The Ranas are one of the most unique factions in Songs of Conquest. They have almost no ranged options, but their spell casters are quite strong. They have plenty of cheap units, but their most expensive ones, the dragons, are the best in the game. It’s easy to get lost playing those guys. Hopefully, our Rana faction guide for Songs of Conquest will help you get started.
Rana Faction Guide: The Units
The Ranas have one major disadvantage when compared to every other faction: they aren’t great at ranged combat. As such, they are forced into melee at the start of every combat scenario. While this doesn’t make defensive strategies any worse, as you’ll see in a moment, it does mean that Ranas tend to lose a lot of units. This is especially true at the start of the game when their Hunters and Ravagers haven’t yet been upgraded into the more advanced units.
To account for that, Ranas are fairly cheap. Compared to Arleon’s Militia unit, a cheap, ranged-focused soldier, the Hunters cost the same but are fast enough to close the gap in two turns at most. They do slightly more damage and have extremely high initiative. Comparing the enhanced forms of those two units only widens the gap. The Hunters become Storm Guards, and while their price doubles, many of their stats improve drastically. Their defense goes up six times the original value, their health doubles, and their attack is not far behind.
If you’re playing Rana, try prioritizing the Tier 2 Lean-To to start producing Storm Guards. The Beast Corral, a prerequisite of the upgraded Lean-To, also produces Ravagers, while its second tier will upgrade them to Riders of the Swamp. Once you have those two units, it’s worth investing in a Dragon Pyramid. This is a fairly expensive large building, but it might be worth it as it unlocks troop buff research, which will apply to both your main units.
If you end up using Riders and Storm Guards, you might want to avoid Chelun, Guards/Protectors, and maybe even Shamans, as they’re much slower than your other units. Tremors are your debuff bards, while Burrowers (but not the non-upgraded Crawler) hit hard and can teleport around the battlefield. And what about dragons? If you manage to build them, good for you, they’re incredible. But are they better than a whole army? You’ll be the judge of that.
Casing Spells with Rana
If you focus on those units (Storm Guards, Riders of the Swamp, Tremors, Burrowers), you’ll have access mainly to Destruction and Creation magic. Destruction will likely be your strongest, which includes some buffs and debuffs like Aggression and Sabotage, and direct damage, from Fireball to Ice Bolt. Ice Bolt is interesting because, on top of doing lots of damage to a single unit, it slows them down. On Tier 3, it slows down a single unit by 3 movements per round, stopping many of them completely.
Creation magic can be just as offensive as Destruction. Acid Cloud, especially when mixed with Earth Block and Ice Bolt, is a perfect example. It deals 25 damage (75 at Tier 3) to any unit inside a circle with a radius of 1 hexagon. What makes this great is that the spell lingers for two rounds (three at Tier 3). Together with the spells mentioned before, you shouldn’t have many problems keeping the most problematic enemy units stuck inside Acid Cloud while your soldiers deal with the rest.
That’s it for our Rana faction guide for Songs of Conquest. And if you need a little more help with the game, check out our SoC guides hub.
