Every faction has a weakness. Bring the right weapon, hold the right ground, and kill the right target first. Here is how each enemy fights and how you break them.
— type to filter foes.
Thugs, Poachers, Raiders, Leaders. Your bread and butter from day one.
Threat: Raider marksmen and two-handers hit hard. Leaders carry good armor and the best loot.
How to beat: Use your own ranged brothers to kill their crossbowmen and two-handers first, before they reach your line. Shield wall the thugs, then collapse on the leader. This is where you farm gear and crowns to grow.
Billmen, knights, sergeants, banner-bearers. Late-game Noble War crisis.
Threat: Heavy armor across the board, polearms with reach, organized morale.
How to beat: This is an armor-breaking fight. Two-Handed Hammers, the new Estoc, and crossbows crack their plate. Kill the banner-bearer and sergeant to weaken their morale, then use Fearsome to rout the line. Hold a choke so their reach polearms can't all engage at once.
Young, Berserkers, Warriors, Warlords. Massive weapons, thick armor.
Threat: Orc weapons hit far harder than human ones and shred armor. Berserkers charge with no regard for tactics. They are strongest in melee, weakest at range, and better fought by day.
How to beat: Use ranged brothers to drop the squishy axe-wielders (Young, Berserkers) before they reach you, so your shieldmen's defenses stay intact. Against Orc Warriors, two-handed weapons and armor-piercing hammers end them fastest. Spearwall blunts charges. Loot Orc weapons for high-Fatigue brothers (Wildmen, Barbarians) since they cost extra Fatigue for humans.
Wolfriders, Ambushers, Shamans, Skirmishers. Weak in melee, crafty and hard to hit.
Threat: Poison, nets, and sharpshooter tactics. They pin your brothers with nets, poison them, and shoot from range. They will not charge you honestly.
How to beat: Stack Ranged Defense. Put high-Ranged-Defense brothers in front and shelter the rest behind them to raise their effective cover. Kill the shamans (they curse) and the net-throwers first. Close distance fast: once you reach them, Greatsword Swing mows them down since they have almost no armor. Don't let them kite you across open ground.
Risen corpses, armored and unarmored. The Undead are a Horde, and a DPS race.
Threat: They keep rising. Without a Necromancer they revive a fixed number of times; with one, until you kill the caster. Numbers, not skill.
How to beat: Outlast them. Take an unflankable position or a hill to funnel their numbers. Six shield brothers up front with spears and sword backups, ranged in the rear. A high-damage backline (polearms) that strikes over your front line accelerates the race. High Melee Defense holds the line. As a tip, an unarmed risen corpse can't fight, so taking their weapons matters.
The caster behind the horde. Raises the dead, including your fallen.
How to beat: Snipe him. Two bowmen on the flanks of your backline with Bullseye exist for exactly this, picking the Necromancer out of the crowd. Until he's dead the corpses keep coming. If you can't reach him, decapitate the risen so they can't be raised again: polearm cut skills (Strike, Reap) and 2H swords behead, which permanently removes a corpse.
Geists: elusive spirits that drain Resolve and raise your dead. Fallen Heroes: elite armored undead.
Threat: Geists are the run-enders of the Undead Scourge. They're hard to hit, they break your morale, and they turn your casualties against you. Fallen Heroes need a lot of damage focused fast.
How to beat: Bring 2H swords or whips and reach weapons to kill Geists the moment they appear. Keep Fortified Mind on key brothers so their Resolve drain doesn't shatter your line. For Fallen Heroes, focus-fire with armor-breakers, since outlasting them risks one unlucky roll wiping a brother.
Huge armored ice trolls. Slow but devastating, can throw your brothers.
How to beat: High-HP, low-effective-armor, so bleed wins. Cleavers stack damage-over-time that ignores its toughness. Net it to stop it repositioning your line, then dogpile. Keep brothers spaced so it can't hit multiples. See also the Beastmaster trick on the Secrets page.
Two-part serpents (head and tail) that spit and splash acid that destroys armor.
Threat: Extreme damage and toughness in melee. Acid melts your gear. Standing next to either part risks the acid splash.
How to beat: Fight at reach. Use polearms and reach weapons to attack while avoiding the acid. Prefer attacking the tail, which takes criticals and saves you fighting through head armor. Once armor breaks, whips and bows are effective. Cleaver Decapitate hits hard on a wounded Lindwurm. They're slow, so a bait brother (often a sergeant) with Pathfinder can lead one around the map while the company picks it apart. Lindwurm-scale gear resists the acid.
How to beat: Most beasts are flesh-and-blood with little armor, so cleavers, swords, and spears do well. Direwolves hunt in packs: hold formation, don't get surrounded. Nachzehrers eat corpses to heal and regrow heads, so kill them fast and clear the field. Schrats are high-HP plants weak to fire and bleed. Webknechts (spiders) web and poison: spread out. Alps put your brothers to sleep and feed on nightmares: kill them quickly, fight by day. Ifrits split when hit and resist piercing: use cutting and area damage. Serpents drag brothers out of line: keep your formation tight.
Ground wins fights. Before you engage, look for a hill (height advantage), a choke (negates numbers), and clear lines for your archers. Half of beating any enemy in this game is deciding where you fight them.