[Keir Maxwell]

I have had alot of fun with water9 but I'm about to try a slightly different approach with C'tis that might benifit Tuatha - Moloch with Fire9 Water4-6. Did you try something like this when you were experimenting with Fire Jasper?

The idea is that Fire9 is not that pricey and Water4-6 gets you a big part of what Water9 does without the full cost. Wether or not it works depends on how much faster you rout your opponents as this is a good way of reducing casulties. Routing people fast becomes increasingly important as magic starts to back up missile fire and you want to get the battle won before the enemy mages wreak to much havoc on your expensive sacred troops. However if the defense of the Daone Sidhe is not high enough it won't work so well.

I don't build anything other than sacred troops or arrow catchers in my home province with Tuatha as while the longbows do work they don't work well with Daoine Sidhe. Having spent so many points on high level magic for bless effects I want as many of my troops as possible to be able to utilise the bless effects. This is partly a personal taste question and I do understand people can get good results early with Longbows and without the complexity/risk the Daoine Sidhe/Cu Sidhe armies entail. If you can get the start right relying on sacred troops you do end up with a higher quality army.

The lack of good arrow catchers is a big problem with this race. Its nice to have something with a prot of about 13 and a strat move of 2 to deploy to middle and fore of your army on hold and attack so that the arrows stay away from the expensive sacred lads - but Man doesn't get anything like that.

I do think this is a tricky race to use and requires alot of practice to get the expansion right. I've gone off expensive low hit point troops for the moment (it was the Centaur Warrior experiance) but when I next try them I must remember to give Tuatha another go as it is an underdog race with some real strengths and I like that combo.

cheers

Keir