Army Archetype Discussion: The Otherporters

Currently, high rank successful/viable armies are something like VoidMage + some obviously high power units (such as Knight, Pride, RoyalGuard) or some other degenerate thing, none of them really could be considered 'combo' though.

This thread I hope to discuss a certain group of units: anything with Portal/Summoner/Beacon/Nexus/GravityMage and how competitive they could be. Since "teleporters" could sound like they describe Wisp, I've named them Otherporters for now because they teleport other units. I have my eye on them every update.

The general trait with all of them is that they all, being support units, get worse and worse until you hit endgame and they even become Vampire food. I suspect an otherporter that had attacks would be much more competitively seen.

• Portal: Probably the worst(?) otherporter. The main advantage is like, you teleport a Ranger out turn 1. The issue is that there are often pieces that serve a similar purpose to a low-mobility piece like Ranger (Alchemist, FireElemental) and don't require you to delete a minion for it.

  In the good old days you'd see Portal desperately attempting to be 'reused' for efficiency. Go, Legionary turn 1! Now spend turn 2 doing nothing. Okay, go, Legionary turn 3! And so on. Turns out that kinda sucked and didn't make up for it. And Angel does that better without costing a minion.

  With Summoner's buff from a while back, Portal's suckiness was made really obvious as there was now a piece that didn't cost +1 turn moving something behind the Portal - all you had to do was move the recently-ported unit once, which you'd often do anyway.

  Fun fact, there's an old CEO video about this unit that tried to use Lich to portal out Skeletons. You know the concept was bad when you could just summon the thing on row 3 and then move it to row 4, the same row it'd be at if you portaled it. The Skeletons can also attack if a piece tries to block the Portal exit (...makes me wonder if Portal with telefrag would be better).

  The best army I've seen with Portal is OMEGAULTIMATE's double Minotaur and Behemoth army (with the Behemoths teleported on the first turns). I think it still has the problem of a lack of minions though.

• Summoner: Probably really good now. Has a lot of different 'modes' with its ability. On the first row it serves somewhat like a Portal (so all the slow units that are good to Portal, esp. Ranger, are good there). On the second it can teleport minions with otherwise slow movement. (Fireball, Pikeman). When an ally is on the ability target it's probably a bit weaker, as all it usually does is buff an ally's retreat potential which is useless (unless that unit is a PhoenixEgg).

  There's also trying to use it as a Range 3 'attacker' with putting an enemy in the ability target. The obvious is to try to catch the King. It doesn't work, it's easy to counter and sucks unless you're against AI. Less obvious is using it to throw an enemy piece very far into your backline (usually a minion, occasionally a weak-but-high-defense piece like Dryad/Pyromancer). If you have a Vampire+++/Gnome+++/etc. this can be extremely rewarding to get a kill effect. But it's very much a meme tactic, not helped by the fact that you can't teleport a unit into the best protected row (row 1) without minions promoting. (UNLESS you have Shieldsman protecting all your champions there!)

  The last 'mode' is using the bottom ability target, which instead teleports one of your 1st/2nd/3rd row units. This requires Summoner to be on the 6th/7th/8th row. I haven't had any success with it. It's annoying to get into a spot where this advantage can actually matter, and it is still subtly stupid seeing as if your minion is on the 2nd row (the most natural), you still can't use Summoner to insta-promote it, because there aren't any teleports directly to the promotion row at the 7th.

  The best army I've seen actually played with Summoner is tyleryoung's Minotaur/Comet/Summoner/Phoenix/Shieldsman army. There is a lot of othermove synergy going on with it (Demon+++ and Nexus also play a part).

  I've also tried Summoner with HauntedArmor teleportation, Samurai and Lust+ teleportation, even a rush army that spams Fireballs at one side of the board (turns out spending 1 move to swap Summoner into a2/h2 sucks hard).

• Beacon: Phoenix Beacon will forever be a meme after that "To-beacon-tinued" game design. Beacon's a very noob-friendly unit in that it can 'practically teleport any ally unit', and it's also very flexible (along with its synergy with slow moving pieces). I think all Beacon armies should constantly be trying to abuse that flexibility with ALL types of unit attacks. Knight, Envy, Pikeman, Fireball, Valkyrie, Ranger. Basically making that ability target square an incredible fork deadzone. Of course blocking the ability target square also blocks the fork threat, so you want to clear a piece out of the Ability Target as much as you can.

  The best army I've seen with Beacon is SirPendrak's. They've put 4 pikeman in the center and 2 Beacon++ on b/g. It's constantly able to make threats with Pikeman as if it was a Legionary, and has a lot of unit attack flexibility.

• Nexus: Has a lot of utility (it's near as good when the target's occupied as when it isn't) and it's probably the most popular otherporter right now. It is probably the unit that requires the most 'setup'. Compared to Beacon where you can teleport any Champion wherever, Nexus+ and Nexus++ require very specific locations if you want a Champion teleported from the start of the game.

  I prefer to think of the moveset of Nexus as centered 'around the ability target' and not the unit itself. So, Nexus+++'s tele-in range is like a Warrior+0, and tele-out is like a Knight+0 (it has a little anti-synergy with pieces that already move like a Knight). The "tele-in" feature is like a short Beacon at that point, and the extra "tele-out" squares that aren't Knight moves are pretty important. One is a Range 4 forward teleport, which is great for severely dashing opponent's attack plans or promotion plans of stuff like Princess/Salamander, by throwing it right back to the enemy side. Or it can be used for a surprise HauntedArmor.

  Usually the tele-in can't be a credible threat against enemies in the "tele-in" range, but it may have a minor synergy with Petrify/On-Kill stuff.

  The synergy with PhoenixEgg is stupidly obvious, like a mini Phoenix-Beacon. It doesn't have a large range but it's still a tight and annoying one. If taken in its "tele-in" range, it can teleport in the egg, then use its side-backwards 'valkyrie teleport' to put it in row 1, where it will almost certainly revive. I've seen an army played with two Nexus++'s side by side on d/e (created by karikera?). This is pretty efficient because there's no overlap in the tele-in squares due to their colorboundness.

  The best army I've seen with Nexus is Betelgeuse's Phoenix/Nexus/GravityMage+++/ThunderMage/FrostMage. Worth noting: with GravityMage's Range 5 ability square, there is a small combo here where you can put the Phoenix into the 6th row, then if it's killed you use GravityMage to teleport it back into Nexus tele-in range. It's a cool army but I do feel like it relies too much on synergy. I often can break it by taking a combo piece.

• GravityMage: Has a forward Range 5 unblockable ability square, allowing you to teleport that square like a Knight, as well as a large range of squares that can [Pay 1] to slide a piece towards the ability target.

  If there was a piece you wanted to make to intentionally force your opponent to lose minions (to kill them with Ranger), this would be it. It doesn't work with ThunderMage or FireMage like you would expect (your opponent has a half turn to move it away)... but it actually works with Butterfly, as it's "20.5" turns and will trigger at the start of your turn. But of course it's highly predictable. Probably better to just try ThunderMage anyway, and use lots of Freeze/Petrify.

  It also has a lot of horizontal swap, like a pretend Paladin. Can often make surprise saves with King due to that, or just save you some [Pay 1]s by moving the target around.

  The best army I've seen with Nexus is Betelgeuse's Phoenix/Nexus/GravityMage+++/ThunderMage/FrostMage.

I'm also wondering if this topic should discuss swappers, and 'othermovers' too - currently just the Wind ability and maybe FireMage. There is some overlap after all, and I have considered mixing different othermovers. There is a meme army you can do with Portal GravityMage where you can target the King from turn 1 with a Portal, but the ability of just moving it to row 6 is too unreliable.

-main_gi