Re: Return of the raptors – Eat electric death!
 

I moved the CBM 1.7 addition into the guide itself, and added a few paragraphs on cloud trapeze, RoS and twiceborn. (in the mid game section)

Re: Return of the raptors – Eat electric death!
 

Hero blades are a good use for iron crafters, particularly in CBM 1.7 because you get more out of your forging bonus (knocking 1 gem off a 5 gem item's price isn't too impressive). Having a bunch of storm generals (optionally buffed by quickness and iron warriors) flying forward on turn one (even in a storm) will make most any SCs disintegrate. With quickness & iron warriors they've got some staying power to, protection in the high 20s (depending on cold scale) with a 19 defense (plus stars). Not bad at all for 7 gems and 35 gold. They can generally even take a stray thunderstrike hit with their 75% SR, though you'll want to buff that if you're in a big fight and really dropping the sky.

Re: Return of the raptors – Eat electric death!
 

I used the commanders that way with great success, but I never tried the hero blades. I went for dual wielding raven captains instead.

It sure sounds like a worthwhile use for the iron crafters. Might even be worthwhile to scatter them around with your PD as a deterrent.

Question: If a raven captain hides in a province, and that province is taken by a raiding SC. Can the raven captain "ambush" that SC, before it has a chance to move, in a similar way to magic attacks and teleports?
And if so, can this be used to pin him in place for incoming anti thugs(storm generals)?

Edit: Ok, tested. That didn't work. crap.

Re: Return of the raptors – Eat electric death!
 

It will if you give him a black heart. ;)

Re: Return of the raptors – Eat electric death!
 

Well, not exactly, it was the pinning down for incoming anti thugs I was after. I figured if you hid one in each province it might enable you to have a swarm of storm general join forces with them for non-escapable SC killing everywhere.

Reducing the picture to a single assassin while increasing the cost kinda sounds not worth it.:(