How to play vs Nightmares
Contents
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.