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.