Armored Princess Unit Analysis Part 4: Orcs on the March

This is where I repeat in bold that I'm going by Orcs on the March here. Orcs were radically overhauled by Orcs on the March, to the point that they're practically a brand-new race shunting aside classic Orcs. This is by no means a bad thing, as Orcs in The Legend and base Armored Princess were overly similar to Dwarves as a faction, and boring in general. Orcs on the March makes them distinctive and interesting, as well as actually good.

First things first: general Adrenaline mechanics, since it's essential to the overhaul.

At base, an Orc starts a battle with 0 Adrenaline. (AI forces start with increasingly higher base Adrenaline as you get later in the game) Also at base, the maximum Adrenaline they can achieve is 20. (Again, AI Orc forces have this limit go up as you get further into the game) Various Hero Skills affect these values, as can gear and unit Abilities.

An Orc stack generates 4-7 Adrenaline for attacking or counter-attacking. (Objects don't count for any Adrenaline gain-related purposes, and Gremlins and Bosses are considered to be Objects!) Note that Talents that inflict damage on enemy units will generate Adrenaline, meaning many Adrenaline-draining Talents are more sustainable than you might think. Additionally, if any Orc finishes off an enemy stack, all Orcs on its team gain 12 Adrenaline. (This includes the Orc itself, and stacks on top of whatever Adrenaline they would've gotten for the attack, too) Notice how this latter point encourages all-inning on Orcs. It does this much better than the Morale bonus for mono-race does, in fact, and it's nice to see the series trying to find new ways to reward playing along with the racial/factional divides.

At Adrenaline 10, a unit unlocks Level 1 Adrenaline. So too for Adrenaline 20 unlocking Level 2 and 30 Adrenaline unlocking Level 3. (All values past 30 are still only Level 3, however) These Adrenaline Levels unlock Talents, activate Abilities, and provide passive stat bonuses, all of which can be looked at in-game by hovering your cursor over a given unit's Adrenaline Ability. This is the primary point of the Adrenaline mechanic: Orc units getting into fights and especially winning fights pick up momentum, getting more useful as the fight wears on, instead of the usual dynamic of getting less useful as Charge-based Talents are expended and casualties are suffered.

Additionally, however, most Orc Talents will reduce Adrenaline when used, making Adrenaline a resource you expend as well as hoard. This leads to hard choices as to whether you should use a Talent now for its benefits or hold off until later so you can hold onto your current bonuses, or get the opportunity to build to later bonuses. (Though a few Talents instead generate Adrenaline!)

Adrenaline is such a huge mechanic that for this post I'm modifying the formatting on unit tables to cover Adrenaline as its own thing. Talents and Abilities that don't relate to Adrenaline (such as Running) will be placed in the usual slots, while those unlocked/activated by Adrenaline levels will go under their respective Adrenaline Level section instead. (I'm also not going to bother explicitly stating that 'Adrenaline' is an Ability on every single Orc unit. They all have it. No exceptions. Listing it adds nothing to this post)

Odd mechanical aside: some units gain additional charges at higher Adrenaline Levels on specific Talents. In such cases, the access to the charge is genuinely dependent on being at that Adrenaline Level. Say you have a 1-charge Talent that gains a second charge at Adrenaline Level 2. If you reach Adrenaline Level 2, you now have 2 charges. If you then use the Talent without dropping below Adrenaline Level 2, you have 1 charge, naturally. If you then drop below Adrenaline Level 2 without using the remaining charge, you'll lose the charge. If you then get back to Adrenaline Level 2, the charge will come back. If you actually use the charge, it'll never come back outside of shenanigans like Turn Back Time.

By a similar token, even though the game will, during combat, not display unavailable Talents (To the point that if no Talents are currently available it will actually claim the unit has 'none'), the Talents are still existent and behaving normally otherwise. Reloading Talents can advance their reload even if you're below the Adrenaline Level necessary for them to be displayed, and Oblivion can outright eat all the charges -even the ones granted by higher Adrenaline Levels- and force reloading Talents to reload, even if the Talents aren't being displayed.

I'm also not going to be consistently making comparisons to The Legend like I do with other factions' units. It's true, for instance, that Furious Goblins have had their Leadership cost go up by 5, their Health by 2, their max Damage went down by 1 point, etc, but these baseline differences are overshadowed in practice by the Adrenaline mechanics. I'll generally only note a change explicitly if it's either a major one (eg Initiative doubling) or if it's a new Talent or Ability that has nothing to do with Adrenaline.

A final note: a mechanic that's easy to overlook is 'anticipating trophies'.


The icon when Anticipating Trophies has kicked in.

'Anticipating trophies' kicks in when a unit that has the invisible trait finishes off an enemy stack, and what it does is provide +10 to Morale for the rest of the battle. Morale still provides no additional benefits beyond +3, just like in The Legend, but +10 Morale ensures that no realistic amount of Morale penalties will put them below the maximum Morale benefits. As such, it's particularly useful for Orcs to land the finishing blow on enemy summons and the like, because it spikes their damage output and survivability a decent amount, especially as you go forward through the game and your Attack and Defense stats climb, while making them essentially proof against Morale penalties caused by negative status effects, Curse, etc.

Thankfully, later games make this an explicit Ability, rather than an invisible trait you have to work out on your own.

On to the Orcs themselves!

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



Racial relations-wise...

-1 Morale for Demonic presence in allies.
-2 Morale for Undead presence in allies.
-1 Morale for Lizardmen presence in allies.

... Orcs have had their intolerance for Undead spike, not only through the direct increase in the Morale tier penalty, but also by Armored Princess having harsher penalties for negative Morale. Orcs in The Legend were a pretty chill species. Orcs in Armored Princess have some actual racial unpleasantness.

They're still pretty chill, mind, but now Humans are overall ahead of them in that regard.


Furious Goblin
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 60
Leadership: 45
Attack/Defense: 14 / 14
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3
Health: 40
Damage: 3-7 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points)
Abilities: Giant Killer (+30% damage against Level 5 units)

Level 1

Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Irascible (Anytime the Furious Goblin takes damage from spells, Talents, or even from a regular attack that involves an Ability, the stack gains +Speed*Adrenaline Level for 2 turns, to a limit of +3 Speed total)

Level 2

Stat changes: +5 Health
Talents: Goblin Trickery (-20 Reload: 2. The Furious Goblin moves over to melee attack a target enemy for 3-10 Physical damage, and then returns to where they were before using Goblin Trickery. The target doesn't get to retaliate)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +2 Initiative
Talents: Goblin Greed (-10 Charges: 2. Destroys a corpse the Furious Goblins are standing on, generating some amount of Gold if owned by the player. Doesn't end the Furious Goblin's turn)
Abilities:

Notably, Furious Goblins have actually lost 2 Initiative base. They don't really miss it, and they get it back at high Adrenaline, but it does make them less useful for getting out spells fast.

As with Marauder's Gold-from-corpses Talent, Goblin Greed scales its gold production based on the hidden 'location difficulty' stat of a region; basically, you'll get more gold for rummaging around in the dead of later islands than earlier islands. It's a lot harder to justify actually using Goblin Greed than the Marauder Talent due to its Adrenaline cost, especially before you've gotten Adrenaline max above 30, since using it eats their Initiative advantage.

Irascible's exact mechanics are a pain to test and make sense of. The summary I've given is my best attempt to parse it's in-game behavior, and I'm pretty sure it's not actually fully accurate. The Speed boost itself also doesn't actually work the way you'd expect from the in-game description: as far as I can tell, Irascible boosts can't stack, nor will Irascible overrule itself with a larger bonus. (ie if a Furious Goblin gets hit, gains +1 Speed, then gains enough Adrenaline to be able to gain +3 Speed, it needs to run out on the +1 bonus before it can get the +3 bonus)

Regardless, Furious Goblins are now an amazing unit at getting stuck in, and can even contribute damage without having to take damage. Kinda. Due to the need for Adrenaline to fuel Goblin Trickery, in practice yes they do need to take damage, or be backed by wasteful shenanigans, but still, it's at least nice they can make the free hit at all. Giant Killer, it should be noted, boosts the damage on Goblin Trickery, not just their base attack.

Ultimately, the main flaw with Furious Goblins in player hands is that Orcs-the-unit are actually really good. No, really.

As enemies, they're a bit more notable, though it's an important question in a given battle how much Adrenaline they start with. If a given Furious Goblin stack has little Adrenaline to start with, they're actually overall less problematic than in The Legend, full stop. With more Adrenaline though, they can be startlingly difficult to avoid getting right in your forces' face nearly instantly, especially if you're careless with splash attacks.

It's worth commentary that I've never seen the AI use Goblin Greed, just like the similar Talent on Marauders. Similarly, the AI is quite fond of using Goblin Trickery, but not very intelligently. Often, they'll miss an opportunity to lock down ranged units because they see an opportunity to Goblin Trickery from their current position and they don't think to get up close and then use Goblin Trickery.


Orc
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 190
Leadership: 80
Attack/Defense: 15 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 70
Damage: 7-10 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical
Talents: Running
Abilities: None

Level 1

Stat changes: +2 Damage
Talents:
Abilities: Violent (Always crits on counterattacks)

Level 2

Stat changes: +10% crit chance
Talents: Commander (-5 Reload: 2. Grants a second move to goblins [any kind] whose Leadership is 300 or less per Orc in the commanding stack. Does not end the Orc's turn or use AP)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +10 Attack
Talents: Onslaught (-10 Reload: 3. Runs in a straight line an infinite distance to attack a single target for 10-14 Physical damage, shoving the target back one tile if possible. The target doesn't get to retaliate, but the attack requires at least one open tile between the Orc and its target. Can also be used to travel without attacking a target)
Abilities:

Orcs have actually more than doubled in hiring price, note, while their Leadership cost has gone up by 33%. They've also lost some Attack and Defense, and only gotten a bit of Health in exchange. As such, they've gone from being a somewhat generic (If bulky) 2-Speed Running melee unit, to being overpriced garbage if you're not properly supporting them with Adrenaline. What they do get out of Adrenaline is quite good, though!

Onslaught is basically Ice Ball physics as a Talent. It can even be used to just travel really far without actually hitting anything, though there's rarely a good reason to do so.

Commander says in-game that it's 240 Leadership per head, but it's actually 300 Leadership per head, whoops. Either way that's pretty generous, but hey.

On a graphical note, Orcs-the-unit have actually basically switched with Orc Veterans when it comes to their shield: in The Legend, Orcs-the-unit had a shield depicting the Orc racial symbol, whereas in Armored Princess that's true of the Veteran Orc's shield instead, aside from exact coloration.

Overall, Orcs are set up to use an initial Adrenaline amount to zip into melee, and then just sit in the midst of the enemy dishing out brutal counterattacks and tossing extra turns at goblins in the meantime. That's a bit inconvenient from a player perspective, particularly with Grand Strategy strongly pushing the player away from taking casualties through the early-to-midgame, but later in the game a Paladin can have a lot of fun with them, or even a Warrior or Mage once you've gotten a hold of the Resurrection Spell, and the synergy with goblins is decent since Goblin Shaman are ridiculously good, though it's a bit limiting since Orcs tend to be outperformed by eg Veteran Orcs if you're not using goblins alongside the Orcs.

In AI hands, Orcs perform surprisingly poorly. As with most such Talents, they only understand using Onslaught if the position they start their turn in has them lined up with one of your troops, and it's surprising how rarely they use Commander, in spite of the fact that only Goblin Catapults aren't ahead of them in Initiative and/or Speed. Vengeance also suffers from the fact that the player is heavily disinclined to provoke counterattacks anyway, and their stat bonuses from higher Adrenaline aren't terribly important. As such, AI Orcs-the-unit tend to be essentially just a generic 2-Speed Running melee unit, with the only caveat being having to keep in mind Onslaught 'firing lines'.


Veteran Orc
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 380
Leadership: 140
Attack/Defense: 26 / 26
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3
Health: 130
Damage: 13-16 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical
Talents: None
Abilities: Counterattack (If counterattacked, the Veteran Orc makes a second attack on the target. Won't trigger on 'passive counterattacks' like Brontor Spikes)

Level 1

Stat changes: +5 to Attack and Defense
Talents: Potion of Rage (-10 Charge: 1. Cancels Slow if the Veteran Orc stack is currently afflicted with it, as well as granting an immediate 2 Action Points, and granting 5 Rage to the Hero if under player control)
Abilities: Veteran Mastery (Chance to evade enemy attacks. The chance is 5+5 times Adrenaline level, meaning 10-20%)

Level 2

Stat changes: +20 to Health
Talents: Scold (Reduces Adrenaline to 0. Charges: 2. Splits Veteran Orc's current Adrenaline among all other allied Orcs, and doubles the damage of the Veteran Orcs for 1 turn. Does not end the Veteran Orc's turn), +1 charge to Potion of Rage
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +1 to Speed
Talents: Savage Attack (-20 . Reload: 3. Does 13-16 Physical damage to the target and to enemies to the side), +1 charge to Potion of Rage
Abilities: Cunning (When attacking a stack whose Speed is lower than the Veteran Orc's, the target cannot counterattack)

They've actually lost base damage (2 minimum, 4 maximum) as well as Running, but they've picked up 1 each in Attack and Defense, picked up 20 Health, and then of course there's a whole suite of powerful Adrenaline-based effects to boot. (With Potion of Rage basically replacing Running, and being far superior)

I've struck-through the Adrenaline cost on Savage Attack because the value in question is what the game lists, but as far as I can tell it doesn't drain any Adrenaline when used, and indeed will generate Adrenaline just like any other attacking Talent.

I have mixed feelings about Cunning in particular, since it actually undermines their basic Counterattack ability. Though as an aside, the Ice Ball already had me suspect 2 Speed is the default value when undefined on a unit, but Cunning is the thing that cements my certainty, as my consistent experience is that a Cunning-activated Veteran will avoid retaliation from Bosses so long as their Speed is at least 3, implying the Speed on Bosses is 2, when they don't make use of a Speed stat outside of turn order stuff. Also note that Cunning does apply to Fury Attack, which can be exploited to get damage on units that are actually faster than the Veteran Orc without retaliation by simply targeting an adjacent unit that isn't faster.

Scold's in-game description sounds like it doubles the damage of the other Orcs, but it only affects the Veteran Orcs themselves, making it a bit of an odd trade-off Talent. I'm honestly not sure what the intended usage is: maybe you're expected to use it to land a finishing blow? In any event, I've never seen the AI use Scold.

Orc Veterans are honestly just plain amazing so long as you're either okay with suffering attrition or have a way of preventing their casualties from sticking. They do shocking amounts of damage, are so fast they can usually hit whatever target you consider ideal, have a nice habit of dodging periodically, and can even bolster your Rage generation. They're a great unit pretty much no matter what you're doing, and are one of the better Orcs to consider 'splashing' into your army so they can benefit from Adrenaline-the-Skill consistently, and within an Orc army they're one of the more useful units for bolstering the Adrenaline of your army efficiently thanks to Fury Attack being not only free but a way to land a finishing blow while still dealing damage to more important target.

As enemies, Orc Veterans don't impress as much. Like AI Sea Dogs, they have a habit of wasting Fury Attack on single targets, they don't use Scold, they do use Potion of Rage but never more than once per turn and I've never really identified a coherent pattern to when they use Potion of Rage... all they've really got is impressive baseline Speed as their base Adrenaline rises and a habit of randomly dodging attacks. Which is annoying, but unreliable.


Ogre
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 3000
Leadership: 1000
Attack/Defense: 37 / 47
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 680
Damage: 50-60 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 10% Poison, 10% Fire
Talents: Drain (Charge: 1. Picks an enemy anywhere on the battlefield and takes all their Action Points, which the Ogre can then immediately use for itself, as Drain does not end its turn or consume AP. Spell immune units cannot be targeted)
Abilities: Orc's Commander (+1 Morale to orcs-the-subspecies)

Level 1

Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Rage of the Ogre (Reload: 3. +1 Action Points, and Attack is doubled for 2 turns. Also clears Weakness from the Ogre)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: +1 Speed
Talents:
Abilities: Heavy Mace (Melee attacks do 50% more damage against flying enemies, and reduce their AP to 2 if it was above 2. This Speed penalty lasts 2 turns)

Level 3

Stat changes: +15 Attack and Defense
Talents: Strike (-10 Reload: 3. Targets an arbitrary enemy, inflicting 70-90 Physical damage, Stunning it for one turn, and dropping it in a random tile within 3 tiles of its original location), Drain gains another charge
Abilities:

A shiny new graphic! Well. Some more color, anyway. Close enough. Almost all their base stats have gone up a noticeable amount as well, though this includes Leadership climbing. Only max damage is worse.

Ogres are kind of weird in Orcs on the March, in that the Adrenaline mechanic and some other new mechanics (eg Recruiter on Orc Chieftains and Goblin Shaman) don't really end up encouraging them to fight alongside other Orcs, outside of the part where kills landed by allies only give the Ogre Adrenaline if the killer was an Orc unit itself. It's generally going to be more desirable to slip them into a non-Orc-dominated army while having enough ranks in Adrenaline-the-Skill and/or Onslaught that they begin the battle with 30 or more Adrenaline outright. (Among other points, Onslaught's Adrenaline distribution is randomized, but only among valid units: if the Ogre stack is the only Orc-type stack in your army, it'll get all the Adrenaline Onslaught provides)

They do have Orc's Commander, and it's more relevant than it was in The Legend, but on the other hand Orc Chieftains are also a high-Leadership, durable, hard-hitting stack with useful Talents that have a better version of Orc's Commander, so Orc's Commander isn't much of an incentive to consider adding Ogres to an Orc-focused army. Meanwhile, the fact that they aren't considered to be an Orc-the-subspecies, nor a Goblin-the-subspecies, nor a shaman (Relevant to one of the Orc Chieftain's Talents), means that they'll actually tend to be less of an increase to other unit's effectiveness than some other Orc unit. (eg Orcs-the-unit can give goblins another turn, so adding in a goblin if you're using Orcs-the-unit and have no goblins is a notable synergy)

Still, Drain is insanely good, can be stacked with Rage of the Ogre to give them truly astonishing movement range, and Strike gives them a way to contribute damage without having to risk a retaliation. They also show up earlier as buyable than in The Legend, generally speaking, which makes their status as the 'smallest' Level 5 unit less of a flaw: you might actually get access early enough to appreciate their relatively low Leadership and relatively high per-head durability.

As enemies, Ogres are extremely obnoxious and if at all possible you should never Wait when Ogres are in the enemy army, as they will always Drain something if they can. They're particularly punishing to units with low-ish Initiative but decent or high Speed, such as Cyclops, but their Initiative is high enough that it's not that likely that your entire army goes before them, and then they'll zip right up and start bashing your units. They're actually one of the most problematic Level 5 units to deal with, weirdly enough, unlike in The Legend where they were basically a joke. Being Level 5 closes off most of your Spell options for locking them down, such as Magic Shackles, Sheep, Blind, etc, so it's very difficult to prevent their Drain shenanigans, especially since the only protection against Drain is immunity to magic, meaning only Black Dragons are safe. Ogres usually won't do a lot of damage to your army, but they'll make a mess of your battle plans and cause casualties you might've thought you could avoid. As such, they should generally be a priority target in most formations.


Shaman
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 600
Leadership: 200
Attack/Defense: 24 / 32
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 180
Damage: 15-18 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: Dancing Axes (-8. Reload: 2. Targets a single enemy anywhere on the field to do 20-25 Magic damage per Shaman in the stack, with 80% of the damage done healing allied organic units)
Abilities: Fighting Spirit (When Adrenaline reaches maximum, Adrenaline drops by half, all Talents are reloaded, and Attack and Defense are raised by +4 each for the rest of the battle), Thirst for Glory (+1 Adrenaline anytime an ally gains an Adrenaline Level), Enraged (Begins battle with 10-15 Adrenaline)

Level 1

Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Totem of Life (+3. Reload: 3. Sets a Totem in an empty tile anywhere on the field, which in a 2-tile radius around it bolsters the Defense of allies by 20% and once per turn heals organic allies in that radius, starting from the turn after it was set. Level 5 units don't benefit from either effect. The Totem has 7 health per Shaman at casting, and similarly heals 7 Health per Shaman at casting)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: Dancing Axes does 25% more damage, +50 Health
Talents: Totem of Death (+3 Reload: 3. Sets a Totem in an empty tile anywhere on the field, which in a 2-tile radius around it lowers enemy Speed by 1 and once per turn attacks all enemies in its radius for 5-8 Physical damage per Shaman at casting, starting from the turn after it was set. Level 5 enemies aren't susceptible to either effect. The Totem has 10 health per Shaman at casting)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: Totems are 25% more effective
Talents:
Abilities:

It's not super-obvious, but Shaman have a new skin.

Note that the game says Fighting Spirit triggers at Adrenaline Level 3, but this is misleading, as it won't trigger until the Shaman reaches their personal maximum on Adrenaline; raising the maximum Adrenaline on your Orcs thus makes it take longer to reach that first Fighting Spirit trigger. (Though it is accurate inasmuch as if your Orcs can't rise above 20 Adrenaline yet, then your Shaman can't have Fighting Spirit trigger) I'd say the same about AI Shaman, but enemy battlegroups raise their starting Adrenaline in later fights so it's not really a consistent thing. It also means that getting maximum Adrenaline to 60 ensures they'll still be at Adrenaline Level 3 even after Fighting Spirit triggers. Also note that Fighting Spirit has, as far as I can tell, no limit on the number of times it can trigger per battle, and it doesn't care whether any Talents are actually on cooldown; ideally you'll have your Shaman spam their Talents so as to maximize the benefits of Fighting Spirit triggering.

Similarly, the Health boost actually kicks in at Adrenaline Level 2, not at Adrenaline Level 3 the way the game claims.

Do note that their Totems actually increase their Adrenaline when used. Not by much, but it is an increase rather than a decrease. Also notice that they always start a battle at least Adrenaline Level 1, thanks to Enraged, so they can always start a battle with the ability to toss down a Totem of Life. Further note that Thirst For Glory means Shaman are strongly incentivized to be used alongside a team of all Orcs: it's not that hard to get to Adrenaline Level 2 so they get boosted Dancing Axes (And Health!) if fielded alongside Orcs galore.

The overall result is that Shaman usage actually hasn't changed that much compared to The Legend. The main notable difference is that in The Legend it was usually smart to drop a Totem of Death on turn 1 or 2, and in Armored Princess you won't necessarily have access to it that quickly. Enemy Shaman are even less changed in implementation, since the AI's base Adrenaline rises the later in the game a fight is meant to be, and so enemy Shaman will frequently be able to use Totem of Death right away. Shaman get to spam their Talents more freely thanks to Fighting Spirit, but Shaman already spammed their Talents; in shorter battles they play nearly identically, albeit being overall a bit more effective.


Goblin
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 50
Leadership: 40
Attack/Defense: 16 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 26
Damage: 2-4 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: None
Abilities: Giant Killer (+30% damage against Level 5 units), Archer (Range: 4), No Melee Penalty

Level 1

Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Zeroing In (+5 Attack for the rest of the battle each time a ranged attack is performed), Unstoppable (When attacking, the Goblin has a 5*Adrenaline Level% chance of getting an additional turn, ie 5-15%)

Level 2

Stat changes: +1 Damage
Talents:
Abilities: Poison Axes (20% chance to Poison enemies with attacks)

Level 3

Stat changes:
Talents:
Abilities: Goblin Rage (-15. Reload: 1. A ranged attack with unlimited effective range which does 3-6 Physical damage and pushes the target back 1 tile if there's space to be pushed into)

Compared to The Legend, Goblins are no longer a generic short-ranged ranged attacker that kind of sucked. Now they... well, now they have Adrenaline. It... mostly makes them a bit more random through Unstoppable and Poison Axes. Goblin Rage is a nice little Talent, the knockback is genuinely nice for slowing enemies down, but honestly you're probably better off using Goblin Catapults instead of Goblins if you want an Orcish ranged unit. Or Goblin Shaman. Or use Blood Shaman as functionally close enough.

Honestly, Goblins are probably the single most disappointing Orcs on the March unit. They can be annoying in AI hands thanks to Unstoppable and Poison Axes meaning they'll periodically get lucky and do a bunch of damage to your units for no real reason (Exacerbated by Zeroing In rapidly raising their attack if they get a chain of Unstoppable triggers), but they're still fundamentally a bad ranged unit with no tactically interesting dynamics changing how you use them. Their primary recommendation is that Adrenaline doesn't build when just taking damage, and so just being a ranged unit at all goes well with Adrenaline... but then they don't really leverage it in a useful or interesting way.

Alas.

At least the other Orc units are cool.

On the plus side, just like Furious Goblins, Giant Killer applies to their Talents, not just their base attacks.


Catapult
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 300
Leadership: 130
Attack/Defense: 23 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 80
Damage (Ranged): 6-11 Physical

Damage (Siege Gun): 12-22 Physical 

Damage (Melee): 7 Physical

Resistances: -50% Fire
Talents: Detonation (Reload: 2. A selected powder keg or bomb explodes on command)
Abilities: Archer (Range: 5), Siege Gun (Calls the Siege Gun attack against most Objects, including Gremlins. Effective range is 6 for such targets), Susceptible to Fire (50% more damage from Fire)

Level 1

Stat changes:
Talents: Fire Missile (Reload: 2. Ranged attack with infinite effective range against an enemy, which does 8-13 Fire damage to the target and 50% that to adjacent units, with each unit having a 50% chance to be Burned as well)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: 2 Fire Damage added to all attacks
Talents: Explosives (-15 Reload: 3. Sets an explosive object on a chosen empty tile 2-3 tiles out from the Catapult)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +30% chance to crit, +30% Fire resistance
Talents:
Abilities:

Catapults are slightly more Leadership-intensive, but their base damage has been improved (As has Fire Missile's damage) and they've got Adrenaline in general. The fact that they have to wait for Fire Missile is a bit annoying, though, and Detonation is basically useless. Usually you can detonate a bomb/powder keg by just attacking it, after all, and with Fire Missile you'd be able to stack on additional damage to adjacent enemies on top of the explosive being detonated. Still, while the Catapult is one of the more low-key Orc units in its changes, overall it's gone from being a solid if flawed unit to being... basically the same thing, but a bit better. And just intrinsically more interesting from its Orcness. And as previously covered, Cannoneers are much weaker competition as Gremlin-killers, so you're a lot more likely to field Catapults than in The Legend just on that basis. 

Though it's also worth noting that an easily overlooked big point in their favor is Burn being made percentile, as it means that Fire Missile isn't simply splash Fire damage but is also a way to inflict shocking amounts of ongoing damage against stacks. Cannoneers have nothing equivalent to this, which is another point shifting things in favor of Catapults.

Also note that Detonation does not burn Adrenaline. This... doesn't actually do anything to bring it into relevancy, but it's true regardless. Amusingly, behind the scenes it's actually coded as a regular Fire damage attack, except this attack doesn't matter because other code jumps in and causes it to do 150% of the HP of the target.

Explosives is a situational Talent, primarily due to its horribly limited range. It can occasionally be great for blocking a chokepoint, especially since the AI will generally try to destroy the explosive if it can't reach one of your units instead and thus burn a unit turn or two on inflicting damage on itself, but most of the time the Catapult won't be in position to really pull this off. Thanks to the short range, fairly fast units like Horsemen will often just go around and hit the Catapults or one of your other units if you're not using it to outright block off a chokepoint, further limiting its utility. And of course it eats Adrenaline, potentially costing you Fire damage on your base attack, crit chance, Fire resistance, or even access to Fire Missile.

Still, it does have uses. Unlike Detonation.

Explosives itself can create two possible bombs, with its chance split evenly between the two. Broadly speaking, it's accurate to think of them as 'the bad bomb' and 'the good bomb'; the bad bomb has 20 Health per Catapult and does 8-12 Fire damage when it explodes. (Again, per Catapult) The good bomb instead has 35 Health per Catapult, 50% Physical resistance, and does 12-15 Fire damage when it explodes. The bad bomb is thus actually weaker than just lobbing Fire Missile if you don't manage to catch multiple targets, while the good bomb is the Catapult's strongest attack, but is more of a nuisance to actually detonate... but also better at stalling enemies if placed well.

Catapults are one of the better Orc options for bolstering the Adrenaline of the army as a whole by picking off targets, both being a competent ranged unit in general and in particular Fire Missile having even greater utility than Fury Attack for finishing off nearly-dead stacks while still dealing serious damage to stacks that are large and thus dangerous. Since it is a ranged attack, there's no need to fiddle around with positioning to get such an opportunity, and the lack of an Adrenaline cost helps still further. Though speaking of this, another flaw with Detonation (As well as a bit of a flaw with Explosives) is that you only get Adrenaline for direct damage/kills: finishing off a stack by detonating a powder keg, even if it was generated by a Catapult and/or detonated via Detonation, gives zero Adrenaline.

In AI hands, Catapults are fairly straightforward. I've never seen the AI use Detonation or Explosives, making them a fairly basic ranged attacker that will intermittently use Fire Missile. Since the AI starts with increasingly high amounts of Adrenaline, guaranteed, AI Catapults can almost always immediately open with a Fire Missile. If you've got Tactics, it's worth avoiding clumping your troops to minimize the Burn rolls/resulting damage, especially since AI Catapults will often hold off on actually using Fire Missile if none of your troops are adjacent to each other. (But not always!) Their weakness to Fire is a bit less serious of a flaw in enemy hands than in The Legend as well, since the Mage doesn't start out knowing Fireball, Fireball is more expensive, Fire Rain is also more expensive and can't be double-cast anymore, and a blaster caster is probably focusing on stuff like Black Hole and Death Star anyway, rather than on the Fire damage Spells. As such, Catapults are overall a little harder to kill for the Mage, even aside the probability of them having enough Adrenaline to reduce the seriousness of their Fire weakness.


Orc Tracker
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 500
Leadership: 160
Attack/Defense: 20 / 28
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 150
Damage: 10-15 Physical
Resistances: 10% Poison
Talents:
Abilities: Tracker (+1 Speed to allied animals), Hunter (+50% damage against 'beasts'), Loner (+5 Attack and Defense if no ally is within 2 tiles)

Level 1

Stat changes: +1 Speed
Talents: Animal Companion Level 1 (-5 Charge: 1. Summons into an adjacent tile 70-90 Leadership per Tracker in the summoning stack, with the unit summoned being randomly chosen from Lake Dragonflies, Fire Dragonflies, Hyenas, and Swamp Snakes. So long as the summoned stack is on the field, half of the damage the summoning Tracker stack takes is redirected to the summoned stack)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: +20% Physical and Poison resistance
Talents: Snare (-10 Reload: 2. A single adjacent enemy below Level 5 is unable to move or use Talents that involve moving for 2 turns), Animal Companion upgraded to Level 2 (As Level 1, except it will summon Snakes, Bears, or Wolves)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Healer (-20 Reload: 3. Heals/resurrects an adjacent stack of allied animals that is below Level 5, 44 Health per Tracker in the healing stack), Animal Companion upgraded to Level 3 (As Level 1 and 2, but it will now summon Royal Snakes, Griffins, or Ancient Bears)
Abilities:

Note that you only get one charge across all three levels of Animal Companion, meaning that if you want the biggest payoff you have to hold off until Adrenaline Level 3 before using Animal Companion.

Orc Trackers are fantastic to use in the extreme early game, as they passively boost the Snakes and Royal Snakes you're probably going to be fielding and are sufficiently beefy for the very low Leadership of the early game that they can get into melee combat without there being a high risk of them suffering casualties. Past the super-early game they shift to being more gimmicky, and really need serious Adrenaline support to be an effective unit that isn't costing you money. If you do have a lot of ranks in Onslaught and Adrenaline-the-Skill, being able to instantly toss out a disposable animal stack that of course benefits from their passive Speed boost for animals can be useful enough to justify dragging them in even if you never send them into combat. Glot's Armor can also theoretically be used to let them get into melee to build Adrenaline, though in practice it honestly just doesn't absorb enough damage for that to be practical.

In AI hands, Orc Trackers are almost never paired up with animals -they basically only ever show up in pure Orc armies- and are rare besides, like much of the Orcs on the March content. When they do show up, they never use Healer that I've seen, and are erratic as to whether they bother to summon an Animal Companion at all. When they do summon an Animal Companion, they simply summon it from wherever they start the turn at; they won't move closer to your forces and then summon. About the only thing they're kind of competent at is that they like to use Snare on your forces when they're close to death -much like Cave Spiders and Fire Spiders using Web when they're close to dying- which can genuinely inconvenience your forces at times. Even then, they don't really know what to target.

Still, they're usually more problematic to fight than Orcs-the-unit, as they'll often be operating on a passive 4 Speed, and killing them quickly is a nuisance when they bother to summon an Animal Companion.

On a mechanical note, the damage transference effect is a bit weird in how its handled. Splash damage and damage over time effects (ie Poisoning and Burning, primarily) will sometimes immediately transfer the damage appropriately, and sometimes will instead not trigger until after the current unit has completed its turn, which can lead to weird situations where you do a bunch of damage to a Tracker, none of it gets transferred, and then suddenly and for no obvious reason their Animal Companion keels over dead after a completely unrelated thing has happened. Or, more inconveniently when you're fighting them, maybe the Animal Companion gets to take a turn with its full stack size and then absorbs the damage, when it should've suffered casualties first and thus lost damage output.

A different mechanics note is that the game completely fails to mention that the Orc Tracker apparently really likes their animal companion, by which I mean that if a unit directly attacks their animal companion -including if they retaliate against it attacking them- the Orc Tracker does doubled damage to that unit until such time as a different unit attacks their animal companion. You're really encouraged to have the animal companion initiate combat on an enemy the Orc Tracker is going to attack, which is a neat little dynamic! It's frustrating this goes unmentioned, because it's easy to overlook in casual play and knowing about it notably changes how one wants to play with the Orc Tracker.


Orc Chieftain
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 4000
Leadership: 1200
Attack/Defense: 40 / 35
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 850
Damage: 50-70 Physical
Resistances: 20% Physical, 10% Poison, 10% Fire
Talents:
Abilities: Smash (Melee attacks additionally hit enemy units behind the target. No friendly fire risk), Commander (Allied orcs and goblins gain +1 Morale), Thick Skin (+20% Physical resistance, and melee attackers have a chance of suffering an Attack penalty for 2 turns when attacking the Orc Chieftain. The lower their Level, the higher the chance, and the greater the Attack loss), Recruiter (After a battle, 1-2 Orcs-the-subspecies are added to a randomly chosen existing stack in the player's army)

Level 1

Stat changes: +10% Damage
Talents: Sneer (-5 Charge: 1. Provokes a target enemy of below Level 5 that lacks immunity to mental effects to attempt to attack the Orc Chieftain, with the targeted unit's resulting behavior being exactly as per Scoffer Imp's Sneer)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: +20% Damage total, +1 Speed
Talents: Predator (-10 Charges: 3. An adjacent allied orc or goblin stack suffers casualties, but immediately maximizes its Adrenaline and gets another turn. The Orc Chieftain stack, meanwhile, is healed by 200-400 Health base [does not scale to Chieftain stack size] and continues its turn), +1 charge to Sneer
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +30% Damage total, +2 Speed total
Talents: Spirit Strike (-20 Reload: 3. Attacks all adjacent enemies, for 35-45 Physical damage per Orc Chieftain, and shoves all affected enemies away 1 tile. Level 5 units are immune to the shove. Shaman, Blood Shaman, and Goblin Shaman allied stacks act as a multiplier to the final damage), Predator's healing is doubled
Abilities:

An interesting point is that the Orc Chieftain's skin was actually used as the new skin for the Ogre in the base version of Armored Princess. I'm personally glad they switched back to a variation on the old Ogre graphic, because it was pretty strange to retcon Ogres as being the same skin color range as Orcs and Goblins while still emphasizing that they're fairly off to the side, societally and all.

Thick Skin is weirdly complicated. First of all, its 'weapon-breaking' effect can only trigger against...

Peasants, Robbers, Marauders, Swordsmen, Guardsmen, Knights, Paladins, Miners, Dwarves, Foremen, Giants, Werewolf Elves (In Elf form, specifically), Orcs-the-unit, Orc Trackers, Orc Veterans, basic Skeletons, Zombies, Decaying Zombies, Vampires, Ancient Vampires, Demons-the-unit, Executioners, Gorguls, Pirates, Sea Dogs, and Witch Hunters.

... which is a decent array of units, but it's still very easy to go several fights without this effect being able to trigger at all. Second, the chance of it triggering, and the strength of the Attack penalty, are the same number per-Level; Level 1 units will run into the effect 75% of the time and lose 75% of their Attack for the duration, Level 2 units run into it 37% of the time and lose 37% of their Attack for the duration, Level 3 units hit it 25% of the time and lose 25% of their Attack, Level 4 units hit it 19% of the time and lose 19% of their Attack, and lastly Level 5 units (Which is to say Giants in specific) have it trigger a mere 15% of the time and only lose 15% of their Attack for the duration.

I sort of like the part where its penalty is greater the lower the Level of the unit simply because higher-Level units tend to be hit pretty hard by even proportionately fairly small penalties to Attack or Defense because they have so much in the first place; a Giant losing 15% of its Attack is actually generally going to be higher impact than a Peasant losing 75% of its Attack. I'm not so fond of the trigger chance being rolled in there too, as it turns Thick Skin into a mechanic with a notable element of screaming "Come on big money!" at the game; after all, you can all but assume Peasants will break their pitchforks on your Orc Chieftain's skin, but you'll much more appreciate Knights having their swords crack in the attempt, when it's less than a 20% chance it'll happen on any given attack.

Recruiter is heavily biased toward using high-Leadership orc stacks to maximize its effect, as its value really is just 1-2 no matter what unit is being added to. Also note that it can and will take you over your current Leadership, so it's worth considering avoiding actually maxing out your relevant stacks, especially if you've got your Reserves slots tied up somehow. Also note that it doesn't apply to goblins or Ogres, nor (more intuitively) to the Orc Chieftain theirself. It's just Orcs, Orc Veterans, Shaman, Blood Shaman, and Orc Trackers.

Predator's casualty infliction is static (ie a bigger stack of Orc Chieftains doesn't eat more units), and defined per-unit, specifically being that Goblins and Furious Goblins lose 2 members, while everything else loses 1 member -well, everything that can be targeted. You can't use it on Ogres, other Orc Chieftains, regular Shaman, or Blood Shaman. While sort of an interesting idea, Predator unfortunately isn't a very good Skill. The healing amount is only useful if you luck into Orc Chieftains extremely early in the game, and the second turn effect is difficult to make reliable use of unless you're doing something like just planting the Orc Chieftain atop eg Catapults and not bothering to try to close with the enemy... which has the problem that they can't use Predator until Adrenaline Level 2, while demanding that you're fielding a minimum of two Orc units, making it impossible to reliably ensure they get enough Adrenaline from Skills to use Predator first turn. So it's difficult to consistently get real use out of Predator, above and beyond the dubiousness of deliberately inflicting casualties on your own units.

Spirit Strike is a bit finicky if you're running a mono-Orc army since Orcs are so weighted toward melee, though to its credit the fact that it's boosted by Shaman, Blood Shaman, and Goblin Shaman means that you're strongly encouraged to run 3/5ths of your army as not-really-melee if you want to maximize the Chieftain's damage on Spirit Strike. Probably the biggest flaw with Spirit Strike is actually Smash's presence; via Smash, a Chieftain can hit two targets with a base damage of 50-70, whereas Spirit Strike's base damage per target is a mere 35-45. Oftentimes a Smash will thus get you a base total damage of 100-140, which Spirit Strike requires at least three victims to be about on par with and of course requires more to consistently beat... oh, and Smash isn't using up Adrenaline, when one of the primary benefits of gaining Adrenaline on the Chieftain is that their damage goes up! Worse, the Adrenaline-based damage boosting does not apply to Spirit Strike, meaning that the comparison for Smash on two targets vs Spirit Strike is actually Smash having an effective base damage of roughly 130-182! Spirit Strike thus needs four targets to actually justify itself over Smash, which is quite a feat to arrange even with eg Teleport support.

Now of course there's that shaman-derived boost, but it's less great than one might hope. What the game does is look at how many shaman stacks your army contains, and then use that number as the multiplier, with a multiplier of 1 being used if you have no shaman present. So first of all this means that having only one shaman stack in your army provides no boost at all; you need at least two for their presence to help any. Second, by default you can only reach a multiplier of 3, as only Shaman, Blood Shaman, and Goblin Shaman count; while the game actually doesn't care about the size of the shaman stacks, it's not like splitting a stack to get Spirit Strike to a multiplier of 4 is a particularly sensible strategy. A multiplier of 3 does at least pull Spirit Strike ahead of Smash if we're assuming two targets apiece, let alone if Spirit Strike is catching three or more targets, but you're committing 4/5ths of your army to enabling this and it's not that great. As a bonus, Blood Shaman's Power of the Horde is better off with literally any other Orc unit in place of Orc Chieftains; this isn't a strongly synergistic set of four units overall.

A further problem is that Spirit Strike is has some pretty major coding errors that make adding shaman to your army straight-up disadvantageous to Spirit Strike itself. By default, Spirit Strike has no friendly fire (In spite of the game telling you it hurts 'friend and foe alike') and is guaranteed to shove enemies away; the second any shaman are boosting Spirit Strike's damage, suddenly it gains the friendly fire that the in-game description refers to. Worse, shaman presence also means the shove component is disabled! This appears to have been an attempt to code Spirit Strike to only shove enemies, but if so they botched it quite badly. So adding shaman to your army makes Spirit Strike less flexible in usage if you're trying to avoid hurting your forces, and can get you in trouble if you were planning around the shove and didn't know (Or forgot) about the shove being disabled when shaman are in your army. And note that this is all enabled by even one shaman stack being present; one shaman in the army actually makes Spirit Strike worse than having no shaman at all, since it doesn't even get a damage boost!

That said, something of a saving grace for Spirit Strike is that it fully counts 'fake' shaman; you can give Spirit Strike a boost by using Phantom to create additional Shaman. If you're fond of, say, using Phantom on Goblin Shaman anyway, you can potentially get a good amount of damage out of Spirit Strike without so serious a commitment of army formation to it, or alternatively get it to notably more impressive height -a Mage fabbing up two Phantoms for two turns ahead of the Spirit Strike use, on top of three natural Shaman stacks, gives Spirit Strike a base damage of 245-315 per target per Orc Chieftain!

Unfortunately, Spirit Strike is further hampered by the fact that Smash is generally safer to take advantage of (In spite of the fact that it will provoke a retaliation) because it keeps the number of enemies in immediate striking range of the Orc Chieftain to a minimum, where Spirit Strike maximizes danger to the Orc Chieftain. Even considering it shoves enemies away (If you're not boosting its damage...) and that it won't necessarily have friendly fire: it still requires more dangerous play to optimize it than utilizing Smash. Especially since it costs Adrenaline, and so can take away the Orc Chieftain's high-Adrenaline Speed advantage, when high Speed is really useful for battlefield control.

The overall result is that the Orc Chieftain is primarily useful as a combination of mildly-to-moderately effective damage sponge, dishing out surprisingly decent damage in melee, and strategically Sneering with your two charges of it when it will have a profound effect or when you just don't want the Chieftain risking any more damage for the moment. With a secondary utility of slightly reducing your spending on recruiting additional Orcs, assuming you combine it with the units Recruiter works on.

As an enemy, the Orc Chieftain is surprisingly underwhelming. I've never seen the AI use Predator (Though I'm not sure if this is because they're not programmed to use it or if it's just an illustration of how rarely they're in a decent position to use it), they don't know how to use Sneer effectively (Further hampered by the fact that they'll never move before using it), and they have a bad habit of using Spirit Strike when there's literally only one unit in range, actively lowering their damage output twice-over. (It's not like the game tries particularly hard to team them up with lots of shaman stacks) And of course Recruiter doesn't even matter in AI hands.

The overall result is that you should generally treat enemy Orc Chieftains like most any 2-Speed generic melee; a slow-moving unit that should be a low priority compared to anything faster or with ranged attacks.


Blood Shaman
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 900
Leadership: 270
Attack/Defense: 20 / 32
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 160
Damage: 15-22 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents:
Abilities: Enraged (Begins battle with 10-15 Adrenaline), Thirst For Glory (+1 Adrenaline anytime an ally gains an Adrenaline Level), Spirituality (No Morale penalty from allied Undead)

Level 1

Stat changes: +1 Initiative
Talents: Spirit Rage (-5 Reload: 3. Inflicts 7-15 Astral damage on any one enemy troop. If the stack is killed by Spirit Rage, it leaves behind an Eviln instead of a corpse. This effect cannot trigger on Plants, Undead, or inorganic units. Alternatively, Spirit Rage can target an Eviln, in which case Spirit Rage will do half its normal damage, but to all units adjacent to the Eviln. The Eviln is destroyed in that case)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: +20% melee damage
Talents: Goblin Blood (-10 Reload: 2. Every allied goblin loses 1 member of its stack, but gains 10 Adrenaline and 1 AP, which can grant it a second turn. Additionally, the Blood Shaman is healed to full health, and for each stack that sacrificed a goblin, a 'rage cluster' appears, which will provide 5-10 Rage when walked over), Spirit Rage hits twice

Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes:
Talents: Power of the Horde (-15 Charges: 2. One enemy takes Magic damage equal to the number of Orcs-the-faction in the Blood Shaman's army, multiplied by the Level of the units involved [ie the Blood Shaman provide 4 damage per head], and additionally the target suffers -1 Initiative for one turn), Spirit Rage hits thrice
Abilities:

Notice that the Blood Shaman always starts a battle in at least Adrenaline Level 1. This means that in short battles and/or with decent Adrenalin-providing support from eg other Orcs landing kills, Blood Shaman can be treated as basically a ranged unit, especially if you can get their Adrenaline high enough for them to use Power of the Horde without exiting Adrenaline Level 3.

Speaking of Power of the Horde, for your convenience, here's what each Orc unit works out to for Leadership-to-damage:

Furious Goblins: Leadership is 45, Level is 2, so 1 damage for every 22.5 Leadership
Orcs: Leadership is 80, Level is 3, so 1 damage for every 26.6 Leadership
Veteran Orc: Leadership is 140, Level is 4, so 1 damage for every 35 Leadership
Shaman: Leadership is 200, Level is 4, so 1 damage for every 50 Leadership

Ogres: Leadership is 1000, Level is 5, so 1 damage for every 200 Leadership
Goblin: Leadership is 40, Level is 2, so 1 damage for every 20 Leadership
Catapult: Leadership is 130, Level is 3, so 1 damage for every 43.3 Leadership
Orc Tracker: Leadership is 160, Level is 4, so 1 damage for every 40 Leadership
Orc Chieftain: Leadership is 1200, Level is 5, so 1 damage for every 240 Leadership

Blood Shaman: Leadership is 270, Level is 4, so 1 damage for every 67.5 Leadership
Goblin Shaman: Leadership is 130, Level is 3, so 1 damage for every 43.3 Leadership

Notice that Power of the Horde is actually an argument for using Goblins, as they provide the biggest damage boost for the Leadership of any unit. The Blood Shaman is sadly the third-worst at boosting its own Talent, and somewhat disappointingly the Orc Chieftain is awful at boosting Power of the Horde, making their own desire to see Blood Shaman alongside them to boost Spirit Strike not very synergistic with the Blood Shaman's own priorities. The overall best possible team is Goblins/Orcs/Furious Goblins/Veteran Orcs plus of course the Blood Shaman. Using 10,000 Leadership as the benchmark, the Furious Goblins would provide roughly 444 damage, the Orcs would provide roughly 375 damage, the Veteran Orcs would provide roughly 285 damage, the Goblins would provide 500 damage, and the Blood Shaman would provide roughly 111 damage, for a total of approximately 1,715 damage.

Let's compare this against Spirit Rage. Spirit Rage's base damage is 7-15 per Blood Shaman, but it strikes three times anytime you could've used Power of the Horde instead, meaning the base value of Spirit Rage in this comparison is effectively 21-45 damage, or potentially more if you arrange to target an Eviln surrounded by multiple enemies. At 10,000 Leadership, you'd have 37 Blood Shaman, which means you'd do 777-1665 damage.

Notice that the absolute best-case scenario for Power of the Horde is actually not much higher than the high roll on Spirit Rage. This assumes your army is optimized to maximize Power of the Horde's damage, and also assumes you haven't taken any casualties, and that you're far enough into the game no magic number issues are cropping up with your Leadership. Now, the low roll on Spirit Rage is much lower, and the average damage is still low enough Power of the Horde isn't necessarily worthless or anything, but honestly Power of the Horde is a bit underwhelming and I wish the numbers on it had been stronger, especially since it has a fixed number of charges and it's not like Gift exists in Armored Princess. It's especially frustrating since maxing Power of the Horde's damage involves making your army heavily out of units that are all about getting into melee, where they start taking casualties and thus weakening Power of the Horde further. If you instead shift over to eg Catapults and Goblin Shaman over Orcs and Furious Goblins, you suddenly drop down to approximately 1360 damage on Power of the Horde in this 10,000 Leadership example, which is much more dubious when contrasted against Spirit Rage, and of course if you include Orc Chieftains or Ogres anywhere in the list they're contributing nearly nothing.

To be fair, Spirit Rage has a long reload and Power of the Horde has some potential utility through the Initiative reduction, but it's still fairly weird that the Blood Shaman's Ultimate Attack Talent is so underwhelming. The only really positive/interesting thing about Power of the Horde is that it barely loses any damage from the Blood Shaman themselves taking casualties; if you're playing a Paladin and interested in playing around with Orcs, having the Blood Shaman charge into melee and act as your damage sponge can work surprisingly well, and you can even save using Power of the Horde until their numbers are fairly low while retaining 90% of its effectiveness.

In enemy hands, Power of the Horde makes them a critical priority target (For disabling or killing outright, if you can) when facing particularly large Orc forces if you're not able to just rapidly nuke down the army itself. This doesn't happen too often, but it's something to keep in mind, and in particular requires a bit of a mental shift: usually a nearly-dead stack isn't contributing much directly anymore, but Blood Shaman can potentially inflict shocking casualties even when nearly gone if the rest of their team still outnumbers you significantly. Worse yet, AI Adrenaline scaling means that the kind of late-game Orc force that has a chance of being so much larger than your forces is likely to be able to Power of the Horde right on the first turn!

Weirdly, the AI usually prioritizes Spirit Rage first, even when the Blood Shaman stack is nearly wiped, making it less important than it really ought to be. The AI clearly doesn't look at the expected damage to determine which to use. Speaking of AI derp, I've never seen a Blood Shaman use Goblin Blood, even though in AI hands it would be an amazing Talent, where in player hands it's a neat idea hampered by the fact that the player should usually be avoiding casualties. Goblin Shaman having Recruiter and Instruction are inadequate to push the player away from 'casualties=bad', too, unless you're consistently expecting to avoid goblin casualties otherwise and also expecting to reasonably consistently use Instruction. (Which, among other points, requires Goblin Shaman get to 30+ Adrenaline)

Still, aside from potential Power of the Horde shenanigans, Blood Shaman in enemy hands are mostly like Shaman, except less threatening, bar specific matchup considerations like Black Dragons shrugging off Dancing Axes while taking full damage from Spirit Rage. Shaman actually use their utility Talents, even if they could be smarter about placement, and since Dancing Axes reloads quicker than Spirit Rage Shaman are generally putting more ranged pressure on your forces anyway.

As an aside, it doesn't really matter, but an element of how Power of the Horde is calculated results in a probably-unintentional oddity; that the final damage value will always be a clean multiple of the casting Blood Shaman stack's own headcount. That is, if you were to have 7 Blood Shaman cast Power of the Horde, the final damage number would be allowed to be 70, 77, 84, or any other multiple of 7, but not anything in between. The nature of this oddity is such that adding additional non-Blood Shaman to your army won't necessarily increase Power of the Horde's damage; raising your Leadership a little and adding another Goblin will likely have no effect, unless you happen to be near a breakpoint. As your Blood Shaman count rises, this effect becomes more pronounced, since of course the gap between valid numbers grows; at 540 Leadership, where you have a couple Blood Shaman, any even number is valid, which is easy. At 20,000 or so Leadership, where you're talking around 74 Blood Shaman, that's of course a quite wide gap in which the final number isn't getting to actually improve.

It's fortunately not terribly important, but it can be confusing, especially if you bother to calculate out numbers yourself before doing a battle, as you'll end up with damage either lower or higher than expected -the game actually rounds to the nearest valid multiple, not specifically down, so for example with 74 Blood Shaman you'd see no improvement rising up through around +36 damage, only to abruptly gain +74 damage at the +37 damage point. It's also sufficiently weird/obviously janky it's almost certainly not something that was intended, anticipated, or even recognized -most likely it was a side effect of a reasonable-at-a-glance under-the-hood calculation whose implications weren't fully considered.

On a different note, the Eviln produced by a lethal Spirit Rage will kill 20% of a stack, or heal 10% of an Undead stack. That's a decent bit of added damage if you manage to focus one stack down before really starting on other stacks, assuming you do manage to catch an enemy with the Eviln as well.

Goblin Shaman
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 250
Leadership: 130
Attack/Defense: 20 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 60
Damage (Ranged): 6-10 Astral

Damage (Melee): 6-10 Physical 

Resistances: Generic.
Talents:
Abilities: Goblin Commander (+1 to Morale for all goblins), Recruiter (Upon completing a battle with allied stacks of goblins-the-subspecies that aren't Goblin Shaman, a randomly chosen such stack is reinforced with 3-5 individuals), Ghost Axes (Range: 4. Ranged attack lowers all enemy Resistance by 2%. This effect lasts for the rest of the battle, and stacks), No Melee Penalty

Level 1

Stat changes: Ghost Axes now lower Resistances by 3%
Talents: Web of Life (-5 Charge: 1. Targets a stack of goblins, which for 3 turns redirects to itself 50% of the damage the casting stack would take)
Abilities:

Level 2

Stat changes: +5 Defense, Ghost Axes now lower Resistances by 4%

Talents: Astral Attack (-10 Charges: 3. One member of the stack dies, and a 12-18 Astral damage attack is performed by the remainder of the stack against a single distant enemy. Does not end the Goblin Shaman's turn and ignores Attack/Defense modification)
Abilities:

Level 3

Stat changes: +1 Initiative, Ghost Axes now lower Resistances by 5%

Talents: Instruction (-15 Charges: 3. An adjacent troop of goblins loses 5 members, and the Goblin Shaman stack gains 1 member)
Abilities:

Note the the game itself claims that the Defense boost kicks in at Adrenaline Level 1 and the Initiative boost at Adrenaline Level 2, but this is incorrect.

Recruiter works basically the same as it does on the Orc Chieftain, just with a larger number of reinforcements and being applied to Goblins, Furious Goblins, and Catapults. Same basic sentiments apply in terms of eg you might want to hover somewhat below max Leadership on your goblins if you have a Goblin Shaman along.

Bizarrely, Astral Attack is a Talent unique for entirely ignoring the target's Defense stat. (And, thankfully, the user's Attack stat) It's effectively like a spell, only scaled to a stack's size, and with almost-irresistible damage to boot. (Astral resistance is really rare, but not quite nonexistent) This makes it one of the most lethal Talents in the game. This is an unfortunate example of a thing that's much more frustrating in enemy hands than it is useful in player hands, since the player's Attack and Defense will rise over the course of the game, with enemy Goblin Shaman remaining just as lethal anyway while your own Goblin Shaman fail to rise in lethality with Astral Attack, increasingly being prone to being better off just hitting something with their Ghost Axes. That's not even touching on how it actually kills a member of the stack, which is nearly a non-cost for the AI where for the player it actually matters.

The game makes some reference to Astral Attack hitting a number of times scaled to Adrenaline Level, but that's simply wrong -you might think this is a botched translation of how it can be used so long as you have enough Adrenaline and charges, but no, even the original Russian incorrectly claims this!... because at some point in development it did work this way, which is a bit of a horrifying thought.

Also note that Ghost Axes lowering resistance even works on Bosses. This is one of the only lingering negative effects in the series that works on Bosses! By a similar token, it works on Gremlin Towers! It does not work in melee, but is otherwise universal.

Further note that Web of Life can actually be targeted on hostile goblin stacks. Interestingly, it can't be used on enemy Goblin Shaman, only Goblins, Furious Goblins, and Goblin Catapults. This is a bit of a niche thing -Goblin Shaman aren't exactly ideal tanks- but redirecting damage to the enemy is a lot more useful than redirecting it to your own units, so if you're using Goblin Shaman and happen to be fighting valid goblins it can be useful to keep in mind. Knowing about this quirk might let you overcome a particularly strong battlegroup.

Also, a weird, annoying point is that the Goblin Shaman's Initiative boost from Adrenaline is buggy. Their stated Initiative will rise appropriately when it's triggered, but their position in turn order will remain where it is as if their Initiative didn't go up -but if a new unit is then generated in the battle (Note that Ball Lightning counts for this purpose), the Goblin Shaman will have their position in turn order immediately shifted to where the Initiative increase should put them, with this correction to the turn order persisting for the entire battle. I suspect the game is, internally, doing something like calculating turn order and then in this one case adding Initiative without bothering to recalculate turn order, thus only accounting for the Initiative boost once something else forces turn order to be calculated. This usually isn't an issue, but it can really foul things up if you planned ahead and your Goblin Shaman isn't going ahead of units you were expecting it to go ahead of, be they enemy units or potentially your own, and it's one of the bugs that can really mess with your head if you notice it; I imagine there are players who were left sure they must be missing something and spent forever trying to hunt down the thing they weren't thinking of rather than realizing a really strange bug was at work.

Overall, the Goblin Shaman is themed around solving problems by drowning the enemy in Goblin blood. It's a really cool idea! It's too bad Grand Strategy means you'll ideally avoid using basically everything they do aside Ghost Axes for... a long, long time. And... Recruiter is so underwhelming that it's not actually practical to bury enemies in a tide of Goblin blood. Still, it's a cool idea...

... and anyway Goblin Shaman are so good they're worth using in spite of their flaws, just because Ghost axes is really useful. Note in particular that they effectively enhance the damage on Spells and Rage attacks, something few other units can assist with, making them particularly appealing for a Warrior or Mage. Admittedly not as appealing as a Gorguana outside of Boss and Keeper fights, but you only need a minor boost to Morale to make it practical to mix Lizardmen with Orcs so that's not some kind of deal-breaker.

As an aside, I've never seen an AI Goblin Shaman use Instruction or Web of Life. The former makes perfect sense -it would basically never be a good trade for the AI- but the latter is a bit surprising. Honestly, probably the biggest significance of this is that it means the AI is never going to interrupt its own Astral Attack spam; the AI will always use Astral Attack until it either runs out of charges or the Adrenaline costs bring the Goblin Shaman down below Adrenaline Level 2, and then lob a Ghost Axe to finish the turn. Due to the rising Adrenaline on AI forces point and the fact that Orcs are mostly placed as fairly late encounters in the game, quite often if you're fighting a Goblin Shaman at all this means all three Astral Attacks hitting you first turn. Since Astral Attack ignores your Defense, it's usually one of the most lethal things a battlegroup can do to you: Goblin Shaman should be a priority target, though thankfully they're low enough in Level it's not too hard to Blind them, Magic Shackles them, etc.

It's really a bit weird and a little disappointing how in both AI and player hands the Goblin Shaman ends up being a straightforward damage dealer, in spite of having more interesting qualities than that. Oh well. I do like getting to see goblin magic, at least.

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It's honestly difficult to convey how much fun Adrenaline adds into the game. Orcs are actually overall probably a bit too powerful in Orcs on the March, but Adrenaline is such an interesting mechanic I find myself forgiving them for it. It's enough fun I'm even willing to accept technically-unnecessary casualties once I've maxed out Grand Strategy, just to properly enjoy the full Orc experience.

Outside of Goblins and Goblin Shaman being pretty annoying as enemies, the closest thing to a negative thing I have to say about the Orcs on the March overhaul is that I kind of wish all the races got an equivalently interesting and distinctive core mechanic to their name. Alas, there's only one other case in the series that I feel manages to pull that off at all, and it's way off in Dark Side.

Anyway, next time, we cover Demons.