They're just overshadowed by other units.Īs enemies, they can be surprisingly maddening to face. It's too bad, because The Legend's usage of Action Points means that, where Fairies in the classic Heroes of Might and Magic games look usable and are honestly fairly terrible, Lake Fairies in The Legend actually do have a lot of potential within the system. Combined with the distribution of quality in races making it so that running Demons isn't necessarily a Morale burden, and it's fairly common for a run to just never have it sensible to try them out. Most notably, it's actually possible to enter Demonis before going to the Elf lands, and indeed depending on your luck with battlegroup generation et al it may be easier to reach Demonis than to hit the plot gate that opens access to the lands of the Elves, at which point Lake Fairies have essentially been preempted by Imps and Scoffer Imps, which are better able to function as No Retaliation melee harassment and throw in Fireballs and Sneer in the Scoffer Imp's case. Ultimately, the primary issue Lake Fairies have is that the game doesn't tend to give you access to any until late in the game when you have access to a variety of other units. They're an okay unit for using Time Back with, and unlike some of the glass cannons out there they're perfectly possible to Resurrect, so even those issues are manageable, but they're still worth commentary. but if there's ranged attackers you can't lock down or high Speed/Initiative units on the enemy side (eg Horsemen, Dragons of any stripe) they tend to take casualties fast, rapidly degrading their damage. They're lightning-fast, hit hard, get No Retaliation making their glass cannon status workable, and the bonus of potentially inflicting Weakness on enemies is a nice. Lake Fairies themselves are tricky units to make use of. Some things, here and there, but it's fairly rare. Oddly, later games don't do a lot to make Soaring more relevant. I've thus neglected to provide a description on individual units, because it's this weird grab-bag that usually can be ignored entirely. However, some normally-impassible terrain can be soared over (Usually either short blockages like vines or bottomless pits are possible to soar over), a handful of Talents interact with Soaring (eg the previously-covered point that Earthquake on Giants doesn't work against Soaring units), and it ensure the units will never activate a Trap, period. On many battlefields against many units, it does essentially nothing. I'll also take this opportunity to talk about Soaring, as it's a bit of an odd Ability. If you get a hold of Anga's Ruby in a given run, female units are worth considering giving a second look if you've been largely ignoring them for whatever reason. It provides massive boosts to 'female' units, and the four I just mentioned are all the units considered to be female in The Legend. I don't usually talk about items, but it's worth commentary in the case of Lake Fairies, Sprites, Dryads, and the still later Demoness that Anga's Ruby is a thing in the game. (Though there's still problems, admittedly)Ībilities: Soaring, No retaliation, Magic Resistance (25% Magic resistance), Fairy Dust (Melee attacks have a 30% chance of inflicting Weakness for one turn) Of course, Elves get a few Tolerant units, letting a player work around that issue even before they get Tolerance 1 themselves, so in The Legend Elves are arguably easier to please all-around than Dwarves.Īnd as you'll see, Elves have actual unit variety and more consistent unit quality. Which fits to plot stuff, given that Dwarves have an ongoing problem/history with Demons, while Elves have an ongoing problem/history with Undead. they're basically a mirror image of Dwarves, only hating Undead more than Demons instead of the other way around like Dwarves do. 1 Morale for Dwarven presence in allies. 2 Morale for Demonic presence in allies. Like Dwarves, Elves can get a Morale bonus for all-inning on their kind.

Female units kings bounty the legend