Necro healing during finite life through the Alter

[Sirscott13]

First post so go easy on me.

I am in love with the Necromancer, but I do not play him swarm style, You psych your opponent into believing you are about to go swarm but end up setting up a small fortress, and then going solo to defeat your opponent.

Something that always appealed to me when playing the Necromancer was his way of getting Life Bond on the alter of skulls when finite life was activated. Keep a Mort with his Reconstruct 2 trait for all skeletal objects in his zone and you can essentially heal the Necromancer 2 damage every turn while the opponent cannot heal and is constantly being damages 2 (3 if you drop an Idol of Pestilence)

My Idea to do this was to put an alter of skulls in a corner and keep an on guard Mort combined with an eternal skeletal archer and your cleric in the corner and then throw up a wall of bones boxing them in. Your cleric will feed your alter of skulls while Mort kept your walls from coming down and your archer could handle any flyers while being healed by Mort. Now the opponent may find a way to get through to the alter, but if you play your cards right and put up good defenses like teleport traps, poison gas clouds, hell fire traps, caltrops, and maybe Malacunda as a moat to your wall of bones corner, then your opponent is going to have a hard time bringing down the alter of skulls.

 Once you have that set up, you can go totally solo Nec with your cloak of shadows, deathshroud staff, demon hide armor with some other form of armor combined with veteran belt, cheetah speed, and a defense or two (I also highly recommend an elemental wand with acid ball to take care of any tanks). You do this and you are a big threat. Your opponent will be trying to get through to your Alter while you go after his force. The Nec makes a difficult opponent to kill when he can take almost all blows, heal 2 damage a turn, has poison immunity, and give constant Rot conditions that he can make extra painful.

While your opponent might eventually take out your alter (provided you play smart and keep it defended and throw up more walls when they go down) you will have devastated his health and his army leading to a ruthless victory. 

[silverclawgrizzly]

This tactic does work, I've seen it. A Druid can somewhat counter it at the cost of their tree, which means they're going to go full throttle on you though so expect a heavy offense and the loss of your armor fast.

[Sirscott13]

True but as long as you stay fast and run away your cloak of shadow can protect you. Plus the trea will lose 4-6(IoP) life per round killing it fast. And his epic reconstruction spell can repair damage from a distance

[DaveW]

I just started to work out how the first few turns of such a book would go. See if this makes sense:

Turn   Channel   Mana      
0           10      
1   10        20      
           -5   Acolyte   
           -2   Enchant (Mage Buff, or maybe a Fortified Position?)
2   10        23      
           -9   Altar   
           -2   Enchant (Brace Yourself or Mage Buff?)
3   10        22   
           -5   Death Ring   
         -15   Mort (Discount)
4   10        12
         -10   Archer   Discount
           -2   Enchant

Is this doable against all but very aggressive enemy openings?

[sdougla2]

If I was going to try it, I would probably run something like:

Turn 1 (20): Death Ring -> Acolyte (10)
Turn 2 (20): Libro -> Altar of Skulls (2)

Against non-aggressive openings and

Turn 1 (20): Death Ring -> Acolyte (10)
Turn 2 (20): FD Brace Yourself -> Altar of Skulls (9)

Against hyper aggressive openings. I would be tempted to drop Altar of Skulls entirely against a potentially hyper aggressive opening and just start playing creatures, but if I was going to include Altar of Skulls in the opening, that's how I would probably do it. In this context, potentially hyper aggressive mostly means your opponent can start to spam big attack spells at you turn 2. Against most other things, you aren't under so much pressure that you can't afford to make those two rounds of investment. There are a couple of creature rushes that can start attacking you turn 2, but they won't be throwing as many dice turn 2 as double Hurl Boulder, and you have some time to stabilize.

[ACG]

This tactic does work, I've seen it. A Druid can somewhat counter it at the cost of their tree, which means they're going to go full throttle on you though so expect a heavy offense and the loss of your armor fast.

True but as long as you stay fast and run away your cloak of shadow can protect you. Plus the trea will lose 4-6(IoP) life per round killing it fast. And his epic reconstruction spell can repair damage from a distance

Unfortunately, [mwcard=DNJ01]Altar of Skulls[/mwcard] only inflicts damage and gives finite life to living creatures, not conjurations. Likewise, [mwcard=MW1J11]Idol of Pestilence[/mwcard] only deals damage to living creatures. [mwcard=MW1J19]Deathlock[/mwcard] can give conjurations the finite life trait, however. In general, however, a druid's tree will still be able to heal itself and the druid effectively.

[wtcannonjr]

True but as long as you stay fast and run away your cloak of shadow can protect you. Plus the trea will lose 4-6(IoP) life per round killing it fast. And his epic reconstruction spell can repair damage from a distance

Remember the Druid ' s vine markers will hinder your fast necromancer.

[V10lentray]

In order for the alter of skulls to work, you need to get 8 markers on it. So you need clerics and to be able to kill my creatures. You are also only allowed to place 1 marker through the clerics, regardless how many clerics you have summoned. And only having yourself as a creature, you're never going to get to the 8 markers required.

I played against a similar strategy, but it was a rush build and he used the alter of skulls. His cleric only got 2 markers on it before I killed it. also a good book will have at least one force hammer and with the druid it is used solely on killing any conjuration that prevents regeneration. So the deathlock would immediately get a hammer to the face, and corrosive orchid attacking it every turn until it is dead. I would also send a corrosive orchid and a raptor vine after an Idol of pestilence.

This whole time I would be hindering you with vines and keeping you in place with strangle and tanglevines.

[DaveW]

In order for the alter of skulls to work, you need to get 8 markers on it. So you need clerics and to be able to kill my creatures. You are also only allowed to place 1 marker through the clerics, regardless how many clerics you have summoned. And only having yourself as a creature, you're never going to get to the 8 markers required.

I played against a similar strategy, but it was a rush build and he used the alter of skulls. His cleric only got 2 markers on it before I killed it. also a good book will have at least one force hammer and with the druid it is used solely on killing any conjuration that prevents regeneration. So the deathlock would immediately get a hammer to the face, and corrosive orchid attacking it every turn until it is dead. I would also send a corrosive orchid and a raptor vine after an Idol of pestilence.

This whole time I would be hindering you with vines and keeping you in place with strangle and tanglevines.

I guess all of this reinforces the need to bring out a number of walls as well to keep the Cleric(s) alive. I think this will take way too many actions to pull off against even a moderately aggressive Mage. If you want to try it, you might want to go with Mort on round 1, but then you lose one round while the opponent builds up or just gets closer to pummel you. I don't know... might want to put an Altar in your book in case you play against a Warlord or Priestess, but better have another plan against others.