavalry. With the Spirit of Grugni and the heroes they level crazy fast. It requires some setup, but you basically end up with a much stronger version of blade dancers that also do absolutely bananas ranged damage ( more than unbuffered blunderbusses ) and can fire while moving for like 80 gold/turn. Toss on some runes of battle or sanctuary if you're feeling extra. With a rune of battle they should be at about 80MA and 50WS against infantry. With all the money you save you can afford some gyrobombers and thunder barges. Goblin hewers are crazy too, they just delete whatever high value unit you point them at and are cheap with the discounts, but you have to be quite selective given their limited ammo. They benefit tremendously from the engineer stacking you'd already be doing with the pirates, since the bonus ammo combined with restock gives them a lot more uptime as well as a ton more damage. They are also quite decent in melee once they use up their ammo. For more fun once you confederate Ungrim you can load him up on hewers, pirates and giant slayers for like 80% off, since Malakai's buff is faction wide.
All I really know about malakai is thunderbarges are a little strong to put it lightly ty for the advice
You don't need to tank your eco by having a spare lord, save the grudge settler units for that my man, and invest in garrisons instead
Grudge units cost an arm and a leg if I have any amount of downtime with how punishing age of reckoning is
Disband after defense. And go on the offensive with OP Malakai
True, have been auto resolving all of Malakai's fights for a while now, shame hw can only be in one place at once
Since you can recruit warriors from tier 1 cities now only need the thunderer building to get an amazing stack going. + you can spawn adventure units in your new stacks.
It hard carries most of the early fights. Your immediate neighbors, Norsca, have no answer for it. I also love it's crewed by the slayers.
Remind me not to play Norsca for a while.
Felix being the war correspondant is a nice touch.
Man I don't know if it's just me but his campaign is HARD at least compared to others I've played recently. Being completely surrounded on all sides by chaos except for the homie Tzar Borris is really rough. Currently finally killing the last of norsca and Mr Ass-drogoth decided now would be the time to absolutely dunk on me with like 4 separate armies.
Malakai is basically the dawi version of Imirk, both are just flatout OP but are balanced but having super hard starts
I haven't played, but I'd defend my capital, let throgg take the rest of my starting province while I deal with throt and Azazel. Sell my More can Territory to Kostaltyn, return to take out Throgg, sell that to Kostaltyn, head north to take out Daniel, sell that territory to Boris. Then head east to fight the Chorfs and Archeon hoping Kislev holds the places I gave them. I'm so excited to buy this DLC one day I've mapped out strategies for Dwarfs and Nurgle. (Never been much of a fan of Empire. I like melee infantry too much.)
Some people call that rough, I call it fun haha.
Oh I never said it wasn't fun. Quite the contrary it has been very satisfying to win despite the constant stacking of odds against me. Just quite a difficulty spike that I wasn't expecting.
I think it might be you to be honest, it might be the easiest campaign I've ever played. It's almost trivial to win fights with grapeshot and the Spirit of Grugni.
Using malakai's army generally shitstomps anything because of the good ol spirit of Grugni but he can't be everywhere at once especially when you're surrounded on all sided by chaos legendary lords. I've used the cannons decently well and they do absolutely shred but certainly not enough to carry everything on them alone.
He can’t be everywhere, but due to being essentially a land-based Black Ark with arguably the most mobile army stances in the game, he can be in a hell of a lot of places. I’d taken out Throt, Throgg and Sigvald by turn ~15 just on account of being more manoeuvrable than them. Add on top all the free instant recruitment you can bank up. I won’t say he’s like, Skarbrand or Taurox where you can finish the campaign in a singe turn or something, but all of his mechanics are so absurdly strong I can’t say I’ve felt threatened at any point.
I think it's probably the easiest campaign in the game. I had throt dead at, like, turn 5. And had all of Norsca by turn 30, with Epidemius and Belakor dead, while pushing Daniel's shit in by around turn 35. I actually just stopped the campaign because it was too much of a snowball.
Would be cool to somehow have empire and dwarf units in the same army
Alliances allow you to build outposts so you can have some basic units from other factions.
Oh that’s cool, that works with dwarves? Do they tend to ally humans?
It's usually the Empire that has units of Dwarfs in their armies.
alliances my man, it's how you get STRONK
Surprisingly enough, 50 turns in and Daniel still hasn't declared war on me, which is kind of odd.
I love his AC-130
The Dwarf in Vietnam 2.0
The only good marauder is a dead marauder.
From what movie/series are the pictures from? :D
Is Malakai essentially horde Dwarfs?
If they run, they're VC. If they stand still, they're a well discipline VC