Hello, so I'm super new to FW but I made a Zombie deck and I love it! Looking for more FW to play...I made a vampyre BG, and it's pretty terrible. Granted I only have 1 lamia and 1 bloodbinder. Still looking for 1 bloodbinder and 2 demonologists...but eh, I might just give up. It's terrible. Eyeing up skeletons or maybe spirits for my next FW BG. Any input on skellies and spirits? Compare/contrast? Thanks!
Spirits are a lot more fun to play and a lot harder to win with. Skeletons are a bit more straight forward but will be easier to win with.
Isn't Lamia pretty terribad atm? She does almost nothing for an almost 100 nora champion. Also I know your feel about making a spirit BG, Lich Magistrate is like a far away dream and he could fit so well even on my FS/FW BG. As for Skells, they are fun to play with but they are kinda weak against strong early game BGs, sometimes you will find yourself being rushed early and not being able to do anything about it. However, if you are able to build your army, you will have an easy time against your opponent. That's my experience with them.
I have been toying with Vampyres for a while, and I think I have witnesses most of their strenghts and weakneses. To begin with, Vampyres are a bit more runable now than a couple of patches before. Still, playing Vampyres is not something anyone can master from Dusk 'till Dawn. Vampyres is all about positioning and timing. I have played DE's and they have plenty of mobility, and even accept some mistakes before your oponent can take advantage of them. Vampyres not so much. For example, if you place the Bloodcrest in the wrong spot, your oponent will rush and kill it on sight. After that, Vampyres will be piece of cake. Another thing is that Vamp healing isn't something one can rely on. Blood Magic's strongest feature is to damage oponents without triggering any defense. It also makes for a good detection, so you won't need anything with it. And more importantly, Bleed is way cheaper than all the other Vampyre upgrades. The strongest aid Vamps have is UD's Brutality and Masochism now that Seeker of Blood got demon racial. This way you can have one of the many demons in a split Vampyre BG suck up lots of damage and not dying using the Masochism+Bloodcrest combo. I also noticed both factions have Bodyguard units, so I can exploit them by granting one Vamp at least 40 extra hitpoints. After all, some of the best Vamps, Demonvein and Vampyre grow stronger the more they remain in play. Another thing which may disappoint you is that the Vamp LEGs are not really that good. Both are very vulnerable to swarm, have very situational support abbilities, and they don't really do a lot of damage. I don't recommend them. Hope this doesn't make you think Vamps suck. Please understand up until now they were an unexistant theme which got forced into the game just by making some fancy runes, and forcedfully turning unrelated runes into Vamps. SOE's trademark job. So, it's just a matter of getting used to play them, and wait for an expansion and two to bring results. I'm already asking the Greens for more, cheap vamps and synergy runes.
Thank you for your post! I agree with pretty much everything. I've been playing FF, too stubborn to make a split though I'm sure that would be much better. Lamia is totally useless, but I do like bloodbinder's AoE paralyze..I'll play with them a bit more, but they are definitely not a top tier theme yet.
Xarios made an excellent guides for 4 themes, zombies, skeletons, witches and vampyres, too bad we never imported those, i wonder if he still around.
