[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by geo981010:

Keir-
For a fun dual bless choice, have you tried a Baphomant with Marignon yet? Cheapest dual 9 magic pretender there is (I think - only 468 points), and twisted fate flaming attack flagellants are a whole lotta fun It's good being the Astral King, too!

Marignon has always been a favourite of mine and Baphomet is certainly interesting now.

To be honest I had a few dissapointments when I tried out a race shortly after getting the full game. My race theme was "In you we trust" with Paladins running around questing. Unfortunately they kept dying to lucky blows (or Xbows) after having already used up the twist of fate. ToF works best with decent numbers of sacred troops with very high def as Paladins defence gets overwhelmed and they have to rely on their Prot which isn't quite high enough. The most successful Paladin I recall (Heroic ability Quickness) lost his arm to an archer (the shame of it!) while finishing off a battle and was quickly butchered. Low HP supercombatents don't seem to work very well.

I have been intending to have another try in which each questing Knight is accompanied by a small band of Zealots, who wish nothing more than to die in battle fighting beside their chosen hero, and a couple of Men at Arms to attract Xbow bolts. At present however I'm distracted by the tricky Tuatha and the intricacies of Mictlan.

I suspect it will take me awhile to get a setup I like with Marignon as I don't like depending on the throw away Flagellents - in general I don't like losing my troops. The trouble with using the Paladins is that the need for decent productivity really puts the squeeze on points. In search of more points I tried the Lady of Fortune water9, nature 4 and Turmoil3/luck3 and retitled the race "In Fortune we trust" but it wasn't a great success.

I have a nasty suspician that the best pretender for using Paladins with might be the Earth Mother (earth9, nature6-9) which is too inappropriate for me.

It's good being the Astral King, too!

I thought they had made immobile pretenders truly immobile? I may well have misunderstood and being Astral King with Marignon would be very reassuring. If you are indeed right then Baphomet is significantly better than I had thought.

Re Niefel Giants:

I wouldn't underestimate the value of the reinvigoration effect of earth magic. I have also found that its hard to get too much prot. Often in the early game when my Niefel Giants came up against things that could kill them they died in moments (lack of support) and so the regeneration is perhaps not as important as berserk which is, as you point out Geo, very important - although it only
gave +2 prot in the examples I remember checking for Niefel Giants. Prot bonus from berserk seem to vary alot depending on starting prot so I suspect its a percentage adjustment and the difference could be what cold scale the Niefels are in - or I could just be completely confused. The reduction in the amount of battle afflictions from regeneration is pretty key in the long term and in a mid-game big battle the regaining of HP's can be huge.

I have tried Son of Niefel with water 9, Earth 9 and it seemed to be very smooth early as the enemy get broken quicker. However it was only one test and though thematically appealing it just doesn't seem as tight as the Earth Mother approach - stay alive and freeze them.

Good to hear of anothers experiances with a dual bless race.

Cheers

Keir