Forsaken Wastes Spell Rune - Infected Wind Nora Cost: 25 Artwork: A group of undead atop a hill, overlooking a legion of advancing soldiers. Flavor Text: "The end is inevitable. Every soldier on the horizon is a corpse waiting to be made, and another addition to our ranks." - Xulos, undead sage. Effect: AE3; every friendly zombie within the affected area gains Zombie Plague(When this champion successfully damages a non-Undead champion with a basic attack, that champion becomes Plagued. When a Plagued champion is destroyed, a Festering Corpse spawns in it's place, under your control.)For 2 turns. For every friendly lich in the affected area, the effect is extended by 2 turns. Now, to start things off, I'm not really a FW player. I tried spirits pre-revamp and I found I'd been too spoiled by UD's damage to enjoy its intricacies. This spell is made to address the complaints of many FW players about the zombie theme, and how it's incredibly difficult to utilize the zombie racial effectively. This spell aims to change that by giving a cheap source of Zombie Plague over a wide area. This should hopefully make it easier to set Zombie Apocalypse up and generally get a swarm going. As Plagued is a condition, it could be cleansed, making it necessary to kill the infected targets quickly before they can be cured. Furthermore, this would allow the caster to deal the killing blow with any unit, zombie or otherwise. Some feedback from FW players would be appreciated. Would this make zombies feel less worthless? Would a better goal be to put Zombie Plague or Zombie Apocalypse on more effective units? What would make the spell better, if you consider it to not be good enough?
The swarm was only good before due to the absurd amount of potential zombies you could get from it, and only then because it was made easier to trigger. I think now that the festering corpse swarm is in a more controlled state it's easier to see how bad the actual swarm unit is. After all festering is not in the slightest impressive. I would rather have carrionlings swarming than those slow bags of meat. At least if you leave those unchecked they can become a problem that demands resources. Getting to many corpses can actually prove detrimental to your board control much like having to many melee units out at the same time can. They also only stack disease damage which is possibly the worse type to have without inhibited attached. The revamp got the speed of zombies just about right they just need to become as well supported and defined as skeletons. I can't remember a time skeletons didn't have a good thing going for them after their boosts synergy was cemented. Zombies need something like that. Snuff and elsarian night are good pushes in the right direction. Zombies do need ways to single out and catch a target like Snuff attempts, and they also need ways to move 4-5 pack hordes from section to section like elsarian night attempts. I think infected wind is something that could further that even more but not by spreading more swarms. Zombie Apocalypse is a good tack on racial that helps to support a more united racial.
