Back To School: Necromancy

Overview

In this series, we’ll take a close look at one of the nine schools of magic and the minions that can be summoned from it. The goal here is to give readers a feel for how the school plays and how they might combine these minions with their favorite mages. In designing these units, it was important to me that the mechanics and flavor were aligned, and I hope that comes through.

First up is Necromancy! Currently, Cu’Laghn and Vortinbraz have access to this school, which means it can be paired with Illusion and Druidicae.

Necromancy is inherently a bit creepy since it involves raising the dead, but is it that evil, really, when compared to some other forms of magic? For example, Enchantment is pretty darn evil. Dominating the minds of intelligent beings and subverting their right to self-determination is pretty messed up when you think about it. Illusion is inherently about creating deception. In the wrong hands, Elementalism is a perversion of nature that can cause mass destruction. Whether or not magic is good or evil kind of depends on how and why it’s being used. So, keep an open mind about these Necromancers. Maybe these zombies are out here for the greater good. Or not. I mean – a healthy distrust of zombie hordes is probably wise.

Anyhow, Necromancy is a clear thematic idea: the undead. Their mechanics hopefully reflect this.  The school is characterized by units with lots of characters to give that horde feeling. This school has ways of occupying a lot of board because everything in it is either very durable or has some sort of recursion mechanic that allows characters in a unit to rise again. This school’s damage output is about average, but it leans toward an offense based on volume rather than quality of actions. Let’s dive in.

Mindless Skeletons – 1 Mana

The shambling skeleton horde is a classic fantasy trope. Dangerous only because of their raw numbers, they slowly advance up field with a slow, menacing invulnerability.

As you can see, we’ve got three characters in this unit, which is the most you’ll find in the game at this point. This means you get a lot of board presence for cheap. Their stats are, predictably, horrible. A good thwack will pretty much always make them crumble like the dusty bone piles that they are. This might be alarming given their high bounty of three. Never fear.

Lowly and Numerous Constructs

The Lowly trait is the key to this unit. Without it, they’d simply be giving the opponent too many bounty points to justify even their meagre summoning cost. Fortunately, the opponent doesn’t score any VPs for banishing a skeleton unless they’ve banished all of them.

This is somewhat hard to do because of Re-Raise, which is an action any skeleton can take to bring back another one. So, if an opponent leaves one skeleton alive, the next time the skeletons activate, the lone surviving skeleton can bring another one back. Then the one that was just brought back can use an action to bring back the third one. This does harm the skeletons' action economy, but their actions are pretty bad anyhow. The best way to really get these skeletons gone (and score any points from it) is to do so in a single activation. Which some characters can do.

Fortunately, a lot of them do this with WP-based attacks. These skeletons are mindless constructs, so they don’t get hurt when someone attacks their willpower. They don’t catch diseases or have psychic traumas. They’re skeletons.

Skeleton Army

Is Bony Clutches a good attack? It is not. Is it one you can make three times in an activation? Yes. If you can just get one success, you can do damage here, which does matter. If one of the skeletons gets a little lucky (or has a little help from buffs/debuffs), they can also debuff the target’s defense which will make subsequent skeleton attacks hit harder.

Plague Zombies – 2 Mana

Most great zombie movies seem to have to choose between the slow shambling ones and the fast, bitey ones. These are not the slow, shambling zombies. These guys will chase you down and infect you.

Once again, we have a three-character unit. If zombies are anything, they are numerous. These guys are kind of tough as well – they have a health pool of two, so it will often take two actions to remove one.

However, they are not Lowly like the skeletons, and they have bad defensive stats, so opponents may find it worthwhile to engage them.

 The zombies do have a recursion mechanic of their own – when an enemy goes down adjacent to them, you can turn that enemy into a zombie with One of Us! This doesn’t cost an action or require any dice; it just passively happens.

Before using any of their actions, they have a base speed of 2, like most basic characters. The zombies have some powerful tricks up their sleeve, though.

BRAINS…. BRAINSSSSS

The Pack Smells Brains gives these Zombies a way to speed each other up. One of them must take action to smell the Brains, but this will let another zombie in the unit move at an above average speed of 3. If you really need to get a single zombie somewhere, you can stack two speed buffs on it to get to an impressive speed 4.

Once the zombies get in place, they have considerable offensive output. Jump Scare is a good way to set up Infect, especially when dealing with targets that have a high willpower and a lower defense. Getting to that third result for the damage point is tough without the aid of buffs and debuffs as this action only rolls 5 dice.

Infect is strong. Notice that star icon next to it? That means this is a free action which does not count agains the two actions per turn limit! That means you could move, smell brains or jump scare and still infect all in the same activation. Since Infect does not have a hit meter, the zombie in question only needs to exceed the target’s willpower by one to get both DoTs. Remember, there are three zombies in the unit, so if all of them hit the same target (and it doesn’t have access to healing), it’s taking six damage at the end of its activation. That’s enough to put down most characters in the game. The downside, of course, is that it’s not an immediate payoff. Unless you have Cu’Laghn, that is.

Death Knight – 3 Mana

Undead fantasy tropes aren’t all about mindless hordes of the risen. There’s usually also some intelligent undead champion on a mission. This archetype is represented in Mage Duel by the Death Knight. This terrifying, armored monster is a fallen hero from another time pursuing an agenda beyond death.

The Death Knight is a bit of a departure from the Necromancy characters we’ve seen so far. There’s only one character in this unit, and it has very good defensive stats. Though the Death Knight has a small health pool for a 3-cost minion, Willpower 3 and Defense 4 is no joke. Bounty 4 is also a lot, but it will take considerable investment to banish this guy.

Like the skeletons, he’s also a construct, so attacking his weaker stat (willpower) can’t damage him. The Terrifying Incantation makes the Death Knight even harder to take out because it can debuff the offense of 3(!) enemy characters at the same time. This makes it difficult to pressure this unit’s low health pool with a series of small attacks.

Relentless Doom

The Death Knight is an offensive powerhouse. The Brutally Efficient Sword Technique only rolls 6 dice, but the hit meter is just a lot of damage results. This makes the Death Knight a powerful target for offensive buffs. Although the Death Knight lacks a recursion mechanic per se, Life Drain is a strong attack which can easily take out a one health target and replenish the Death Knight at the same time.

Necromancy Mage Pairings

Cu’Laghn is an obvious pairing with the Plague Zombies, but he may also appreciate the Skeletons in matchups where he’ll need to cast a lot of spells during his own activation (against Artifice, for example). The Death Knight might be a good option for Cu’Laghn if you just need a lot of direct damage, which Cu’Laghn himself does not bring.

Vortinbraz has some interesting combinations available because of his access to Illusion minions. The Necromancy minions really appreciate buffs and debuffs to polish up their otherwise lackluster stats. Illusion minions offer this in spades. Aside from the zombies, this is a pretty slow school, and Vortinbraz’s Danse Macabre spell can help position them for success.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for taking some time to explore the world of Mage Duel. Remember, this is just the beginning. We’ll continue to explore the characters in this game here on the Objective Hex, but there’s no need for you to wait for us. I encourage you to explore the game on your own given that all if tis resources and assets are available for free. Let us know what you think!

Please consider playing Mage Duel: War for the Wellsprings.

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