[geo981010]

After more play and reading JO's thoughts on lowering the cost, I am starting to wonder about what that would do. The prices do seem out of whack in the demo and don't seem worth it, even if it is fun sometimes. But with the full Version I can think of some pretty nasty combos, so I'd like to wait to hack that out to see how it balances then.

First off - Ermor. Played by someone well (hi Pepe!), Ermor is already likely going to have 4+ magic in most everything and will tailor the bless bonuses to make some really nasty Knights right off the bat. Ermor gets almost 1000 points to play with for the pretender, so if it is cheap to get 9 in a path Ermor will be able to do it multiple times. Ermor with 9 water (quickness, +4 defense), 9 fire (flaming weapons, +4 attack) and 9 astral (+3 MR, Twist Fate), plus the minor bonuses would make very scary Knights of the S.

Next up - what about the Shroud of the Battle Saint on a supercombatant (or prophet supercombatant)? Construction 4 with Astral 1, it gives a constant bless with all the bonuses. So with a little tweaking I imagine we'll see some aggressive options to get all these bless bonuses on Ice Devils (Regeneration, Reinvig, + defense) and such. Ermor will likely be the first one to abuse this, and in this case the lower dominion from the cost of getting 9 level magic skills will allow better slave hunting. And a Prophet combat Bane in the second turn would be able to take many indy provinces by himself, especially in the third turn when he gets on the HoF and gets a special ability.

If you want to play risky, the shroud could be for your pretender - regenerating, impossibly armored+reinvig, etc etc Cyclops or Great Mother at a very, very early stage. Take some risks, but when most people are barely researching and still tossing lowend troops, you could make a early kill (just get him out of the foreign dominion quick or pump dominion yourself) or at least get a large head start.

Mostly conjecture until the game ships, however...