I was digging through some old back up drives when I came accross this old file. At the time, I was thinking it'd be fun to ape Stephen Colbert's "Better know a Congressional District" and write guides centered around a Pretender instead of a nation, which is probably less time consuming. I apparently abadoned the project until I found this word document, and it was nearly completed. So, I finished it off and here it is. If anyone else wants to contribute to the project, feel free. Without further ado, enjoy!

Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue

A divine messenger, descended from the heavens and a physical manifestation of all that is good and right. As a chassis, the Virtue has a lot to recommend it, but ultimately needs help in a few areas to be competitive. Lets start with the basics:

Cost: 50
Base Dominion: 4
HP: 39
Size: 3
Strength: 13
Attack: 13
Defense: 13
Precision: 15
Base Protection: 5 (no armor)
Starting Magic: Air-2 and 80 points per new path
Starting equipmnet: Flambeau (13 damage, 4 attack, 2 defense, AP, x3 vs undead, Fire effect)
Movement: 3 and Flying
Base Encumbrance: 1
Miscellaneous: Awe+4, 50% resistance to Lightning and Fire, Magic Being
Availability: Caelum, Arcosephale, Pythium, Marignon, Bogarus, Ashdod, Gath, Ulm (MA and LA), and Ermor (EA and MA).

Pros: Should be fairly obvious. It's cheap, it comes with Awe standard, and has the same high dominion as immobile pretenders while being incredibly mobile itself. Also, it has the lowest encumbrance of any living pretender. Almost every other chassis out there has either 3 or 4 base encumbrance compared to her 1. This gives the player a little more flexibility in equipment. Finally, Air magic is one of the best for thugs and Super Combatants to have. It combines great mobility (Cloud Trapeze) with great buffs (Air Shield, Mistform and Mirror Image).

Cons: HP could be higher. Also, lousy starting equipment. Sure Awe will keep the weak from attacking, but if they do the Virtue cannot take a lot of punishment upfront, meaning research and/or construction are necessary to really use her. What might be worse, however, is the lack of effective killing or routing options. With out Fear or multiple attacks, the Virtue is limited to only attacking sparsely defended independent provinces, and even that carries risks.

Awake Strategy: In case you did not get my hints above, the Virtue is not awake SC material in the same manner as the Wyrm or the Prince of Death. Unless you pay to add another path and plan on doing some early site searching, you might as well put her to sleep so when she does wake up your nation has the buffs and gems to use her effectively. You might be tempted to think otherwise, let Awe nullify the meelee threats and Air Shield (a level zero spell) worry about the arrows. Unfortunately, in a world of undead and beserkers and lucky rolls, Awe (even with the +3 bonus of Dominion-10) can be overcome, and Air Shield will still let 1 in 5 arrows through. The odds of getting hit are small, but the margin of error is equally small. The Virtue has no default shield, little in the way of protection, no natural regeneration, and only a moderate HP total. As fatigue starts to pile up, she can get in a lot of trouble. However, once you take into account these weakness, the inherent strengths begin to shine.

Typical equipment includes: boots of the messenger, Weightless Scale Mail, Horror Helm, Fire Brand, Frost Brand, Boots of Quickness, Amulet of Anti-Magic, Amulet of Luck, Amulet of Resilience, Girdle of Might, and any encumbrance 1 or less shield. A lot of this will depend on what your nation has available and what your neighbors are willing to trade. Now an example of a good SC script is: Air Shield, Mistform, Mirror Image, Resist Lightening (if necessary), Orb Lightning, Attack Rear. Mistform and Mirror Image really are the best buffs, though, especially if the Virtue's meant to take out PD and under maged armies.

Bless Strategy: Almost non-existent. Air as a bless is very, very niche. The Virtue may be the cheapest way to get Air-8 or Air-9, but the Air Shield effect only benefits sacreds with a strong melee presence (such as awe and high defense), but have low or no protection and parry. 75% Shock protection is also points probably better spent elsewhere.

Army Strategy: Air has some very nice buffs. Wind guide is the second best Archer buff in the game granting +5 precision to all units. This bonus is not effected by Darkness or Storms, which is another spell the Virtue can cast to drastically reduce enemy effectiveness, along side its weaker (and lower on the research tree) syblling Mists, though the spells stack. Finally, the Virtue can cast the incredibly powerful Fog Warriors which grants Mistform to every unit on the field. Once a Virtue is done casting buffs, if it has any fatigue left, it becomes a powerful spell caster. The insanely high Base precision of 15 combines with the bonus provided by Air Magic to grant precision of 19 or 20 easy. Air or Wind Guide tacks on another 5. This lets the Virtue Cast Thunder Strike like Lightning Bolt and make any enemy SC pay for not coming equipped with Shock immunity. Put a little close to the front, and the Virtue will start casting Orb Lightning, a cheap fatigue spell that scales wonderfully with Air Magic.

Magic Diversity Strategy: The Virtue is a great way to break into Air. Remember, Air Boosters (Winged Helm and Wing Bag) can only be forged by an Air-4 unit, and even the magic heavy EA only has four nations with that as a default. Yet, there are a lot more nations with Air-3 in which getting the first Air booster means many more can be forged. By starting with Air-4 or Air-5, the Virtue can summon Air Queens for even more Air Magic and SC's. Unfortunately, additional paths costs 80 design points for the Virtue. In general, most Virtue builds will stick with just Air Magic. Still Death-5 gives the Virtue a Fear effect for greater Awake SC duties. Earth is another fantastic path for SC's (Earth Power, extra protection) and opens the door to forging Elemental Staffs(+1 to Air, Earth, Fire, and Water). Blood lets the Virtue forge Robes of the Magi (+1 to every magic path), and might be achievable through empowerment and boosters to blood nations (Assuming any blood nations get the Virtue).

Conclusion: The Virtue certainly lacks that “One province captured per turn from turn One” that the Wyrm, Prince of Death, and a handful of other Pretenders give players and thus will always play second fiddle. However, the Virtue's low cost, impressive Awe, high dominion, easy access to Air Magic, and full slots make it progressively more useful against opposing enemy armies once the land grab is done.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

While I agree with most of what you are saying, I find that you downplay the Virtue's province grabbing abilities a bit too much.

She certainly is no Wyrm, but as long as she is handled differently, she can take take a lot of indies. You have to stay away from indies that have the ability to ignore your awe as well as some of the beefier ones, but for the rest she works fine.

The main reason for this is that she can compensate her lack of ability in taking some indies with that perfectly awesome flying mobility. Her flying also ties in with her equipment and high awe when it comes to explaining her actual combat ability. The Flamberge actually suits her very well as it makes her a pretty decent killing machine while giving her enough defence to have a reliable second attempt at stopping damage, should her awe fail to a lucky roll. With a base 13 strength (you might want to include that in your guide) the 13 AP damage from the flamberge is exactly what she needs and the 4/2 in attack/defence means that she hits and kills one time per round while having an impressive 15 defense. The last makes her rather hard to hit and after about 2 stars of experience, which she attains very quickly, she is practically impossible to hit for most indies even aside from awe.

Apart from giving her excellent fleeing options if really bad luck should be in the cards, her flying also helps dealing with archers. Nothing can prevent her from just flying up to the indie archers and start killing. This will make a lot of archers unwilling to use their ranged attack and they also keep a good number of more beefy infantry away from the Virtue.

In conclusion I find the Virtue a decent expander from turn two. Mostly she will take a province each turn for the first year, but if bad luck with indie placement prevents it, that usually only means a province or possibly two less the first year.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Keep in mind also that in CBM the virtue is much cheaper and also has 1S.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

What nations could best make use of a Virtue? She's not available to all nations, and she'd be a hard to use if you needed a heavy bless. The added astral in cbm is nice, but the reduced price is countered somewhat by the need to go to astral 4 or so to avoid being magic dueled, yes?

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

I don't know off the top of my head who gets her, but LA Pythium could easily make use of an A?S4 Virtue.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

This type of guide would be far more useful if every nation which had access to the Virtue was listed. I mean, A2+ sounds great, until you realize its not going to do much to break many nations into air because they *can't choose her*.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Off the top of my head, she is available to Caelum, Ermor, Pythium, Marignon, and Arcosephale. The air magic and expansion abilities are useful for at least Ermor and Arcos.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

OK, I added some of the requested information. I think I got all the nations. If anyone catches one I missed, let me know. As for expansion, I sort of agree with Amorph, but in the end feel like the margin for error is to small. But, still doable, especially with extra Awe. Regardless, Amorphous's comment stands on its own and gives players information to make their own desicions.

As for what nations could use the Virtue? I guess it depends on playstyle and strategy. I like using the Virtue as a sleeping Pretender and use the points to buy great scales and expans with national troops. That probably won't work with Bogarus, but does with Early or Middle Ermor. Then when she wakes, the nation is hopefully ready to outfit her better for war with Alteration and Construction research, the former of which also gives access to Wind Guide.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

I think the Virtue is an awesome pretender, and I use the word advisedly. It works for me for Arco. However, you have to embrace the concept of Dominion-killing as what Arco is about. So pump up Dom to 9 or 10 (I think I did 10). This puts the Awe up to +7. This still was not enough, however, so I shelled out the points for Water 4. The boost to defence took it from getting hit once or twice in a fight with small-medium indys, acquiring an affliction, and needing to come back to be healed, to getting hit never. You can also very quickly research Ench-1 for Grip of Winter.

That is a lot of points, but Arco can have the points to spend. The only disadvantage is the bless you get is anemic, so you cannot throw your Oreiads around with quite the same lack of concern as you can with a bigger bless.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

That was Aweful.

Just running a little test game, and the Virtue is almost tailor made for EA Arco. Philosophers w/sloth 3 magic 1 give you stratospheric research to get those all important buffs early. E income and a quick oreiad gives you a cheap black steel chest piece to fix prot issues. Finally, Arco has plenty of design points to spare. My build is Awake, Dom 10, A3S4, O3S3H1G0L2M1. Your virtue can expand in 5 turns or less, and flying lets you skip over whatever indies you like. Recruit peltasts and indy commanders to further expand, and you will be rolling in money in no time. Fort spam like crazy and go from there. If your virtue gets a booboo, just send her back to the cap and have one of your awesome healers fix her up. Later she'll get you the rings, and cast stuff like wind guide, arrow fend, or whatever you need.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

FYI- It doesn't look like LA Pythium gets the virtue. Unfortunate, since they could use her paths.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

You could consider D5 for Fear +0 instead of (or in addition to) Dom10. Plus, that lets you cast nifty stuff like Wind of Death later on.

That Pathcost 80's a killer, though.

-Max

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Dom 10 virtue can safely attack indies on turn 1.
Script air shield (research 0) and attack. The extreme awe (+7?) will keep her from hth attacks and air shield protects her from missiles. No other paths or equipment needed for that.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Sounds risky to me. Admittedly, normal morale units won't hth through that awe. But 20% of normal missiles will go right through the air shield and any indies with abnormal mr could hit through the awe.

I'd be surprised if you died that way, but it's a definite risk. It would only take some fatigue and an indy commander with the ability to summon up some undead and you would end up afflicted or worse.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

There is no reason to attack blind. Upside just isn't worth the downside risks.

Barbarians or longdead will penetrate the awe no problem, yielding one dead pretender. Maybe knights too.

Waiting 1 turn, to establish dominion - which boosts morale, strength, mr, hit points... and allows you to pick a weak province is vastly preferable.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Maybe not blind.
Turn 2, avoid crossbows, undead or too many arrows. Also lizards (curse).
Knights, Barbarians rarely hurt her at all.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Barbarians wouldn't berserk from being hit, because one hit would kill them. But I think they could berserk from a repel. Then again with that awe, they would never get repelled.

So yeah, barbs would be safe, as they'd never berserk.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Not to mention elephants. As far as I can tell, trample doesn't check Awe. (I'm assuming Virtue is smaller than an elephant - could be wrong).

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Umm, trample DOES check awe. Thats what makes nationals w/animal awe useful. So ele provs would actually be a pretty fair bet, so long as you cast air shield. Armor would be nice though, since there's going to be a LOT of sling bullets.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Barbarians don´t have berserk, only the chief.

Barbarian chiefs are viable mini-thugs in CBM btw...

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Pretty well known I thought that Awe is one of the best defences around against tramplers.

@ Fantomen - Ok I'll bite. How do you go about creating a mini-thug with a barb chief. Is it just a big chunk of armour and a lychan amulet to take advantage of the big berserk bonus you'd get?

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

As said earlier, only barbarian chiefs get beserk. However, I'd still say barbarians pose a significant threat to the Virtue even at +7 Awe. 2 main reasons: 1) large numbers, 2) high damage. Without a fear aura, the Virtue has to kill the barbarians one by one, which gains 1 fatigue every round. Though I'm a bit confused by routing mechanics, it would appear that 50% casualties must be suffered before a retreat is contemplated. So, if a Virtue attacks a 50 barbarian province, thats accumulating a lot of swings that will add up in the fatigue column. Plus, when barbarians do hit, they average 15 damage give or take. On a 40 HP, chasis, thats affliction likely, to say nothing of death possible. Better dominion helps, but that still means slowing down expansion. Feel free to test this out yourself. The Virtue will survive some just fine, but other times will retreat with 2 new afflictions ending her SC career (barring healers, but that still delays the vitals expansion phase).

Obviously, a bit of equipment (or XP) can quickly change this dynamic.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Routing:

Routing can be caused by unit casualties (where a casualty is a heavy wound or a death).

It can also be caused by a army casualty levels. Route checks are made a single time with light casualties- but every round once casualties reach heavy.

The manual says units of four or less check - thats not my experience.

However, it is fairly reproducible that pans carrion dragon (plague breath which causes couple points of damage) and area fear - on top of aura and +18 fear on the dragon will cause routes without causing a single death...

Wounds count..

this is why I said barbarians can kill a virtue - they come in groups of up to a hundred commonly - A virtue will be losing fatigue faster than it will be able to kill barbarians / inflict a morale check. Ie., you'd have to inflict 10/20/25? before the first serious check - and even then then survivor bonus means the barbs will pass.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

My god got totally jacked up once by attacking a barbarian province that for some reason had an H2 priest in it (no militia, so it was a special poptype maybe?) Anyway, Sermon of Courage can be bad if you are depending on Awe.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

In CBM the chief has 25hp, berserk 3, 13 base attack and defence, strength 15 and cost 40 gold. Thats a pretty tough guy for the price. Now we will imagine that you have no fort or mage sites there so he´s not competing with any other units. You can easily just let the chiefs pile up until you have a dozen or so.

I see two kinds of uses. Either as an anti-sc; just give them the prefered weapons and swarm the subject. Might be what you need against sc:s with awe sometime.

Otherwise you can make them battlefield thugs with a couple(more than 2 is too expensive) items and combine with army buffs and bodyguards. I like stars of thraldom when I have them sprinkled in my regular infantry. Lycan ammys are an alternative, or shrouds if you have a bless.

The general idea is to get them for "free", using leftover gems that your nation don´t need to make them a cheap weapon and throw them out there to kill a bunch before dying. quantity over quality

It´s not a strategy in itself, but sometimes you need to scrape the bottom of the cauldron.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Last time I checked CBM 1.5, the barb chief only had 15HP and regular Att/Def skills IIRC. I certainly missed many of the early versions of CBM, so maybe the barb chief was turbo-charged in one of them.

But if a barb chief ever had 25HP, then I can certainly see him having a great use as a thug. Especially because, as you say, he wouldn't compete in the build queue, or even take up mage time to summon. In fact a 25HP barb chief might be pretty much Mr.Go-To in the early-mid game. With just 5-10 gem worth of items he'd be pretty tasty.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

Damn it, I checked again now and it seems I was wrong. I guess I forgot to turn off the Antilarium mod last time I played and obviously that one was responsible for the change. Sorry.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

First a rather important omission in my former post: The Virtue needs dom 10 to be able to expand properly without equipment or extra magic pics - at least in my opinion. The difference between +4 and +7 awe is huge when it comes to independents.


Regarding routing the independents I have never noticed a problem and you certainly do not need to kill off half of the army in order to rout them. While not being at all certain as to why, I guess that it might be because at least the more numerous indies tend to be organized in units and once you rout a reasonably big unit, the rest of the army soon follows.

As for extra magic paths it mostly depends on what nation she is used for. Death can be fun and make for a very effective SC with fear in addition to the awe and the very good spell selection from that school, but ultimately I usually go for earth or nature, as that works well with the national mages I tend to use. This is certainly a situation where it varies by nation, though.
Generally, though, I find it too expensive to go for D5, especially as it is not as good as dom10 for initial expansion. To me it seems that air/death would work best if you go for a sleeping Virtue.



Regarding CBM:
Though I do not really play CBM, I do have a copy in order to be able to adapt some what I see here on the boards, and as far as I can see the Virtue costs exactly the same here. Am I missing something?

Furthermore, while the change from A2 to A1/S1 makes her pretty perfect for EA Arcoscephale, it tends to make her more expensive for a lot of the other nations that can use her. I more or less always want A4, for early booster access if nothing else, and as mentioned earth and nature tend to be my preferred additions. What this means is that you need to fork over an extra 24 points for air and since you are eventually going to use her in combat, you need to pay at least another 24 - more likely 48 - points for astral that you probably could use better elsewhere. With the low initial paths there are virtually always a better pretender to choose if you want a accomplished caster in either - or both - schools. As I see it, the changes mainly detract from her charm as a rather fragile, but cheap and flying high dominion chassis for air access with SC potential.

Re: Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue
 

There's a barbarian lord that comes with the horde events - 16 HP, still not enough.
I like the idea to make Barbarian chieftains a recruitable thug Conan-style though. Give them a iron cap, Enc 1 and 18HP.