[Murph]

I agree that they do look powerful on paper. That will somewhat be balanced by relatively high costs, both in gold and resources, and weak priests.

They should be tough, but they're also going to be a bit of a crapshoot to play, with random picks on mage abilities you can get lucky or screwed, and they'll play somewhat differently each time. I'm also going to give Malazan mages relatively low research values, so research will be a bit of a soft spot.

I also agree on the high mages, based on Illwinter's modding guidlines those boys will cost a pretty penny and will of course be capital-only. Likely looking at costs around that of a Demonbred or so.

As for the sappers, I'm thinking of doing something like the Star child ranged/spell effect, but with limited accuracy, fireball effect and very limited ammo. Might simulate the chaos that sappers cause pretty well.

Could be I'll make the infantry less high-morale and just give them lots of survivals skills, so they can go anywhere.

Hounds of Shadow *would* be tougher than shade beasts, but I'm not putting *real* Hounds in because that would make the balance problem worse.

In people's opinions, would those proposed negatives balance the powers somewhat? Or do I need to build in more weaknesses?