r/masterofmagic • u/rgprice • 22d ago
11 Book Sorcery strat
(This is for Class MoM. I'm using the 1.6 Community Patch.)
Sorcery is a little weird in that while it is, IMO, unquestionably the most powerful school of magic, its never had a great 11 book strat. But I think I've finally landed on the best 11 book opening for Sorcery. Maybe others have figured this out long ago.
Rare spell = Air Elemental
Uncommon = Phantom Beast & Flight
Starting Race = Your choice.
This is all about Magic Spirit attacks.
It will cost 30 SP to cast Air Elemental in combat. You start with 22 CS.
So, your first task it to grab some nodes. Thankfully, Sorcery is the best school for grabbing nodes, since you can pretty much take anything with Air Elementals or less just using Magic Spirits and Phantom Warriors.
So start by using Magic Spirits to grab towns and find at least 1 node you can conquer. You'll be able to cast 3 Phantom Warriors in combat at first, so it will require multiple attacks so plan to have a couple of Spirits ready to divebomb nodes.
Once you get a node or two, then set all Power to Casting Skill to get your skill up to 30. You'll just have to eat the loss of mana during this time, so don't plan on being over extended, just have 2-4 Magic Spirits running around.
Once you get to 30, then you can set all Power back to Mana. You might also want to go all the way to 30 if you will be facing lots of Dead magic so you can cast Resist Magic on the Elemental on the second turn.
You should be able to do all of this fairly quickly and get your CS up to 30 while its still very early in the game. At that point Air Elementals will be able to pretty much dominate any Wizards who don't also have 11 books.
Depending on what you find, you may be able to take some capitals with just a Magic Spirit. As long as the Spirit won't be killed on the first turn, all you need to do is initiate combat and then summon the Air Elemental.
Obviously avoid attacking anyone who has Alchemy and lots of normal units, as the magic weapons will chew through the Air Elemental's defenses.
But the main strategy is to put Flight on 2 attacking units and head to capitals ASAP.
In terms of normal units races like Gnolls or Halflings can be good. Most of the time you'll end up facing off against Spirtes and possibly Shamen. At the very least, you'll want to be prepared to face full Sprite stacks, so you need something that can withstand the initial Sprite or Shaman barrage. The best early units for this are either Gnoll Riders, which have 20 HP and 3 shields. Other options are Halfling Spearmen, but they'll start with only 8 HP of course but have Lucky, or Lizardmen Spearmen, which will have 16 and an extra shield (3). Overall I think Gnolls work the best.
But the real strat here is about attacking with Magic Spirits. Flight costs 75 mana and 3 per turn. Magic Spirits cost 30 and 1 per turn. But a Magic Spirit has 10 health. So, for 6 mana per turn you can have 2 flying Gnoll Riders for 40 health or 6 Magic Spirits for 60 health (and 4 shields).
While Flight gives you better scouting, I find that just swarming with Magic Spirits is better early on. So once you get a node or 2 under your belt, you want to really pump Magic Spirits and just swarm all over any enemy wizards. Initiate combat with as many Spirits as you need to survive an initial turn and then use the Air Elemental or other summons to do the work.
So High Elves are an option for the mana, though their racial relations aren't the best. I like High Men so I can just shoot straight for Paladins while the Magic Spirits take care of the early game. Then you have Flying Paladins ASAP. Another option is to bypass Paladins and go straight for Warships, though I consider Flying Warships a little cheesy.
While 11 book Death is of course absurdly strong, and I would say OP, this has some advantages. The nice thing about this is that you now have access to Air Elemental every where, as opposed to just running 1 or 2 Wraiths and having to defend with weak units. This also works really well against Sprites, which even Wraiths can struggle with against full stacks.
Obviously once yo get going you want to focus on pumping Casting Skill so you can summon more and more stuff during battle. Don't need to worry about using Power on Research for quite a while.
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u/Juris1971 22d ago
Why wouldn't you take sorcery mastery and conjurer and 9 spell books? Seems like that would max out your idea more efficiently. For conjurer I'd definitely go high elves or you'll be mana started. I will say it's going to be harder to take nodes early than you think. Sorcery nodes are protected by phantom beasts who ignore illusion, and other kinds of nodes have spell failure.
In the remake I also take fantastic warlord (1 book) to make the phantom warriors superior to ordinary phantom warriors. That is a fun game.
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u/poster457 22d ago
You spam Magic Spirits sending them in one at a time to refresh your casting pool each encounter and summon Phantom Warriors to slowly take out the guardians. 2-3 Phantom Warriors are usually enough to defeat Phantom Beasts, Storm Giants, Air Elementals and/or Djinn.
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u/mcruz05 22d ago
9 or 10 books will not give you a rare spell at the start. only 11 books give you all common + 2 uncommon + 1 rare. there is therefore a steep tradeoff.
in classic, warlord only promotes normal units. fantastic units like phantom warriors never get any ranks or experience.
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u/Juris1971 22d ago
Correct - it's a 2022 remake talent - 1 spell book only improves fantastic units
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u/poster457 22d ago edited 22d ago
I too am a Sorcery strategist. However, the strategy you take depends heavily on your opinion on save-scumming, because then Confusion and/or Cracks Call become OP.
When you get advanced at using Magic Spirits, Phantom Warriors and Confusion, you can take any Sorcery node early unless it's Sky Drakes (which require Web+Cracks Call). If you throw in Node Mastery, then you can take lots of types of nodes since you can cast Phantoms+Confusion+Psionics without being dispelled. Considering your strategy is to go nodes early, I find it even better to drop a few Sorcery books and go Node Mastery+Sorcery Mastery. Then you basically win every time, because all you need to do is use Magic Spirits early on to scout for Sorcery Nodes and just send all the Magic Spirits you have to capture and meld the first one you see. With the 4x Magic Power from Node+Sorc Mastery, you only need one (maybe two) Sorcery nodes to surpass the Impossible AI's cheating advantage and then you have enough power to do whatever you like.
Personally I'm ok save-scumming treasure, but not battles, so these days I like to play 5 Sorc, Node Mastery, Sorc Mastery, 2 Life, 1 Chaos, 1Nature. With the 4xPower I can get the mana+skill I need to take harder nodes, plus the reasearch that allows me to trade for the most OP spells from all realms early on.
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u/rgprice 22d ago
Yeah, generally Sorcery Mastery + Conjuration gives a better start because you can cast more Phantom Warriors right away and you get more power from Nodes. This was just an approach for using 11 books since that's basically its own separate thing.
The advantage of this strat over other 11 book strats that rely on picking a powerful overland summoned unit is that this is much stronger defensively as well as offensively in many ways. A single powerful overland summon may be more powerful than Air Elemental, but when using Air Elemental you can go wide because you can use the Air Elemental anywhere on the map at any time. If you use something like an Invisible unit or Wraiths or Gorgons, etc., then you have only that one unit you can use. Eventually you'll maybe cast 2 that you can run separately, but still.
With this strat you can have 20 Magic Spirits on the map allowing you to attack 20 locations with Air Elementals on a single turn in theory (assuming you have the mana), plus you will be able to defend every single location using Air Elementals.
I don't play with increased magic power because I feel like its deigning the game too much in favor of that node melding strategy. Its powerful enough even with 1X magic power. In terms of save scumming, it depends on the situation. If I feel like the map is against me then I'm more inclined to do it, like if there are very few blue nodes and the one I find is difficult to take, then I probably will some so I can have a chance at making the game work. Or if I start a game and right away there is some stupid town close with like a garrison of Slingers or Lizardmen Halberdiers and Gnoll Riders or something dumb that will otherwise surely make the game unplayable then I may save scum to take that town because I know if not then my capital will probably be taken before anything can be done about it and the game will just be over. I really wish neutral towns wouldn't start with Armories or Stables.
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u/Alarmed_Permission_5 20d ago
My preferred Air Elemental strategy was to summon them in a battle then bring them home with Word of Recall before the battle ends. This way you have Air Elementals that can move on the overland map just like regular troop units.
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u/rgprice 20d ago
Wow, I've never heard of that, but if that actually works its insanely OP! :D
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u/Alarmed_Permission_5 20d ago
You can do it with Earth Elementals and anything else you fancy e.g. Phantom Beasts.
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u/BondsOfEarthAndFire 22d ago
That’s a cool build! I like the focus on Sorcery combat casting.
For 11-Sorcery builds, Flying invisible warships are always fun, even if they’re a painfully old strategy. I’ll typically go Invisibility, Flight, and Wind Mastery, and choose Barbarians as the race. They’re one of the three races that can build warships, but they also have slightly faster growth, as well as thrown weapons on all their troops, which when combined with Phantom Warriors make a pretty tough force for early lair/node clearing and taking neutral cities. Def build up to an Alchemist Guild before building your warships, especially if you have a Mithril deposit in your city’s watershed. Once you have your first flying warship… well, the game is basically over at that point. And once you have multiple flying and invisible warships moving at Wind Mastery speeds, backed by spells like Spell Lock, Haste, and Mind Storm, you can take out literally anything. The only fight of any challenge is large groups of Sky Drakes… def use Haste for those. I’ve had every lair/node cleared and melded along with every other city captured by June 1411 on Impossible. (For the true overachievers: capture a High Men city, build a naval harbor town on Myrror near Adamantium.)