How to play vs Nightmares

General strategy against Nightmares

The faction of Nightmares of Meloen is chaotic (except Creepers that are neutral). It is composed of quite fast units with many specials or abilities. For this reason, if you are lawful faction you have to follow strictly the day/night cycle. They can hit quite hard at night but on the other hand they have several units with low resistance or low defense. So according to the recruitment you did, you should be able to counter with some result at your best time of the day.

The Nightmares of Meloen don't have particularly efficient units to hold on villages. Taking into account the high price of some of their units (Life Thief, Howling Darkness), you can try to win with your economy, getting their villages earlier, holding your villages longer, by preventing them to have enough gold to buy expensive units. They have some cheap units too, but depending on which faction you play, these sometimes lack of efficiency to hurt you.

Unhatched: as this unit will charge to inflict maximum damage, you should screen your ranged specialists so it can't reach them. To do so you might rely on different units according to its trait as each trait give it some resistance bonus for some damage type. If you succeed to leave to the Unhatched only attack on your melee fighters, it might decide to do so, but will most likely receive retaliation. Get ready to finish them on your turn if the time is right.

Black Cat: with her magical attack and the jinx special, the Black Cat is one of the first unit you may want to kill if you are not Undead. She benefit of high defense but her pretty bad resistances help to kill her in a minimum of strikes when your best time of the day has come. After she has hit you, Unhatched, Life Thief or Scornful Watchers will most likely follow, that is why they say you are cursed.

Life Thief: arcane melee with drains, we all know from those pesky Ghosts that units of this kind are not easy to handle. Life Thieves will be seen in any matchup but against Loyalists. Fight them with ranged fire or arcane, slow them or run away from them as they are rather slow. As their defense and their physical resistances are lower than the Ghost's, countering them with any range unit is good enough to deal with its additional hitpoints.

Scornful Watcher: his ranged attack turns arcane resistance into weakness. For this reason, he will be Loyalists worst enemy and will be seen in numbers every time except against Drakes, Undead and Nightmares. Slow and weak, Nightmares will have to cover him with his tanks. Your ability to win will often be measured by your ability to clean your way to hit him.

Howling Darkness: as an expensive unit without melee attack, the Howling Darkness is an ideal target when you are countering, but as it is fast and skirmisher, the kill is never guaranteed. It will often be use to support Unhatcheds and Life Thieves on offense to reduce your retaliation and can be a threat itself at night especially against the cold fearing Drakes.

Unstable Elemental: this volatile unit can be used as a scout only in its tornado form that you can find in plain, road and castle. It will most likely never fight in this form and will prefer to move to hill or forest when he is ready to fight. Up to you to accept or not the challenge as it will be much slower in those forms. The Unstable Elemental most disturbing use is when it moves behind your lines and take a defending form (quake, bramble), cutting your retreat. The slow ranged attack of the bramble form, obviously combines well with Unhatched's charge at level 1 and berserk at level 2.

Creepers: if you are not playing a chaotic faction, this unit should not change much in your strategy. You should keep trying to catch units with more hitpoints at your best time of the day, so that you don't waste too much fire power to kill this cheap unit. If you are chaotic though, you may have to adapt in order to cope with those pests that can hit you when you are at your weakest. When attacking Creepers on melee, target the ones with few Creepers around so that you reduce the retaliation. When they form a chain, you can consider breaking it in two to double their upkeep.

Drakes

If both teams were randomly picked, they will most probably be badly prepared for this very offensive match. The Life Thief, Nightmares best asset at attack, and the Drake Burner are both expensive recruits for each side would wait to know their opponent before recruiting them. So if the game is starting at dawn, it is very likely that the first night will be quite peaceful and you will have plenty of time to equip yourself in Burners for the next day.

Burners and Life Thieves are the best enemies and two of one kind can kill one of the other every turn at their best time of the day. It shows how crucial the dusk will be for your Drakes, so be ready to retreat in time. As you are at least as fast as the Life Thief, if Nightmares has fallen back too much at day, you will have a easy retreat. If he has stayed close to you to prepare counter, retreat using Drake Fighters to cover your Burners from the Unhatcheds. That strategy might fail if Nightmares succeed at trapping you with Howling Darknesses. That is the reason why, using your Drake Fighters on them at day is the second objective you have to meet to keep the match going.

Depending on the number of Howling Darkness turning to Skirmisher might be a good alternative. Beside dealing free damage to the Howling Darkness when they are the most impetuous, the Skirmisher have additional benefits: dealing a lot of retaliation to not slippery Unhatched, getting high defense units that might requires Nightmares to get more Black Cats. On top of that, as saurians resist well Life Thief's arcane, they can force Nightmares to turn to Scornful Watchers that are of not much use against your Drakes.

Drake Burner: he is Life Thief's fierest enemy. As you will definively will see many of them around, getting as much Burners as you can is a safe strategy. As only quick ones are faster than the Life Thief, when they can't reach any, they can also have a shot at the Unhatched. As both Burner's advancement are awesome against Nightmares, you should try to level one.

Drake Clasher: due to his slowness and his price, the Clasher is not the best buy against Nightmares. You can however decide to get one if Nightmares haven't any Howling Darkness as it can retaliate the Unhatcheds charge with one of his two attacks depending on their trait. When Howling Darknesses are around, their mobility and their cold attack will be devastating to the Clasher with no chance of retaliation. You don't want them to have such easy kills.

Drake Fighter: the Drake Fighter is necessary to cover Burners' retreat at the end of the day as they will give maximum retaliation to Unhatched's charge and they are relatively cheap. They should not however try to shield off the Life Thief as they won't be able to survive the whole night. When attacking, the Drake Fighter should focus on the Howling Darkness, the Black Cat or the Unstable Elemental.

Drake Glider: faster than the Drake Fighter with better defence and an impact damage type, the Drake Glider can be used for holding off the Nightmares when Burners are retreating. During attack at day time, they will be useful mostly for trapping the Nightmares at dawn and prevent them from fleeing too easily. As they are not as efficient as the Drake Fighter at dealing damage to the Howling Darkness the role they can play is still secondary and you should not recruit too many of them.

Saurian Augur: the Augur with his low hitpoints and cold damage doesn't not play a big role in this matchup. He will have trouble getting away from the Unhatched and Drakes won't have really time to protect him. The healing he can provide might be of some use to the Drakes as they will abandon open villages at night. His cold ranged attack should than be used on Unhatched or anything else that he can kill. You may take your chance and feed him with kills as at level 2, the Soothsayer will be able to cure Black Cat's jinx.

Saurian Skirmisher: Depending on the number of Howling Darkness the Skirmisher might be a good choice for recruitment. Nearly as fast as them, doing free damage on melee, they beat them in price. However, due to Saurians' weakness on both cold and impact, keeping them alive might be a difficult task. Hence it is only possible if Howling Darknesses are enough to guarantee a target before Skirmisher dies.

Loyalists

When Loyalists realizes he faces Nightmares of Meloen, his attention should constantly be focused on the Scornful Watcher. The large range of Loyalists' melee units can be used to bring them down before night. As your opponent will try his best as zocing you out from getting at his Watchers, recruiting a bit of any melee units is one important step to ruin his strategy.

While the Spearman gets the best damage per gold, he is quite easily controlled by the Unhatched. Hence you should have some Cavalryman to attack from the distance, moreover his good impact resistance can make him a good blocker against the Unhatched.

While when attacking Unhatched with Mage you should try to finish from fear that Nightmares might sacrifice him on your Mage hoping for a kill, for any other attack combo, the most important is to deal maximum damage. As the Nightmares don't really have an efficient village holder, they will have to give up villages reducing their ability to heal. The only exception is the Scornful Watcher as he is so deadly that you want to have him dead.

Bowman: the Bowman is less efficient at dealing damage to Nightmares than the Mage. For this reason you should restrain yourself from getting them. However, if you lack of gold or if you already have one, it can be quite useful against the Live Thief and the Unhatched or against the Scornful Watcher at retaliating. His additional hitpoints can be a life saver.

Cavalryman: this is a key unit for this matchup. His high resistance to impact damage helps containing the Nightmares push at night while his speed allows him to switch quickly to the attack mode on Scornful Watchers. The Cavalryman can also successfully chase down a fleeing Howling Darkness and you can use his 4 strikes to nearly guarantee a hit on the Black Cat. His blade damage is also doing well against the bramble form of the Unstable Elemental. So get some of them and try to level one.

Fencer: get them if wounded Howling Darknesses and Scornful Watchers keep escaping your grip. They will only have small use in defense, as the combination of Black Cat's jinx attack and their own bad resistance are promises of short life when facing the Unhatched. If you have no problem killing your quota of Scornful Watchers you probably better keep the gold for a Mage.

Heavy Infantry: do only recruit them when Nightmares abuse of Unhatcheds. As soon as they appear, they will be the target of Scornful Watchers to clear the way for the Unhatcheds. As your Heavy Infantry's armor is no use against them, you should make sure they are in Scornful Watcher's range only at the second night otherwise you will probably lose too much gold. Due to their slowness, they will only be useful in defense so the best time to get recruit them is usually at dusk or first night. On attack they should target anything but the Life Thief whenever possible.

Horseman: while the Horseman powerful charge let's you hope of huge damage, its cost is a deterrent to having one in the early game. Money is better spend on another mage if you plan an attack. If the game gets longer and you succeed in cashing enough gold, you can then get one as he will do well at Scornful Watcher assassination with his impact resistance cutting down the retaliation.

Mage: the Mage will be your best weapon against the Unhatched. However, his low hitpoints require you to protect them at any time of the day. Hit the Unhatched you have the best chance to kill, as even wounded his charge attack is danger for your Mage's life. As he is so weak against the Unhatched, don't feed him with kills as he will probably never live long enough to level.

Merman Fighter: when water is present in the map, getting a Merman Fighter or two is a good idea. As Nightmares don't have good movement on water, they can force the Unstable Elemental to move to water to control them or they will be able to reach the Scornful Watchers. When facing a whirlpool form of the Unstable Elemental do not fear to engage in combat as they have worst resistance than your Merman Fighters.

Spearman: as always, the spearman will be the first recruit to turn to. He can both retaliate hard on the Unhatched's charges and do severe damage to the Scornful Watcher. His low price allows you to get enough to protect efficiently your Mages from the threat of Unhatcheds. Combining with Cavalryman is a must though, as you want to diversify your damage type to leverage on the resistance bonus of the Unhatched's trait and get more speed to chase Nightmares down when the day comes.

Undead

Having to fight Nightmares is one to the toughest experience for Undead. Unlike what they are used to, Undead in this matchup will play by counter-attack as the ability of make most damage is not on their side. While you will be relatively safe on the ranged front, the Unhatched's impact will break his Skeletons in piece, the Life Thief's arcane will tear them appart while the cheap Creepers' banding is an additional threat to your Dark Adepts. So you will have to turn on the survival mode as soon as possible, recruiting Ghoul, Ghost, Walking Corpse, still some Skeletons and Dark Adept for the counter.

Always keep a decent amount of Dark Adepts on the board in order to keep Nightmares under pressure. This way you will be ruling on the ranged as they will rule on the melee part. As you will unlikely face the threat of Life Thieves in the begining, you will have to deal with Unhatched first by recruiting Walking Corpses to contain them. While your Walking Corpses begin taming the Unhatched, Nightmares will send more Life Thieves. Try to make them attack your Skeletons as if they get wounded, they will become an easy job for your Dark Adepts.

It is quite sure that at a certain moment, as your Walking Corpses starts getting annoying, Nightmares will recruit Creepers. As level 0 units, they are quite a natural opposition for the Walking Corpses, however they require some special techniques to deal with them. Creepers have a neutral alignment so you better fight them at night as two hits will be enough to kill them (they won't get plagued). As the band to inflict maximum damage you should always try to attack the most isolated ones, if you really need to kill one in the pack, better use the Skeleton as he resists strongly their pierce.

Dark Adept: again, the Dark Adept will be your best unit for attacking. The threat of the Unhatched's charge will be the major challenge, as three hits are enough to kill them at night. When they are in position to attack they should hit the Unhatched first as they will do maximum damage against them. The second best choice being the Life Thief. Try to pick your target so your Dark Adept can take the shoot from good defense or make sure you can cover him immediately.

Ghost: with drains on its arcane melee, the Ghost can enjoy this matchup. It is efficient against the Unhatched, the Scornful watcher, the Unstable Elemental at to a lesser extend the Creepers. Its only problem will be when facing full health Life Thieves. As the Ghost has worst resistance, less hitpoints and doesn't hit as hard, it should not engage in direct fight with them. Hopefully it can rely on its better movement points to make sure to keep far enough, as long as it doesn't get slowed by the bramble form of the Unstable Elemental.

Ghoul: the Ghoul is an important unit in this matchup. That is the best candidate for holding village against Unhatcheds with its poison and Life Thieves with its relative resistance to arcane. He can also poison Unstable Elemental to force them to heal, depriving Nightmares of support units.

Skeleton: its is a good support unit against Nightmares. As it certainly fears the Unhatched's impact and Life Thief's arcane melee, he can cause enough damage to make its sacrifice worthwile. While the Skeleton can help clearing Creepers out of the way, it is not worth putting it on bad defense terrain for that as the Nightmares' counter will hurt him badly. It is also the best weapon against Black Cat and Scornful Watcher if they are present on the field but it is not worth to feed it with kills, better use a Walking Corpse to plague them.

Skeleton Archer: do not recruit any Archer, they are made of the kind of bones Unhatched likes to play with. At any time of the day, the Unhatched will be attracted by them and his impact charge attack will destroy them within the second. There is no way the Skeleton Archer can make enough damage before dying to repay its gold.

Vampire Bat: even the hax power of the Bat is not enough to save them against the charge of an Unhatched. Any bat is killed in two hits and the intelligent ones are dead in one single hit at night. If you got one, use it to steal village or disrupt Nightmares' orginization. But stay away from Unhatcheds and Scornful Watchers at all time.

Walking Corpse: the use of Walking Corpse is mainly for obstructing, screening off Dark Adepts and Skeleton from their foes. You can also place them around units that are holding a position to reduce the number of spots available for attack. On attack, they should focus on Creepers and Unhatched.