Guide by Mad Supermage at http://warbookforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=380.0

The "supermage army-less over-expansion" aka land grabbing run strategy only works partially. Trust me, I survive on it and I used it to go from 35K acres to 1.3 million in a matter of weeks. You have to have some kind of army unless you want to take a triple digit loss on every hit. I have logs detailing some truly frightening losses. My DPA used to be 9. Now it is 23 and increasing to cut the losses.

Don't attempt this without having 500 mana. One of the guys in my alliance is restarting because 495 mana is crippling his expansion strat. You really need the 500. You also need max amps and you need to spend the gold to keep them maxed. There are several ways to actually go about the runs, some n00bish and some not. I'm going to give you the experienced way:

- XP has nothing to do with anything. If you're going on land grabbing runs, you already have lvl 50 and xp does not matter to you. LG = 5 xp, but you're not doing this for that. Land grabbing runs are for pure massive growth only.

- Never use a land grab every hour. That moves you two levels up in resources. If you were at scarce before your tick and you land grab with that tick, you'll be on plentiful. Next person to hit you takes a shitload of land. You'll go nowhere doing this.

- Stack your land grabs all at once. This means gather your full mana bar. However, do not attack yet. Wait until minutes before your next hourly tick. This gives you a 6th land grab, you'll need it to maximize your gains.

- Only hit people exactly 3x your size. Obviously, the guys with the most land have the potential to give the most up.

- Resource levels don't apply to land grabs [except FA]. You can grab as much off a stripped target as a plentiful target.

- Only hit each target once. Leave a message after each grab. My personal message is as follows: "Sorry, nothing personal, just random top-feeding. If you decide to retal, please leave me a message! Enjoy your day." Being polite actually cuts down on retals.

- Some supermages will burn the 6th grab mana on surveys to check targets for barriers. I don't bother. I'd rather get slightly shafted by barriers than lose that extra land grab. Do note who's got them, however.

- Increase your 3x range as much as possible in as short an amount of time as possible. The chance of retal occurring during a run is very small, so you can quickly hit bigger targets and get more land. If you were using one grab an hour, your 3x limit would barely change.

- Recharge your mana for 5 hours afterwards. Do not use it for anything during the wait period. Do not retal any hits on you from anywhere. This is the most difficult part of the strategy. Do you have the balls to let someone run off with lots of your land? If you feel the need to retal big hits, stop growing on land grabbing runs, you are not suited to this method. It requires extreme patience and self-restraint.

- Do not fear the land grab retals. Many targets will retal, some harder than others. They never take back more than you grabbed, simply because of how bottom-feeding vs top-feeding works out. If they retal excessively, you can land grab them again and pwn their asses. The acre exchange can only work in your favor. If you stacked your grabs, you might get multiple retals in a short period of time. This is very good, for you'll get to scarce resources or even better.

- Do not miss a full mana cycle. Sleep in just one morning and you are going to regret it. I lost 500-700K acres overnight. I rarely retal the people who hit me during that time. Instead, I go on a fresh run and build back, often further than before.

- Use your gold minimally. Many land grab runners only do this to generate gold for their alliance. I do it so that smaller members can get emergency gold and gold to vault into the high acres. Spend on your amps and some army. Since you need no conventional offense, most of you army can be cheap pikes. Have a force of elites as well, just in case you want to bottom-feed [bad idea though]. But like I highlighted earlier, it is possible to get away with tiny DPAs, even under 10. Your losses are greater, but you'll survive in a yoyo using grabs every 5-6 hours.

- Do not hit GAoM people. That's just a condition of this advice. A supermage will get extremely pissed off if you, a fellow supermage, lad grab them. The Mages Unite movement will come down hard on your ass as well.