Warriors of the North Unit Analysis Part 11: Snow Elves


Snow Elves are one of two entirely new factions in Ice and Fire, and they're the first one you'll see. Their primary factional distinction is...

Snow Elf
Defense is increased by 25% on snowy battlefield. Attack is decreased by 25% on volcanic battlefields. Additionally, each unit has a unique property.

... pretty limited. They don't even have any Ice resistance from it or anything. As with Dwarves' Drunken Ability, I'll be using the Snow Elf Ability to cover each individual unit's special snowflake quirk.

Racial Morale-wise, Snow Elves get a mono-racial Morale bonus, and...

-1 Morale for Demon presence in allies.
-3 Morale for Undead presence in allies.
-3 Morale for Lizardmen presence in allies.
-3 Morale for Undead Lizardmen presence in allies.
+1 Morale if the army is made solely of Elves and Snow Elves.

... Snow Elves are actually overall more chill (pardon the pun) than Elves are, with a smaller list of units that bother them and only Lizardmen bothering them more than they bother regular Elves. This makes it a lot easier to blend Snow Elves with other factional units, which is nifty. Of course, Snow Elves are designed so several of them are only really good if they're operating as part of a Snow Elf-heavy force, but there's still some fairly splashable units, like Snow Falcons.


Snowflake Fairy
Level: 1
Hiring Cost: 18
Leadership: 9
Attack/Defense: 4 / 3
Initiative/Speed: 7 / 5
Health: 9
Damage: 1-2 Ice
Resistances: 20% Ice
Talents: Special Crystal (Reload: 2. Summons an Ice Spike to an arbitrary open tile)
Abilities: Soars, No retaliation, Cold Protection (20% Ice resistance), Ice Touch (30% chance to Freeze with melee attacks), Snow Elf (Each time the Snowflake Fairy attacks an enemy who is Frozen or currently within a Snowstorm, they gain +3 Attack and Defense for the rest of the battle, up to a max of +30)

As you'll soon be seeing, Snowflake Fairies are... actually a bit atypical of Snow Elves. Most Snow Elf units are a bigger, meaner version of an Elf unit, with an ice theme slapped on to further separate them. Snowflake Fairies are technically 'bigger' than a Lake Fairy (Or, alternatively, are just as 'big' as a Forest Fairy), but they have the damage of a Lake Fairy with the Leadership of a Forest Fairy, similar combat stats in general, and their Ice resistance is actually weaker than the Magic resistance of Lake and Forest Fairies. Their Talent is borderline useless if you don't team them up with Snow Elves who make special use of Ice Spikes (And since Sorcerers can generate Ice Spikes en mass with their ranged attack, this isn't a unique niche for Snowflake Fairies), their Snow Elf unique quirk is this weird, slow build-up to admittedly quite high Attack and Defense for a Level 1 unit but you're having to have a glass cannon land ten attacks (Even with counterattacks counting, that's a lot) to get there... sure, Ice damage is actually overall much less resisted than Magic damage, so that's a pretty notable point in their favor for offense (Most especially in Keeper fights), but Snowflake Fairies are the only Snow Elf unit where I'd often probably rather have the Elf unit they counterpart to. And since Elves and Snow Elves can be freely mixed while still getting +1 to Morale, that's a perfectly viable scenario!

And rather like Lake Fairies and Forest Fairies tending to be displaced by Dryads, I'd generally rather have an Ice Nymph than a Snowflake Fairy if I'm wanting a Snow Elf unit with a No Retaliation Ice damage attack who Soars. Admittedly, Ice Nymphs have pretty noticeably worse damage -only slightly higher base Attack, and nearly 3 times the Leadership while only raising their max roll by 50%- so Snowflake Fairies could certainly be worse off, but it's still a bit frustrating to see the same basic design issue recur on a new-ish faction.

Fighting them is pretty similar to fighting Lake and Forest Fairies, but overall a bit easier unless your army is really heavy on Ice damage or on Magic resistance. The AI will occasionally waste a turn holding still and summoning an Ice Spike, with the AI honestly having no idea how to place them usefully, and even when they're just going on the attack they're just not that hard to kill. They should be a priority fairly often just because of how quickly they can get across the field, but not as much of a priority as, say, Snow Falcons.


White Werewolf
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 370
Leadership: 100
Attack/Defense: 20 / 20
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 90
Damage: 9-12 Physical
Resistances: 10% Ice
Talents: Transformation (Reload 2: Switch forms), Shroud (Reload: 3. An allied unit below Level 4 other than the user is rendered Invisible for 2 turns)
Abilities: Blades (Melee attacks inflict Bleeding), Night Vision (+50% Attack at night and/or in underground combat), Vampire Despiser (+30% damage against vampires in either form), Cold Protection (10% Ice resistance), Regeneration ('Top' member fully heals at the start of their turn), Battle Marks (Snow Elves other than White Werewolves gain +1 Initiative), Snow Elf (Enemies that are Frozen, Slowed, or standing in a Snowstorm do not get a chance to retaliate against the White Werewolf)

It's the Werewolf Elf's bigger, meaner cousin (As I said earlier; a common theme with Snow Elves), throwing in the ability to toss Invisibility on an ally, which is nifty. I especially appreciate that they can get situational No Retaliation, as one of the reasons it can be hard to justify using Werewolf Elves is that they lack No Retaliation entirely, while being a surprisingly generic melee attacker otherwise too.

Though note that they don't have Tolerance, unlike Werewolf Elves. You're strongly incentivized to run Snow Elves altogether, so this isn't a huge loss in context, but it is something regular Werewolf Elves have over White Werewolves.

Battle Marks is also really nice, making it easier to justify incorporating White Werewolves into a Snow Elf army because even if they don't contribute a lot with their turns per se the passive Initiative boost may well be a game-changer on its own. 

Overall, though, White Werewolves play broadly like Werewolf Elves but a bit more useful. And I've never seen the AI use Shroud, so for AI ones this is especially true.

It gets more interesting -at least in player hands- when you start considering how White Wolves function.


White Wolf
Level: 3
Leadership: 100
Attack/Defense: 22 / 16
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 4
Health: 90
Damage: 8-11 Physical
Resistances: -10% Fire resistance, 10% Ice resistance
Talents: Secret Paths (Reload: 3. The White Wolf teleports to an open tile within 3 tiles, ignoring intervening obstacles. This doesn't end their turn or consume action points), Transformation (Reload: 2. Switch forms)
Abilities: Beast (-10% Fire resistance, +10% Ice resistance), Night Vision (+50% Attack at night and/or in underground combat), Vampire Despiser (+30% damage against vampires in either form), Alpha (Allied Wolves, Hyenas, and Werewolf Elves in wolf form gain +1 Morale), Ice Devil (If currently standing in a Snowstorm, has unlimited retaliations), Snow Elf (When attacking enemies who are Frozen or within a Snowstorm, the White Wolf leeches 50% of the damage it does, healing and potentially resurrecting casualties)

I really love how the White Wolf is genuinely a contrast in strategy with the Snow Elf form. The Snow Elf wants to opportunistically take potshots at enemies who are suffering from the cold, avoiding getting caught up in a brawl. The White Wolf wants to charge into a snowstorm, let enemies dogpile onto it, and come out the other side soaked in its enemy's blood and wagging its tail happily having done insane damage and suffered no permanent casualties. It's amazing, and it makes the decision about which form to use at any given moment much more significant.

Notice that unlike Werewolves, White Wolves don't have Regeneration. You... don't actually miss it, and their Snow Elf quirk is honestly a lot more useful... but it's interesting that White Werewolves lose Regeneration when transformed, unlike Werewolf Elves. Also notice that White Wolves don't have Howl, instead having Secret Paths; this is a bit of an interesting flip, in that for Werewolf Elves their Elven form is a dedicated combat piece while their wolf form is a fast supporting piece, while for White Werewolves their Elven form is the one that has support capabilities while their wolf form is a dedicated combatant who readily closes to melee right pass Traps and obstacles and so on.

The AI is pretty erratic when it comes to Secret Paths. I've seen the AI use it every once in a great while, but most of the time you can basically pretend they don't have it because most of the time they just... don't use it. I really have no idea what prompts them to decide to use it. By a similar token, the AI doesn't try to leverage Snow Elf special traits, so you'll almost never see an AI White Wolf go nuts with its leeching and so on unless you foolishly toss a Snowstorm down yourself. So oddly enough White Wolves actually tend to be a bit less bothersome than AI Werewolves, because AI Werewolves will mostly-consistently use Howl to screw up your battle plans while White Wolves will usually just... try to close and attack and that's it.

So long as you make sure to provide some support to them -and in the long haul several of your Rage moves will have a 75% chance of Freezing enemies so it's not like it's an effort to provide that support- White Wolves are really, really good as melee meatshields, much like Vampires and Ancient Vampires have always been via their bat forms. The one caveat is that you tend to not get that many sources of Snow Elves, and so it may require some Sacrifice shenanigans to keep their numbers up with your Leadership once you're fairly deep into the game even if you're perfect at avoiding permanent casualties.


Frost Unicorn
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1050
Leadership: 170
Attack/Defense: 30 / 25
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 4
Health: 155
Damage (Default): 8-15 Physical+3-6 Ice
Damage (Horn of Light bonus): +4-7 Magic
Resistances: 25% Magic, 10% Ice
Talents: Winter Breath (Charge: 1. A target ally is granted a 5 turn buff, which causes enemy melee attackers to be Frozen for 2 turns if targeting the unit, but the buff's duration is lowered by 1 each time this is triggered)
Abilities: Magic Resistance (+25% Magic resistance), Horn of Light, (Adds Horn of Light damage against Demons, Undead, and Undead Lizardmen) Sense of Danger (+5 to Defense for every enemy stack within 2 tiles), Tolerance (No Morale penalty from allied Undead), Harbinger of Winter (+1 Morale for allied Snow Elves), Snow Elf (All enemies within 2 tiles that are below Level 4 have 10 points less Ice resistance)

As with others, Frost Unicorns are basically the bigger, meaner cousin of a regular Elf unit. Frost Unicorns are particularly notable for basically being a souped-up version of both Unicorns and Black Unicorns, with Harbinger of Winter being a super version of Defender of Beauty. (Race distribution aside) Most Snow Elf units are a super version of just one Elven unit.

Surprisingly, Sense of Danger actually counts Gremlins even though they're Objects and usually excluded from this kind of effect.

Their Snow Elf trait is kind of neat but not a big deal. It does mean that in real terms their own damage is a bit better than it should be, but their Ice damage is around a third of their Physical damage -so basically their Snow Elf trait increases their own damage by like 2.5% overall, if talking a unit with neutral Ice resistance. (Worse than that when Horn of Light applies!) It's a little better if your whole army is fairly heavy on Ice damage and you're able to toss out Lord of the North relatively reliably and you've got Blizzard for Spell-based Ice damage, but 10% is still pretty small. And it doesn't even work on Level 4 and 5 units. I wish it had been a bit stronger of a penalty. Even pushing it up to 20 or 25% reduction in Ice resistance would be enough to make it the sort of thing where you might implement them for that trait in particular.

Winter Breath is really synergistic with White Wolves. The target gets Frozen before the retaliation occurs, which normally wouldn't matter but in the case of White Wolves means they get to leech from their tormentor on their counterattack. Just make sure you wait until the White Werewolf has changed forms before applying it. Of course, there's other Snow Elves that get some kind of benefit for attacking Frozen enemies, but none quite so blatantly great with Winter Breath. And I'm not sure any of the others applies to counter-attacks at all, in fact. Certainly, White Werewolves themselves don't get their 'enemy is Frozen=awesome' benefit when counterattacking.

Overall though, Frost Unicorns are okay but a bit bland. As enemies they're often actually a bit less threatening than Unicorns and Black Unicorns because they spend their first turn dropping Winter Breath on an ally rather than charging your forces, and even aside how ranged-oriented forces still tend to be best in Warriors of the North the AI isn't exactly good at judging what unit of theirs would, if bolstered by Winter Breath, be most problematic to you. In player hands, outside the strong synergy with White Wolves they're just... fast, decent melee attackers who passively make Snow Elves a little better overall. Which is nice enough, just not exceptional.


Snow Falcon
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 23,000
Leadership: 2200
Attack/Defense: 60 / 64
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 7
Health: 850
Damage: 25-45 Ice+25-45 Fire 
Resistances: 80% Magic, 50% Fire, 50% Ice
Talents: Cold Stream (Reload: 2. Infinite distance straight line attack which does 50-85 Ice damage, with a 50% chance to Freeze victims. All empty tiles in the line have an Ice Spike placed in them), Ice Explosion (Reload: 3. All Ice Spikes on the battlefield explode, doing 40-55 Physical damage to enemies adjacent to Ice Spikes with a 30% chance to inflict Bleeding. No chance of friendly fire)
Abilities: Flight, Magic Immunity (80% Magic resistance and immunity to Spells), Fire Protection (50% Fire resistance), Cold Protection (50% Ice resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Storm (Attacks both tiles to the 'side' of the target in addition to the target, with 50% chance to Freeze or Burn each victim), Snow Elf (Cannot be Frozen or Burned)

The Snow Falcon is like some horrifying child of a Red Dragon and a Phoenix, but Ice-themed in addition to the fire. It even has the same Initiative/Speed tier as most of the dragons!

And yes, its Snow Elf special effect really is just immunity to Freeze and Burn, instead of some special effect activated in snowstorms or the like. The in-game description is longer, but most of it is flavor. Which is weird, since usually the Snow Elf unique quirks don't do flavor text, not even when it would be nice to have an explanation. (Why do White Wolves get to feast on the enemy to revive their dead if the enemy is freezing to death, exactly? It's a fantastic gameplay thing, but it's very odd to try to explain it in-universe)

A curious property of Cold Stream is that it won't destroy Ice Spikes in its path. The game doesn't mention this, but it's actually really useful since it makes it easier to set up for Ice Explosion abuse when trying to combine with eg Lord of the North. Notably, Ice Explosion fully 'stacks'; if an enemy is adjacent to three Ice Spikes, this will do roughly three times the damage compared to if they were adjacent to just one. So it's really nice that Cold Stream doesn't smash existing Ice Spikes; ideally you'd surround every enemy with Ice Spikes before setting off Icy Explosion. (Though that extreme is rarely realistic) 240-330 damage to every enemy on the field per Snow Falcon is pretty bonkers peak damage!

Snow Falcons are also another of the new units that doesn't leave behind a corpse when destroyed.

Anyway, Snow Falcons are an amazingly useful unit, able to strike at a distance through both of their Talents, get in free hits on tough units by attacking adjacent weakened stacks -or even attacking an adjacent Ice Spike!- absorb a shocking amount of punishment from Magic and to a lesser extent Fire and Ice attackers, and while each of those damage types is individually uncommon-to-rare collectively that's actually a pretty consistently useful set of resistances, and of course they're insanely mobile and laugh off a number of otherwise-problematic effects. Being Spell-immune does mean they can't make use of Runes and makes it a bit more tricky to undo or avoid casualties with them if you're not careful, but eg Sorcerers can resurrect them with Hardening and again they're shockingly durable so long as you're careful about what units get a chance to even attack them. And with how mobile they are, it's often entirely possible to fly out of an enemy's reach, Wait, and then fly back in and attack when it's the Snow Falcon's turn again, so you've got a lot of control over what even gets an opportunity to fight them.

Their mixed Ice/Fire offense is a bit inconvenient in some ways (Can't really pick on weaknesses, and most of the time pure Ice would be better for stable offense), but it does mean that their offense is fairly stable. There's very few units that have resistance to both Fire and Ice, and most such cases only have 10% in each. Trolls in daylight are one of the few units that really has a notable amount of resistance to Snow Falcon offense, aside Snow Falcons themselves. Black Dragons are another pretty strongly resistant case thanks to 80% Fire resistance and 20% Ice resistance, but they're also not very common in Warriors of the North. Every unit with severe (50% or more) Ice resistance aside Snow Falcons is weak to Fire, and many of the notably Fire-resistant units are weak to Ice as well. (Demons, mostly, but not exclusively) So yeah, there's very few situations Snow Falcon melee offense suffers in a dramatic way.

They're also a lot more useful in Keeper fights than Black Dragons tend to be, being better able to stably dish out good damage to the Gremlins themselves while still being safe from regular units and able to soak solid damage from a wider range of units. (Even if Black Dragons have more resistance types; they have resistance to all the types Snow Falcons do plus to Physical) Alternatively, they can be really useful alongside Black Dragons, such as if you're tired of dealing with your forces being Sheeped and Slowed and so on and so decided to go in with only stacks that are immune to all that stuff. Now you can have more than one army slot meaningfully filled when doing that! (3, in fact, thanks to Ice Dragons)

As enemies, Snow Falcons are a very high priority target. They don't use Ice Explosion very often, but they use Cold Stream exactly the way Red Dragons use their own Talent; fly out to somewhere they can catch multiple of your units in the line and fire it off. In conjunction with their Spell immunity and their resistances protecting them from your primary Rage damage moves (Viking Vortex is your only attacking Rage move they don't substantially resist!) they can be quite difficult to take down in a timely manner. And since they have high Initiative and excellent Speed, it's burdensome to eg try to get your entire army to go ahead of them! Unless you deliberately avoid engaging a group including Snow Falcons until you're hideously over-strength or have the tools to outright undo casualties, a fight with Snow Falcons is pretty much guaranteed to inflict casualties on your forces. They're one of the nastiest units in the series on that level; Goblin Shaman back in Orcs on the March were probably more horrifying in real terms due to how obscene their damage output was, but you could do stuff like Sheep them or Magic Lock them. Snow Falcons can only be dealt with safely by killing them before they move, which is pretty hard to do!

... though it's worth noting they're not immune to Diversions, and so with a bit of luck and an aggressive focus on killing them first, you can potentially take them out before they get a move without having to be extremely over-strength. Killing them in one turn is often very, very hard. Killing them in two turns is often more reasonable.


Ice Nymph
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 75
Leadership: 30
Attack/Defense: 5 / 13
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 35
Damage: 1-3 Ice
Resistances: 10% Ice
Talents: Winter Garden (Reload: 2. Generates an Ice Thorn stack in a chosen adjacent tile with a total Leadership of 8-10 per Ice Nymph in the summoning stack. If an Ice Spike is targeted, the stack is 50% larger), Lullaby (Reload: 3. All enemies below Level 4 that are not immune to Mind effects and are below 45 Leadership per Ice Nymph fall asleep for 1 turn), Ice Armor (Charge: 1. A single ally gains 15% resistance to non-Astral[] damage for 3 turns. If the target is not a Snow Elf, its Speed is reduced by 1 and its Attack by 20% for the duration)
Abilities: Soaring, No retaliation, Beauty (30% chance to dodge attacks from male humanoids), Charm (Melee attacks have a 20% chance to temporarily convert male humanoids into allies. Victims must be below Level 4 and equal or less than the Ice Nymph stack's Leadership), Cold Protection (10% Ice resistance), Inspiration (Allies below Level 4 who are not Demons, Undead, Plants, or inorganic have an 8% chance to get a second turn with 1 AP after finishing their turn. If they're male humanoids, this chance is 12% instead), Snow Elf (If in a snowstorm, chance to dodge male humanoids is raised to 40%)

Minor detail: the description for Ice Armor as a Talent correctly describes its effects, but if you cast it on something and look at the buff's description it will incorrectly claim to lower Speed and Initiative instead of the Speed and Attack it actually lowers. This error is present in the original Russian, too!

Broadly speaking, Ice Nymphs are Ice-themed Dryads who are 50% more Leadership and have a lot of numbers tweaked appropriately. (eg Lullaby is still '50% more Leadership than the unit using Lullaby') The two big exceptions are that they dump Elven Song for Ice Armor -which is still focused on supporting your own kind, but less absolutely, and in a defensive way- and that they switch from supporting Plants to supporting allies more generally but especially male humanoids. I'm not a fan of the randomness of Inspiration, but I do appreciate that it's a case of making 'being male' something other than a pure disadvantage. Not that 'being male' is a disadvantage in most situations in the King's Bounty games, but it's always felt a little weird that anytime being male matters it's in the form of being a downside. Especially given how rare female units are. If you apply that 'realistically', it becomes a bit strange that male warriors are so very much the norm...

Oh, and they've stolen the Armored Princess Dryad graphic (With maybe some tweaking?), which makes sense for keeping color coordination more coherent. It would honestly be a bit confusing (As in 'Wait I thought those were Ice Nymphs I wasn't expecting Magic damage!) if they had Snow Elves mostly blue and then had regular Dryads still blue, so fair enough.

Ice Nymphs are also kind-of-sort-of content lifted from Red Sands, inasmuch as an Ice-themed Dryad that summons Ice Thorns exists in Red Sands with the same name. The Red Sands version was Undead, however, and didn't have this whole 'supporting allies' thing. It's an odd case, especially as Snow Elves as a whole are otherwise genuinely original content, very much not lifted from Red Sands.

Anyway.

Note that Inspiration kicks in immediately. As in, the unit gets a turn right after their turn ended, before anything else can happen. In the message log it actually goes before a lot of things you'd expect it to come after, even. So when it triggers it's a really big deal.

You might think I'd hate Winter Garden given that Ice Thorns are too pricey on Leadership and Ice Nymphs are 50% more Leadership than Dryads while Winter Garden only generates 20% more than Summon Thorns on respective high rolls and 12.5% more on respective low rolls, but you're really meant to use an Ice Spike as the foundation for the summoned Ice Thorns. That results in a much more respectable comparison -the high rolls end up with Ice Nymphs 80% ahead per head, and thus something like 25% ahead per Leadership. Which okay then slash that number in half in real terms, and Ice Thorns generating more Ice Thorns dwindles really fast, but Ice Thorns generated from Ice Spikes end up respectably useful.

Overall the result is that Ice Nymphs justify themselves primarily on the basis of Inspiration, but that's not a bad thing. It'd be nice if it was a bit less random -with all their buddies being male humanoids you're still only rolling 4 12% chances each turn by default, which averages out to like one trigger every three turns or something in that vein- but in longer battles it'll crop up pretty reliably and it's a very different focus from Dryads being good at stalling out enemies. And Ice Nymphs still have the key capabilities for such stalling, and are only actually worse with the summoned ally part! So it's kind of a matter of opinion which of the two is more useful.

I don't really get the Ice Nymph's Snow Elf unique effect, though. It's... a small boost to your chance of evading an enemy when in a Snowstorm if they happened to be a humanoid male so you had that dodge chance anyway. Like... okay, sure, that means Ice Nymphs can practically hard-counter Dwarves for a bit, and that's kind of neat, but in most situations there's no way of seeing a difference between a 30% chance of triggering vs a 40%. Not that I'm a fan of randomness of this sort, but I'm a bit puzzled why it isn't something like 'and also have a 30% chance to dodge anything when in a Snowstorm'. It's so minor it makes me wonder if the development team just honestly didn't want to give Ice Nymphs an additional effect but felt obligated to because Snow Elf and settled for grudgingly giving them something that doesn't really matter as a compromise.

Ice Armor is just sort of there, as an aside. Like +15% to all resistances is pretty neat, but Lullaby and Winter Garden are more useful in an immediate sense and they're both reloading Talents so there's not that many turns the Ice Nymph won't be busy with one or the other and there's not that many units you'd want to put it on given only Snow Elves don't suffer problematic disadvantages. Like, I guess you could slap it onto a White Wolf you've also put Winter Breath on? So you end up with a White Wolf that can soak more damage and thus get more benefit out of its leeching and all? But mostly it just seems pretty pointless. Dryad's access to Inspiration is a lot more reliably relevant.

As enemies, Ice Nymphs are of course fairly similar to Dryads and... well... I'm not sure I've ever seen the AI use Winter Garden on an Ice Spike. And I don't think I've ever seen them use Ice Armor either. They're... actually generally a bit less of a pain to deal with. Especially since their Leadership-to-Health ratio is less favorable -yes, Dryads and Ice Nymphs both have more Health than Leadership, but 5 over is 1/4th more when it's added to 20 and only 1/6th more when it's added to 30. Ice Nymphs thus die more readily to Spells and Rage moves than Dryads, and since the Ice Thorns they generate end up being smaller stacks with less Health in total they rarely get the opportunity to clog up the battlefield with their summons. The only issue is the small chance that one of their allies might wreck your plans by suddenly getting a second move. And I'm pretty sure Inspiration can only trigger if the unit made an attack, just like a Luck Rune, so if you're not letting enemy melee get a chance to target your units in the first place this can't even happen!

So unless your force is a lot more resistant to Magic and Physical than to Ice or something of that sort, Ice Nymphs will usually be a bit easier to deal with overall than Dryads.


Scout
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 320
Leadership: 90
Attack/Defense: 22 / 16
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 60
Damage (Ranged): 4-5 Physical
Damage (Melee): 3 Physical
Resistances: 10% Ice
Talents: Enchanted Arrow (Reload: 3. Ranged attack that does 3-4 Magic damage. If the target is below Level 5, two of its attributes are randomly chosen and reduced by 20% for 2 turns), Ice Arrow (Charge: 1. Ranged attack that does 3-4 Ice damage and Freezes the target)
Abilities: Archer, Sniper (unlimited range), Night Vision (+50% Attack at night and/or underground), Cold Protection (10% Ice resistance), Ambush Master (Allied Traps do 10% more damage), Snow Elf (+25% crit chance when firing on a Frozen target)

Scouts are basically Elves-the-unit, but slightly better in base terms except they're pricier in Leadership. (And lack No Melee Penalty!) They swap out the raw damage of Double Shot for two different utility Talents, one of which actually helps make up for the lack of Double Shot, since Freezing a target means follow-up shots are liable to crit. It's also amusing to me that they support Trap use instead of being protected from Traps, making the two units a bit of an opposite in that regard.

Do note that both of their Talents actually have worse base damage than their default shot. This can be convenient when eg trying to do less damage in an attempt to weaken something for Trapper progress (Or so you can finish it off with Rage or non-Trap Spells for those Medals), but in more general terms it means you're choosing between damage now vs beneficial effects to follow up on. In real terms Ice Arrow will usually do more damage than a regular shot due to the follow-up Freeze damage, and Enchanted Arrow can potentially lower the target's Health and/or Defense and thus make it easier to kill, so it's usually a good trade, but it's worth keeping in mind, especially in regards to whether it's a good idea to use one of the Talents against a target with very minor Physical resistance; something like 10% Physical resistance will actually take more damage from their base attack, resistance or no, than from Enchanted or Ice Arrows. (Assuming 0% resistance to Magic and Ice)

It also means that Elves-the-unit are just plain a better choice for raw damage-right-now. Their base damage is the same while costing slightly less Leadership and having access to Double Shot, and while Scouts have higher Attack it's literally just one point. The crit chance advantage against Frozen targets helps a little, but you need to Freeze the target first -Elves don't need setup or support to be doing maximum damage, and can outright count on it instead of just having better odds of rolling a crit.

It's really nice, because it's one case where I'm not particularly tempted to say a Snow Elf unit is basically the better or worse version of whatever unit(s) it counterparts to. They really just have different focal points.

It's also worth noting that Scouts are, like Bowmen, able to work around resistances, where Elves-the-unit are stuck with just plain Physical damage. So Scouts can do things like lob an Enchanted Arrow and then an Ice Arrow at a Ghost and then shift their focus to something that's not Physically resistant until Enchanted Arrow reloads. Potentially even pick on weaknesses, like lobbing an Enchanted Arrow at droids, though admittedly the main context Ice weakness crops up at all is that Demons are collectively moderately weak to Ice. Regardless, this reinforces the contrast between Scouts and Elves; Elves are relatively specialized, but better in that area, while Scouts rarely have to worry about struggling against a given overall battlegroup but rarely reach the same peaks of performance Elves can usually count on. And focusing on Scouts themselves, it makes them a reliably useful ranged unit against pretty much every foe -and they have innate Sniper! It's difficult to go wrong with Scouts.

Some wrinkles; firstly, Scouts have the oddity that their melee attack suffers the full damage penalty from Bone, unlike every other archer unit. This is probably a bug; if it was intended, I'd expect the other three elven archers to experience it too. Second, Enchanted Arrow can penalize all of Attack, Defense, Health, Initiative, Speed, crit chance, or damage... but damage behaves oddly, in that it doesn't directly lower base damage but instead shaves 20% off a stack's final number. As such, unlike other effects that reduce damage, it doesn't have an uneven impact against different unit types; Thorn Hunters doing 1-2 damage per head doesn't get lowered to a flat 1 per head or anything like that. Enchanted Arrow otherwise always removes at least 1 point, so for example if it removes Initiative from a unit with 2 Initiative it still removes a point even though that's 50%. Lastly, it specifically removes 20% of the base stat: a Peasant will lose barely any Attack even if it currently has over 50 Attack from assorted boosts. So Enchanted Arrow is ideally aimed at units with high base stats.

As enemies, Scouts are a straightforward ranged attacker who doesn't quite live up to its full potential. The AI doesn't bother to prioritize targeting Frozen units, doesn't prioritize picking on units that Enchanted Arrow shaved the Health of, and of course doesn't try to have Scouts Freeze a target for the benefit of some other Snow Elf like White Wolves/White Werewolves, and doesn't even pay attention to elemental resistances/weaknesses for deciding its targets that I can tell. And of course Ambush Master's effect doesn't apply -I don't think there's a single Hero in the entire game who is allowed to even have Scouts, let alone try to use Traps against you at the same time. So Scouts will occasionally luck into doing things you really don't want them to do, but mostly will bumble along as an okay-but-not-as-good-as-it-should-be ranged attacker.

Alas.

It's really too bad there's no generic underlying code in the series for having the AI understand elemental stuff.


Sorcerer
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1650
Leadership: 250
Attack/Defense: 26 / 28
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 170
Damage (Ranged): 13-19 Magic
Damage (Melee): 5-8 Physical
Resistances: 50% Magic, 25% Ice
Talents: White Haze (Reload: 4. Deals 8-12 Ice damage in a 7-tile circle centered at an arbitrarily selected point, and then a Snowstorm lingers afterward, increasing by 10% the Ice resistance of units inside of it and potentially interacting with Snow Elf special effects. This Snowstorm lasts 1 turn. Ice Spikes are not destroyed), Hardening (Charges: 2. A target Ice Spike is destroyed, healing adjacent allied units for 20 Health per Sorcerer casting. Units that are below Level 5 can have casualties undone by this effect, but the healing is only applied at half effectiveness for calculating resurrections)
Abilities: Sorcerer's Staff (Range: 6. For every Ice Spike on the battlefield, the Sorcerer has +2 to Attack and Defense, up to a limit of +30), Magic Protection (50% Magic resistance), Cold Protection (25% Ice resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Runic Knowledge (Begins the battle with 1 of each type), Snow Elf (When attacking a unit that is Frozen or within a Snowstorm, there is a 50% chance that Ice Spikes will generate in all open tiles surrounding the target)

It's the Druid's Ice-themed cousin, only it's bigger, meaner, and... er... lacks summons, lacks innate-on-attack splash damage, but has good resistances, high potential damage, and synergizes to a hilarious extent with various Snow Elves in a way that Druids don't synergize with Elves. And notice that they're fairly reliable at pulling off resurrections!

Of course, Sorcerers and Druids end up focused on entirely different things. Sorcerers do get to support Snow Elf allies, but they're pretty heavily oriented overall toward dishing out damage with supporting effects being basically incidental. Druids are, in spite of their innate splash, pretty meh at actual damage-dealing but a lot better at trying to stall out enemies. Which is nice! It makes for another case where I don't really want to compare a Snow Elf unit to its Elf counterpart and find one wanting in the comparison -it's just Druids are still a bit eh in general while Sorcerers are really good, not 'Druids are worse Sorcerers'.

It's pretty weird that they do Magic damage with their ranged attack, given the way their ranged attack is animated (Snowflakes!), not to mention their Snow Elf special effect. It's also a bit surprising to see another non-Viking unit with inherent Runic Knowledge -it's just them and Jotun for non-Viking units. Jotun are at least thematically connected to Vikings what with being based on Norse mythology while Vikings are based on the Norse. Sorcerers are just confusing. (Unless you're familiar with Russian neo-paganism, in which case there actually is an inspiration...)

Anyway, the Sorcerer's bread-and-butter is White Haze. If you're hitting even two targets it's just plain better overall damage than their regular ranged attack, it sets up for you being able to potentially stall enemies further with follow-up ranged attacks, and of course it sets up for multiple other Snow Elf units. It's also got the Snowstorm's full set of effects, which means that it punishes enemies for having Fire resistance or a weakness to Ice by crippling their stats -specifically, every 10 points of positive Ice resistance or negative Fire resistance will boost a unit's Attack and Defense by 10%, while negative Ice resistance and positive Fire resistance is penalties at the same rate; an Archdemon ends up with 1 Attack and Defense, for example. (It's worth pointing out that a 10% modifier is twice the best modifier Snowstorm gets if cast by a player) As such, White Haze is fantastic to slap down when fighting dragons, Demons, and a number of other units like Fire Dragonflies -and there's a pretty small pool of units whose resistances mean they benefit from the Snowstorm. Just don't be hitting Ice Creations, Jotun, or Plants, and you're basically good.

... though actually the above description is not quite accurate, as there's a bug with Snowstorm -and by extension White Haze- where it has a greater impact on Defense. Specifically, the game, rather oddly, both applies the percentage modifier but also applies a flat modifier derived from the total resistance baseline, multiplied by what's supposed to be the percentage modifier; in White Haze's case, this means that for every total 'step' of Fire and Ice resistance, it adds or removes 10 Defense on top of the actual 10% modification of Defense. Among other points, you shouldn't just casually drop White Haze on the assorted Undead that have slightly negative Fire resistance and slightly negative Ice resistance; they'll get 20% of their base Defense added (Which isn't too bad) and also +20 Defense. That can drastically slow down your ability to kill something like Skeleton Archers. (This bug existing is particularly frustrating given Warriors of the North has you fighting Undead tons more than any other game in the series...)

Anyway, once you've got targets Frozen or in a Snowstorm, the Sorcerer is fantastic -if a bit unreliable- for trying to contain non-flying-non-teleporting melee enemies, and also combos well with the Snow Falcon's desire to detonate Ice Spikes for damage. You can also be freer about mixing it up with your own generic-ish melee units since you can use Hardening to undo minor casualties twice, and keep in mind Hardening is splash healing/resurrection. A Sorcerer is your best friend if you want to take a swing at making an army that's mostly generic melee sorts of units. A pile of bears, say. (Which, incidentally, will benefit heavily from the Snowstorm bug in regards to White Haze) It's really nice, and it's just too bad it's like... the only unit in the entire series that really works to try to prop up using multiple generic-ish melee units together. 

A minor advantage of Sorcerers is they only have a 40% penalty for firing beyond their effective range, instead of the usual 50%. That's still pretty harsh, mind.

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

Snow Elves are awesome. I was honestly expecting to be a bit underwhelmed by them going into Warriors of the North since they're, you know, 'Elves but icy', which didn't exactly sound like a compelling and distinct group in its own right, but they're actually really good at being a fairly distinct faction and even though they can outright be freely mixed with Elves Morale-wise their combination of mechanics still give you good reasons to try to stick heavily to a mono-Snow Elf army. It's very comparable to Adrenaline giving you stronger reasons to go mono-Orc, or Drunkenness giving you stronger reasons to go mono-Dwarf. The only major caveat is that Snow Falcons end up at the outside of the group, because they only really benefit from Sorcerers and they only really benefit Ice Nymphs and to a lesser extent Sorcerers while being a really amazingly generally good unit that's absolutely worth splashing into basically any army.

They're also just a surprising amount of fun to play! The way the various mechanics intertwine and intersect makes for a relatively deep experience, where a lot of army formations lean a little much toward 'do what makes the most sense for the individual unit and don't bother to have an overarching strategy'. Snow Elves are, in fact, my favorite addition to the series after Orcs on the March overhauling Orcs, and it's really sad that Dark Side doesn't bring them back at all and there's probably never going to be a sequel that brings them back even if the King's Bounty series gets revived.

By contrast, we'll next be covering the group I was most excited to see and in the end found fairly lackluster in practice; the Undead Lizardmen.

Comments

  1. Snow Elves. They give me an old-fairy-talish-times feel. In a good way.
    Even their backstory kinda does. There is a story about Snowcap who lived separately from other flowers, met living personifications of frost and learned how to live in the cold.
    And here we have a race that calls themselves 'Snowcaps', live far away from their brethren, have ice elemental neighboors (who ware never mentioned in earlier games) and learning to live in the cold.


    Snowflake Fairy's Special Crystal's original name is just a diminutive form of 'crystal'.
    Attack/defense increasing ability works on counterattacks too.

    White Wolf DOES have beast resistances (-10 fire, +10 ice). Now, why doesn't he has logically increased ice resistance compared to normal wolf is another question.
    Use of Secret paths doesn't end the turn.
    Alpha is Pack Leader in Russian.
    Also notice how he doesn't have Rabid or Lycantropy. Now, it's propably for balance, but considering he is part of the same race as 'Кудесник', icy horse with winter breath who is 'harbinger of winter', and relatively white Snow Falcon (who is outright called 'белый сокол' in devs' comments), it sound logical that he may be inspired by a Wolf Shepard - sort of shapeshifer mage who can switch between humanoid and white/black wolf form, commands wolves, serves as middleman between people and wolves, has some power over nature/storms and sometimes has minor vampiric theme.

    Frost Unicorn deals 8-15 physical damage + 3-6 ice. Against Undead, Demons and Necrolizards he deals additional 4-7 magical damage.
    Sense of Danger counts Gremlins as enemies too, despite them being objects.
    Script for Winter Breath is called 'winter_is_coming' :)
    In folklore frost horse is a messenger and harbinger of winter, possessing power of winter breath. He can also be a personification of a winter month.

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    1. Snow Falcon is another of my most favoured units. He is like кречет/white falcon (actually called such in devs' comments) and жар-птица/firebird (well, actually it's 'heat-bird') blend together! Ultimate royal bird :) 'Gets +10 morale'
      Now, it's a digression but I want to eleborate on birds.

      Russian people of old times were VERY much into birds in general, both real and mythological (there are tons of various magical bird-creatures). For some reason, you would never see it in anything created in West; westerners are really obsessed with bears for some reason, who never had any major role in Russian folklore or history (if you want a non-flying animal, wolf would be better choice). This may go into insulting idiocy like bear-gods (what the...). I remember there was some FAQ by Total War devs where question "why Kislev doesn't have any flying units?" got answer "because bears doesn't fly". [SENSORED]
      Ahem. Anyway, Heat-bird is a silvery-golden immortal flaming bird. It's kinda like phoenix, but usually without rebirth thing but with mighty voice instead. It also have royalty association.
      White Falcon is kinda like romantized image of a real life bird, I think it's called gyrfalcon in English. Falcons in general were propbaly THE most favored of all birds. They were seen as symbol of nobility (in both meaning) and manliness. Gyrfalcons were brought from Siberia and were seen as especially beautiful and regal. And, of course, white falcons are rather winter-y.
      A woman would compare her beloved/husband to a falcon as an expression of her love. Grand Princes and Tsars had special aviaries called 'Falcon Courts'. Tsar Alexey the Quietest was especially known for his love of falcons. He had about 3000 birds in his grand Falcon Court. THREE. THOUSAND. Amount of bird shit too must have been astonishing... Whole district of Moscow (to this day called 'Сокольники' - 'Falconers') was inhabited by people who worked at the Court. After death of his most favourite falcon (during a hunt) he named a field after it. I think 2 of Moscow streets too? That's it, after attending said falcon's funeral. And Alexey was not seing as some crazy bird guy or anything.

      So now you know why the Big Awesome Wintery Bird is called specifically a falcon, even through it doesn't looks like one. And why it's awesome.
      Anyway, his damage is 25-45 ice + 25-45 fire.
      Ice Explosion has 3 turn reload, not 4. It deals physical damage, not ice. Bleed chance is 30%. Damage from multiple Ice Spikes should stack, and atleast in my quick test just now it indeed did. Tested on Black Knights, one spike - 1414, 1277, 1340 damage. Same Black Knights, 3 spikes - 3908, 4125, 4538.
      Set 100500 Ice Spikes by the spell from Rune Magic and/or Rage attack, than EXPLODE THEM ALL. I love this :)

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    2. As with Dryad, Ice Nymph's Charm only works on level 1-3 enemies of equal or lower leadership and lasts for 2 turns.
      Winter Garden leadership is 8-10 per Nymph.
      Atleast in Russian version description of Ice Armor status effect (not talent isself!) wrongly mention decreased intiative instead of attack.

      Scout deals 3 damage in melee. His melee attack is bugged and deals reduced damage to Bone-y enemies, as if it was ranged arrow attack. But hey, it's seems to be the only bug Snow Elves have!
      Enchanted Arrow can reduce any of unit's main atributes - attack, defense, initiative, speed, krit chance, damage*, health. It will always reduce an attribute by atleast 1 point (good in case if initiative or speed) and uses base stats for calculation (bad in case of attack and defense if used on low level units).
      *Damage debuff works differenly from other debuffs and is quite unusual; it DOES NOT reduce target's damage stat, so one can wrongly think it doesn't work at all. Instead, it applies a negative damage modifier to all attack calculations made by affected unit.
      It looks like originally debuff power was 15% but was increased to 20%. Which is good.

      'Sorcerer'? Really? He is 'Кудесник' in the original. This kinda unusual word was already present in base WotN as the default title for Olaf if his class is Volhv. It means a mage who is associated with doing amazing or fascinating things. In a good sense. Or just uses his magic to make people happier. It's almost exclusively used for clearly good-aligned mages. It isn't used for priests through, despite "religion is magic" trope, only 'actual' mages.
      I remember one Russian video game that used it for a specific dark mage type; in it's case it was supposed to be understood as "they cast magic so powerful that even a whole race of mages is amazed". But this is a very unique case - normally this word is not used in such way.
      Sorcerer is just meh. It doesn't have any marvellous connotations at all; in fact, in some settings (like Warhammer Fantasy) it's mostly used for 'evil' mages.

      Also, this word is used as epithet for Grandfather Frost. You may know who he is, but if not - he is an antropomorphic personification of frost, an old looking but immortal winter mage. He was more omnious character in older time, but for over the century he is seen a kindly guy who plays about the same role as Santa-Claus for westerners. Also, his cart is driven by frost horses.
      He is a pretty persistant guy too by the way. Before the revolution Church was not a big fan of him. After - Soviet government actively tried to cancel him for some time, but failed and surrendered.
      Now, unit's model is taken from Druid, but still, kindly looking old ice mage, called 'Кудесник', and in the same lineup as frost horse... You got the idea.

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    3. Finally, 'Кудесник' as a word is kinda popular among, well, neopagans (Volhv too btw). Said neopagans also use so-called 'Russian Runes', supposedly based on symbols that were used by our ancestors for mystic practices. There actually were some mystical symbols (Chernorizets Hrabar mentions them in his book), but calling them 'Runes' is factually wrong and disapproved by official science. As are calling ancient Slavic people 'Russians'. Neopagans, of course, don't care, thus Volhvs and 'Кудесники' with 'Russian Runes'.
      I don't know if Ice and Flame devs made it as a joke, for the sake of 'Volhv' - 'Кудесник' link, or are actually sympathetic towards neopaganism, but KB Кудесник actually have Runic Knowledge. And, as your example shows, it looks completely random for a foreign player. Especially with this generic 'sorcerer' name.

      Anyway, his melee damage is 5-8, physical.
      His ranged attack has 40% penalty for far range instead of 50%.
      Hardening heals for 20 health, not 24. You propably had +20% to healing power from leveling.


      I have similar history with Snow Elves - I was pretty sceptic when before playing, but found them to be amazing after. If only they had more units, preferably more actual elves.
      Gameplay aside, I also like them for be way more, well, elf-y than boring overused Wood Elves we already had. I mean, they Snow Elves some magical stuff on every single unit, they have this great 'old-tales' vibe (maybe only in Russian), they are, well, icy (Elves came from Norse mythology after all) and they are way more badass, considering that in-story they are pretty much a small bunch of exiles that fought a powerful ancient civilisation to a standstill, while Wood Elves looked like utter losers in the Legend and AP atleast.
      I think I already wrote it somewhere, but if there was a KB game with race selection (like Darkside but for light races), I would have preferred a Snow Elf hero instead of Wood one.
      And if KB series ever get a restart (real one, not this... thing... called "King's Bounty 2"), I would very much prefer Snow Elves taking place among core races, replacing Wood ones.

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    4. I had some problems with White Haze, but here it is.
      It's snowstorm lasts only 1 turn (alas), but it's Attack/Defense modifier is 10% - twice as strong as hero's level 3 version!
      Snowstorm effect has a bug, but I think it will be better to talk about it in the Rune Spells post.

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    5. Implemented all of this, aside wanting to more closely retest Snow Falcons myself before rewriting the commentary about explosion damage stacking.

      It's interesting to me how much Snow Elf stuff is actually rooted in real stuff and gives them a more coherent theme -Frost Unicorns in particular I'd shrugged and accepted as being present because Unicorns are already Elven units in the series, but no, the icy horse concept has a bit more meat to it than that. It gives me some context on why they work as well as they do; they're not the result of going 'hey, WotN has this big ice theme, what if we made another faction that's ice-themed, using an existing faction as a base?' Or at least, there's more to it than that.

      And yeah, I'd wondered why falcon in particular. Falcons are well-liked in historical Europe too, but I've never heard anything approaching the degree you're talking about; I'd genuinely wondered if a mistranslation was occurring.

      And yeah, I'd love it if we got Snow Elves returning in a sequel game.

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    6. Your Winter Garden description tells about Dryad instead of Nymph.

      I'm having second thoughts about Snowstorm mechanic. It is part of Kudesnik's main talent, after all. And I need to right on it sooner or later anyway...
      Alright.
      Snowstorm changes attack and defense of units in it depending on their ice and fire resistance. It works like this:
      1) ([Ice resistance] - [Fire resistance])/10. Result is rounded down. Note that if a unit have 100% resistance, in game it will shown and treated as 95%, but Snowstorm will still see it as 100%.
      2) Now this number is multiplied. Said multiplier is 3/4/5 for level 1/2/3 spell and 10 for White Haze.
      3) Resulting number is the percent of base attack/defense that is applied to affected unit (always atleast 1). Well, it was supposed be that way...
      4) ...but works properly only for Attack. BUG! Defense wrongly get's additional increase - number from step 2 as flat bonus.

      Let's get some example. I'll use level 3 hero spell and Kudesnik's marvellous White Haze.

      Skeleton Archer, common and annoying enemy. Has 10 ice res and -10 fire res. Base attack is 3. Base defense is 2.
      (10- -10)/10 = 2
      For hero spell, this will get us +(2*5)% of base to Attack and +((2*5)% of base + 2*5) to Defense. So +1 to Attack and + 11 to Defense.
      For White Haze we'll get +(2*10)% of base to Attack and +((2*10 )% of base + 2*10) to Defense. So +1 to Attack and + 21 to Defense.

      So by casting Snowstorm at enemies one can accidentally make them way tankier.
      Than again, White Wolf has the same resistances, so in addition to already very good abilities in Snowstrom he will get free 10+ (hero spell) or 20+ (White Haze) to Defense. Nice.

      Now let's get to some extreme examples.
      Like this Archdemon. He came into wrong neighborhood and will face consequences. 80% fire res, -25% ice res, 66 Attack, 66 Defense.
      (-25-80)/10 = -10,5. Ronds to -10.
      For hero spell it will give us -(10*5)% of base to Attack and -((10*5)% of base + 10*5) to Defense. So -33 to Attack and -83 to Defense. OUCH.
      For White Haze it will be -(10*10)% of base to Attack and -((10*10)% of base + 10*10) to Defense. So -66 to Attack and -166 to Attack. WOW.
      I know there is saying in English about Hell freezing over. Well, KB Kudesniks WILL make Hell freeze if they'll want.

      Now let's look on opposite extreme - this nice Ancient Ent (he is a tourist) volunteered to demonstrate.
      20% ice res, -100% fire res, 50 Attack, 60 Defense.
      (20- -100)/10 = 12.
      Hero spell: +(12*5)% of base to Attack and + ((12*5)% of base + 12*5) to Defense. So +30 to Attack and +96 to Defense.
      White Haze: +(12*10)% of base to Attack and + ((12*10)% of base + 12*10) to Defense. So +60 to Attack and +192 do Defense. BEHOLD!

      So we need to remember following things about Snowstorm:
      - both Ice resistance and Fire weakness make it work as buff.
      - both Ice weakness and Fire resistance make it work as debuff.
      - it's effect on Defense is always much stronger than on Attack.
      - effect on Defense will be really disproportional on low-level units and on units with extreme resistance/weakness to Fire and/or Ice.
      - Kudesnik's White Haze gives much more noticable effect than her spell, but alsts for only one turn. Well, it was 3 turns at some point but not anymore.

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    7. Corrected to refer to Ice Nymph, and incorporated an allusion to and explanation of the bug into the post, because yeah that matters a fair amount, given among other points it makes mindlessly tossing out White Haze at Undead a pretty bad idea.

      I'm also going to update Snowstorm's description in the Rune Magic post because yikes this matters.

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    8. Finally confirmed Icy Explosion 'stacking' and updated post appropriately; that's some absurd peak damage potential!

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