How to play Skirmishers
Introduction
This guide covers the use of skirmishers. Skirmishers are fighters, that are good in some situations, but they are not the frontline unita. Skirmishers are fast, can ignore Zone of Control (ZOC) and they are requied for specific tasks. Only a few of them are alive at the end of the scenario, mostly for their low health.
Typical skirmishers are Fencers, Saurian Skirmishers, Dune Skirmishers and experienced thieves from the Knalgan Alliance.
Skirmishers have good defenses. They are simply good on flat lands, swamps, mountains etc, because they are very agile and can dodge a lot of attacks. Enemy fighters knows that and can use marksman and magic attacks against them.
Skirmisher in attack
There are two main ways how to use skirmishers. We can call them attacker and defender. In reality, it is most of the time somewhere between these too extremes.
We can start with the aggresive use. Lets say that enemy is playing rebels and you are playing with the loyalists. What can you do? One of the smart decision is to scout, find out what exactly is your enemy doing and what is the best target for your units. Use cavalry, infantry, bowmen... And you can also use Fencer, your skirmisher.
His best use is to target important specialists. Do not attack. Elvish archers or woses on full health, but focus on:
- Support units, like shamans and mages
- Wounded units, like elvish archers with 4hp remaining
- Retreating units on their way to the villages
- Units with limited or no melee damage
Skirmishers are agile and fast and they can be the sixth attacker for high priority target.
Use them last. Everyone is on high health? Send mages first, fighters after them and fill gaps with skirmishers. Attack retreating units or steal villages close to enemy wounded and/or poisoned units. Good skirmisher on good terrains can take village after village and because they have low health and high defense, they can many times fully heal in single turn in village.
Sometimes it is good to sacrifice a skirmisher when you really need to kill an important mage, who is killinh your units.
Best use: kill enemy healer, when there is a lot of poisoned and low health units. Healers are often well surrounded, so there is only one way that can find the gap and execute them - a skirmisher.
See also
How to play Loyalists article
How to play... series