Collective feedback on Maps at Nightmare difficulty (suggestions, strategies, improvements etc.)

Blight
1

So a few of us began testing maps on nightmare and we decided to start with Monster Mash.

Here’s some bullet points:

TL:DR (more thought out notes below)

-Overall what happens with this map is 1 or 2 players get beat down, the other 2 or 3 players have plenty of time/ resources to build up a massive army and can finish things off with ease.

-The player(s) most likely to have a bad time are the eastern ones, because Orcs don’t have CC and blighted dragons are maybe one of the toughest units in the game to deal with.

-Gryphons are fast. If you play this map and want to do well, don’t sleep until the gryphons are dead.

BLAH BLAH BLAH WAY MORE LONG WINDED NOTES

Maps starting with blighted gryphons overall require players to pay a LOT of attention to the early game, because they move incredibly fast. A gryphon stack can do a lot of damage in an 8 hour period… and the fact that this map hinges on lots of blighted gryphons means that the beginning of the game requires players to pay close attention

The eastern border is easily the most difficult to defend, because the gryphons are likely to blight the dragons, and Orcs have NO way of really stopping them. The south is also somewhat difficult as it relies on the player locking down a spider nest for CC.

The North and West have access to tons of really usable crowd control, so they can pretty easily take (and hold) the settlements near them and then come to the rescue of whomever is trying to defend the south and east.

We did end up losing a player, but at no point did I really feel too much like we were at any real risk of losing the game, but that’s just me maybe.

Anyone else wanna chime in with thoughts/ideas?

1 Like
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You cannot sleep for the first couple days. I got extremely unlucky with birdies and fire birdies choosing the correct path to run over my troops both nights without me ever reaching any dragons. By the time I realized I dun goofed, my southern base got focuses by the whole orc area and got overwhelmed before I could get enough hydras to defend.

As far as ideas, I wouldn’t be opposed to each direction having a dedicated horde to start with so there’s more pressure around the board, it seemed like the Elves and Humans were set for the whole game by day 2, a solid fight for Goblins, and me not respecting birdie speed and needing the 2 safe players to save my area.

3

When you have a 8k gryphon stack flying your way early game there is not much you can do to beat them.
When i started you had already teleported to the orcs so i concentrated on the elves.
Problem with the elves is that you need mana and that takes time.
So at the start my plan was to repel the big stacks and kill the small ones.
With most zombies repelling just buys you time but with the gryphons they fly halfway across the map and then choose a new target.
Likewise with the stacks that headed west getting repelled by the humans.
But this is only such a big issue on nightmare, in normal and hard its far more manageable.

4

I didn’t think this map was even winnable on Nightmare, so good job! It’s more like a crazy novelty mode.

I’ve been thinking about making a map where you only play as monsters, with distant Dwarves for Gold.

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My highlight was tangling a 7k stack of dragons and then nuking it once the zombie hydra’s, trolls and orcs got in range. The explosion killed everything. :slight_smile:

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Pretty much this. I (or rather, the Orcs across the map from me, sorry @DDRX) fell victim to some poor deckbuilding on my part. If I’d thought a little more about how crazy fast Gryphons are, I would have brought Wizards in my deck instead of all those Houndmasters.

I certainly expected it to be harder than it was. As @thethanx says, even though we lost a player I never really felt like we were in any danger of losing the game.