Armored Princess Analysis: Distortion Magic

Note: Shroud is gone, having been replaced by Oil Mist.

Ghost Blade
Crystal Cost: 3 / 6 / 9
Mana Cost: 10 / 10 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 100; Ignores 50% Resistance
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 200; Ignores 75% Resistance
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 300; Ignores 100% Resistance

A single enemy unit is attacked for Physical

damage, ignoring some portion of the target's Physical resistance if it has any.

No change.

The primary strike against Ghost Blade is that your new Astral damage options tend to fill the same function, but even better. The other strike against it is that for economical single-target damage, percentile effects tend to be more effective. It's still occasionally useful, but it's not a semi-staple single-target damage Spell like it was in the mid-late game in The Legend. It's mostly good for finishing off key stacks as a battle is winding down, now.

Geyser
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 20 / 30 / 40
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 110-220; Geysers: 4
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 210-420 Geysers: 6
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 310-620; Geysers: 8

A randomly chosen set of enemies are hit for Physical

damage, inflicting Freeze on any units whose Fire

Resistance is at least 50%. The number of Geysers spawned is the maximum number of separate units that can be hit.

Geyser's Crystal cost has been raised by about a third (Noticeably less for the third level), its base damage has been raised substantially, and the boost per level has been only slightly lowered. (It was +100% base damage in The Legend, it's +90% base damage in Armored Princess) The overall result is that Geyser is actually really good, where in The Legend it seems impressive initially but tends to lose its luster as you realize other Spells have better damage and cost less.

Of course, if you're playing Orcs on the March Geyser eventually gets largely sidelined by Black Hole, but in the base version of Armored Princess it's actually very solid all the way into the endgame, since it doesn't have real competition for the role of 'hit everything no matter its position with no friendly fire'. And even in Orcs on the March, it being a mass Freeze against eg Demons gives it a niche.

Pain Mirror
Crystal Cost: 2 / 7 / 10
Mana Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Returns Damage: 60%
Level 2 Statistics: Returns Damage: 80%
Level 3 Statistics: Returns Damage: 100%

Inflicts Magic

damage to a single enemy unit, said damage being derived from the damage the unit dealt most recently.

Crystal cost has spiked hugely, and the damage has been lowered. Completely understandable, especially given that Armored Princess has a higher level limit for the player and also extends their statistics more. To a certain extent, this is basically just reducing the impact of the higher potential Intellect in Armored Princess and making it less absurdly good as army sizes climb.

The overall result is that Pain Mirror takes even longer to start being worth using, but in spite of its nerfs it still eventually ends up a very solid Spell no matter which class you're playing. The Mage probably cares least just because of all her area-of-effect nuke options, but even for her it can work as your first cast in a turn for quite impressive damage, depending.

Trap
Crystal Cost: 4 / 8 / 14
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 15
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 80-120; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 175-265; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 245-310; Duration: 5 turns. Poisons target

Places an invisible trap in a tile. If a unit enters the tile on foot, the trap triggers, doing Physical

damage and immediately ending the unit's turn. The trap vanishes after triggering or after a number of turns have passed.

Mana cost past the first level has spiked noticeably, the Crystal cost has doubled (More than doubled on the third level!), and its damage past the first level isn't as high as it used to be. Of course, the Trapper Medal more than makes up for the lost damage, especially since it even applies to the first level, so in real terms Trap is actually more powerful than ever, assuming you put in the effort to 'level' Trapper.

The Trapper Medal makes Trap a much more important Spell to get as early as you can, and also makes Traps themselves even more powerful and appealing. The fact that Traps on the ground don't count as a Spell is also really nice for the fact that it means they give you Transmute payoff when killing stacks, making it one of the most direct Spell-based methods of getting Transmute Mana. This is particularly important to the Mage, obviously, who actually struggles a bit to get real use out of Transmute, ironically.

The fact that Level 3 Trap Poisons its victim is also a lot more useful than it was in The Legend. Not crazy-useful -Poison Skull gets them Poisoned before they even get a move, and at Level 3 it's realistically guaranteed, so you're not going to specifically get Trap to Level 3 as your Poisoning delivery mechanism- but actually a genuinely nice bonus if you're setting down Traps to slow enemies anyway, as contrasted with its 'meh, whatever' status in The Legend. In particular, a non-Mage might actually find it worth getting Trap to Level 3 in Armored Princess to get that Poisoning thrown in, unlike in The Legend where Trap Level 2 was probably as far as it was worth going if you weren't a Mage.

Hypnosis
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 20 / 30 / 40
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2; Leadership: 40% of hero's total
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3; Leadership: 60% of hero's total
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4; Leadership: 80% of hero's total

Takes control of a single enemy unit for 2 turns. The target must be within the Leadership and Level limits and cannot be immune to mental effects.

No change.

It's worth pointing out that the modifications to Higher Magic make combining Hypnosis with Sacrifice a lot clunkier than it used to be, but overall Hypnosis isn't really terribly different in execution, which means it's still fairly situational. It's also a bit more strongly biased toward being a Warrior Spell thanks to Leadership being guaranteed per Level (Instead of undesirable to take until late in the game), which is conceptually a bit appreciated since the Warrior was so terrible in The Legend, but it's not some gamechanger.

Magic Shackles
Crystal Cost: 2 / 10 / 35
Mana Cost: 10 / 10 / 35
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4, Mass

Affected units are unable to use their Talents for 2 turns. (Before Intellect extension) Does not affect inorganic units, Plants, or units with the Persistence of Mind Ability. (But does affect the Undead) Capped by Hero Leadership, as modified by class: the Warrior is capped at 100% of their Leadership, the Paladin at 140% of their Leadership, and the Mage at 200% of their Leadership.

Crystal cost has been spiked noticeably, while the Mana cost at the third level has actually come down a little. Additionally, there's now a Leadership limit on what units you can affect, making Magic Shackles no longer an option for helping against insanely out-of-depth fights you're not meant to be taking on.

I'm not sure how meaningful the Leadership limit is for enemy Heroes. They do have a Leadership limit, but it's completely invisible in-game, so a player has no way of, say, identifying when their army is large enough to be safe from a given Hero's Magic Shackles, and I don't know how well it correlates to their actual army size.

Whatever the case, the Leadership cap's tuning is... odd. I assume the thought process is that it's an attempt to compensate for the Mage having the worst Leadership and the Warrior the best, but while Leadership has a substantial class-based element of growth in Armored Princess, you still get a fair amount of Leadership from other sources, where these other sources aren't modified by class modifiers; in real play a Warrior isn't going to have twice the Leadership of a Mage, or even come particularly close to such a vast gap outside of the extreme early game. Personally, I kind of wish the capping modifier ran the other direction -it would be interesting to have a Spell that's unambiguously much better in Warrior hands than in Mage hands.

Regardless, I'm a bit puzzled by this change being applied to Magic Shackles and not, say, Blind? Magic Shackles was never a Spell that was essential for breaking oversized battlegroups, and the Spells that do let you do that kind of thing remain unfettered. It's a very puzzling nerf to an already-niche Spell.

Admittedly it's a little less niche in Armored Princess, which has a lot more Talents you'd actually like to shut off, but it still seems weird.

Also, the game still doesn't actually mention the part where immunity to mental effects is protective against it.

Slow
Crystal Cost: 2 / 5 / 12
Mana Cost: 5 / 7 / 12
Level 1 Statistics: Speed: -1; Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Speed: -2; Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Speed: -3; Duration: 3 turns

Lowers a single enemy unit's Speed.

No change.

Slow is overall indirectly nerfed by the fact that Speed has trended upward in Armored Princess, and you're a little bit less likely to use it in specific since you have new options for interfering with enemy movement, but it overall remains a perfectly good option.

Pygmy
Crystal Cost: 4 / 8 / 12
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2; Health: -20%; Damage: -20%
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3; Health: -30%; Damage: -30%
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4; Health: -40%; Damage: -40%

Lowers a single enemy unit's Health and the damage of their basic attacks for 2 turns. Also disables certain Talents.

No change.

Pygmy is overall improved by Armored Princess in indirect ways, though. With Rage now having worthwhile damage options even in the late game outside just percentage damage, using Pygmy to effectively bolster your Rage damage output is actually worth considering, and as it happens its Mana costs line up with the Mage's reworked version of Higher Magic so it's worth considering as your first cast in a turn as a Mage to enhance the following Spell's damage while also benefiting units and Rage attacks.

It's still going to tend to be overshadowed by more dramatic options like Blind, but just forgetting it exists is probably a mistake.

Blind
Crystal Cost: 4 / 8 / 12
Mana Cost: 10 / 15 / 20
Level 1 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-2
Level 2 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-3
Level 3 Statistics: Target's Level: 1-4

A single enemy unit is completely disabled for 2 turns. The effect ends if it takes damage.

No change.

Blind is still stupendously useful, and since it even slips in under Higher Magic's range the Mage is actually considerably more likely to use it than they were in The Legend.

Berserk
Crystal Cost: 2 / 5 / 8
Mana Cost: 2 / 5 / 8
Level 1 Statistics: Attack: +75%; Target's Level: 1-2; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Attack: +100%; Target's Level: 1-3; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Attack: +125%; Target's Level: 1-4; Duration: 5 turns

A single allied unit increases its Attack, but control is removed from the player. Units that are immune to mental effects can't be affected.

Bizarrely, Berserk's Mana and Crystal prices are higher at Levels 2 and 3 than in The Legend. I really have no idea why, given it was fairly awful in The Legend and I can't think of a single way it's better in Armored Princess.

Haste
Crystal Cost: 2 / 5 / 15
Mana Cost: 3 / 5 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Speed: +1; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Speed: +2; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Speed: +2, Mass; Duration: 4 turns

Affected allies gain additional Speed/Action Points. (This won't give units an additional turn if they've already ended their turn)

No change.

Haste is still one of your best army-supporting tools at Level 3, pretty much.

Precision
Crystal Cost: 2 / 4 / 16
Mana Cost: 2 / 4 / 16
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: +25%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: +30%; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: +30%, Mass; Duration: 4 turns

Affected ranged attackers have the base damage of their attacks increased.

Damage boost on the first level is a bit higher, duration no longer increases on the final level, while the Crystal and Mana cost actually spikes dramatically for the third level like you normally see on mass-at-final-level Spells.

I kind of suspect this ties into the general trend where a lot of Armored Princess seems to involve noticing that ranged-heavy armies are really good, where The Legend seems to have imagined them as being niche/not very good.

Personally, I was never very fond of Precision in The Legend and have even less motive to use it in Armored Princess due to the nerfs, but I can see why they'd bring it more in line with the other mass-cast-gaining Spells.

Also, the cap on its effectiveness is actually feasible to reach in Armored Princess; 40 Intellect is, if anything, a bit low for an endgame Mage, rather than absurdly high. So that's something to keep in mind if you're fond of Precision as a Mage.

Magic Spring
Crystal Cost: 3 / 7 / 12
Mana Cost: 5 / 7 / 9
Level 1 Statistics: Defense: +5; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Defense: +10; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Defense: +15; Duration: 5 turns

A single allied unit bolsters its Defense by a flat value. Every time the affected unit takes damage, the unit's controller gains 5 Mana and the duration of the buff decreases by 1 turn.

Magic Spring no longer is percentile for its Defense boost, its Crystal cost has been spiked overall, and now the Mana cost rises over time, making it no longer something you can toss the highest level version on something and assume it will pay for itself even if the unit is instantly killed.

So basically it's no longer kind of a silly gamebreaker, but is still quite good for protecting a unit while extending your Mana economy. That works for me.

Stone Skin
Crystal Cost: 1 / 2 / 4
Mana Cost: 3 / 5 / 7
Level 1 Statistics: Defense and Physical Resistance: +20%; Duration: 3 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Defense and Physical Resistance: +30%; Duration: 4 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Defense and Physical Resistance: +40%; Duration: 5 turns

A single allied unit has its Defense and Physical

Resistance increased by a percentage, but its Initiative is lowered by 1.

No change.

The big thing worth pointing out is that Stone Skin is a cheap option for building progress on Guardian Angel, unlike eg Divine Armor. Dropping Stone Skin on random units in the closing stages of a battle is thus one of the best ways of building Guardian Angel progress without having to actually compromise a winning strategy. The secondary point is that it's de-facto a little bit better than it was in The Legend, since the Guardian Angel Medal raising base Physical resistance means Stone Skin's own Resistance increase has a more significant effect on your units' durability.

Overall though Stone Skin really does work out much like it did in The Legend. The Same But More So, you might say.

Invisibility
Crystal Cost: 3 / 6 / 9
Mana Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Duration: 2 turns
Level 2 Statistics: Duration: 3 turns
Level 3 Statistics: Duration: 4 turns

A single allied unit is rendered invisible to the enemy, rendering them un-targetable. The effect ends prematurely if they attack or use any Talent.

No change.

Abusing it with Emerald Green Dragons is less practical now, thanks to Intellect being overhauled to require more points for extending duration on effects. It's also less consistently effective -I'd assume- since there's more Eyeless units, and in particular more Eyeless units that are actually pretty hard to kill. For most purposes though, nothing has really changed. It's still possible to do this abuse, mind, but it's not as effortless as in The Legend.

I suppose if you're a Mage and you're considering it while able to double-cast you do need to remember you can't cast the Level 3 version as your first cast?

Target
Crystal Cost: 2 / 6 / 12
Mana Cost: 3 / 6 / 12
Level 1 Statistics: Duration: 1 turns. Level limit: 2
Level 2 Statistics: Duration: 2 turns. Level limit: 3
Level 3 Statistics: Duration: 3 turns. Level limit: 4

A single allied unit is made more appealing of a target to units up to a certain Level.

Target's third level has a slightly higher Crystal cost. That's really it.

Phantom
Crystal Cost: 3 / 6 / 9
Mana Cost: 15 / 20 / 25
Level 1 Statistics: Phantom Health: 20%
Level 2 Statistics: Phantom Health: 30%
Level 3 Statistics: Phantom Health: 40%

Targets an allied unit to generate a phantom version of the unit that lasts for three turns. The phantom's stack size is derived from a percentage of the unit being copied, going off of Health, though the initial unit number is only ever 'whole numbers'. (The new stack can be eg 1 troop or 2 troops, not 2 troops where the second one has only half health) This phantom is a completely fresh unit (Its Talents are fresh, even if the unit being copied has used up all its Talents), but it leaves no corpse when it dies.

No change.

It's worth mentioning Phantom is a lot more slanted away from the Mage due to the overhaul on level-derived Leadership. Which is quite nice. Overall you still use it much as you did in The Legend, just that you should be keeping it in mind more as a Warrior and to a lesser extent Paladin than in The Legend.

Teleport
Crystal Cost: 2 / 5 / 15
Mana Cost: 5 / 8 / 12
Level 1 Statistics: Range: 4
Level 2 Statistics: Range: 6
Level 3 Statistics: Range: Unlimited

Moves a friendly unit to a targeted cell within a certain number of tiles of the units starting location.

Teleport's range on the first two levels has been bumped up by 1, which is nice, and it hasn't even increased in price or anything of the sort. Awesome.

Teleport was already a uniquely useful Spell, and it's not only been directly buffed but now there's Chosha and Burrowing Brontors to give new unique utility to Teleport. If you're fond of Lizardmen, you're likely to end up fond of Teleport.

Oil Mist
Crystal Cost: 2 / 4 / 6
Mana Cost: 5 / 5 / 5
Level 1 Statistics: Duration: 2. Ranged attack: -30%. Fire resist: -20%
Level 2 Statistics: Duration: 3. Ranged attack: -50%. Fire resist: -30%
Level 3 Statistics: Duration: 4. Ranged attack: -70%. Fire resist: -40%

Designates a seven-tile circle with an Oil Mist. This Oil Mist reduces damage dealt by ranged attackers firing from within the mist and also reduces the Fire

resistance of units within the mist. Has no effect on Level 5 units.

So remember Greasy Mist and Shroud? Gone! Combined into Oil Mist. Not only that, but Oil Mist lowers the ranged damage of Eyeless units. Compared to Shroud, it's pure improvement (Unless you're wanting to send in melee units and are unhappy with them losing Fire resist? This is a pretty niche concern, though), and compared to Greasy Mist... well, you're losing the tiny amount of immediate damage, and it doesn't 'cling' to the target, letting them move to escape it, but you can drop it on an entire battlegroup and follow up with Fire Rain while simultaneously impairing any ranged attackers in the group. That's a more-than-fair trade in my book.

I actually really like Oil Mist's spellbook graphic. I'm sure some people think it's lazy, but I honestly love how it's clearly Shroud+Greasy Mist, aside from the shift from orange to yellow on the mist. It's good communication for returning players, that they should expect this new-yet-kinda-familiar-looking Spell to be new-yet-kinda-familiar in functionality too.

Oil Mist is obviously particularly fantastic if you're inclined to field Imps and Scoffer Imps, with the radius perfectly aligned with the area of effect on their Fireballs. In particular keep in mind it's helpful for letting your Imps do good damage to Demons -a Level 3 Oil Mist is nearly doubling their damage against most Demons. (It's really unfortunate it doesn't work on Archdemons...) So keep Oil Mist in mind if you like fielding Demons.

Also keep in mind that it's a way to improve Burn damage. While the resistance numbers I've listed look a little underwhelming, that's the base numbers -Oil Mist's resistance-lowering effect actually scales with Intellect, adding 1% per Intellect. Thus, at 40 Intellect a Level 3 Oil Mist is actually -80% Fire resist. And to be clear, this is fully multiplicative with Burn's innate percentile damage; if you get enough Intellect to bring it to -100% resistance, that does in fact double Burn's damage. So Oil Mist is something to keep in mind if you're considering taking on an oversized army.

Awaken Dragon
Crystal Cost: 5 / 10 / 15
Mana Cost: 10 / 10 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Mana burn: 30%
Level 2 Statistics: Mana burn: 20%
Level 3 Statistics: Mana burn: 10%

Cancels the Dragon's current Rest period. In addition to the actual Mana cost, a percentage of your current Mana is drained as well.

By far the most important implication of Awaken Dragon is that it's a lifesaver for Rage skills with a Rest period above 1. And I don't mean like 'well, I can use Stone Wall and then use something else next turn by casting Awaken Dragon', I mean 'I can use Stone Wall, cast Awaken Dragon, and then immediately use Smashing Blow, ending up with a Rest of 1'. The game doesn't stack Rest periods or anything like that. In fact, you can even use a given Rage effect twice in a turn: there's no separate cooldown on individual Rage effects in Armored Princess. (Unlike the later games)

It's honestly difficult to overstate how much of a game-changer Awaken Dragon is. In fights you're confident in your ability to win without Spells and Rage, it makes it easier to get Treasure Searcher collection out of the way. In fights that are actually hard-fought, it lets you do wacky stuff like drop 2 -or even three, if you're the Mage!- Balls of Lightning to wear down the enemy hilariously rapidly, or keep two slow-yet-huge melee stacks away from you by just bashing both of them with Smashing Blow each turn. In general it accelerates your Pet Dragon's experience growth... and there's just an incredible amount of room for creativity and interesting ways to solve an encounter.

It's also notable as the Spell that really secures the Warrior's ability to do ruinous things with Rage, letting her essentially give up her weak Spellcasting ability on a turn to leverage her more useful Rage abilities.

Note that the 'Mana burn' effect occurs after the regular cost has been paid, and is not factored into your ability to cast the Spell. If you have exactly 10 Mana left, you can cast Awaken Dragon just fine, and you won't end up with negative Mana or anything weird like that.

Exorcism
Crystal Cost: 8 / 14 / 20
Mana Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 200
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 400
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 600

Does Magic

damage to a single target Undead, Demon, or summoned unit. In the case of summoned units, does double damage.

Another new Distortion Magic Spell, and a fairly interesting one since its thematics would usually place it under Order. It even benefits from the boost-various-holy-Order-Spells Skill! Nonetheless, it's under Distortion, and yes its .txt file position places it under Distortion too, so this isn't some weird last-minute change.

Exorcism itself is an astonishingly effective single-target nuke, especially against summons, albeit one with a moderately burdensome Mana cost. Its most frustrating flaw from the perspective of a Mage is that it's awkwardly placed in the context of Higher Magic: you can't open with its Level 3 version if you want to double-cast, yet it's difficult to justify using it as your second cast when you've got things like Black Hole and Death Star as your alternatives for the second cast.

Note that all Boss summons do, in fact, count as summons for Exorcism purposes, even though most of the Boss summoning effects are rather mundane-looking. As such, Exorcism can really help you out if you're struggling to keep the cannon fodder under control in a Boss fight, especially if you haven't yet found something like Black Hole.

That said, overall Exorcism is an awkward Spell that's only occasionally actually worth casting. I like the idea of it, but it really needed more damage, or a useful side effect like inflicting Stun, or something.

Turn Back Time
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 30
Mana Cost: 30 / 30 / 30
Level 1 Statistics: Max target Level: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Max target Level: 4
Level 3 Statistics: Max target Level: 5

Returns a target unit to the position and condition it began its last turn at.

Oh look, it's Reaper's Time Back, but as a Spell!

Contrary to what you might be thinking, Turn Back Time actually is in the base version of Armored Princess, unlike all these other recycled Rage skills. It's also worth commentary that it de-facto takes over Gift's role as 'extend the utility of specific Talents', only it's even more expensive and finicky. But also has wider utility, which I absolutely appreciate.

Turn Back Time is, mechanically speaking, pretty much literally just Reaper's Time Back skill from The Legend, but now it's a Spell. Notably, you can't use it on Spell-immune units, which is worth mentioning given how many of these converted Rage skills don't care about Spell immunity.

Also worth noting is that a mechanics issue not evident in The Legend is that you can only take advantage of a given Turn Back Time moment once. If you Turn Back Time a unit on Round 2, before it gets a chance to move in Round 2, and then use Turn Back Time on that same unit on Round 3, it won't reset to its pristine Round 1 status a second time, it'll revert to whatever state it was at when Round 2 started, before you Turned Back Time on it. This can be a nasty surprise if eg a unit took a horrific beating on the first Round, you Turn Back Time to avoid that, and then during the second Round they take a smaller-but-still-unacceptable-to-you amount of damage and you actually make their damage worse as a result.

By a similar token, you have to play carefully if you want to use Turn Back Time to endlessly recycle a charge-based Talent: you can't just use the Talent and Turn Back Time every Round, you have to give the unit time to have an 'anchor' in which it legitimately started its turn with the Talent unused.

While these mechanics make Turn Back Time somewhat less abusable than you might've been intuitively expecting, it's still a fantastic Spell that can de-facto fill multiple very useful roles all at once. You can Sacrifice a unit and then Turn Back Time to undo the casualties for cheaper than a series of Resurrections would be, you can let a unit charge in and suffer egregious casualties -such as letting an Executioner get dogpiled so it can retaliate against everything- and then just Turn Back Time so they're pristine again, you can Turn Back Time on enemies to stall them or erase benefits that have been stacked on them or both, the list of possibilities remains largely bounded by your imagination.

The Mana price is pretty intense and so you can't just freely toss it out, but its effects are still frequently fantastic and worth the price. Turn Back Time is one of the most useful Spells added in the game, period, regardless of which class you're looking at. You probably won't use it in every battle, but when it's worth breaking out it's really worth breaking out.

Balance of Power
Crystal Cost: 5 / 10 / 15
Mana Cost: 5 / 10 / 15
Level 1 Statistics: Bonus Adrenaline: 1, 'inspiration' chance: 33%.
Level 2 Statistics: Bonus Adrenaline: 3, 'inspiration' chance: 66%.
Level 3 Statistics: Bonus Adrenaline: 5, 'inspiration' chance: 100%.

Evenly divides the Adrenaline of all allied Orcs among all allied Orcs, with some Adrenaline added. Non-Orc units instead have a chance of becoming Hasted or Battle Cried. (This is the 'inspiration' chance)

The only Distortion Magic Spell Orcs on the March adds that isn't based on a Rage skill from The Legend.

Balance of Power has a personal duration value, but I'm not listing it because it's never actually used by the game. Rather bizarrely, it instead always calls the Haste turn duration of its Spell Level -this makes sense when it boosts Speed, where it literally casts Haste, but if it casts Battle Cry this actually gives it 1 more turn of duration than if you cast Battle Cry directly. Either way, when I say Balance of Power is casting Haste or Battle Cry, this includes that eg you can't stack Balance of Power's Speed buff with a Haste, because the game really did just cast Haste.

By default, it's a 50/50 split as to whether it Hastes or Battle Cries when 'inspiration' triggers, but in the event a unit is already under Haste or Battle Cry it will reliably apply the one that isn't in effect. (Assuming 'inspiration' triggered at all, of course) In conjunction with it providing a longer Battle Cry than an actual Battle Cry of the same Level (For the same Mana cost, even), this means for a non-Orc army it's strictly optimal to cast Haste Level 3 followed by Balance of Power rather than Haste plus Battle Cry, since of course Level 3 Balance of Power always triggers its inspiration chance.

To be explicit: a Level 3 Balance of Power triggering a Haste cast doesn't mass-cast Haste just because a single individual rolled Haste. And of course triggering Battle Cry is always per-target even though the Battle Cry Spell is a mass-cast.

Balance of Power, like Totem of Adrenaline, is a Spell I think is a somewhat interesting idea that I've nonetheless never actually cast myself in 'real' combat conditions. Evenly dividing Adrenaline isn't actually that useful in general, and only really gains potential once your maximum Adrenaline is high enough there can be units with a significant surplus who won't necessarily lose their bonuses just because you cast Balance of Power (ie they have 50 Adrenaline, casting it drops them to 30 or so, so they're still at Level 3 Adrenaline), while the 'inspiration chance' makes it this weird, unreliable alternative to Haste/Battle Cry if you're using non-Orcs. At that end, the only particularly nice thing I have to say about it is that it's mass cast at Level 1, and so can potentially boost the Speed of multiple units in a single turn, which Haste can't match until Level 3, but it's behind so much RNG it'll almost never happen. It's slightly better at Level 2, but still way too unreliable.

It's nice that it provides Adrenaline in addition to the reorganizing aspect, but the amount is so small that it's just this nice little bonus if you were considering casting Balance of Power anyway for some reason.

The overall result is that it's only at all worth considering extremely late in the game, and it's hampered by the conflicting drives involved. A Warrior will easily get her Orcs to high Adrenaline values via Skills from quite early in the game, but getting Distortion Magic 3 will be painful and casting Balance of Power 3 will be moderately burdensome. A Mage will much more readily get to Distortion Magic 3, but will struggle to get the relevant Might Skills leveled high enough to make it a worthwhile Spell to cast, and being a Mage she'd generally rather try to nuke enemies or summon Chaos Dragons or otherwise disdain boosting her comparatively weak army. Only a Paladin is all that likely to find themselves getting real use out of Balance of Power, and it's still going to be something that isn't worth bothering with until extremely late in the game. And only if you wanted to focus on Orcs in specific in the run.

Overall, I'd rather have had a Spell for directly boosting the Adrenaline of a single Orc, or a Spell to somehow provide a new avenue for gaining Adrenaline. (ala Totem of Adrenaline, but minus the 'destroy a corpse' requirement)

At least it has some fiddly utility for non-Orc armies?

Glot's Armor
Crystal Cost: 10 / 10 / 10
Mana Cost: 15 / 18 / 23
Level 1 Statistics: Health: 300, Duration: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Health: 700, Duration: 4
Level 3 Statistics: Health: 1500, Duration: 5

A single allied unit is protected by a shield which absorbs all damage the unit would normally take. 'Overkill' damage will not spill over when the shield is broken. The unit cannot move, be moved except by Teleport, or use Talents that require it move so long as the shield remains active, and will not retaliate against enemy attacks. This shield has 1% non-Astral (

) resistances and 3 Defense.

It's Glot's Armor, but now it's a Spell!

And... strangely enough, it's actually frustratingly bad. Glot's Armor as a Rage Skill worked decently due to how Rage's mechanics worked in The Legend, most notably the Rest mechanic and the multiple Spirits. Sometimes you'd be in a situation where the best thing Sleem could do was Glot's Armor, and everybody else was unavailable. Furthermore, Rage was a resource generated on an ongoing basis, and so the exact price point of a Rage Skill wasn't a make-or-break deal unless it prevented you from using it.

Glot's Armor in Orcs on the March is painfully expensive (While being a Spell, where being expensive is much more concretely 'I could've cast X if I hadn't cast Y'), and it often badly underperforms. The shield itself still doesn't use the Defense or resistances of the unit being defended, instead using its personal awful statlines, making it routine to see Glot's Armor take several times more damage than what the unit underneath would take from the same attack.

It's especially harmed by how it's now in direct competition with Invisibility, which is a much more surefire way of denying the enemy the ability to hurt a unit, while being cheaper and being in some ways less constrictive on the unit affected!

On top of all that, it doesn't even count for the Guardian Angel Medal, meaning that from a long-term perspective it's usually better to drop Stone Skin on something you'd like to not suffer casualties since it can potentially do that and will advance your Guardian Angel progress.

There's still times Glot's Armor can be useful, such as when you want a unit to act as a distraction without taking damage and either can't Trap the attacker(s) or aren't confident in your ability to do so (high Speed units with Flight aren't less predictable exactly, but they're less obvious to a player still learning the game), but it's surprising how rare it's justified to cast it compared to how useful it was in The Legend.

In addition to its tuning problems, Glot's Armor also has a coding problem, in that it's actually meant to scale its duration with Intellect, but it doesn't actually do so. Admittedly this was probably missed in part because real play will virtually never have it last more than two turns anyway, but still.

Oh, and it's still susceptible to Siege Gun, so Catapults and Cannoneers pop it especially easily.

Poisonous Spit
Crystal Cost: 5 / 7 / 10
Mana Cost: 10 / 10 / 10
Level 1 Statistics: Damage: 20-60, Poisoning Damage: 10-30, Duration: 3
Level 2 Statistics: Damage: 40-130, Poisoning Damage: 20-65 Duration: 4
Level 3 Statistics: Damage: 65-200, Poisoning Damage: 35-100, Duration: 5

A single target enemy takes immediate Poison

damage, and is also afflicted with a special Poisoning status that does 'fixed' Poison

damage instead of percentile Poison

damage but can be stacked with regular Poisoning.

It's Poisonous Spit, but as a Spell!

And it's surprisingly awful.

The fact that its Mana price is rigid and not horribly high means it's better at higher Levels/later in the game, as does the fact that the duration of the Poisoning is directly increased by Spell Level, but it remains the case that its damage up front and over time is quite low, and since it's not benefiting from Poisoning's overhaul it actually tends to perform poorly compared to Poison Skull, which costs the same or less Mana at every Level and at Level 3 is realistically guaranteed to Poison the target. Poisonous Spit's Poisoning damage does scale with Intellect, but unless you're playing on Easy or something, even the Mage will tend to find enemy army size growth vs Intellect growth ends up favoring regular Poisoning over Poison Spit's Poisoning.

Heck, Poison Skull even has better minimum and maximum damage for the up-front damage!

It's a surprisingly lackluster addition to the game in practice, probably not worth the Magic Crystals.

Oh, and this isn't going to come up in real play, but where in The Legend Poison Spit could afflict even things immune to Poisoning, in Armored Princess a Poison resistance of at least 80% prevents its over-time effect from being applied. A player would never want to do that anyway just thanks to the changed context of being a Spell instead of a part of The Legend's Rage system (In short: why would you cast a Poison damage Spell on a heavily Poison-resistant target when you definitely can be doing something less ineffective with your turn's cast?), but hey, one more way in which it's worse off than in The Legend.

Ice Orb
Crystal Cost: 10 / 20 / 35
Mana Cost: 20 / 30 / 40
Level 1 Statistics: Summons an Orb of Cold
Level 2 Statistics: Summons an Orb of Snow
Level 3 Statistics: Summons an Orb of Ice

Summons an Ice Orb into any open tile the caster feels like targeting.

The targeting is exactly as generous as it was back in The Legend, only now you're not having to mess around with the question of 'will I get enough Rage to cast it this turn?'

Unit stats time.

Orb of Cold
Level: 3
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 30 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 2 / 2 (Note that Speed is only relevant for Initiative calculations, due to the Ball Ability)
Health: 400
Damage: 25-50 Physical

Resistances: 10% Physical

, 25% Magic

, -100% Fire

Orb of Snow
Level: 4
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 40 / 40
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 2
Health: 800
Damage: 60-90 Physical

Resistances: 25% Physical

, 50% Magic

, -80% Fire

Orb of Ice
Level: 5
Leadership: 1
Attack/Defense: 40 / 40
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 1200
Damage: 110-150 Physical

Resistances: 30% Physical

, 80% Magic

, -50% Fire

Talents: None
Abilities: Ice (+Physical resistance, -Fire resistance), Ball (+100% of base damage added per tile traveled before attacking, but can only travel in straight lines, travels until it hits something, and automatically attacks whatever the thing that stops it if it's an enemy. Targets cannot retaliate when struck. Conversely, the Ice Ball will never retaliate. Additionally, the Ice Ball cannot be healed), Magic Immunity (+Magic resistance, Spells don't effect the unit), Blizzard (At the start of its turn, all adjacent enemies that aren't resistant to cold damage have their Attack lowered by 25% for 1 turn)

Blizzard's English-language in-game description claims to Freeze enemies, but it does not do so. It's also a very non-standard effect, in that it's not treated as a proper debuff by the game; it won't lower Morale, can't be Dispelled, not even by the Witch Hunter's self-clear, and works on anything that isn't considered resistant to cold. (Which includes Orbs of Ice and Phoenixes)

Regardless, the Orb of Ice has pretty bonkers base Health -that's 300 less than the max in The Legend, before Intellect scaling shoots past it- and while the base damage is still underwhelming compared to The Legend's heights (350-400 is around 3-4 times what the Orb of Ice has as base) and is unlikely to actually catch up through Intellect scaling (You'd need something like eighty Intellect to get there, though the Summoning Skill could cover part of that) it's really great as a distraction that happens to get in decent enough damage, especially since its Physical resistance has bumped up slightly, its Magic resistance is finally at standard Magic Immunity levels, and its Fire weakness is merely bad instead of agonizingly bad.

If you want to use it as a wrecking ball... you're going to be disappointed, honestly, compared to Lina's version's heights. The main thing it has going for it is that Spells are a lot easier to get the perfect timing done than with Rage moves, making it easier to line up deadly bowling ball lanes.

Regardless, it's serviceable, and the Blizzard effect in particular contributes to it being able to tank hits for a surprising amount of time, so it's certainly worth keeping in mind, Mage or no.

----------------

Next time, we cover Rage in Armored Princess.

See you then.