This post named in honor of one of the pretenders from a hilarious Disciples game I watched ages ago. I’m continuing my series of posts about the fun strategies you can use in Dominions 5. I still hope my posts inspire someone else to start playing the game, either now or when Dominions 6 launches in January of 2024.  Last time was physmoss, this time it’s Thunder Strike.

“Evocation” is the general magic-y word for “big spells that do damage.” Fireballs, shockwaves, if it directly hits someone, it’s usually evocation. I think the separating of magic spells like this first came from D&D, but the tradition has carried on in Dominions.

In Dominions though, not all Evocation is created equal.  Some spells really aren’t worth it, and casting “retail evocation” aka low level tiny spells is a sign that times are desperate and you don’t have the mage firepower for Big Boy spells. But one of those Big Boy spells, indeed a spell so powerful it people might build their pretender specifically to counter it, is Thunder Strike.

Let’s start with the good: Thunder Strike deals a boatload of armor negating shock damage to a square, and then a smaller amount of shock damage to all the squares around it. That means any units sitting where the Thunder Strike hits get instantly deleted, no matter how good their armor, while surrounding units can still be stunned by the small shockwave that surrounds the big strike. So this spell not only deals with ultra-powerful enemy units (like the physmoss mage from last post), but also ties down large enemy armies by shocking their units and stunning them for a turn or two. It may not seem like a lot, but stunning some troops can break apart their formation and allow your own army to defeat them in detail.

The only counter to Thunder Strike is Shock Resistance, which is a very hard resistance to get. This is why some nations will specifically build their pretender around defeating Thunder Strike: if the pretender has high level Air or Earth magic, they can bless their sacred troops with Shock Resistance. That will help immensely against the large stunning shockwave, but still may not be enough to save units from the big Thunder Strike at the center.

But now here’s the bad news: Thunder Strike requires a mage to be Air 3. Remember that Hordes of Skeletons from before required just Death 2, higher levels of magic are much less common than lower levels. Mages with magic of Level 1 are everywhere. Level 2 is usually doable. Level 3 and above is exceptionally rare. So while it’s easy for your enemies to amass the Death 2 mages needed for skellyspam, it’s hard to find the Air 3 mages needed for a Thunder Strike counter.

But there is one hope for an aspiring Thunder Striker: and it’s called Storm Power.

Storm Power is an Air 2 spell that adds +1 to a mage’s Air Magic. In essence, it turns an Air 2 mage into an Air 3. BUT it can only be cast when a storm is already raging.  And creating a storm on the battlefield requires… Air 3 yet again. So Air 2 mages alone can’t make this work, but everything can come together if they can get just a single Air 3 mage.

The trick is that the Air 3 mage will cast Summon Storm, then the Air 2 mages all cast Storm Power. And now that everyone is an Air 3 mage, they can start blasting out Thunder Strikes like there’s no tomorrow. This is a huge ability, and Thunder Strike plus Storm Power is a key tech level for most air nations in the game like Vanheim and Caelum. 

The best part is that summoning a Storm will also power up Air Elementals, who Air 3 mages can also summon. Air Elementals can fly directly into the enemy’s lines, barely take damage because they’re Ethereal, AND ignore shock damage. So you can also summon a few of them during the storm and let them tear apart the enemy army while you’re dropping Thunder Strikes on their heads. It’s a brutal strategy.

This is why Air 3 is such a key breakpoint for mage power. Air 2 is OK, but Air 3 is key. The ability to summon storms and turn everyone into a Thunder Striker overturns a lot of strategies and forces your enemies to come up with effective counters to deal with you. 

One fun nation I love is Ur: The First City. Ur gets Gudus as a mainstay mage, and 1/2 of Gudus are Air 2. Unfortunately, Ur can’t natively recruit any Air 3 mages, so it seems they’re out of contention for Thunder Striking. But they can use a national spell to summon an Ugalla, which is an Air 3 mage in its own right. So by summoning an Ugalla, Ur can turn itself into a Thunder Striking powerhouse on par with any other.

And Thunder Strikes have a huge range as well. They can hit well into the back-line and destroy an enemy’s mage corps. So if the enemy sets up skellyspam, Thunder Strike can be a legitimate counter, as you delete their mages to slow the tide of skeletons.

So that’s yet another tactic I really enjoy. It’s stereotypically done by the “Elven” nations (Vanheim, Helheim those sort) but I’ve also made it work with my favorite nation, Ur. Feel free to try it yourself when Dominions 6 comes out.