How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

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Huumy
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How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Huumy »

Drakes by Huumy:

Guide for 1v1 with default settings.

I think this is one of my weakest races and I had no idea how to start this Drake part of the guide, because my playstyle could be described ”do what seems best in the situation”. I hope this part of the guide helps me to understand how I play as drakes. Also I like the feedback and questions, because I'm not 100% sure that what I say in this guide is true or best way to play. I just hope some1 finds something useful from it

<<<--->>>
Drakes vs The undead
You are fast the undead are slow. The undead deal crazy amount of damage during night, drakes during the day. Sounds simple? Play it simple.

Units you are using
→ Saurian Augur: You don't want to recruit any of these, if you already did you can use it finish frontline units with very low HP and hope it survives long enough to give you healing. When leveled and it's not some crazy crazy situation where your augur can try leader kill, always go for the healer.
→ Saurian Skirimisher: Have 1-3 of these with your army. Their skirimish ability is useful to finish those pesky adepts both during day and night.
→ Drake Glider: Have one of these to scout specially on maps with lots of water. These are also good for meleeing skeleton archers and using ranged attack to finish anything that's on high def but has low HP.
→ Drake Fighter: These are the meat of your army. They are also the unit to kill adepts.
→ Drake Clasher: Have one of these, they are the slowest unit of your army and make sure you can always retreat with these. Only good thing is they have 4 melee strikes you never know when it comes handy.
→ Drake Burner: You need 2-3 to break your undead buddys skeleton frontline. If your opponent has way more skeletons than adepts, get more burners. If your opponent has lots of skeleton archers and adepts you should recruit more of the cheaper fighters.

Day and night cycle
Drakes should always make sure the undead can't attack you during the night. The undead need only one turn to kill half of your during the night and that's why you should retreat out of the reach of the undead, heal up and attack during the day. What you should do during the day? Kill as many units you can or make the undead retreat to get their villages so the night is easier for you.

How to win?
→ Try to avoid fighting (do not fight) with small parts of your army.
→ Always fight during the day and always either have the good terrain or start the fight.
→ Retreat before the night. During the night losing units for free is way worse than losing 1-3 villages. Basically you need to have more kills than your opponent after every day-night cycle.
Once you have an edge in this matchup don't let it go by taking risks, steadily keep killing more and more undeads during the day and always retreat during the night.

When fighting
→ Kill melee skeletons and ghosts with burners and everything else with fighters and skirimishers.
→ Don't think your level 2 units can survive more than 3 adepts even during the day.


Units you want to level:
1.Drake Burner: Fire burns the undead and fire with leadership burns even more.
2.Drake Fighter: More damage, more HP.
3.Saurian skirimisher: More damage, more HP.
4.Drake Clasher: New mace, more HP. Still the slowest part of your army, make sure not to get Thrashers trapped.
5.Drake Glider and Saurian Augur both have an ranged attack that can be used to finish low HP, high def units. Soothsayer is weaker than Sky Drake but has healing. They both have the same weakness, they are too easy to kill and have too low damage in this matchup.
Units you don't want your opponent to level:
1.Dark Adept: More damage, more HP.
2.Skeleton archer: Wayy more ranged damage and still lousy melee.
3.Skeleton: More damage, more attacks, more HP.
4.Rest of the units.
5.Walking corpses: I hate when my units are turned into zombies but the Walking Corpses are the worst unit to give xp in this matchup.


Keep on flaming!
Last edited by Huumy on April 6th, 2011, 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Desertofsounds1
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Desertofsounds1 »

Huumy wrote:Drakes by Huumy:
Units you want to level:
1.Drake Burner: Fire burns the undead and fire with leadership burns even more.
2.Drake Fighter: More damage, more HP.
3.Saurian skirimisher: More damage, more HP.
4.Drake Clasher: New mace, more HP.
5.Drake Glider and Saurian Augur both have an ranged attack that can be used to finish low HP, high def units. Soothsayer is weaker than Sky Drake but has healing. They both have the same weakness, they are too easy to kill and have too low damage in this matchup.
I Would rather have a thrasher than a level 2 fighter or skirmisher.
Good guide.
Huumy
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Huumy »

I Would rather have a thrasher than a level 2 fighter or skirmisher.
Good guide.
Thanks for replaying :) I actually had reason prefer leveling up fighters more than clashers :) Clashers are still as slow and can be trapped much easier. Otherwise Thrashers are better everyway then fighters.
I think it's really important always to get no units trapped.
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Kolbur
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Kolbur »

I think you underestimate the saurian augur. I want at least one for my Drake army. Prohibiting poison damage can be quite useful and also Drakes really need every extra healing they can get since they are supposed to move around all the time and that makes healing difficult. If you manage to lvl up one to a healer in a secure position it gets pretty awesome. You have no need for villages to heal your units anymore but can do it on the move. The augur is not about damage but it's one of the best support units, especially for this match up.
salade
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by salade »

i would probably recruit half or more of my drake army as burner
monochromatic
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by monochromatic »

Nice! But I disagree with a couple points.

Burners deal heavy damage to the undead and are useful for pretty much anything except DAs and skele archers at dawn/dusk/night, but they're very expensive. Using too many will prevent you from getting enough units! Keeping 1-2 on the board is a good number, I think.
Clashers are slow, but they are meant to be slow! They are your best tanks as they can rip apart DAs and sustain the least damage possible from skele archers. And yes, Thrashers are awesome.
Augurs are CRITICAL. Always have one. Since poison is such a big factor in the use of the undead and drakes rely on a lot of gold to field many units, there will be much fighting over villages, so having an Augur is nice so you don't have to fly way back into a safe village. As the match progresses and if the match is going in your favor, the use the Augur diminishes. But they are vital in the opening moves!
3 Skirmishers is too many, I think. That's 45 gold and 3 upkeep, which can be spent elsewhere. 1-2 is plenty enough, as you have clashers and fighters too.
Huumy
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Huumy »

Heh I have never used augurs in this matchup but it seems other players use it :o I guess I'll just have to try it myself.

For the clashers I just feel like they are most of the time waste of money and make it harder to retreat. Tho I have to admit using more clashers + 1 augur makes sense.

I guess I'll have to try that next time. Also I don't feel the damage from archers is too much for the fighters. But this is just how feel atm about the matchup. I'll try more clashers and augur recruits in future :)
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The Black Sword
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by The Black Sword »

.Another point on augurs, they're very good at removing drake WC's who have -50% to cold and are resistant to blade and fire(from your fighters/burners). Usually I have 1 in my initial recruit and that's enough for me. I'm not sure I'd recruit another if he dies, I'd need to have a pretty large army before I feel it'd be worth it.

I have to agree I'm not really a fan of the clasher though again I'd have some in my initial recruit. This is a matchup where you simply don't tank and anyway, the fighter is probably better hp/cost vs adepts and lets face it, if your opponent isn't using them properly you've won anyway.

I wouldn't use so many skirms though I can understand 3 if you're up to like a 20+ unit army.

Mass Burners can work fairly well IMO but you need to buy a certain number of fighters to be able to kill adepts.

Drake Gliders also work pretty well against skeleton archers, which are quite common and I'd probably have 2 or 3. His level up also rocks, I'd probably put it 2nd on your list :D
Insinuator
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Insinuator »

I have yet to see the Drakes beat the Undead, but I had some success using them the other day. I would agree with Hummy on just about everything. Clashers are too slow to get into position to take DAs out. Heavy usage of Fighters seems the best strategy. Also agree with the Saurian skirmishers. In my last match with the Undead, would have paid all the gold in the world for one more skirmisher. :(

I would disagree about the Burners, however. Both DAs and Skeleton Archers can take a Burner on, and the Burner costs a LOT. I don't often see Undead players go with a lot of Skeletons, so Burners don't have much to do. About the Augur, I am split. On the one hand, they're terrible against Undead units of almost any sort. On the other, they're the only unit the Drakes have with a 70% chance to hit. Another note: I've never had to deal with poison much when playing Drakes vs Undead. I'd be happy if my enemy built Ghouls, actually. So tasty well roasted. 8)
Velensk
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Velensk »

I have seen drakes beat undead plenty of times.

Burners handilly beat both skeleton archers and adepts during the day. And being more mobile (though only slightly so) they can frequently achieve it. Sporting about 30% more hp than archers they deal 9-4 vs 5-3 damage ranged. Adepts can retaliate better against ranged at 11-2 vs 7-4 but also competely lack a melee attack and can be mawed for 10-2 or similar damage without any retaliation at all. As long as you can force an engagement at day, the undead have nothing incredibly effective against burners (though ghouls can be annoying). Even when not forcing an engagement at day burners make a better wall against adepts and skeleton archers than any other unit (even at night, they do the same damage to skeleton archers as the skeleton archers do to them and are one of the few drakes that can always survive both hits from a dark adept reguardless of traits).
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Lone_Isle »

I agree with the crux of Huumy's points.

Augurs are not useless against UD, especially if the UD player recruits ghouls, but I would not recruit more than the initial augur I always get if I didn't know my opponents faction.

Also, a compelling argument can be made that ghouls are sub-optimal against drakes.

Why ghouls suck vs Drakes in the first place, and why you won't expect to see them.

1. Poison is useful for high defense units, and drakes(excepting lvl2s) never have more than 40%.

2. Poison is useful slowly killing units you have little hope of killing outright. As the UD player, your DAvsDrake dynamic is the very definition of "killing outright". A DA hitting a drake with both hits at night does 38 damage > 4 turns of poison

3. Poison is generally more useful on your bad TOD, when your units are doing less damage. This does not apply in UD vs Drake. During day you want to be retreating, not hitting drakes for pitiful damage with a ghoul only to have it killed next turn.
If you're using a ghoul at night to hit a drake ask yourself whether you might have not preferred a DA instead.

4. Ghouls to some measure rely on not taking a damaging retaliation in response. This does not apply to any drake unit. Even hitting a burner makes the ghoul(during day) much easier to kill on the drake's turn.

5. Augurs more or less counter ghouls outright

These are only some of the reasons you wouldn't want to use ghouls.

As the drake player, if you know your opponent won't be using ghouls, then you shouldn't really need augurs either. Doesn't mean augurs are useless, but more than 1 is generally not optimal when it could be put towards a heavy hitting fighter.


I don't like using Clashers at all vs UD. Levelling one is hard, and the result is still not as versatile as the lvl2 Drake Warrior, which has a fire attack to deal with skeles, ghosts, and for retalling against DA.

Recruiting Clashers is also somewhat of an rng roll: A strong Clasher is leagues better(+8 dmg at day vs non-strong) than usual, while a strong fighter has only a 3 dmg difference. If you don't get a strong clasher, you are paying 2 more g for a slower version of a fighter that does only 1 more dmg (28 vs 27)with no retal to DAs.


I will also say that I don't like skirmishers as much vs UD. I will use 1 to handle the quieter side of the map where a UD player sometimes only uses ghosts and bats(good UD players will use DAs and skeles too). Usually however my recruit goes by a simple rule of thumb that's something like this:

1 fighter for every opponent DA
1 glider for every opponent skele archer
1 burner for every 1.5 skele/skele archer.

Some notes:

*traits being equal, a glider does melee 18 dmg to skeles at day vs 15dmg for fighters, or 20 vs 18 for their strong counter parts. This means gliders are really fking good vs skeles.

*Go always for kills over capping villages. Target the 40% and 50%ers first. Kill DAs as your top priority as they are the units that force you to cede villages at night.

*The defensive terrain your units stand on is not as important as the terrain around it In general make sure your drakes don't stand next to forests, hills, mountains.
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Caphriel
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Caphriel »

Lone_Isle wrote:3. Poison is generally more useful on your bad TOD, when your units are doing less damage. This does not apply in UD vs Drake. During day you want to be retreating, not hitting drakes for pitiful damage with a ghoul only to have it killed next turn.
This would be true if Drakes weren't more maneuverable than Undead to the extent that the Undead player is almost always forced to fight at day. As such, ghouls are useful as blockers. Not in large numbers, but if you're going to have to expose something to enemy attacks during the day (and you will), ghouls are arguably your best choice.
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Lone_Isle »

You would need too many ghouls to cover up all your other units. If you have a ghoul on your village, I as drake will simply ignore it and go for your softer targets. If you over-recruit on ghouls you will end up in a very bad place when drakes snipe your DAs and then are able to pick off your ghouls at leisure.
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Velensk
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Re: How to play - Drakes vs The undead - By Huumy

Post by Velensk »

Sometimes you don't need to cover all your units who can simply move out of range, but you do want to speed bump villages. Ghouls are good for this as they resist fire enough that you'd need a lot of burners to reliably take them down and poison enemy melee. Ghouls are also one of the few units who can do reasonable damage to burners at day without getting slaughtered, useful for p2. Now admittedly, if I see that they still have augers left over from inital recruit I won't be jumping up and down to get ghouls, but if they are lacking an auger, good use of ghouls can make defending against drakes much easier.
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