Air bless: useless?
 

The air bless is unchanged from Dom 2, and I wonder, what's the point of it?

Only about half the nations have serious missile weapons, and only a few have the air magic to make the lighting resistance worthwhile. An enemy making heavy use of lightning will probably be casting Storm, and not using archers, so there's little synergy between the air shield and the lightning resistance.

For sacred units which have low protection and no shield, the astral bless is better. Twist fate works well into the late game, and magic resistance is always handy. Even better, astral nations can use spells like Body Ethereal, Luck and Anti-magic to further enhance the astral bless, whilst the air shield becomes obsolete with Arrow Fend.

The air bless needs help. Ideally, it'd be a good bless for air nations like Vanheim and Caelum.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Perhaps I will try a air bless in my next game to see if it is that useless.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

The 4-8 bless has a niche in a few cases, the level 9 effect is second only to blood 9 in uselessness.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Do not forget, high air bless make nether dart, blade wind, and most bolt spells miss three of four times. And Shock Resitance stacks with Shock ward (or whatever it name) and Storm warriors.

I do not like high blesses to use or have used on me. But I think Air Bless 9 can be useful, if you plan to cast Wrathful Skies with sacred mages and thugs.

Is it less useful than other blesses? I think so. Other blesses make for rushing, not Air. If not for rushing, I think high blesses are cripling yourself.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Wait. You're talking about missile resistance bless as needing help? First off...
Lesser Air Bless shouldn't be compared to the Greater Astral bless.
Lesser Air VS. Lesser Astral
Helps versus ranged fire/No help against ranged fire.
No Help versus Shadow Bolt/Helps against Shadow Bolt and other MR spells such as Decay.
Helps versus some fire and many earth spells/No use against spells that do not check MR.
Becomes moot when Arrow Fend is castable/Stacks with other MR boosters.
Air spells not always castable/Astral spells not always castable.

Regarding its value for Air Nations, I've got no opinion. But it has been invaluable for certain games I've been playing as nations such as Atlantis that have no missile troops. If my current build supports an inexpensive air bless, I will take it.

My current pretender build for BAG involves an imprisoned Titan with Air 6, Earth 9 for a bless. The bless is not factored into my long term strategy, but has, in test games, allowed me to take 20 provinces by the end of the first year. A lot more than I ever expected a nation like Late Era Atlantis to manage. Of course, in MP, I'll be running up against human controlled nations as well. And as my Arssartut are capital only it won't be useful once I run out of independents to massacre. Fortunately, I've got other plans for that stage.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Remember as well, that if you've got low level air mages it's really nice to have A4 on your pretender to get access to Air boosters. 20% air shield isn't much but it can help. I wouldn't build a strategy around it, but it's a nice bonus.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Does air shield work against bolt and dart spells?

I don't see a problem in comparing the lesser air bless with the greater astral bless, they've got similar effects, and with the Oracle, astral-9 is very cheap. In any case, ranged weapons can be dealt with in other ways; troop placement, counterfire, protection, regeneration, etc.

Another nice 'quirk' of the air bless: take air-9 for 70% missile protection, and watch as your sacred air mages waste a turn casting air shield.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

It's a bad idea to reveal my plans in advance, but what the heck. Try this experiment.

Strength five independents.
Late Era Atlantis.
Imprisoned Titan.
Air 6, Earth 9.
Order 2, Productivity 3
Death 2, Cold 3
Magic 1, Misfortune 1
Dominion 8

Every turn for the first year recruit one Tungalik and 8 Arssartut. Send out every other Tungalik with bless orders and sixteen Arssartut. Put the Tungalik at the very back, the Arssartut a little ahead with Hold and Attack orders. Watch as they slaughter 40, 50 units. Avoid cavalry, but little else- perhaps barbarians. Take on the cavalry and barbarians with Seal Hunters and Snow Warriors added onto your starting force. You can sometimes send out just eight and win, but it results in low research and swarms flanking your Arssartut and killing the Tungalik who's trying to stupidly cast a touch spell because you haven't researched anything.

Now, take off the air bless, and see how long they last against the crossbowmen plentiful in LE independents. The +4 protection from the earth bless just doesn't cut it. The Earth protection bonus is more valuable, but at E9 it should be. The Air makes a big difference, though.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

I just wish that Air 9 provides an additional +2 precision. Useful, but not overpowered. It might open up different bless builds for strategy...

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Not useless. Not great either.
I can see the lv9 air bless being useful for a nation like Man. They get national troops capiable of orb lit and with a little buffing, lit bolt. B/c they rely so heavily on archers your not going to want to cast storm. You haev alot of crazy low precision mages casting lit stuff and your poor sacreds get hit. They also get hit by your longbowmen and the enemies archers. they don't have sheilds. And you save fatigue and time by not having to cast airsheild.

IMHO lv9 air bless synergizes perfectly with Man, and lv8 is useful for any nation with sacreds w/o sheilds.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

For the info on what spells are blockable, check out Kristoffer O's 9/22/2007 post on the last page of
FAQ Discussion & Submission Thread and 10/03/2007 post in Arrow Fend Thread

Similar effects? One works only once, while the other has a permanent effect. Twist Fate isn't of much use on a unit with only 10 defense, though goes up in value with ethereal or harder to hit units.

I admit, that the value of the air bless for an air nation has its flaws. But it can be powerful for a non-air nation. And for an air nation, it'll allow you to save gems and can be used before arrow fend is researched, allowing you to bypass some research, if you have a reason. For nations like MA Agartha, however, you have these limits.
1). No archers = no counterfire
2). Earth magic is pretty short ranged. You'll often have mages in forward positions if you actually want to hit something important first turn with Blade Wind (i've ocassionally carved up poorly protected Star Children casting communion slave, and that was important with forty of them). The air bless will help keep them alive while you're skipping Stoneskin in favor of a first strike.
3). You do get ironskin for protection, but lucky strikes still happen with frequency. Especially with fatigue kicking in. I've done quite well without an air bless, but I've seen plenty of situations where a 40% miss rate would have made a difference. Of course, I would be giving up something to get that air bless with Agartha's choices... but I would be giving up something with most blesses.
4). Regeneration requires another bless - or items and is hardly effective on 10 hitpoint mages. Though it's certainly useful on a lot of front-line troops.

There are situations where I would pick astral, and situations where Twist Fate is near useless.
Twist fate good? Ermor's Shadow Vestals, or T'ien Chi's (3.08?) Red Guard or Ancestor Vessel, to name a few. Where it benefits from neither air nor astral? Abysia EA's Burning Ones, with a glorious 5 or 2 defense, and 17 protection 23 hitpoints. I've outlined a situation where I prefer the air blessing- there are probably others where its handy, but I've stuck to Atlantis, Agartha, Ctis, Yomi in competitive situations, and am not very versatile.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

With your Late Atlantis build, an earth-9 cyclops with the same scales and dominion is 160 points cheaper. That's a heckuva lot to pay for a 40% air shield. With better scales, you can throw in more back-up troops and chaff. The Titan is an incomparably better fighting pretender, but even so.

Twist fate isn't just good on high-def pretenders, it's great on inexpensive massable sacreds, and it's also better if you want to try 'first strike' spell casting with sacred mages.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Air bless = garbage.

Jazzepi

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Imprisoned - points remaining - no scales, dom8
Cyclops E9: +160
Titan E9 A2: +82
Cyclops E9A6: -50
Titan E9A6: +2

What can I get with your better scales? I've already got order 2 and productivity 3. Certainly, 160 points could go into luck and magic or growth but... Having death is part of my defensive strategy. Any normal nation coming into my territory is going to have a 60% supply hit. Going above magic one gives me that horrid MR penalty. It wouldn't be so horrid except R'lyeh is in the same game. As well, most of my mages are NOT good enough to make any tactical advantage of this. I'd seriously considered taking drain because of R'lyeh, but decided it would make me completely dependent on Skull Mentors and I couldn't depend on the necessary gem income.

As an experiment- I'm going to try my same expansion with earth nine cyclops, dom.8, order 3, prod 3, cold 2, growth 0, luck 0, and Magic 1.

That said, has anybody tried my example?

Even placed all the way at the back, crossbowmen can hit my Tungalik. Without the leader surviving, my strategy falls apart.

As well, with task forces of size 16, attrition is fairly high taking on a forty infantry and crossbowmen. Two deaths are 12% of my force, and each death increases my loss rate. I just can't maintain the momentum of my rapid expansion. With the air bless, I can attack province after province without pausing for reinforcements.

Repeating myself, I'm not buying the air magic just for the bless...
To share some rationale- not all - you have to keep in mind Atlantis' poor precision, and lack of archers.

About a quarter of my Angakok have 1 air, or 1 earth. Wind Guide, Arrow Fend, and Mist are A2/A3/A3, but all one hundred fatigue. With one Winged Helmet I can cast any of those spells. 1 gem to to boost my path to 3, and 1 to cover the cost.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Test Cyclops E9: Task force breaks down at about third province, either retreating or taking 50% casulties.

Titan: first province 16 vs 50. One casualty, 3 afflictions versus 37 units consisting of LI, HI, Crossbowmen
Second, 15 vs 24. Archers, LI. 0 Casualties. Gained only 1 affliction.
Third: 15 vs 36. HI, LI (javelins). Casualties 2
Fourth 13 vs 18. Casulties 0.

So... here's my evidence that an air bless is far from garbage. As part of a bless strategy as you might use with Mictlan or Jotunheim, it may not be worthwhile, but as part of another strategy (just like you take death pretender for the globals), it can be very powerful.

I'll do one more test, hoping to find more archers on the next map, and less Heavy Cavalry. This test, as an example, is a little lacking.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

20% airshield is not going to save you from attrition though. Xbow still has 80% chance of penertrating your airshield. Ditto for the commander. If commander surviving is so important, you would have to require more than 20% airshield to deflect arrows.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Test continued.
That task force had a Pyrrhic victory in the fifth province. Leaving only 5 units left alive (including commander).
Another task force has made it through five provinces with 13 survivors. I'll see how far they continue.

Anyways, I have six air, or 40% airshield. It's not really fifty percent, but I'll say so anyways for simplicity's sake.
One Tungalik has 12 hitpoints, the Arssartut 16. As my formation puts the Tungalik a few squares behind, but still close enough to make the third bless without moving, he's not a prime target for the enemy, more like for stray fire. Meaty enough to take one arrow without problems. But unlike other mages, there's no way to cast stoneskin or mirror image or body ethereal, or other protective spells. Best I get is Quicken Self- useless for ranged.

Taking half as many arrows for someone who needs only get hit twice is a big deal- especially when there is no 'fire rear' command and they're not big enough to be a target. As an aside, the protection bless helps here as well, but not well enough on its own. Bringing me from 5/8 to 9/12. With the protection bonus, that many other mage-priests cannot get, I can last even longer, being able to take two hits and keep on going, albeit damaged.

In the meanwhile, my Arssartuts still suffer from attrition, but at a significantly lower rate. There's a big difference between stopping at the third province and making it through five or more, non-stop. My bless isn't awesome enough to prevent casualties. That's one reason I'm sending out forces every other turn, despite some tests where 8 took out five times their number. I plan for loss in exchange for momentum and research. At half the ranged casualties, I can fight twice as many battles before my capabilities are compromised.

I'm not saying that Air is an awesome bless, worth taking only for its own sake. But it can make a big difference as part of your strategy.

Update: My second task force has made it through NINE provinces- and still has seven members, one commander left. The last fight involved 1 commander, 8 troops taking on 43 woodsmen (blowpipe, archers). And I suffered only one casulty.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Really, how? Twist fate works once. Get hit by a slinger, and its gone.
As Atlantis' fastest unit has 9 AP, Twist Fate will never survive to close combat.
Very true
Partially true. If your sacreds are very expensive, like a 150 gold Niefelheim giant, you're going to give them proper support. If however, your sacreds are a cheap 25 gold, its nice to have taskforces you can support with only one commander and yet tear through independents or province defense while your real army engages the bulk of the enemy force.

If you take a peek at man, you need one Magister Arcane to provide the arrow fend (250 vs 130 of Tungalik), a Magister of Theology (40 gold) to bless and carry the spare gems. The compact taskforce obviously isn't a great idea here. You'd be investing 930 gold for an equivalent force of sixteen. Whereas I'm spending 530.

So, if you have an inexpensive commander who can bless and lead a relatively inexpensive squad of sacreds who aren't that powerful compared to other Elites, but like a Chainsaw compared to the boring old day to day troops... An air bless can give you a lot more mileage to your troops- though they're not great for the epic battles.

Actually, I agree. It would be nice if it wasn't as redundant. However, it is worth noting that unlike both fire and water, there are no shock-resist spells, and lightning always hits if there's something in the square where it falls.

If you look at Caelum- I could think of all sorts of wonderful uses for the Shock Resist bless if only they had flying sacreds. Unfortunately, the earthbound are at a measly 5 AP. I suppose you could use them as bodyguards to prevent melee messing up your script while like the last spell your mage casts is Shockwave. But with their current options and those Storm Guards there isn't anything that shock resist can do that you can't do sooner with non-sacreds.

On top of that, your sacred Earthbounds have Kite Shields and 19 protection, rendering missile warding rather useless. Most of your mages can also cast air shield or arrow fend as well. You'd only find a use for the missile protection if you were spamming LE Caretakers in some kind of bizarre strategy. (Earth Boots+Summon Earthpower -> Attack -> Point-blank Bladewind -> Retreat?). Anyways, air bless is a waste...

On Vanheim (EA), you've got rare air focused chassis like Asynja. And then you have Vanhere sacred infantry and sacred mounted commanders with air magic. Other than research, there's zero barrier to getting up Arrow Fend. Use two gems instead of one, and you're not even taken out by the fatigue. However, Arrow Fend does require Enchantment six, though Air Shield is available immediately.
If you take the air bless, you can support with a simple Vanherse of 160 gold and 8 fatigue per cast. If you rely on magic, then a Vanjarl will cast the spell for you, but falling unconscious in the process, and costing two gems and 280 gold. Alternatively, you could get the Vanadrott out for 380 gold, spend two gems, and take about 58 fatigue instead.

I really didn't find any valid rush strat using the air bless, though I'm not familiar with the race. I'd say it's also a bit crummy, though considering the high defense, it might be combinable with Shock Wave - barely.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

>Actually, I agree. It would be nice if it wasn't as redundant. However, it is worth noting that unlike both fire and water, there are no shock-resist spells, and lightning always hits if there's something in the square where it falls.<

Untrue, there is a battlefield wide AoE spell that increases elec resistance, and another one that does a large AoE for the same effect.

I still maintain that air bless is garbage. I would always, always, pick twist fate over it (which is universally cheaper to get anyways with the way pretenders are laid out). Especially against crossbow men, who will only shoot once-twice against a quickness blessed group of sacreds set towards the front of the battle map.

Air bless is easy to get around too, you just don't build archers, you mass meele, whereas twist fate works against both and is much harder to counter.

Jazzepi

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

It should be noted that the MR portion of the S bless doesn't apply past MR 17...not sure if that can be gotten around by making sure the bless goes off before the antimagic spell or not, but it might not combo that well with astral magic (partly dependent on sacred MR, but most that are worth blessing are 11 or higher, so at least half of it would be wasted, Jags being the notable low-MR exception...hunter spiders too, I guess), much like arrow fend and the air bless don't get along.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

I will say this. Do you use garbage?

If you had a strategy that involved Dark Skies or a Gale Gate, would you bother taking advantage of an incidental air bless? Would you see any benefit from that? Or would you ignore the bless completely, despite having taken air anyways.

As a primary bless strategy, there are a lot of problems with an air bless. As you've said, there are ways to get around it. There are also ways to circumvent twist fate and nations where its almost useless. Abysia with def2 sacreds? Jotunheim where you're outnumbered six to one?

With some nations, like certain eras of Atlantis, Agartha, and Ctis, you only get to play the melee game anyways, and you may or may not have certain advantages there- an opponent massing melee sometimes only levels the playing field.

An air bless is not a winning strategy like a fire bless can be. When picking paths for blesses alone, air isn't one of my picks either. But I play a lot of nations where Astral magic is garbage, but Air magic has some real value.

But when you're not basing your entire game strategy around blessed troops, air is a damn solid bless. I don't expect my air blessed Arssartuts to win me the game. If the opponent actually masses melee or kills all my Arssartut - I don't care. I'm only churning out eight a turn, tops. I already got my money's worth from them, doubled their usefulness and versatility, in fact reliably tripling my normal expansion by the end of the first year, surpassing the early value of a supercombatant, IMO. By the time someones' countering them, I'll already have dropped Arssartuts from my plans because of their scarcity. And I'll be using my six points of air magic for key tasks.

I won't let myself loose on the argument of universally cheaper. I'd take it a bit further afield than I should, and get senselessly agitated. I'll simply say that MA Atlantis has no oracle, just a monolith. And with only one astral pick, an astral nine bless will leave an awake pretender with only 22 points. Whereas an Arch Mage with an air 8 bless has 60 points to spare, and my Air Six, 180.

I'm going to stop debating this for now. I took this position in part because I found air blesses useful, and in part to play the devil's advocate. I still believe it's not garbage, but I'm not going to let myself be agitated simply because I'm not getting people in general, or one person in particular to agree with me. And once I stake out a particular thesis, I do tend to get contrary w/o reason.

Maybe I'll revisit later. But I don't want to go stir-crazy and derail the thread into a flamewar for no reason either. Other than the reason that I was arguing, and therefor must win because my ego demands it.

I will give into a little of my inner child for satisfactions sake and say...
Nya nya nya. I'm right and you're wrong. I can't hear you. *Sticks fingers in his ears*.

Ah, that was cathartic.

Okay, I wish you well, but its best I cut myself off for now. Getting off work early (but still needing rest) without any plans gave me too much time to myself with nothing to do but argue. I will continue to read this thread, however. And may chime in later when I'm in less of a bratty mood.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

>As a primary bless strategy, there are a lot of problems with an air bless. As you've said, there are ways to get around it. There are also ways to circumvent twist fate and nations where its almost useless. Abysia with def2 sacreds? Jotunheim where you're outnumbered six to one?<

Don't put words in my mouth. I never said I'd bother with twist fate on these nations, it's obviously subpar, but air shield would be /even worse/ which just further proves my point that is has no place as a high level bless. In fact, the only reason I would ever take air on my pretender is to get level 4 air to allow me to easily forge air boosters. And as I said, I would always pick a high astral, enough to get twist fate, over a high air any day.


>I won't let myself loose on the argument of universally cheaper.<

Obviously some nations don't have access to the astral fountain, but most do, or they have access to the sacred statue, and the vast majority of the time a high astral bless is infinitely cheaper than the air bless. Oh, and high astral bless lets you cast much better ritual spells than air. Dispel with a huge added bonus to your roll? Or maybe arcane nexus with your level 8 or 9 caster that's nearly impossible to dispel. Or master enslave with a pretender that's ready to cast it out of box. Or Gate so that you can teleport your entire army into the enemy's capital, and then spam master enslave communion awesomeness while you take it down.

A high air bless will never, ever, be a good bless because it's opportunity cost is far too high, and it doesn't help you enough. Maybe it would be if quickness, twist fate, and flaming weapons weren't around. All of them are vastly superior, and except for the water one, offer better late game casting options. Although the sea of ice is quite useful, as is the ability to summon water queens out of the box.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

My apologies. I did not intend to put words in your mouth. I did not intend to claim you had a stance on Abysia, but in hindsight, I agree that it clearly came out that way.

I'll rewrite that section.

As a primary bless strategy, there are a lot of problems with an air bless. As you've said, there are ways to get around it. There are also ways to circumvent twist fate.

I'll provide an example from a nation I'm familiar with, Agartha. The Ancient Ones really are not a good bless chassis until Darkness is castable, but then blesses are kind of moot. Most blesses are a bit of a waste on them, compared to other nations. But being as I'm not familiar with many nations, they will have to serve as my example.

Twist fate will protect them from one attack. With forty hitpoints, that one attack isn't likely to be significant. With a defense of ten, and a parry of only two, they're going to be hit rather easily by missile and melee attacks unless you've got a secondary bless up. A simple chaff screen or group of slingers will quickly dismiss Twist Fate, unless support spells or secondary blesses are in place.

Body Ethereal, or versions of luck can make them more effective, though you are drastically limited by your national mages.

An air bless, on the other hand, has a permanent affect, fully effective immediately without requiring support spells (which you might not have the mages for) such as body ethereal to reach maximum potential, and has no practical fatigue cost. It also presents capabilities you are unable to reproduce using national mages. Your national mages can boost mr in smaller, less effective capacity via iron will or lead shields, or later on in Army of Lead. Unfortunately, Agartha has nothing approaching the effect of Twist Fate, but they do have a few other ways to prevent attacks from hitting now that cave forts and provinces are properly darkness-ing battles.

If you have a high air bless on Agartha, then you can be more aggressive in your use of Blade Wind. This is especially handy because you have such low precision, Darkness or not. Any level of Blade Wind won't protect your Ancient Ones from friendly fire to the point where you don't need to take precautions, and the cost of the higher levels is way too much as well. But there are specific opportunities- worthwhile ones- to a pretender with air magic. In the case of a titan, you may find a staff of Elemental Mastery useful. The Flying Carpet or Winged Shoes will have a dramatic effect on the mobility of your map-move 1, expensive, capital only Oracles. And it achieves that at construction four, not in any unique item. Anyways, there are a few reasons to take air, and while the effect of an air bless alone is not enough to take air, there are situations where the combined value of a low-middling air bless is higher than that of Astral magic on non-oracle/sacred statue pretenders.

And there are opportunity costs to the sacred statue. Astral magic has a lot of expensive temptations. And it can be tough to get your pearl economy off the ground. You cannot manually move around searching for astral sites, though you may get lucky- probably so in the site rich early age- and find a site with the side effect of producing the pearls necessary for steady (and slow, with only one caster) Arcane Probing. On the positive side, Astral pearls are easier to convert to and from- and Probing costs a low two pearls. If you're unlucky at finding sites, though, forty gems can easily be wasted. It doesn't happen often, but it happens, and even when it doesn't, I really don't like the inconvenience. I'd be more interested in bootstrapping a blood economy off of a pretender.

There. I doubt that was any more convincing, but hopefully less troublesome. I really didn't intend to put words in your mouth, and I hope this straightens things out between us- though we'll still be on opposite sides of this debate.

I kind of was unfocused in this post, but here I have a specific question for you. Focusing solely on a 50% air shield and twist fate - none of the other effects considered - what bless would you rather have on Agartha? Leave the MR boost out only for the moment, because while it is worthy of consideration I'd like to save that for later, please. I don't have much energy left tonight.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

As an attempt to understand (one of) the other perspectives, I'm trying an E9 only Cyclops. The attached game demonstrates the problem that causes- Javelins + Crossbows = hurt.

I'll next be trying the Monolith- the only Astral Chassis I have available. Taking the same scales I have with my AirEarth titan above, what do you suggest I change? I have 202 spare points. 85 is tied directly to chassis costs. I cannot take an Earth 9 bless with this build, unfortunately. Though nature, or lesser water is available. Or drop some of my negative scales. At the moment, I'll experiment with W4, S9, and N6, magic docked.. I'll try what else you might suggest, Jazeppi.

EDIT:
I hate to say this, but Twist Fate is surprisingly effective... even on Atlantis. It's late spring of year 2, and my first two task forces are still intact.
One of them is down to six, but its still intact. And I took on cavalry, as well.

In my defense- the idea behind e9a6 was effective 0 encumberance, long lasting fighters, where they would be taking some cold damage from Grip of Winter.
Grip of Winter would cancel Twist Fate, right? Cold damage?

Anyways. You're right about how effective the S9 bless is. Air was useful- don't get me wrong- I refuse to say it is useless- but its nothing beside this Monolith. Still- I don't have any interest or use for Astral magic.

As well, E9 was essential for one reason not related to bless at all. I can't get a dual 9e9s with a monolith - at least without sacrificing order and productivity completely -about 200 points. I can manage E6 which is _functional_ but unsatisfactory due to dispel risks - and lack of feet for Earth Boots. If I have just enough earth gems on hand, I'd like to have the dispel protection from exceeding the path limits.

For a bless strategy, astral nine is clearly superior.
Relative to it- air stinks- but Air is far from useless (though not dependable...), and had caused a significant reduction in fatalities in my tests. If your game strategy is bless- air is a waste- but If your strategy isn't bless- and does not lie on the astral path- air is worth taking in some situations. If the chassis has one pick of astral, twist fate costs 288 points. The air six bless 200 (with base cost of 50). If, for whatever reason, you have a mobile chassis w/o astral such as the crone- you'll pay at least 362 points, probably more for the S9 bless, whereas an A6 bless cost 170 points.

If you first consideration is bless, then Jazeppi wins- air is useless. If it's only your second or third consideration - than its a good deal cheaper and effective enough.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Two comments.

1. I personally wouldn't bother with a bless on Atlantis. It might be worth trying if the sacred troops weren't capital only. They just feel so... subpar, when compared to most sacred troops.

2. Here's the build that I would do instead, using no bless.

Pretender
Dagon
Dom 9
S3
W3

Scales
O3
P3
C3
D1
Misfortune 2
Magic 1

My reasons are listed below.

In C3 the Ice Guard have a 23 protection + shield which makes them 99.9% immune to regular archers, and even very good against crossbow men (I think) as they have shield block + huge damage reduction. This should give you a front guard which is ready for assembly at all provinces. You can then recruit a combination of extremely cheap seal hunters to place as vanguards on the right and left flanks. With such high productivity you should be able to raise 60-80+ per turn once you have all the territory around your capital. A single turn of those, plus a few turns of the ice guards, should give you an extremely effective fighting force. Armor is also king underwater.

I had a sort of option between Dagon and the Wyrm. With P3 you should have a really strong early game between an awake pretender and your strong infantry. That said, you still want to be able to use your pretender in the mid-late game. Wyrm is useless for this. His chassis is *great* but he lacks the slots to really kite him out as an SC. Dagon, on the other hand, is built for that sort of thing. He has fear, posion immunity, trample, and a touch of the right type of magic built in. By adding astral you do three things.

One is that you give him a huge weakness to being killed by astral dual, which sucks, but this only really matters against astral heavy nations as getting access to astral through summon diversity is terribly difficult.

Two, you give him access to an awesome set of easy to access buffs. Twist fate, personal luck, body ethereal, quicken self, astral shield, and breath of winter. Put all these together and he becomes a real behemoth.

Three, you give yourself some much needed magic diversity. My assumption is that your game would look something like this. Dagon expands, Dagon site searches while you research and build army, around turn 15-20 or so you declare war on a nearby neighbor, and use Dagon to lead your armies into battle with some serious ***-whooping to follow.

Comments on Dagon himself. He desperately needs, just like any trampling SC that isn't either elemental or undead, some reinvigoration items. You have zero access to nature so you have to depend on trade to get these, but securing some + 4 reinvig boots and +5 reinvig amulet should be all you need, though I'm a huge fan of rainbow armor as well. He also does well dual wielding two different types of shields and depending on his trample alone to smash through the lines.

I can't think of anything else to say about the above build, but this is how I would play LA Atlantis. The biggest weakness is the lack of late-game magic diversity. You should be able to easily purchase a boots of earth +1 from the open market, but otherwise you're limited to W/D/E/S, which isn't terrible, but I think you really want to try to get in on some nature as well.

Jazzepi

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

I also like to take some air, so that my pretender can come in for a mass murder. To push it to 4 to have some benefits is a luxury with most factions, but a sacred like the assartut can take much support from it.
For all those reasons I think LP is right (may you set back those chtonian things to were they belong), and that an air bless indicates this pretender shoots with surnatural precision.

Re: Air bless: useless?
 

Here's an alternative air bless:

Minor bless: 25% lightning resistance. So air-4 gives 25%, air-6 gives 50%, air-8 gives 75% amd air-10 100%. This is still limited, but it does open up more tricky tactics. For example, taking air-6 would be enough to ensure a lightning immune sacred army when combined with Storm Warriors.

Major bless: mirror image. This would stack with casted mirror images and the glamour ability, instantly making this bless desirable for air nations.