Let's Explore Magical Worlds - Big Spookums, Part 2 - 1

 I am restarting the playthrough to better cover the game. It turns out that making the computer randomly pick wizards isn't great for Expert difficulty, which, despite its name, is intended to be the "default" difficulty for regular players of the game. So let's go about picking a new wizard.

I pick 5 Sorcery and Death books each, and then pick the Conjurer and Cult Leader traits. Conjurer makes summons cheaper to research, cast and maintain, and given that Death is reliant on summoning, this only makes logical sense.

The other trait, Cult Leader, buffs the effect of religious buildings. This is nice when used in conjunction with races capable of building a wide range of them, and also synergizes well with a Rare spell in Death that buffs them ever further!

Having this ample selection of books gives my wizard 4 Common spells to start with, and 1 Uncommon spell to guarantee in the spellbook. I pick Resist Magic to offset the bad resistance of Death's summons, Floating Island to have a reliable and less vulnerable source of transport for my armies, Phantom Warriors to deal reliable damage to enemies pulling close to my units, and Nagas in case my Ghouls run into anything too sturdy to directly damage. For the Uncommon, I pick Confusion, as, with Black Prayer available at roughly the same time, it's going to be extra effective at getting rid of threats.

Here are my Death spell picks. It's pretty hard picking Death Commons since they have quite a fair selection of good spells, but I ultimately went with Weakness to cripple enemies in the early and midgame, Cloak of Fear to similarly render melee enemies useless, especially in swarm situations, Ghouls as my main summon and Wraith Form to take advantage of weapon immunity and freely cross bad terrain, if needed. 

One thing to note about buffs here - barring the creation of a "doom" stack, an exceptionally strong army that can easily take down most of its opponents with either no or minimal casualties, buffs are best used either in combat, or on heroes. Needless to say, aside from Resist Magic, the buffs here do not enable a doom stack, and so are only going to be pulled out when the opportunity arises.

The Uncommon is Black Prayer, which is a fairly obvious choice, considering how much Death relies on targeting resistance. I could pick Shadow Demons, but truth is, their ranged attack is pretty mediocre too, they only out damage Ghouls because of their high hit rate. With five books in two schools of magic, we're likely to find a good Uncommon summon when the time comes.

As for the race, I picked orcs, partly because neither Death nor Sorcery care too much about regular units, and partly because orcs have both pretty good economic infrastructure as well as some decently robust regular units should it become necessary to rely on them.

This game started my wizard out on a tiny island, with a wizard staking their claim to a continent nearby. Luckily, he had a weak claim over it, being severed from his capital by a string of neutral cities and having little that could stand up to a mass of ghouls.

That being said, he wasn't one to be taken lightly. The combination of Life and Chaos realms is extremely potent in the late game, allowing the wizard to turn their regular soldiers into demigods, while also spreading general destruction throughout the world.

Thankfully, getting there would take him considerable time, and Death is at its best in the early game, where it can prey with near impunity. As such, it didn't take very long for my wizard to exert his authority and capture his cities, and then most of the (known) continent for himself.

The Dervish, Sage, Druid and Rogue all joined my wizard's employ. While my wizard didn't have Benefactor nor Life spells, and thus couldn't make them as powerful as they were in the first game, they were still welcome as capable defenders of the capital, freeing up ghouls to garrison other cities and farm undead from the rampaging monsters that sought to throw themselves at them.

I did mention how Wraithform could come in handy against weapon immunity, and how Cloak of Fear could further no sell melee units with bad to mediocre resistance. Well, here's some examples of that. Check out this lopsided victory, where three skeletons handled a gnollish garrison on their own:

Or what about this one, where a single coatl took on a Hawkmen city all on its own? And before you ask, yes, ghouls raised it as an undead unit. In fact they got quite a good variety of undead, with sprites, wargs coatls and nagas all rising up in service of my wizard.

Curiously, Druk'gyalpo was willing to trade my wizard Bloodlust for Darkness after the end of their little war. Though, sadly, he declared war at the end of the session because he disliked that my wizard had grown considerably more powerful, especially since it came at the expense of his territory. I'm not too worried about him though, the map makes his limited influence pretty clear:

 Already this session is going considerably better than my earlier game. I feel great about it, here's hoping this game sees a definite success! Until next time.