The Plague Doctor

The Plague Doctor is a unique piece that can wreak havoc in the right hands.

His attack does 1 damage but adds a 1 attack damage bonus to its target. The attack bonus given to the target unit wears off if the affected unit attacks or moves. Additionally, the Plague Doctor’s attack action recharges his defense action, which can only be used once between each recharging.

'''The Plague Doctor’s defense action is the ability to throw a poison vial at targets, causing 1 damage immediately and poisoning the target for prolonged damage. This poison acts identically to the Thief’s poison, dealing 1 additional damage to the target every 2 turns (1 full round) for 4 turns (2 full rounds)''' but there is a massive side note to this ability: poison will not take a unit’s final point of health, thus killing them, unless the target is left with only that final point of health when first poisoned. This may be a bit confusing to understand in text, so the following chart makes it simple to learn how much damage will be done to a unit and when, considering they have only been poisoned once by a Plague Doctor and no Priest or Bishop has cleansed them of poison, nor has the affected unit picked up a heal item from the board. Keep in mind that poison only checks to see if a unit will remain poisoned at the beginning of a turn so, if a poisoned unit had 2 health left at the end of its turn and is attacked for 1 damage on the opponent’s turn, the affected unit will die from poison at the start of their next turn because it still had 2 health when last assessed by the poison effect.

'Once the defense action has been used, it cannot be used again until the Plague Doctor lands a successful attack. This means you cannot simply stab the air or a corpse to recharge your defense action. You can however choose to stab your own units to recharge your defense action, preferably a Shieldmaiden with her shield engaged or any unit protected by a Priest bubble.'

When using Plague Doctors, be aware that the Plague Doctor/Shieldmaiden combo is an especially useful defensive pairing. Look to keep your Plague Doctor directly behind your Shieldmaiden. In this way, at the end of your turn, your Shieldmaiden can engage her shield for protection. On the next turn, if your enemy was bold enough to stand next to your Shieldmaiden, your Plague Doctor can stab your Shieldmaiden in order to not only lift her shield (incurring 0 damage, of course) but to also charge her attack damage by 1. From this point, your Shieldmaiden can launch a 2 damage attack and engage her shield to end the turn. Enemies will quickly learn to stay away from you with your pieces in this position, forcing them to find another route of attack.

Another pattern to look for when using the Plague Doctor is, if an opposing piece lands directly next to your Plague Doctor but they are unable to kill it, the Plague Doctor can respond by first stabbing the opposing piece, then moving 1 space to the left or right and then throwing a poison vial at the opposing piece as well, resulting in a total of 2 immediate points of damage with lingering poison effects ready to deal prolonged damage. Also, since you Plague Doctor stepped away from the target unit after stabbing it, the target unit will likely have to move before being able to attack the Plague Doctor in retaliation, thereby losing the +1 attack damage bonus it had gained as a side effect of the Plague Doctor’s stabbing attack before being able to capitalize on it.

Plague Doctors do well as counters to Priests because, even if cursed, the Priests curse doesn’t affect defensive actions, meaning the Plague Doctor can still launch an attack.

When countering Plague Doctors, it is most important to avoid creating the scenario outlined above wherein you move next to a Plague Doctor but fail to kill it on that turn. This scenario will cause even a Knight to suffer a nasty attack, resulting in him being left at death’s door with 1 health over time should you not manage to counter the poison effects in any way. While it is true the Knight and some other pieces will manage to kill the Plague Doctor on the following turn, you must be certain the exchange is worth it before moving ahead with creating this scenario.