My Guide to the Witch

[djicelatte]

Starting spells:
Witch: Brew potion, familiar, fog
A: Summoner: Imp
A: Necromancer: steal health, or bone dart
A: Enchanter: Telekinesis
N: Thaumaturge: Dispel
N: Illusionist: Beauty

Wizard and Apprentice: Hand weapon, dagger or 2h weapon. (you will be moving the spells casters forward and will have to fight when they come through the fog)

Warband: Treasure Hunter 80g, Treasure Hunter 80g, Archer 50g, Thug 20g, Thug 20g, Thug 20g, Dog 10g, Dog 10g,

Strategy: Create your path to treasure safely with the cover of Fog.
Only took one archer because fog blocks line of sight so the archer goes off on his own away from wizards either to get a treasure and shoot on his way out or harass the enemy.
Dogs are cheap meat to charge forward and for some reason always roll really good so charge em in!
Treasure hunters are fast and great fighters and with the cover of fog you want good fight skill behind the fog for when the enemy comes through.

Brew potion: brew tons of demons in a bottle. Stockpile them! give them to thugs or soldiers and when they get to a treasure drop the demon. Thug can drop the demon then next turn pick up the treasure and try to walk off the board while the demon moves forward to fight the enemy and protect the treasure carriers.

Fog: your bread and butter. they spent gold on archers and crossbows and line of sight spells so try and make it hard for them to find targets.

Familiar: free health points!

Dispel and Beauty: you started with these because you dont wanna buy them or wait til you find them. you have them so start lowering their casting value as you gain levels

Steal Health Bone Dart: Steal health is a last resort because we dont have the heal spell yet and that 3 hp can save your life. Bone dart instead if ya wanna shoot a guy in the neck with a tibia.

Telekinesis: if you need to pull a far away treasure closer or if your spell casters are close together pull the treasure close then the apprentice can drop the fog so if your opponent has telekinesis he cant get line of sight to pull it back

Imp: maybe my favorite spell. You get to drop a free little demon that your opponent has to deal with because its a wandering monster it will attack them and can be cast up to 3 inches from an enemy. Any attack an imp absorbs is one less attack you had to take and sometimes they even win combat and you get to laugh at your opponent as their barbarian is chewed to pieces by the free imp. Icing on the cake both the wizard and apprentice can cast this for 2 imps running wild. its a blast.

Future spell pick ups.
Banish: help deal with demons and genies in bottles
Control Animal: add an extra dog compliments of your opponent
Enchant weapon: you only have bone dart so creatures that need magic weapons to be hurt are a problem for you
Strength: giving +2 fight to a treasure hunter makes him +6 and if you got lucky and found the +2 fight hand weapon or could afford to buy it now you got a real threat with a fast move and +8 fight tearing up anything.

Gold: BUY THE ELIXER OF LIFE ASAP. it makes you feel safer knowing your wizard will be in combat and if he dies he isnt going to be dead dead on a bad roll after the game. Keep on in stock

[Morray]

Nice guide, it scares me that this game has tactics!

[wrinklestiltskin]

Wow, completely different from the list that I made (and haven't tested yet)

I had:
Witch: Brew potion, Animal companion and Poison dart
Summoner: Leap
Necromancer: Bone dart
Enchanter: telekinesis
Thaumaturge: Heal
Elementalist: Wall

So Leap & telekineses for treasure hunting. Wall for blocking off enemies (Though I wonder how effective it will be at 14/16) Heal for obvious reasons.

Poison dart seems like a powerfull spell. Though to be honest my luck with shooting and your list made me doubt it very much.

Brew potion I picked for the invisibility and demon potions.

Animal companion seems like a good way to get a tank with the bear.
Though control animal seems like a good spell as well as it doesn't limit the amount of soldiers you can take and there are always dogs on the table.

I'm not sure about familiar. I've only played one battle, but 1 spell from the witch list for +2 health seems a bit thin especially if you pick heal.
I'm not certain how much we're going to be playing frostgrave so that's why I'm not certain whether I should invest in the future with dispel and beauty or go for instant help with heal and something else.

[ChaosChild]

Animal Companion is an excellent spell, it's generally the first one I'd pick for a witch. The fact that the animals take up a soldier slot in your warband is actually a plus, as it allows you the freedom to take quality soldiers without having to max out your force with thugs and thieves.

Poison dart is also excellent, when it hits.

[Awesome Adam]

I'd take animal companion over a familiar. The Bear is easily comparable to a 50GC soldier Being a beast it is also to immune to Beauty. If it dies, you just summon another one, without losing any additional gold.

[djicelatte]

id skip animal companion because after a few games youre going to upgrade past what they give you. if a kennel allowed you to keep a bear instead of a dog id take it. Plus with control animal if your opponent has a bear, leopard, dog you could try and take it over and it doesnt take up a warband slot Also bears cant carry treasures so in the beginning its nice but i dont think its worth the 500 gold to buy the spell ya want later instead of starting with it unless ya get lucky and find it.

Also, a dog, bear, wolf, toad cant carry a magic item so you lost the option of having the thug with the demon in the bottle or teleport poition.

Wall is better then Fog but if you wanna go with walls id go elementalist because fog is so easy to cast and only goes away on a 19-20 its better for the witch.

I havent learned Mud yet but it would be fun to surround a guy carrying treasure in mud to slow movement to a crawl.

after a few weeks of play my warband is 3 treasure hunters, 1 apothocary, 1 archer, 2 thugs, 1 dog.

Poison dart looks good but i havnt gotten it yet.

[almic85]

Has anyone got any feedback after playing a few games with a witch?

I am looking at starting up a new witch warband and am trying to figure out which of the spells are really must have and which are no gos for start up spells.

so far I am looking at
Witch: Brew potion, Animal companion and Fog/poison dart
Summoner: Imp
Necromancer: Bone dart
Enchanter: TBC
TBC:
Illusionist: Beauty

I am thinking I need a couple more buffing spells for my troops or debuffing spells for opposing troops or possibly a movement spell.

[Timeshadow]

I have a witch and my beginning list looks like this

Spells: Animal Companion (Free Barbarian and mobil blocking terrain) DC 8
          Fog (Easy to cast and too good not to take to block all those archers ect) DC 8
          Brew potion (Free demon in a bottle or 100gc/battle on average)  DC 12
          Leap (it's one of the best spells in the game) DC 10
          Bone Dart (Great ranged attack) DC 10
          Telekinesis (So good for getting high treasures down off buildings or moving them away from opponents) DC 12
          Heal (another go to spell if you can take it do so) DC 12

Wizard
Apprentice
Captian Crossbow,hand weapon,leather armor  105gc (+1 Fight stat, +3 Fight trick, +3 Shoot Trick)
Archer 50GC
Archer 50GC
Thief 20GC
Javaliner 25GC
Javaliner 25GC
Javaliner 25GC

Last open slot is for animal companion at DC 8/10 its almost for sure and you also get a DC 12/14 at a demon in a bottle as well.

Get an Inn for your base and upgrade to get pigones, Giant Culdrin and Kennel when you have the cash.

[mdauben]

Interesting discussion, djicelatte!  Some really good ideas from everyone to consider when running a Witch. 

[thoughttrauma]

what are people using for 'fog templates'?

[Timeshadow]

Currently I use a simple 6" by 1" D&D dungeon tile for all my walls but I plan to make a few out of foamboard and hotglue.

[farseer]

For walls I use the reaper bones flame walls.  They come in 1 inch sections and are transparent red/orange.  😊
For fog i'll make a template with some cotton glued to it.  I like representation in my games.

[Bishop Cockthrottle]

what are people using for 'fog templates'?

I use white Christmas draping material cut to size and then some nylon packing (like cotton wool to place on it. Then I have card templates of the 6 x 3 x 1 dimensions when we need to determine LOS. Having a soft material allows it to fit in gaps.

May make a full-size 3D version that can free-stand by dble-sided taping bubble wrap together

I am using some thin vinyl for Wall spells with card stands to hold it upright,

[forcecommander]

Curse seems really powerful for the Witch, or is losing an action not as crippling as I think?

[Iamafish]

what are people using for 'fog templates'?

I use a īTī made from 3mm ply wood I am going to glue cottern wool on it and fluffi it up