Help the Lion Newbie

I've checked out the two threads on Lion but so far the information is a little sparse. Is there anyone who can give a bit of a run down on how to actually play with Lion to start with since so far I''m just getting steam rolled by Wolf starters or optimised 200 armies.

What upgrades should I be looking at for my units and some basic pros and cons of the units would be nice. That way the few coins I do get aren't poorly spent.

I'd love to stick to this game to get my table top fix but in it's current state it is not even remotely enjoyable.

A good start is always at least 3 swordsmen level 2 with parry (99 AP total). An important thing to get used to with swordsmen is to use them together. Sometimes it may be better to move in and wait with the first swordsmen rather than attacking. Thinking of your swordsmen as a little team or guards/support for other units will help you get good value from them.

Archers are good, very good. They really need at least level 2 and accuracy for maximum effect. The level 3 abilities are both good but I prefer Double Shot. Double Shot pairs well with 'Divine Favour' stance that lion players get. Divine Favour is very important to lion. Using it and the other stances well in a game will often be the deciding factor.

Lion of War is very good. It is good unlevelled. Most abilities for it are decent but I think it is best to keep its AP cost low. It has low TOU which makes it weak but very good defence (DOD,PAR) and offence (DAM,ACC). This makes it a good candidate for both offensive and defensive stances. Use offensive stance wisely because it leaves you very vulnerable to attacks until your next activation.

I think a starter team of these units is very competitive in 250 AP and gives you a good base to build on for 400 AP matches.

I've had a number of matches so far mostly against the wolves and that double attack eat my poor team alive. I have actually managed to win one today purely because the deployment zone were so close together that no matter where the opponent when I was on him turn 1. Numbers coupled with that is a bit of a joke. Strategy which he was far better at played no part.

So your recommendation would be to add another swordsmen and archer to the group to get it to 400.

On a side note my archer and mage leveled up so now I'm over the 250 cap meaning I actually have to drop a swordsmen to stay in the bracket. Any strategy advise?

While other armies like the Wolfen one have many high damage units that suit better in a melee, the Lion army strength is usually based mainly on its ranged units (i.e. archers & mages) that you should protect in the best possible way with all your other units if you want to win. The Lion melee units strong point is their high PAR values, so that they can counter the enemy attacks in many cases. You should try to use them more like meat-shields that should block the path leading to your archers/mages, so that the latter will be able to do a considerable amount of damage as soon as they hit lvl 2/3.

It is better moreover if you decide to focus on a mage-based company or an archers one: if you want to base your company on mages (usually 1 or 2 max), then try to lvl up one of them to lvl4-5 and use 2-3 Sparkling to give him additional mana, while if you want to base your company on the archers, then try to lvl up 3-4 of them to lvl 3, giving them Accuracy to increment their damage and at least to 2 archers the ability "Double Shot", that coupled with the "Divine Order" Stance can hurt badly an enemy unit. With all the other APs, you have to buy meat-shields (Guards, Valkyrie, Knight) to protect them. In general, it is easier to protect a single mage respect to 3-4 archers, however you must be aware that if the enemy can snipe out your mage then you'll lose the game.

The War Lion may be a nice additional unit that you can try to use instead of a classic meat-shield: it has a high MOV and damage output, however it is made of paper so if you attack blindly it will be easily killed. It is not an easy unit to use, since for it you have to "sacrifice" a meat shield and therefore you leave your archers more easily to be engaged & killed, usually is more present in mage-based army than archers-based.

In general, the Wolfen army is the easiest to start with (since in many case you just have to charge with everything you have got to win!), while the Acheron and Lion ones require more strategical thinking and knowing of the units abilities and characteristics and so they may seem more "weak" for a beginner respect to the Wolfen one, while in truth they are equally, if not more, strong.

PS: Obviously, also the Wolfen army can use many strategies to improve greatly its efficiency, but for a beginner player playing against another beginner player, the Wolfen will be overwhelming in the majority of cases simply for the fact that they are mostly melee units and so "easier" to use!

Excellent thank you, what you've written there has been my take away from the games I have played with Lion.

It is also in part why I started this thread. I'm trying to gather the information on what each unit excels at, what their abilities do and what synergies the units have. This is very useful information of new players.

Something else I would like to find and is often very useful for Table Top games is suggestions from more experienced players on how to expand from the starter army. In my case I've now got 2k Ducats but 3 of my units have levels and that means my army is now 251 AP.

You've already talked about the Mage and the Archer armies but how do you go about getting to that end point.

For example:
1.
Do I buy just archers and swordsmen and just keep playing 250 AP games until I have 400AP

or

Do I save, buy a couple of elite units.

2.
Is it better to just play training missions until I have enough to buy the units I need

or

Do I just keep playing DM with my weakened company likely taking losses.

1. The KotL at the moment is not worth his AP, so you should focus on saving to buy a Valkyrie or some Sparklings (these in the case you are creating a mage-based army) or simply buy more archers (for a total of 3-4) and Guards (same number).
Regarding the AP range in which you can play, you can either play in the 250 AP range (which gives less rewards but in which you can obtain a good army faster) or try to lvl up all your units in the 400 AP range (you'll get more ducats and exp when you'll win, but it will be more difficult to win!). A suggestion is to avoid to lvl up a unit (i.e. Lion, Guard, Sparkling, Valkyrie, KotL) when its new AP value will cause that you can't use it anymore in the AP range of your choice and lvl up all your units altogether when a sufficient number will have the sufficient exp. Another thing, it is important instead to lvl up the main units of your army (e.g. mages or archers) when you have the possibility so that you can use them better and starting win some matches!
It is also important to know that if you don't lvl up a unit, it still gains exp normally and can gain another lvl (however you can't see it in the exp bar that is bugged) so that you can then give it 2/3 abilities at the same time.

2. Don't play training missions if you want to earn ducats or lvl up your units! At the moment, the rewards you can get from training mission are much lower respect to the ones you can get from PvP matches, so I suggest you always play with other players in the 250/400 AP brackets. The training missions are just to "discover" the potentialities of your units, since also the possibility to get hurt is lower, but are not sufficiently rewarding to waste time on them. Moreover, don't worry if you lost many "ranked" matches (400 AP ones): the Ranking is reset to 0 every Monday so you can win and get a good rank the week after.

In general, the Wolfen army is the easiest to start with (since in many case you just have to charge with everything you have got to win!), while the Acheron and Lion ones require more strategical thinking and knowing of the units abilities and characteristics and so they may seem more "weak" for a beginner respect to the Wolfen one, while in truth they are equally, if not more, strong.

i think wolven are deceptively easy. Yes they pack lot of power but having less units than your enemy really sucks. Also in the long run when legendaries are more common they have the hardest time out there.

Ram can be much easier to play if you go the golem route or super zerg of doom (5x hardboiled skeletons + other stuff) and i agree that ram and lion are much stronger than wolven at the moment as they offer much more solutions to various problems.

So my units are coming together nicely though the Knight, Valk and sparklings will now have to wait.

So

Swordsmen

Why Parry (+Parr) over Vivacity(+DOD)?

Archers

I see the advise threads all use Elusive. I can see why Accuracy is useful but wouldn't Sharpshooter also shine?

Archer Army
Currently I'm using 3 archers 2xlvl2 1xlvl3 and 3 Swordsmen 2xlvl2 and 1xlvl1. For the future (400AP) would people recommend I leave the swordsmen at lvl1 or bring them all the way up to lvl3.
Also anythings on using sparklings as healers? or better to aim for a Valk?

So my units are coming together nicely though the Knight, Valk and sparklings will now have to wait.

So

Swordsmen

Why Parry (+Parr) over Vivacity(+DOD)?

Archers

I see the advise threads all use Elusive. I can see why Accuracy is useful but wouldn't Sharpshooter also shine?

Archer Army
Currently I'm using 3 archers 2xlvl2 1xlvl3 and 3 Swordsmen 2xlvl2 and 1xlvl1. For the future (400AP) would people recommend I leave the swordsmen at lvl1 or bring them all the way up to lvl3.
Also anythings on using sparklings as healers? or better to aim for a Valk?

i do not play lion but i do play against them and i can tell you that

- parry is very good. Adding extra RNG to your defense is very annoying (for your opponent) as it can potentially wreck his attacking plan. Vivacity is also valid but i would go for PAR bonus as your DOD even with the +2 isn't that great.

-personally i find archers with accuracy the most annoying (and powerful) as they are also be good legendary/elite killers. They are also extremely powerful with double shot or aim. Sharpshooter costs too much imo for what it brings. Elusive is also a valid option but it gives you less flexibility.

-i suggest you at least one valk lvl 2 in your archer army comp with favorable auspices as your aim is to weaken enough the enemy to kill it once it gets in contact.

One general suggestion that very FEW players do...have a sideboard (this is how is called in trading card games) . You have a huge advantage with scourge of the impure and you could consider adding a lvl 2-3 mage with it only when you face undeads by swapping certain units. In this way that skill is never situational.

for example i always switch my wolf company when i face undeads in order to benefit from scourge: living deads and ferocious which are generally wasted ap vs other factions.

One general suggestion that very FEW players do...have a sideboard (this is how is called in trading card games) . You have a huge advantage with scourge of the impure and you could consider adding a lvl 2-3 mage with it only when you face undeads by swapping certain units. In this way that skill is never situational.

Im not sure but a patch ago the game still showed first (not active) enemy army (faction/slot) - so if anyone have wolfens at first army and use undeads - you will see wolfens all the time...

Im not sure how it work but many times i played against diffrent faction than shown in army compositon. Im not certan if this still happens.

also Scourge of Impure is bugged at the moment ... and its another nerfed spell

also making such sidebord needs switching more than one unit most of time (different mage costs) and if you don't do full swap in time - then you are screwed ;P

For example:
1.
Do I buy just archers and swordsmen and just keep playing 250 AP games until I have 400AP

or

Do I save, buy a couple of elite units.

2.
Is it better to just play training missions until I have enough to buy the units I need

or

Do I just keep playing DM with my weakened company likely taking losses.

1 - currently Archers and Lions are most effencite units while mage, knight and chimera are not - so at the moment you dont need to wait for elites to make resonable company.

2 - Play what you have in DM if you can. At current meta making a useful final company is quite cheap - simply at the begining you will have one more archer that latter on

o

Swordsmen

Why Parry (+Parr) over Vivacity(+DOD)?

Archers

I see the advise threads all use Elusive. I can see why Accuracy is useful but wouldn't Sharpshooter also shine?

Archer Army
Currently I'm using 3 archers 2xlvl2 1xlvl3 and 3 Swordsmen 2xlvl2 and 1xlvl1. For the future (400AP) would people recommend I leave the swordsmen at lvl1 or bring them all the way up to lvl3.
Also anythings on using sparklings as healers? or better to aim for a Valk?

Parry
+2 DoD for unit with base 8 is waste of ap most of time. The DOD difference starts feom 12-14+

Elusive for archers? for 4ap? IMO - no way
Accuracy is must have for at least one archer in your company... the others can stay at lev 1 but one simply NEED +3 DAM vs most of tanks.
Sharpshooter cost is far to high - you can always use Stance or Favorable to hit target behind hard cover.