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With a massive seven-foot blade that can carve through low-grade units like no other weapon on the battlefield, the Nodachi class is a perpetual killing machine. The wielder is often able to offset their flimsy medium armour by deploying skills that literally suck the life out of others. With good fortune and meticulous timing (and the appropriate skill choices, of course), the Nodachi-armed character can conceivably survive on the front line for as long as there are enemy units to feed their weapon’s lust for blood.



Attributes

The Nodachi specialises in Slashing damage, which generally equates to Strength. However, the weapon also delivers significant Piercing damage and the popularity and significance of the Bloodthirsty skill make Agility a useful Attribute to invest in. As your opponents tend to be better protected at higher levels, many Nodachi veterans will suggest you go full Strength at the start of your journey, but invest more in Agility as you level up - as well as being a bit more selective with your targets during high-level battles. 



Weapon Skills

Unique to the Nodachi skillset is the concept of Bloodlust, which is an added effect of some skills that increase Life Drain - the amount of Health that can be transferred from the target. There are multiple levels, or stacks, of Bloodlust. When the Nodachi has five stacks, they enter a Bloodbath state, which, as well as a significant level of Life Drain, reduces incoming damage and awards increased movement speed.

• Tiger’s Claw: A simple but highly effective wide-arc Slashing attack that restores health. Good versus Heroes, even better against units.
• Bloodthirsty: A forward lunge followed by a Piercing attack that creates two Bloodlust stacks. Extra effects include Daze removal and enemy knockdowns.
• Fearless and Steadfast: Similar to Bloodthirsty, but delivers Slashing damage and gains one Bloodlust stack. Negates Daze and Concussion, however.
• Samurai’s March: Leap forward delivering 1-2 downward-slashing slices, potentially sending your target flying. Adds one Bloodlust stack.
• Monstrous Blade: Best used when you have a few stacks of Bloodlust, as each will increase Life Drain and restore significant amounts of Health over a four-second period.
• Blood Oath: Eliminates the cooldown on other skills (not Ultimates) and increases the amount of outgoing damage for a few seconds.

Ultimate Skills

Their lengthy cooldowns make their deployment rare, but you can be sure your target will feel it afterwards if they’re on the receiving end of either of these Ultimate abilities.

• Avalanche: A powerful series of dizzying Slashing attacks that should devastate any nearby units. Extra effects include Daze removal, Health restoration, and awarding one Bloodlust stack per enemy hit.
• Dragon’s Leap: Delivers awesome amounts of Slashing damage but requires charging, inviting your target to prepare for the worst. Also consumes Bloodlust stacks, in return for temporary immunity from crowd control effects.

Armour

The Black Sun Anchorite’s armour set is the one to go for if you want to maximise the benefits of the Tiger’s Claw and Blood Oath skills. If neither are part of your repertoire, the Carnifex armour set offers the best in no-frills Nodachi protection, with an increase in damage with two pieces equipped and increased all-round Attributes with four. In spite of the Nodachi Hero being limited to medium armour, those bonuses can make a huge difference in the right circumstances.

Despite being slow-moving and easy to read, the Maul can deliver crushing wide-swinging attacks that can sweep units out of existence in just a few strikes. Against other heroes, the Maul is easily outmanoeuvred and evaded, but when one strike hits home, you can be sure it will be followed by another, a flurry against which few will be able to muster much of a defence.

Introduced to the game in Season III, the Maul was for a time the only weapon class that needed to be unlocked before it can be utilised. It can still be unlocked by going to the Seasonal Screen (press F5) and selecting Season III Unit Challenges or can be unlocked at level 20 via the Skills tab of the Character interface (P).



Attributes

Even with heavy armour, a Maul-wielding warlord is something of a soft target due to their ponderous movement. It’s simply the case that almost every other hero will be able to hit and run faster. To offset this, most Maulers will invest the bulk of their Attribute points into Armour and Toughness, simply to maximise hit points and be able to soak up all that incoming damage.

The Maul specialises in delivering large amounts of Blunt damage, which is the damage type most heroes are ill-equipped to deal with, making it unnecessary to invest fully in increased Strength. Those that do, however, might find that the investment really pays off!



Weapon Skills

The weight of all that armour and wielding the Maul itself can have an adverse effect on a hero, with many skills using up precious Stamina if they are to be at their most punishingly effective.

• Mighty Mjölnir: The standard-issue opening strike for most Maul players, thanks to its sprint. It allows the Maul to quickly engage and then follow its shoulder charge with another attack.
• Bonebreaker: Often used as a follow up to Mighty Mjölnir, this wide-swinging strike is equally effective against heroes and clusters of tightly packed units.
• Earthsplitter: Like Bonebreaker, but with less base and more extra damage. With knockback effects, this is arguably the better skill to use against a dispersed or flighty foe.
• Up from Hel: An upward strike with a short cooldown that can remove daze effects and be doubled up to regain the initiative.
• Maelstrom: Another arcing attack, but one that can be greatly boosted by burning through Stamina to swat a path through almost enemy front line.
• Ukko’s Doom: A remarkably similar skill to Up from Hel and seemingly less damaging, but it’s the speed of the strike that sets it apart - the enemy won’t see it coming.

Ultimate Skills

Two quite different ultimate skills define the Maul. One characterises the sheer energy that can be channelled through the weapon. The other the strength of its wielder to be able to snatch an enemy from the front line.

• Forge of War: An absolute beast of a skill that delivers vast Blunt damage, but that any forward-facing hero will be able to see coming from a mile away. Used in amongst a tightly packed unit, you can be sure most of the enemy won’t be getting back up.
• Strike and Grapple: The signature skill of the Maul is one that allows them to knock out an enemy, pick them up and carry them across the battlefield, likely to be surrounded set upon by allies. A skill that is loved by Mauls and hated by everyone else.

Armour

Created specially to benefit Maul players is the Hammer of the Gods armour set, which with two items equipped reduces Mighty Mjolnir cooldown and with four reduces the Stamina cost of charging skills. If you prefer to take on a more versatile tanking role, the Guardsman’s armour set offers a health boost with two items equipped and gives an all-round defence boost with four items equipped.

It’s not often we are surprised by your creativity, given how many great responses we’ve had to competitions in the past, but in your entries for the recent Avatar Contest, you may have just surpassed yourselves!

In the wake of the release of Season VII: Wolves of Ragnarok, we asked you to create a batch of new Avatars to augment the selection of profile-style pics that had just been added to the game. The response was immediate: Within hours we’d received a wide variety of entries, many inspired by the Tiny Tyrants, others that were miniature fine art portraits, and even some heraldic bearings worthy of any medieval monarch. So good were almost all of them that we couldn’t help but expand the prize pool and include a few honourable mentions.

So, without further ado, here are the best Avatar entries we received, the first four of which will be added to the game in a future update. Keep an eye on future patch notes to see when that might be.

The winners: In addition to Sovereigns and Titles, the following four will be added to the game in due course.



Honourable mentions: These entries were so good that we had to raid the prize fund for more Sovereigns!


Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone that entered. We’re devising new competitions and events all the time, so keep scanning the latest news for the next one to appear!

We’ve just activated a 15% Honour boost to help you assemble bigger and better warbands for the battles ahead. The boost will remain active across all servers until 00:00 server time on April 12, when Honour rewards will return to normal.

Note that the cap on how much Honour you can earn will increase to 30,000 for the duration of the boost

See you on the battlefield!

As the pawns, kings and other pieces on the Conqueror’s Blade chessboard align themselves for Season VII’s endgame, it seems a good time to look back on the last moves of Season VI to see how the final battles to secure Augolia fared.

The following reports are based on recent communications with the champion alliances. You can check out all the winners of each season on the Hall of Fame page.



Server: EU1 (Crystal Sea)
Alliance: Revolution
Member Houses: HUN, Eden, Heretic

Friendly Alliance's three straight seasonal wins was overshadowed somewhat during season V, when, having transferred across from the EU East server (where it was Season IV champion), Dominion emerged as fitting winners. During Season VI a revenge story, of sorts, played out, as Heretic helped engineer Revolution’s first seasonal win, in spite of the alliance having to endure a costly betrayal amid claims that opponents were employing unsound tactics . With Heretic a long-term member of Friendly during its hot streak, some measure of pride seems to have restored.



Server: EU2 (Sicania)
Alliance: BlanK
Member Houses: ENDGEGNER, Schwarzfeder, NordischerOrden

Three wins in five seasons as the lynchpin of two alliances is a good showing for ENDGEGNER, which once again held off SPQR to claim its first consecutive victory at the head of BlanK alliance. With SPQR in command of Reginopolis and Mirage holding Turul Varos, BlanK had a tough time retaining its Ostarian influence, but in the end managed to hold firm and claim a deserved victory.



Server: EU3 (Teutatis)
Alliance: OttomanEmpire
Member Houses: OTTOMAN, OTTOMANII, OTTOMANIII

Having won the previous two seasons, OttomanEmpire was the clear favourite to dominate a third, but was almost thwarted from the beginning by losing one of its closest allies and then failing to conquer Augolia at the first attempt. It managed it at the second, thereafter facing stiff competition from the likes of NorthAlliance,Triforce and Horizon. Inevitably, perhaps, OttomanEmpire held out to win. It will be interesting to see how the alliance fares during Season VII, with Teutatis now a figurative enclave of Crystal Sea.



Server: EU4 (Empyros)
Alliance: Eclairides
Member Houses: Lusitanos, AuroraBorealis, AuroraPolaris

Two of the houses that won Season V for Omerta this time were only the losing side, fighting against the Eclairides alliance. The plan for the insurgent was simple, to take and hold as much of Ostaria as possible. The execution was hindered by early diplomatic errors that created enemies out of potential friends, but, aside from a threat from the Ottomans, Eclairides held out for a relatively comfortable win. Eclairides’ only regret was in sticking to its defensive strategy, which meant there were too few fights to keep the membership engaged.



Server: NA2 (Cloudwing Valley)
Alliance: YellowTurbans
Member Houses: DigitalOrder, Radiance, Atlas

It would appear that as Season VI progressed, Cloudwing Valley became more and more like a proverbial ghost town, as alliances fled to Eagle Range. It’s been suggested that the exodus was a bid to escape the impending dominance of HeavenlyKingdom, which would be ironic given that HeavenlyKingdom itself soon took the last caravan eastwards. It says something about YellowTurbans’ eventual victory that by its own admission, the most difficult opponents were the Cohorts and by the end of the season, there was “little resistance” to be found.



Server: NA3 (Eagle Range)
Alliance: HeavenlyKingdom
Member Houses: ForbiddenCity, aiko, TheWolfSyndicate

Technically a new world, but for HeavenlyKingdom, winners of three consecutive seasons on the NA1 server, it will be rightly considered a fourth. It was a challenging season, fought in the midst of a mass migration from Cloudwing Valley to Eagle Range in the wake of Asterion’s closure, but HeavenlyKingdom made the transition with minimal casualties and embarked on a campaign every bit as ruthless and efficient as in seasons past: “There is a foundation of loyalty, respect, trust, and friendship keeping us together no matter what trials each season brings.”