[aldin]

I need y'all to check my logic on this to see if I've made some glaring error. So far everything I've encountered in my first test game says things are okay. I was looking at the costs of bless-effect troops and I couldn't get over the idea that Mictlan has a lot of inexpensive, solid bless units. I knew I wanted a double 9; Fire to boost standard attacks to excellent ones and Water to boost average defenses to good ones and pick up quickness to boot. The way the numbers are working out is weird though:

-Pretender as researcher = Drain 3; 17 RP/turn is nothing to sneeze at, and the +1.5 MR is nice too.
-Rock bottom resource costs = Sloth 3; It's a minor gold hit but the production just isn't needed.
-Preferred scale = Heat 1; Just for the bonus points.

That's 280 FREE (mostly) points! And just for grins and giggles the cheapest F9W9 pretender available to Mictlan is the Moloch. The Eagle Warriors FLY when blessed. The Jaguar Warriors turn into were-Jags when hit, and the Sun Warriors are tough HI units BEFORE you tack on the bless effects. Add to that the fact that all the commanders are sacred and you've got some tough early armies.

My experience so far is that I can crank out fourteen Jaguar Warriors and a couple of banner bearers while I build a H3 commander and prophet him to H4. Combined with the starting units, this sweeps the "easy" str.7 independants adjacent to the castle while I crank out 7 Sun Warriors/turn. By the time the easy stuff is cleared a fair-sized sacred army is available.

So bring me back down to earth - I know I read a lot about how weak Mictlan is, but so far my experience is that they build a big, fast, good early army with lots of research and many excellent units.

~Aldin