 Hello folks and welcome to the combat clinic today. We're going to be taking a look at one of my recent fights and I'm giving myself a score out of 10 looking for areas where we may have Acted suboptimally or we could have squeezed a little bit more out of the fight Being experimenting trying to figure out what kind of content I can create for heroes 3. That's a little bit more snack-sized a little bit easier to To digest then following me through an entire campaign, which I realized is of course a pretty big commitment for you guys as the viewer so What we've got here is a fight between libita the elementalist in the corner. That's us against vitamina the Necromancer so without further ado, let's get into the fight and we'll have a look at how well I did in real time So let's have a listen here to the previous version of me Working his way through the early stages of this fight Expert slow past the turn You haste your boat your ghost dragons the ghost dragons fly over here and attack my elves If you do expert haste, I'm really sad Okay, I think I like that logic right because obviously expert slow is the kind of thing We want to do on turn one to slow her entire army down leverage the Archery Capabilities of our side of the battlefield the counter to that is of course a fit of mean is an expert air mage Casting expert haste completely undoes slow over writes it and replaces it with haste and we're extremely sad in that case We've effectively thrown away our advantage The dread knights will be on us in one turn Probably the wyverns will as well certainly the ghost dragons. We're gonna lose an awful lot more troops than we wanted to I think I'm still right to do this first Although one way to hedge against expert haste is to implode 1732 Okay So my probably overreacted a little bit there, but what I was doing there I click the implode button just have a look and speculate on the possibility of imploding. I wasn't definitely gonna go for implode You can click a spell like yeah ice bolt and what have you lightning bolt implode Just to hover over and have a think about whether you're gonna do it or not It doesn't necessarily commit you to the spell But of course coming back out to the main window here We see that vitamine has got the recantus cloak on which means neither of us can cast Third-level spells or higher. So that's implode out the window Critically though and the reason why I'm reacting so strongly is that it also rules out Resurrection so my strategy had been whichever unit we hope it's the grand elves take a beating Just the last term before we end the fight or maybe might be the last two turns we resurrect the grand elves now It's gonna turn out the fact that it turns out that we can't do that and we're going to need to what we should be doing Is adjusting our strategy accordingly? Thankfully I can still cast something I can still cast first and second-level spells. Let's have a look at what those are Okay So we go for the expert slow We wait with the phoenixes the ghost dragons wait in response on a ghost dragon do not wait Right so here we go Eventually we get to the ghost dragons and you can see my reaction. We can hear my reaction She's an expert earth mage She's an expert earth mage. So in when it was the ghost dragons turning slow really favours me Right so When it's the ghost dragons turn she casts expert slow She's an expert slow expert earth mage Herself and we now have a completely different dynamic and my initial reaction is that this does favor me massively because we have The ice elementals and the grand elves To sit back and if everyone's really slow, then that'll just suit me just fine I outgun you Like this targeting their power that is it's gonna be a war of archery But killed who did that kill that kills me? Didn't do too much damage. Did that kill some of these guys? I think I can't remember if what my starting stack was I think it did kill some Storm and the way storm elementals there these guys are here. So if these guys stand here, I'll be safe after the phoenixes move Yeah, so just getting a turning off death cloud sort of make some sense there. That's relevant Yeah, I like that just working them over while we're trying to figure out what the strategy is so here I think I Don't think I move them where they should be moved. They should be going down there where my Mouse is pointing just a but they don't so let's pause there. I think that's a mistake, right? Here's the issue the ghost dragons have waited. They can cover the map in Not this turn that they'll move this turn and when they move again, they'll be able to come over they'll act before the grand elves I definitely messed up here. It's necessary to block off the grand elves with something if the unicorns can't get there Maybe the magic elementals can get down to help even the phoenixes could do the job Yeah, on our first turn, maybe we can do something mean to the Ghost dragons figure out how we're gonna deal with them But I think leaving the grand elves exposed with resurrection turned off here just moving the dendroids out to the middle was a mistake I was thinking about death cloud But of course with only seven power let's just that doesn't really matter at the moment So I think this definitely is our first mistake. We're not getting 10 out of 10 here the archery advantage How slow is a slow phoenix? We're about to find out Good question Let's finish these guys off I think we should have been working over the ghost dragons already Notice how the vampires why burns have lined up so that the phoenixes Can't leverage their breath didn't work on these weapon There's no way for the phoenixes phoenixes to stand other than in front of the vampires And face retaliation from the vampire so they'll obviously know what we want to do Stones again Run away with the phoenixes. Okay. Let's pause here So we're beginning to wake up to the fact that the ghost dragons are a problem only now at the end of round one when the phoenixes Are coming back to their turn we're beginning to realize that those ghost dragons are coming over their third to act next turn and I think instinctively my reaction is start killing them So as we'll see as I am pause it here. I lose a phoenix in response That's quite a bad outcome. Yeah, I think this is a tough call Lebeath is an expert water mage, so we could expert less instead of experts do I cast shield bless And you see as you can see I've moved the phoenixes back to protect the elves to take To send the ghost dragons to whichever direction they might go But it's not enough and the elves take that they take that hit it. Okay, so that's the hit Okay expert bless love this. I mean these guys take man storm elementals And then the good luck on top is just excellent, and yeah, we kill for those dragons, but again, we've lost a phoenix. We've lost else here Dispel Yeah, I love this dispel from good at me. All right unlocking the Dreadnights a fantastic target that I've left dangling out there. I feel like the magic element should be back home Helping in the bottom left There's only one palette left, so it doesn't matter. I think this is fine, right? Ten of these kills most of you. Yeah. Yeah, so this is fine. A small group of vampire lords aren't gonna be able to leverage much. Oh Drains enemy mana that I thought gave to be the mean of it. This is just me not remembering the rules properly I don't know how those things work the raids no big deal You guys are doing we have about 30 odd ends there or 34 on the two ghost dragons Obvious that we're just gonna make that this attack I'm not blessed That's nice So slow it's hilarious Movement to There's another to spell up the sleeve here for say the why burns or something true true, of course. Yeah. Yeah about these guys Yeah, absolutely 23 points in a minute So that was good. I mean I learned my lesson and I this sort of unlearned it there and live stuff in front of you guys As I'm thinking about this. Yeah, of course the why burns could have been dispelled and flown over and So we absolutely do need to continue to keep blocking So this is just a decision So and finally leveraging the amazing advantage we have in the archery We also come down here and take him down. I think that's okay. Hopefully I get to kill the vampires here. I think I agree. It's nice Doesn't quite work. It's really annoying. Now. We have this residual problem of the dreadknights. It feels so strange I just look this is the Recantus cloak has just been a fantastic for them. It has I think this is okay Don't mind this. Yep expo shield Hopefully it'll tell us how much it now see this I don't like Right, it's all yours. It's probably border. Oh, yeah How many I think I was thinking to myself Let's get ready to attack the dreadknights. I'm not saying this is but is that really something I want to do I just want to shoot those things right. Well, that's good quick math. See right now. I do the math Okay, so Stormy's getting good luck killing six dreadknights with 50 seems so so nice This is fine. We're really going to provoke Retaliation with them. So doing nothing is okay. There's dispel on the right and sadly, I'll take that We do have to accept take our medicine And these are the stacks that I want to take damage My smaller non-committing sort of stacks like for losing the magic elementals may be in this fight or something I should have aspired to losing ice elementals. I think it's better. Obviously than losing grand elves Obviously touching the ice elementals are a giant stack as well that aren't going anywhere. They're part of my non-game strategy. So so resoundingly May as well do this. Yeah, and the phoenixes kind of just divvied nothing right there They just spell everyone. What does the spell do? I think it's cures the one I want, right? Yeah, cure a cure everyone Okay, so here the options. I think this is right. I'm thinking about is cure everyone means everyone is faster than the wraiths Except for well things that are naturally slower than them But then I like this variation where we go spell instead of that we do ice bolt and Just phoenix them and you do so much damage with blessed phoenixes that yeah, there's only 10 left and okay now the game's over so I'll let this I'll let this continue rolling just while I'm thinking about the residual but look in summary I think it was correct to staying massively back here and wandering out as the middle even with the unicorns Certainly with the magic elementals was unnecessary. We had such an advantage in firepower and With both sides having done expert slow right from the beginning I think it was a mistake to venture forth and the phoenixes have flown around and probably wasted at least one turn That's not bad. I'll take that. Okay, so I'm saying here. That's not bad and I'll take that. I think though in hindsight It's not amazing, right? I feel like one phoenix is more than I wanted to lose I needed to lose and certainly 17 grand elves as well. I feel like a more reasonable exchange might have been something like all the magic elementals Perhaps eight storm elementals as well. Maybe 10 ice elementals Instead of losing the phoenixes and the The grand elves I think I do like the order of events though in terms of cast the spells We chose to cast them when we cast them So hopefully that's been of some sort of interest to you guys just a quick look back at one of the more interesting Combats from the last campaign. I probably only give myself about five out of ten. Honestly, maybe six out of ten tops for my decision-making I think the cloak kind of threw me a little bit and I've been so used to spamming resurrection with the grand elves and just really getting my own way that I don't think I quite played this as optimally as I should have. I at least did contemplate expert haste I contemplated to spell but I didn't really move the units around in a way that sort of Reflected that that consideration. So anyway, let me know in the comments of this style of short content is interesting to you guys It's very easy for me to do Relative to the other type of content I've been doing for heroes 3 so give me a shout in the comments Tell me what you think. Anyway, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time. Cheers