Ritual of returning
 

I wasn't able to find any previous discussion on the subject therefore I'd like to ask a few questions.

For the sake of the questions let's assume we have a mage called retti protected by that spell.

Does ritual of return protect from death? meaning if retti is slain either by a spell or physical attack, does he die or is he teleported home?
My guess, backed by some sad MP experience suggests that in this case retti dies.
Does is at all work, or is this spell broken? Or, Can I trust this spell with my eyes closed to save retti from a sure defeat?

I would like to throw in another question regarding mind hunt and the game phases.
I had a bunch of astral mages cast mind hunt on an air queen, few of which had some heavy MR penetration, the rest were s4 astrals.
On the next turn the astral queen was attacked by one mind hunt from an s4 mage and resisted. The rest of the mind hunts didn't find any target. I assume the air queen phased out with cloud trapeze. So here comes my question.
Is the order in which spells are cast random? or is there an order that I'm not aware of.

Re: Ritual of returning
 

The popular belief for the casting order is the following:

All units from all nations are ordered by a unique number. Rituals are cast in this global order, but it is random each turn whether this order is processed highest to lowest or vice versa.

Example: Assume there are only four mages in the world. So either they cast A B C D or they cast D C B A, but B will never ever be the first or last to cast.

However, due to the high number of mages and the fact that not everyone is casting a ritual each turn, one may say that practically rituals are casted in a random order.

Note that this global order is also used to sort the commanders in tactical setup. It also determines the order in which the mages of the same side cast their spells on the battlefield during a combat round.

One may exploit this by ensuring that some spell X is cast before spell Y:

• In the battlefield, script a mage on the top with spell X and on at the bottom with spell Y.
• For rituals, one has to cast X twice: Once with a mage listed before the mage casting Y and once with a mage listed after. However, I have no idea were this is useful (e.g. lowering temperature with Wolven Winter only takes effect after all spells are cast, so simultaneously attacking with a cold-based distant attacks in the same turn will not benefit from the wolven winter).

Re: Ritual of returning
 

About returning, it doesn't save you from *death*, it just does teleport you back to your fortress if you get *wounded*. If you did die maybe you'll get teleported, but still dead, so it doesn't matter http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
Try some Crystal Heart in conjunction to avoid death.