Swords and Soldiers 2: Shawarmageddon – Demon PvP Guide

How to play demon in PvP games with basic concepts and some tips on dealing specific units.

The Goal

Please note: all credit goes to Blastom!

The goal of the demon is only to bring 2 corpses into the enemy base – then 2 corpse explosion to kill all the workers in mining area.

As a demon lord, you major advantage is that you have more mana than you can spend, thanks to the soul harvest skill.

Core Upgrades

To achieve the goal, there’re 3 core upgrades for the demon to take.

1. Spear Goblin: corpse provider. Every goblne will bring one corpse to the front line.

2. Corpse Explosion: corpse and mana consumer. The best damaging magic. Against stalled enemies, it deals more damage than thunder bolt to multiple targets. It kills all ground ranged units in one shot and severly damages the other types.

3. Soul Harvest: mana provider. By converting a dying goblin into a skeleton, you got a full-healed tougher-than-goblin frontline unit and more than 30 mana.

After the core upgrades:

1. Siege Troll: The middle to late phase core. You will need he for throwing corpses, I mean goblins, across enemy line to create “land mines” to gain ground. And by himself, he is a very cost-efficient warrior.

2. Demonic Gate: if you find it’s hard to push across a certain line, a pair of teleport gates will easily increase your pushing range. And it costs you only 220 gold (120 research + 100 build).

Key Micro-Managements


Spear goblins are weak by themselves but not with magic support. The general process on spear goblin vs anything is like: when a goblin will be killed in next strike, convert him into a skeleton; when a skeleton will be killed in next strike, convert him into a poison cloud. With this process, they are pretty strong when face to face.

When dealing with enemy unit with Area-of-Effect damage, like Fakir, Desert Stalker and Helga, converting a goblin before the encounter, even full-health one, is a good idea. So skeleton, as a melee unit will walk before the goblin blob and get targeted, and the goblins won’t be one-hit to half life.

The Opening

Something to note about the economy – every worker takes about 10 seconds to bring back a sack of gold. every worker will occupy the mine about 3 seconds. So you need only 3 workers to make the mine functional at 90% percentage rate and 4 worker at maximum rate. The 5th and 6th workers are for airborne supplies only and can be delayed.

Do there things simultaneously:

  • Upgrade spear Goblin then Corpse Explosion.
  • Train 2 workers (3 in total with the begin one).

  • If against Demon, one spear goblin right after available – you’ll want 1 or 2 corpses at enemy’s gate instead of yours. 4th worker after.
  • If against Persia, two spear goblins after the 4th worker if not rushed, wait for 6 seconds before the 3rd spear goblin – you need him to kill the tiger dashing soldier or clean up stalker team.
  • If against Viking, one spear goblins after the 4th worker if not rushed and then get soul harvest. Just send the goblin one by one and do the goblin -> skeleton -> poison cloud trick.
  • If rushed, delay the 4th worker and keep popping spear goblin and make corpse explosion.

After the initial scout team sent out, soul harvest shall be upgrade before the second encounters.

Vs Viking

Viking Rush: the rush BO is simple, train 1 worker (2 in total), upgrade berserker and then wait for 450 gold for 3 berserkers. This BO will cost about 200 gold for delaying 3th and 4th workers but cost an unprepared opponent much more than that. There’s a Persia version with 4 soldiers or 3 stalkers. Just use the corpse explosion well, you should be fine.

Berserker start: the scout team of 3 goblins will all be slaughtered and probably not killing any of the vikings, due to their healing magic. But this will surely deplete their mana pool. So just wait all of the berserkers reach your base before sending out another wave, you will be fine. If you can get Siege Troll before they arrives, then they’ll be simply wasted.

Axe Thrower start: just use the goblin to skeleton to poison cloud process, or simply let the goblin die and explode the corpse under enemy’s feet. Axe Throwers are generally wasted by corpses explosion.

Ball of Sheep: this is what you need to watch out, a good viking player will use this magic to pass the poison cloud. If you are expecting the opponent has it off cooldown, you should try to use the poison cloud only right at the front of your own soldier or the enemy will roll across it and destroy your wave with superior fire power.

Defense Tower: goblin bane. Never try to attack it with goblins. Use Siege Troll or Naga to destroy it or simply throw goblins across. Also, fear magic can scare away the axe thrower above and give you a easy time.

Helga: you can kill unsupported Helga with ease with spear goblins, by keeping converting the first goblin into skeleton as said in micro-management part. But generally you will need to kill her with a supported formation and lot of corpse explosion. If the opponent is doing fast Helga, it’s easy to counter her with fast Siege Troll.

Vs Persia

In the current version, Persia is just the hardest faction to play against as Demon. The main weakness of Persia, as far as I’ve found, is lack of extra source of mana – unless convert gold into mana, so you can expect them not having as much mana as you.

Soldier Opening: just like how the scout team deployed against Persia, keep the last goblin apart from the main formation to hunt down the tiger dasher.

Stalker Opening: this opening will cause a lot of trouble on demon as demon can only start with spear goblin. After the first 3 scouts, you need to get soul harvest immediately and keep about an attack range distance between goblins and soul harvest the first goblin to avoid their aoe attacks.

Genie: simple genie won’t cause you much trouble as you can delay him with skeletons and spear him down. But genie with tiger dash is certainly hard to deal with. Cannot say much, still multiple layers of formations and poison him as you can – when he tries to smash a skeleton, explode it.

Fakir: there’s no truely counter to these old men on carpets. The only magic affect them is fear, which only lead your goblin formation into the magic mud. The general tactics against them is using the siege troll or a skeleton apart from the goblin formation to soak fire and use spear goblin to shoot them down. But practically, this is pretty hard to keep as the meat shield will simply walk across the mage and leave the goblins to be targeted. Dealing with them is just a micro-management contest on Persia favor.

Reflect Shield: it can cause major trouble to both your goblins and siege troll. There’s nothing your can do about the goblins. But you should remember to use the throw goblin skill to stop the siege troll from attacking.

Dijin Cannon: let me tell you a strategy – 2 dijin cannon and 1 genie. Genie uses 2 wishes to halve the mana cost of cannon to 34 to give 4 blasts on enemy mines (156 mana in about 8 seconds), all the enemy mines will be killed. This is not exceptionally deadly in middle game, but accurately can achieve under hero rush strategy at about 2:30. Generally, if the enemy has this setup ready, you have to grant no line of sight or destroy the cannon – it’s not defendable otherwise. By themselves, dijin cannon is just a lame aoe source and more nuisance than threat.

Vs Demon

This is the part getting fun. Both of the sides will try to mark their territory with corpses. The short-term goal in this mirror game is too throw corpse as close to enemy base as possible and ultimately into enemy base and finish the game. The basic concept of the scout team is to get one goblin asap and drop a corpse as close to enemy base as possible – this one will stall the enemy’s next wave unless he clean it with own corpse explosion.

Most of the tactics below will both work for and work against you. All you and your opponent do is using Siege Troll to throw corpses into the back.

Create Corpses: the basic way to create a corpse is just letting a spear goblin die. As corpse explosion or explosion of a barral goblin that affects more than one goblin will create a corpse as the opponent can only soul harvest one.

Clean Corpses: if a corpse is not at a position in your favor, just explode it when your skill is free. Turning a goblin into skeleton before dead will leave no corpse – only you can explode your skeletons. As your soldiers will always closer to your base, you should always do this if possible.

Move Corpses: the most simple way to move corpses is turning goblin into skeletons, which will walk towards the enemy formation and “explode”. Siege Troll can throw goblin at a very very long range. Try to throw your own goblins behind enemy Siege Troll and then corpse explosion them to deny enemy reinforcements.

Troll Duel: it’s more likely your opponent will have a siege troll, right? You can accurately take no damage in the duel, if your troll is supported by poison, while theirs not. Both poison from spear goblin and poison cloud will slow down the attack animation, so the slowed one will always get attacked first and then get pushed out of attack range. So remember, always some goblins behind your troll.

Use poison cloud on Siege Troll when possible, as he will be the core of the mirror. Once the siege troll is down, you can easily throw corpse to mark territory while your enemy cannot.

Just remember the whole concept, put corpses as near enemy base as possible and deny the enemy from doing the same.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 15057 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices.

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