Giantslayer

Giantslayer is the attrition legend. When one of your attacks fails, 40% of every attacking unit type fights its way back home instead of dying — so a repelled assault costs you far less than it costs anyone else. Paired with starter scout units to probe garrisons before you commit, Giantslayer wears stronger defenders down in wave after wave until they break.

Starting loadout

Giantslayer begins each Dominion round with a fixed package of units, Soulstones, runes and a signature effect:

Value
Starter units100× Druid Naki + 25× Spotter Naki
Starting Soulstones0
Starting runes+50 offense

Signature effect — Fighting Retreat: whenever one of your attacks is repelled, 40% of each attacking unit type survives and returns to the field it launched from, instead of the usual total wipe. The rest are lost as normal. Those starter Spotter Naki are otherwise only recruitable on treasure fields — they let you spy garrisons before you throw an army at them.

How to play Giantslayer

  • Scout, then probe, then grind. Use your starter spotters to spy a defender's garrison, then send committed waves — every failed attack hands 40% of your force back, so you can keep the pressure on where other legends would run dry.
  • The retreat applies per unit type and always rounds down. A serious army gets a serious fraction back; a tiny token attack rounds to nothing and simply dies, so don't poke with a handful of units and expect them home.
  • You still lose 60% on every miss. Fighting Retreat lowers the price of pressure, it does not make attacking free — win the fight and you lose nobody, so keep pushing borderline odds rather than hopeless ones.
  • Lean on your +50 offense runes and combat-type effectiveness to turn repeated waves into a breakthrough before the defender can recover.

Synergies & counters

Works well with

Giantslayer loves sustained aggression. Offense runes and attack artifacts multiply the damage of every wave, and its cheap, self-refunding assaults pair naturally with a strong recruitment economy so the returning survivors are quickly topped back up into the next attack.

Watch out for

Healing field upgrades are the hard counter: a defender who heals a slice of their losses every wave regenerates faster than your chipping grind can wear them down, blunting the whole strategy. Evenly matched opponents who fight back on offense also punish you — Fighting Retreat only helps when you are the one attacking.

Verdict

An aggressive attrition legend for players who like to keep swinging. Pick Giantslayer to turn failed attacks into cheap repeated pressure — and grind stubborn defenders down one wave at a time.

New to Dominion legends? Start with the Legends overview to see how picking works.