Strategy Contest: 50k price! (in Contests)

Rules:
Give a strat were an Axbow is better than a Compound bow.
Things I want you to consider:
-Ammo costs
-Archery
-Damage
-DX reduction
-Upgrade costs


The best suggestion wins at least 50k. (Maybe more, if I find the strat very good).

Bypassing Enchanters and Walls. Target the damage dealing minions first.

(This can work with EXBows as well)

Lower damage to yourself by taking out the most dangerous minions on your opponents team first, leaving you to mop up the non damage dealers at your own leasure (well, before the 25 rounds run out)

It is essential that you use seeker bolts with your AXBow. The ammo targeting takes precidence over the bows, allowing this weapon set up to target first the mages on the team facing you (who we all know are the damage dealers of CB2 atm). When these are destroyed through multiple hits (if anyone bothers to train dexterity on thier mages, uses a ToA, or the ToA is changed to effect all team minions the Dex draining of a AXBow will lead to more multiple hits landing), your AXBow users will then automatically target minions with the highest Dexterity. And there will be no tanks without dex!

Don't equip and melee weapon, and let your crossbowmen fire during melee! They will ignore the indecent CBF s and will lessen the dexterity penalty for firing in melee by lowering thier targets dex!

(It should be noted, that AXBows have to damage their target to cause the dexterity loss, and as they naturally target the highest dexterity opposing minion, without large dexterity on the AXBow user, or a large pth, the AXBow will suffer less hits than targetting a fleshy 20 dexterity Mage or Enchanter)

Ok heres my off the wall strat idea.

ETT strat

Enchanter
Stats: 3/4 AMF 1/4 V/A
Equipment: Standard mage gear + TOE
Strategy: Casts pretty big AMF to keep the mages honest, casts VA to help second tank - TOE helps reduce damage to both tanks.

Tank One
Stats: 3/10 HP 6/10 DEX 1/10 STR
Equipment: AxBow (no melee weapon) with normal bolts, DB's and DEX enhancing gear.
Strategy: Large DEX allows multiple hits per round with Axbow giving significant DEX reduction, DB's make it very difficult for other tanks to hit him.

Tank Two
Stats: 3/10 HP 4/10 ST 1/10 BL 2/10 DEX
Equipmemt: Big Morg/BoNE, Ranged Weapon not important, Heavy Tank Gear.
Strategy: Despite low DEX Tank will still hit in Melee combat due to the lowering of opposing minion DEX due to Axbow, this tank can sustain alot of damage due to high AC/ TOE effect and can hopefully dish out alot with Bloodlust and a large melee weapon.

This isn't really a very expensive strategy despite having two tanks as only one Melee and one Ranged weapon are really needed.

I guess that the change month of may is an unsteady foundation to build strat competitions upon..
But of course, do include whatever changes made, in your strats :)

I will end this contest in 2 days, or when I've got 10 strats that has thought behind it. (Like the 2 I already have got).

Put the Axbow on a CoC mage or an enchanter without melee.
The Compound is pretty useless on those two kind of minions, while the Axbow will at least drain some DX.
You will need enough strength on the minion to do some damage, and enough PtH on the Axbow to be able to hit.

On a tank, a compound is better than an Axbow.
The only possible exception is when you use a UC single tank with high DX and DB, fight against other single tanks, and want to gain enough DX advantage that you do not get hit at all by the opposing minion.
But that is a very specialized strat, and not a very useful one, for lack of targets.

about 1 day left, and not many entrants.. (and for some parts of the entrants that has been made, i can not personally agree that an Ax would work better).
But, keep on going on folks!
Some parts of the entrants could work.

MM: How to make CoC mages/enchanters to have enough physical stats, to hit? (wouldn't going on pth spree be very costly?, and in the same time, upping the x enough to actually make a DX reduce that will matter?). DX reduce will only matter if you land more hits/take less, often enough to change fightlist.

A preliminary observation: if among your minion you do not have a tank (or at least a ToJ), an Axbow is utterly useless: an exbow can be useful in more situations.

Since an Axbow targets tanks, you only have two options: either the axbow-wielding minion has enough DX to hit the enemy tank (and this means that your minion will have to be also a tank), or you rely only on the + to hit. I do not think it would be a good idea to train DX on a mage/enchanter only in order to be able to hit with the Axbow. Therefore, my proposal is to rely on the PtH of the Axbow.

The setting I had in mind is: either EETM, or EEET, and the Axbow either on the mage, or on the 3rd enchanter. The enchanters train AS, VA and your favorite EO. Note that, unless something exceptional happens, your minion will survive at least up to the 3rd round of ranged combat, and usually will die before the second round of melee (or it is a mage, and will not use the axbow in melee), hence your axbow will fire twice.
BTW, another possible setting is EEWT, where W is a wall, with the Axbow. However, wall means CoBF, which in turns means that tanks will not be a problem anyhow.

The question is: how much should you upgrade the Axbow? I would say: take the + at about +50, and the X at as much as you need: on average, your axbow will hit once per fight. How much does it cost? Let us see at the most valuable items stat:
An Assassin's Crossbow [4x44] (+2) worth $4,539,647 owned by Melris (The Blacksmith)
An Assassin's Crossbow [4x33] (+54) worth $4,404,563 owned by Rufiolo (Hogwarts)
An Assassin's Crossbow [4x38] (+45) worth $4,263,625 owned by Nonsensical Knight (Neji)

NK's Axbow seems to be pretty much what we we want: it costs about 4mil in the blacksmith (significantly less if you forge it or have it forged). It will hit more or less once per battle, draining nearly 10% of the enemy tank DX. A 10% DX can be quite important: see A Dex based hits.

The interesting fact, IMO, is that the alternative is simply no ranged weapon at all on the enchanter/mage. The downside of this approach is double: the cost of forging the axbow, and, most of all, the new proposed malus you get on your rewards from having high NW. However, since the malus is not operative yet, I do not know whether you should take it into account in this contest...

heh.. just a small addition.. Melris is forging the x44 axbow for me :)

Ops. If you want to follow my advice, you will have to pump the PtH quite a bit.

With such a large X and low +, maybe you should also consider a "tank killer" strat:
single tank, with ToA, large DX, large evasion (DB), small AMF (to counteract base decay), exbow.
But again, there only few tanks around, and you would starve. And CoBF is a much more effective "strat" against tanks.

I meant Axbow, not exbow.

its better then a comp bow if you use bl...

give ur main tank bl, have a mage/enchanter cast va on you, and then u hammer their dex down, double and triple hit them and soak in all of the hp's. get a morg and keep ur st low so you dont kill one person every round, then u will be in business!

Contest is over. Congrats to SacredPeanut !
SacredPeanuts 3-minion strat wins, since it's well described, has good points, and is constructed with the things I wanted considered.

A quite expensive strat, with big weapons, heavy armor, DB and such, but an interesting approach, with separate sources of damage-dealing, and separate DX/ST distributions.

I can't from these posts stray from my belief, that (ex)/axbows are way underpowered, but all posts shows good ways to try to use them.

Wow thank you :)