Last updated 8/23/96
Honestly, the only good Orc spells are Bloodlust, Runes, Haste, Death Coil and Death & Decay. In the 6 months of playing, I've never seen anyone use Unholy Armor and Raise the Dead in a real game. What I mean by a real game is a game where everyone is experienced. I've only seen Raise the Dead and Unholy in games where it's good players beating up on newbies. They are using these spells just because no one ever does, not because they are good spells. I've seen Whirlwind used in about 3 games and it did almost 0 damage. Those three spells are almost useless no matter what people tell you. It's not because people don't know how to use them either, it's because there is a better alternative to each of those spells. Blizzard just needed some spells to fill up the Death Knights 6 Spells. They just happened to give the DKs a bunch of crappy ones.
In most games, the entire Magical selections come down to just Bloodlust. I played months without ever making a Dk and won plenty of games during that time. Many of the good orc players use just Bloodlust and win. So like the critics of Orcs say, the Orcs are often played using only Bloodlust. But if it works, who can complain? Many Orc players such as myself only make Dks when they are forced to. My problem is I'm just too lazy to get the Dks and I really don't like their spells.
Haste.
Cost: 500. Manna: 50. Time to Upgrade: 100.
Haste isn't the most useful spell. If it did double attacks, then it would be much better than slow. Haste speeds up attacks on ONLY Dragons and speeds up the walking speed of only some units. It speeds up casting of Death and Decay for DKs and makes them travel very fast. It also is good for speeding up peons chopping or repairing. The main uses for Haste is for casting it on Death Knights, Dragons and Peons.
Thanks to Jay Wagner, we both discovered a lot about Haste. Through some tests, we discovered some surprising things. Here are the results.
Speed. Haste increases the speed of most units. There are some units that Haste doesn't speed up at all.
Attacks. Haste DOES NOT increase attack speed or the number of attacks! What!, you are saying? That was what I thought before these tests. Haste makes it appear through the animation, that your units are attacking faster. But actually they are not. It just looks like they are getting in more hits. What is really happening, is the motion speeds up but the attack occurs at the same time as an unhasted guy. Through Jay Wagner and my tests, we discovered that for Ogres, Axeman, and Grunts, their attacks are NOT faster. In fact in my tests, the hasted guy sometimes got in LESS hits. That is a big surprise to me. Of course the less hits wasn't a result of Haste but it was a surprise to see that It's possible to get less hits even with it on.
Dragons & Gryphons are the only exception to this. For some reason, Dragons do about double the hits with Haste on them. Haste also speeds up Dragons even though they are speed 14. It is my guess it speeds up Dragons to 20+. So Hasted dragons DO attack faster and fly faster. I'm not sure why this is so. It seems kind of illogical to me. If It works on Dragons, it should also work on Ogres, Grunts, and everything else. But it does not.
There are a few units which Haste has no effect on such as Ogres, Flying Machines, Oil Tankers, Transports, and Destroyers. It doesn't make them travel faster or attack faster.
Land
Peon/Peasant = 13 (Same as Ogre)
Grunt/Footman = 13 (Same as Ogre)
Axethrower/Archer = 13 (Same as Ogre)
Ogres/Knights = NO EFFECT
Catapult/Ballista = 9 (Slower than a Grunt, Faster than a Mage/DK)
Sappers/Demos = Speed 17! (Same as Flying Machines)
Death Knights = Speed 17! (Same is Flying Machines) That is very surprising.
Mage = Speed 13. So Hasted Dks are faster than Hasted Mages.
Air
Zeppelins/Flying Machines = NO EFFECT
Dragons/Gryphons = Faster than speed 17. It looks about 21+ speed. It can't really be measured
easily. FAST!
Sea
Tankers = NO EFFECT
Transports = NO EFFECT
Destroyers = NO EFFECT
Juggs/Battleships = Speed 10 (Same as tanker, trans, destroyers)
Subs = Speed 10 (Same as tanker, trans, destroyers)
Main Uses for Haste.
Dragons/Gryphons. The big use for Haste seems to be on Dragons. It not only does it make them travel unbelievably fast but it makes them fire twice as many times. You cast Bloodlust on a hasted Dragon and you get 2-3 more damage on top of that. That is some serious Damage! Hasted/Bloodlusted Dragons can take stuff out quick but they Die quick to Blizzards and Polymorph.
Death Knights. This seems to be another main use of Haste. When you cast Haste on Death Knights they move as fast as flying machines AND they are able to cast Death and Decay VERY fast. So casting it on DKs is definitely worth it.
Peons/Peasants Hasted peons can do some great stuff. They move as fast as an Ogre and are able to repair, chop, and mine very fast. They do not however build buildings any faster with haste on them.
Hasting peons mining is pretty much useless. It lasts about 2-3 trips. I really don't see how useful that is. You should already have lots of gold by the time you hit Fortress. I do encourage you to test it out though.
It might be useful to cast Haste on peons chopping lumber. A hasted peon can chop about 200 wood to every 100 that a un-hasted peon chops. So it's a 2:1 ratio. Cast it on 4 peons and you get lumber fast. Cast it on 8 and you get even more.
Haste peons repairing. It speeds up repairing so much! You would not believe how much.
I ran some tests. I built 2 town halls. I had 1 peon repairing each as they were being built. I hasted 1 of the peons repairing and I did not haste the other one. The town hall, with the Hasted peon repairing it, was completed way before the one that was not hasted did. The Town hall with the unhasted peon still had 300 hit points left to complete. So that is 1 hasted peon repairing vs 1 not hasted. 300 hit points ahead. That proves how much faster a hasted peon repairs.
If you want to see some serious stuff, get 4+ hasted peons repairing a building like a town hall as it is being built. You will see it built SO fast!!!!!!!! Oh man!
Hasted peons repairing can get you out of serious trouble like your Fortress, Stronghold or whatever is about to be destroyed. Get a bunch of hasted guys repairing it. You might not get in this situation but if you do, you know what to do. Hasted peons can repair a building that would normally be destroyed quickly.
Haste on various units.
Grunts/Footman I don't see any reason to haste these guys. If you have DKs, you probably don't have any Grunts left. Besides even if they do travel as fast as an Ogre, they still can't fight as good as one.
Axethrowers/Archers No reason to haste these guys unless you wanna run away quick which does happen a lot. :) Might be funny once but definitely not worth it.
Catapults/Ballistas This great for the humor value. It's funny seeing those cats move fast. But besides that, it's pretty much useless. Haste only speeds them up to about speed 9.
Subs I can't even imagine why you would haste a sub. I guess to run away because your sub sucks so much :)
Juggs/Battleships This is great for chasing transports and for fighting. Although I've never hasted a Jugg in a real game, someday I will and it's going to be really funny :)
Special thanks to Jay Wagner for many of these results.
Bloodlust.
Cost: 1000 Gold. Manna: 50. Time to Upgrade: 100.
The first thing you should know about bloodlust is that it doesn't do anything other than increase attack damage of a unit. This should be the very first spell you get. The next one should be either Runes or Death & Decay.
READ THIS! Robert Di Giovanni and I ran some tests on just how powerful bloodlust is. Here is the number of times the attack damage is increased for each unit tested:
Peons: 2
Grunts: 2
Ogres: 3!
Berzerkers: 2
Death Knights: 2
Skeletons: about 1.5
Dragons: 3!
So what I'm saying is a Bloodlusted Ogres does 3 times the damage as an unbloodlusted Ogre! That means Bloodlusted Ogres do 3 times the damage as a Paladin. Berzerkers are 2 times as powerful, same with DKs, Grunts, and Peons. This is so amazing. I didn't know bloodlust is that powerful. We ran 3 independent tests multiple times with the same results. The only question is if Dragons are 2 or 3 times more powerful.
Main Uses for Bloodlust:
Don't bloodlust/heal during battle
One of the first things you should learn about using bloodlust is DO NOT cast it during battle when
you are being attacked. While you stop to cast it, the enemy will get 1-3 hits in and your guy will be
dead. What you do is cast it before you attack or before you are attacked.
When people bloodlust during battle it is really great to watch. I will come in with say 4 bloodlusted Ogres vs about 6 unbloodlusted. The newbie will stop to bloodlust while all 4 of my guys are beating on him. Then all his guys will be dead and sometimes my guys are not hurt at all. The same applies to Healing for Paladins. Healing during battle is just as bad if not worse.
What you do in this situation is try to take just one or two Ogres out and bloodlust everyone and tell the rest to fight. Another choice is to run with everyone but that probably will not work very well.
This usually only applies to kali games. In games with fast connections and perfect response it's easy to bloodlust during battle but those games are rare. In network games it's easy to heal and bloodlust during battle with little damage.
There are really only 2 times when I bloodlust during battle. That is when the game speed and response is really good, OR I am totally out numbered and bloodlusting is my only chance to do any damage. Sometimes I'll have like 2 Ogres and a bunch of Knights or whatever runs in. I bloodlust even though I'm being hit because that is the only way I'll do any damage at all. Sometimes those 2 Ogres do some big time damage.
Casting Bloodlust
What you do is select one Ogre and use the B key to bloodlust as many as you can. Then use another to bloodlust the rest and the original bloodlusting Ogre. By using only one or two Ogres to bloodlust everyone, you will have more Ogres with full magic ready to use runes.
Another thing, use the B key to bloodlust. Using the mouse to bloodlust by selecting the bloodlust button is really wrong. Use the B key.
Something to avoid is casting Bloodlust on the enemy. A few times I miss clicked and bloodlusted THEIR guys. It was pretty funny but it also hurt me. So be careful.
Invading by Sea with Bloodlusted Ogres.
Sometimes you get into a situation where you need to invade someone and you can't really
bloodlust on their shore. So what you do is find the place closest to their island. Get your Ogres
together, cast bloodlust on them and get in the transport. Quickly move the transport over to the
enemy and unload. In games with little delay and good response this is very effective. In other
games your guys bloodlust wears off before you even put them in the transport. :) Using this in a
few games I was able to unload some Bloodlusted Ogres and attack. This helped me quite a bit.
Sometimes when you unload all of your Ogres are bloodlusted and other times only a few are. Just
depends on how you controlled them, how far you had to go and game speed.
Something you have to watch out for is when cast Bloodlust, the sound will give yourself away. The enemy will run right in when they hear the sound, blizzard you, bloodlust themselves or something else. Try to bloodlust a ways out if possible if this worries you. This will shorten the length the bloodlust is on because you have further to walk but sometimes this is necessary to avoid being attacked. This depends on the game. If the player doesn't have much then it doesn't matter if they hear you. however, if you are playing someone good, this is something to worry about.
A great way to stop people from bloodlusting is using one cast of Blizzard or D&D. This makes all the Ogres charge the DK with only some of them having bloodlust. This can help you win battles. If you are the one controlling the DKs, cast one D&D, hit stop, and run for it. If you are the one being attacked, try if possible to run to the sides of the blizzard instead of toward the DK or back into it. When the DKs casts D&D, the Ogres or units will run straight toward the DK. If you tell them to go back, they will run back into the D&D. If you tell them to run forward, you might be being set up for a double Blizzard. So, I guess the sides is probably the best place to run.
Cast bloodlust on your Axeman! Bloodlusted Berzerkers are have about 5 more damage points than a level 7 Rangers. Level 5 (no regeneration or sight) Berzerkers are seriously powerful with bloodlust on them.
Bloodlust Death Knights.
Death Knights can do some damage with their touch of death when Bloodlusted. Dks fire at a fast
rate. When bloodlusted, they are really good against Gryphons and buildings.
Runes.
Cost: 1000 Gold. Manna: 200. Time to Upgrade: 150 Time Units.
Runes is really a defensive spell. It is really good for preventing attacks. But that is if you see the attacks coming. I've used it plenty of times to prevent someone from attacking me. Another main use I see is for casting it around enemies that are standing still. One thing I've found is Runes doesn't do a lot against players that know what they are doing. They usually just go around the runes or find some other way to attack. There are various other tricks but those are the best, most common and useful.
Using Runes: Runes lays 5 land mines. Each land mine does exactly 50 hit points of damage. I ran some tests. On the slowest game speed setting, Runes lasts 2 minutes. Then the Runes disappear for good. Also, the runes blink about every 15 seconds so that you can see them.
Cast Runes around an enemy and attack them with 1 Axethrower. The enemy will all charge killing themselves on the Runes. This doesn't happen much but it's funny when it does.
Cast Runes around a group of enemies. Then hit them with Death and Decay. If they move they will
hit the Runes, if they stay, they will die from the Death and Decay. Either way they are DEAD!
( Thanks to Steve Ganem for this strategy )
Runes is a great defense against Demolition Squads and just about everything. If you see a Demolition Squad coming then get ready to cast Runes in front of them. Its good for other stuff that charges you. I haven't really used Runes much before. Then I saw how cool it was against Demolition Squads and Mages. Get it, use it!
Cast Runes between your enemy's mine and their town hall. That is a lot easier way to kill peasants than standing by the mine and hitting them.
Use runes to destroy a retreating army. Cast runes in front of the retreating army and they will run
right into them! Instant Death.
( Thanks to Robert Di Giovanni for this )
When you cast runes, make sure you don't run over them yourself. I love seeing these idiots that cast runes then walk right into them. I don't have to do a thing. They do all the work for me. haha. Of course I'm often that idiot :)
One good use for Runes I've found is for chasing Mages. I'll cast runes in front of them and they will walk right into them and die.
Here is a really cool thing to do. Send one Ogre-Mage over to the enemy's town, where they are
mining. The Ogre must have at least 200 Magic points. Cast Runes between the enemy's town hall
and their gold mine. You will kill at least 3 peons, 5 if you are really lucky. Then have your Ogre
run back home. If he does not make it, oh well. It was still worth it. This can really slow down your
enemy's gold supply if you keep repeating this.
( Thanks to StormShadow for showing this to me vs Warpmaster )
Go attack someone's peasants mining gold with Ogres. Then cast runes around you. Then any
peasants that try to escape will be killed. Anyone coming to save the peasants by killing the Ogres
will die on the runes also.
( Thanks to StormShadow for showing this one to me also )
When you go in with your Death Knight to cast Death and Decay, Cast some runes right in front of your Death Knight. Almost Every time I cast Death and Decay, everyone charges the Death Knight once he uses his Death and Decay. So this time when they charge they will have to go through the runes! I don't think many people will see the Runes so I think that should work fine.
When you cast runes on a space that is occupied by someone or something, the runes which were
supposed to appear in that space will not appear. What happens is the rune does not appear in the
occupied space. The runes that would make up the 5 runes, appear around the object. So you can
cast runes on a guy, but they will appear around the unit. You will get less runes for your magic.
( Thanks to limabean for this info. )
More info about runes based on tests:
Regarding Limabean comments about casting runes on guys: If you cast on a unit, the center rune does not appear as Limabean suggests; however, you do not loose the magic for that particular rune. I believe that the total cost is 40 magic points per rune. If you only can cast 4 runes, you only loose 160 magic points.
You can use this to recharge runes that have exploded provided that you cast the runes on *exactly* the same position. It will only cost you 40 magic per rune you replace. I am not sure if it resets the timeout timer on how long the runes last. I will experiment with this to see what happens. If the expire time of the runes is changed by replacing the runes, then this would be a very powerful defense mechanism ... what if you cast runes on previously cast runes before they expire? Do they last longer at 0 cost to the Ogre-Mage? That would be really nasty.
I have got to find out the answer to this question. I love runes.
It appears that each rune is on its own expiration "timer". If you cast onto group of runes that have some missing, you will replace the missing ones; however, the original ones will disappear in the same time they would have. The new ones will last as long as they normally would. The only time I think that I actually extended the time of the complete group of runes with the re-cast was when, by total fluke, I re-cast at exactly the same time the other runes flashed. Apparently, you can extend the duration of the rune, but your timing has to be *exact*. Not very practical for use in an actual game.
What I have found very useful against some opponents is the following: Use several Ogre-Mages to cast a large rune-field by using multiple Ogres to cast runes very close to each other. The first couple of ogres will use up all of their magic. Successive Ogres will only lay runes where needed. The later Ogres will have enough manna to bloodlust. I have used this in a game when I was being attacked by two transports full of Paladins and Mages. I spotted them early and laid out a huge rune-field in their path. I bloodlusted the Ogres to mop up all that actually made it through. When the first Paladin hit the runes, my opponent decided that he would walk around my runes expecting to find only a single set of runes. To his surprise, there were runes *everywhere* he moved his troops. It was really fun watching his guys move around and blowing up at every turn. One or two Paladins did make it through and were quickly beat to a pulp by the bloodlusted ogres.
-----
Robert Di Giovanni
A few months ago, someone sent me some anonymous email telling me that Runes work on Water. I spent about 1-2 hours testing. I did not have much success. It seems you get lucky and sometimes hit the ships. Most of the time, I spent along time trying to make the ship hit the runes. If you are doing that, you know that casting runes on water is no good. Sure it's possible but not likely to happen. It's all a matter of luck. If you have some ogres by the shore with runes, try it. I doubt you will have much success but who knows. Maybe you will get lucky.
Here is yet another strategy based on the way guys pop out of a building after they are trained. Cast Runes right where the opponent unit will come out.
R R
E B B B
R B B B
B B B
Death Coil.
Cost: Free. Manna: 100.
Death Coil is an area attack spell exactly like Death and Decay. So when you cast it, you will lose the magic points even if no one gets hit by the Death Coil. This explains why death Coil misses. What happens is you cast it on an area, and the enemy runs out of the area before it is casted. If you want to test this, just cast a Death Coil in the middle of water or something. You will see you lose all the magic points but nothing happens. If there were some Gryphons over the water, you would have Death Coiled them. But since no organic enemy was in that area, the spell was casted, the magic lost and nothing happened. This is exactly like Death and Decay. The enemy does not even have to be there for you to cast it. You can cast it anywhere. Death Coil is the same way.
Death Coil does two things. It totally misses as in you cast it nothing happens but the magic is taken
away. It also appears to miss but really doesn't. Take a look at this picture. As you can see Death
Coil appears to miss but it doesn't. I think what we have figured out is that if you get the box from
clicking on the enemy, the Coil hits. If you don't, it fires and misses. So I guess my advice is make
sure you click on the enemy instead of free land because if you do, the coil will miss and you will be
out some magic.
Thanks to Enrique for that picture.
When multiple enemies are hit by Death Coil, the damage is distributed between them all. So the more enemies, the less damage it does.
I discovered that you have no control over who a death coil hits when there is a group of enemies. To see what I mean, play a test game with a friend. Have the friend make a block of 9 peons. Then with your death knight, try to cast a death coil on a specific peon. Impossible. I've tried it. So what this means is be careful with Death Coils. They don't always attack the people you want it to.
Combine Death Coil and one or more Axeman for destroying Dragons and Gryphons. The Death Coil takes most of the Dragons health and the Axemen will finish the job.
Cast a Death coil on a Sheep, Pig, or Seal. It gets you an easy 5 more hit points. haha. I guess its not really worth it, but it is funny.
The crappy spells (Whirlwind, Unholy Armor, Raise the Dead.)
These spells are almost worthless. They come into play in games where people either don't or are not able to attack by land. They come into play in games where the players don't have a clue what they are doing. They all pretty much suck.
Whirlwind
Cost: 1500 Gold. Manna: 100. Time to Upgrade: 150.
Whirlwinds suck. They are uncontrollable. The best you can do with them is cast them and hope you get lucky and they hit something. I ran some tests. I launched 18 Whirlwinds at once in a town full of guys. You know how much damage they did? None. They got a few buildings on fire but they didn't kill a single building! It took 9 DK's do to that. You know what you could have done with 9 DKs casting Death and Decay? You could have leveled the whole town.
What really sucks about Whirlwinds is they don't care who they kill. If your are not careful, the whirlwinds come right back at you and kill your guys.
Another thing that sucks is the tip must be exactly on a building to do any damage.
Whirlwind has only one good thing about it. It lasts forever.
The main thing you should know is anything you wanna do with Whirlwinds you can do better with Death & Decay. So the point is don't get it, use D&D instead.
The only real use for Whirlwinds is to launch one between the enemy's town hall and their mine. It lasts a long time and it is hard to impossible to move anyone under the whirlwind. Still I would use D&D instead.
Raise the Dead
Cost: 1500 Gold. Manna: 50. Time to Upgrade: 100.
This spell is almost as crappy as in Warcraft 1. Skeletons are still too weak. 2 Ogres not even bloodlusted can Kill 4 Skeletons with almost no damage. If you have Skeletons, they have Bloodlust unless they are an idiot. If they don't have Bloodlust when you are using Raise the Dead on them, then you certainly don't need Raise the Dead. You can just beat on them with Bloodlust Ogres.
People say Skeletons can be good when Bloodlusted. Bloodlusted they only do 1.5 times more damage. 1.5 X nothing = nothing. Here is the deal, If you got Mana for Raise the Dead, you should use it instead for Death and Decay. Raise the Dead is too defensive. You shouldn't be wasting Death Knights on raising some crappy weak skeletons. You should be casting D&D on the enemy.
The only benefit of Raise the Dead is free troops. But look at the quality of those troops. Pretty much souped up peons.
Raise the Dead is really just an I've got nothing better to do spell.
Just for your information, Skeletons require no farms.
Another thing you may notice is that you sometimes cast it on a recently dead something and nothing happens. That is because before your DK can raise a skeleton, the dead whatever must rott or decay down to bones before it can be turned into a skeleton. So If it doesn't work, wait a second, and try again.
Another thing, Raise the Dead seems to not always raise the dead guys you expected it to. Now this doesn't hurt anything but it is kinda of strange.
Skeletons also die after a long amount of time. They just blow up. So that's another great
(sarcastic) thing about Raise the Dead.
Thanks to Robert Di Giovanni for this info
Here is the only good use for Raise the Dead. This was done in a game played by Gotcha. He played a game and when all the mines where gone, he killed all his peons and made skeletons out of them. Then he had a massive army of skeletons. That is one cool strategy, because skeletons are much tougher than peasants and he did not have to spend any money.
Other than that, Skeletons just suck.
If you are playing a game where Skeletons make the difference between you winning or losing, then that is a pretty sad game.
Unholy Armor
Yet another kick in the face for the Orcs.
Unholy Armor's main weakness is the time it lasts. It lasts about 2 seconds. You cast it, you tell your guys to move, and it wears off before they move. Now I'm exaggerating quite a bit but that's pretty much it. It doesn't last long enough to be useful.
It cuts your hit points in half. You go in with some Bloodlusted, Unholy Armored Ogres, and the stuff wears off and you are left with a bunch of 45 hit point Ogres who die pretty quick. Same with Dragons and the other things you cast it on.
All the enemy has to do is run away. The enemy runs, and it wears off and you are stuck with a bunch of guys with 1/2 hit points. The enemy is just laughing because that spell hurt you more than it did him. The point is run away if you see that spell on anything. Don't be an idiot and fight them.
Another main flaw is people with Unholy Armor can be Polymorphed. All they have to do is polymorph you and that's quite easy if they are a good human player.
Here is really the main use of Unholy Armor:
Cast Unholy Armor on a Death Knight before you send him in to use Death and Decay.
You can also cast it on Sappers to blow them up.
Really it's good for killing flying Machines. Just cast it on Flying Machines and Zepplins and it cuts
their hit points in half. Then when it wears off, they will be easier to kill.
(Thanks to DeathDealer for this.)
None of this justifys it's cost. 2000 gold. You could spend that on a lot better things. Don't waste your time. It's almost useless. Now I'm not saying you can't do some damage with Unholy Armor, I'm saying it can end up damaging you more than them which is what usually happens.
Fighting Human Magic.
Fighting the Human's magic on land is often pretty easy because usually all you need is to charge with Bloodlusted Ogres or use a Dk. I've only had problems with Mages on land one or two times. The only time I've had trouble with Mages is against players with really good recon and places to defend. For example, Nowhere out of this Maze. With a flyer, you can spot an army coming and start a Blizzard. I played one game against Ricardo where he kept doing this. I had an impossible time trying to invade him. Every time I would try to charge in with the Bloodlusted Ogres, the bloodlusting would give me away at which Ricardo would start a blizzard in my path. Because of the delay, my guys would run right into it and all die. He killed about 20 Ogres in one shot at one time in the game with Blizzard. When my guys would make it through, the Mages would slow me, the Knights would attack. If I attacked the Mages, he would just keep healing them with Palladins while he had Palladins hacking on my back. Then after it was over, the healing began and everyone was restored. Often this left me with lots of dead guys and no damage to him. My solution to this was to run in and kill the knights. Of course this left the Mages free to Blizzard the whole lot if I won. So this was really a no win solution. I tried sneaking up on the sides but his recon was too good. So I called on human help. Gotcha ran in with invisibility and other stuff and Polyed the Mages making it safe to invade. So the point of this is sometimes the Humans are just too good for the Orcs. That is when they are controlled by a good player. But since these games are rare, I won't go much into what to do in this situation. If you find yourself in this situation on land:
But usually Human Magic isn't a problem on land because often the game is already won or lost before the Castle/Fortress Stage. occasionally you get screwed by an invisible Mage on the peons but it's not like that has to ruin you. I've had that done to me 3 times in one game and still won.
Sea is a different story. Humans rule the Sea because of their Mages. The only real advantage Orcs have on sea is they can invade easier with Bloodlusted Ogres. Often using either Humans or Orcs doesn't make a difference on Sea because the game is usually won before the Fortress/Castle Stage. But sometimes the game get's far into the Fortress/Castle stage and that's when the Orcs start to get in trouble. My best example of this is my 1 bloody Knight story on my story page. I've had a few other games where I've had problems because I was Orc against Mages. One game Gotcha kept doing hit and run attacks with healing Gryphons and Mages and there was nothing I could do. Nothing. I had lost simply because I chose Orc. First hear about the problem.
I learned a whole lot from Ricardo. I learned that if the human player has Mages and knows how to control them, us Orc players are in some serious trouble. So we have to kill the humans off before they get to mages. Or if they get to mages, invade and take those mages out.
Here is the perfect Mage defense. I learned this all from Ricardo. Get about Ten or so Mages. All with Blizzard, Slow, Polymorph and Invisibility. Ricardo has great Recon. Whenever he sees an army coming, he gets a Blizzard going right in front of it. So the army has not choice but to Turn back or find some other way. If you do get past the blizzard, here is what he does. Usually everyone attacks the mages first. So he gets all his knights attacking your guys. Your guys head straight for the Mages. He casts slow on your Guys. The whole time, Knights are beating on your back. If you do get a few hits in on a mage, he heals the mage. If you are lucky, you maybe kill like 1 or 2 mages. If a lot of Ogres get through, he polymorphs them. He then Heals everything. He did this to me for 2 games. I would lose huge armies and he would lose nothing. So he would end up losing maybe 2400 gold, the price of 2 mages. I would lose 5000+ worth of guys. I finally figured out how to combat this.
Well that is how I fight Mages. If I can't directly kill them with Ogres. I kill whoever or whatever is protecting them, then kill them with Ogres. Really Ogres are the only Mage killers unless you can get Death Coil or sappers to work. Peons work well too sometimes as does Death and Decay.
Exorcism on your DKs. Try if possible to get rid of that Church before they get Exorcism. But if they do get it and use it correctly, I might avoid making DKs. It used to be rare to see anyone using Exorcism on your DKs but now that human players are getting a clue, it is getting harder to use Dks on humans.
Fighting Invisible Transports. This can be hard. But often people with Invisible Transports bring them right back to their island when they are done kicking your ass. So what you do is watch their shores. Whenever you see a transport, sink it. If you can't track down the Transport, sometimes you can use D&D to kill it. Attack ground with Cat's and Ships also can work.
Main Orc Spell tricks.
Bloodlusting Ogres. You bloodlust the fat boys and beat people up :)
All other tricks are optional since the above one is the only one really necessary :)
Double Death and Decay. Same as mentioned on the general spell page.
Hasting DKs and casting D & D. Haste allows DKs to not only move as fast a flying machines, but also cast D&D at a fast rate. So hasting DKs, sending them in and casting D&D and running is a good strat.
Hasted, Bloodlusted, hit and run with Dragons. A good way to keep the enemy down is to Blood and Haste Dragons. Then quickly attack the enemy. When the Haste or Blood wears off, Run. This can work good against the enemy but good players often find it easy to defeat this. Polymorph and Blizzards make quick work of this strategy :)
Rune Bait. You take an Ogre, have him hit a group of enemy Ogres and run. When the enemy charges, cast runes in their path. Thanks to Megatron for this one.
