Rolled Aries!

Silence, fools!

I rolled an Aries last week.  Part of why I started the blog today is so I could crow about this to someone, even if only the ice-cold void of the Internet.

This is my first new hero since I rolled a Beast Tamer about two months back.  Beast Tamer doesn't seem to have any particular use, and I have not instantiated him.

But Aries... yeah, he's super useful.  I've got mine up to level 169, and skill 8/10.  I got a lifedrain 1/8 in a recent quest re-roll, so he's got that for sniping.  I also have him inscripted up to level 83, which is my standard level for weaker heroes.  This will go higher.  And I gave him my set of Revite 4 crests, previously owned by my Death Knight.

Already I have seen my average Arena wins move up a half notch, even though I lack Dread Drake.  Of course without DD there's a pretty hard cap on how high one can go, but I have still started to occasionally top out at the 90 HB/hour level, whatever that is rankwise.

But I am having the most fun with Aries as a supplemental sniper.  I'll have a long sniper guide out soon, to be posted here.  So stay tuned for that.  But here's the fun thing about Aries: Aries can kill Skull Knight in half the time by turning off his Revive 8!  Making this happen is chancy, but when it works, it feels great.  Take that, you overpowered hero that I wish I had!

Yes, Silence stops Revive from working.  However, there is a catch: Aries must have a teammate to do the actual kill.  Aries' skill, Calamity, does damage first, and only after the damage does it impose Silence.  Thus, as a solo sniper, Aries never stops Revive.  You have to have two (or more) snipers; Aries needs to proc and damage, but not quite kill, the victim; then when the red cloud of Silence affects the victim, some other hero needs to kill him.

My main sniper is Warlock, and that won't change since he's the most awesome sniper.  But now I watch carefully the enemy SK, if there is one, and when he gets low, I drop Aries and hope for the best.  This works particularly well in Expeditions and Guild Wars, since if Aries doesn't get the timing right and SK revives, you can just quit and retry.

I have even started to snipe some of the "X" bases so common in Guild Wars.  Particularly if they have troops, you can do this with a full set of snipers.

Introduction

I've decided to create a blog for Castle Clash, since I have been writing a bit about it.  Often I go looking for CC information on the web, and can't find what I want.  Some info is out there -- the CC wiki is decent, but by no means great.  And reddit often has useful info.  But I have noticed not much blogging about it, meaning very little information outside of those two places.  Indeed, I found my current guild, Acadian Clashers, via google searching for info about the game.  Our leader has webbed some useful information.  It boggles my mind that there are not other guilds out there with such information posted, but there don't seem to be.

A bit about me, then.

I am an old strategy gamer from way back.  Other games I have enjoyed recently are EVE (I blogged about that too), and Clash of Clans, though I never blogged about that.  CoC is a great game, by the way, in its clan wars.  The problem is that my clan got old and ceased to have enough people interested in wars... and the raiding game in CoC is not much fun.  I could get a new clan, I guess, but I have not done so.  In fact CoC is not even on my phone right now.

I am playing CC mainly because it offers me interesting tactical puzzles in small chunks.  This is what raids, expeditions, and guild wars are.  It also offers a strategic level of planning for some subgames, as for example attempting to optimize your team for Boss 5 (the Centaur boss and Rage Goblin team).  I enjoy thinking about this kind of stuff.

In CC, I am a free to play (FtP) player.  I have never bought a gem, although I did scrounge a few free gems by watching stupid videos and suchlike when I was first playing.  I have not even bought the $0.99 Phantom King pack, which seems like a pretty great deal.

As a FtP, I don't have maxxed out heroes and I don't have anywhere near a full collection.  However, I started playing Clash about a year and a half ago, and have been playing steadily since.  So I do have fairly strong heroes, and I do have a decent set of them.  Of the more common top level heroes, I lack a Skull Knight, a Dread Drake, and Vlad.