[LintMan]

Originally posted by Kelan:
Another way you could get your 4S/3N Coatl to 5N (if you really wanted to) is to forge a Ring of Sorcery. Use that with the Moonvine Bracelet and you could get to 5N, assuming the Coatl has 2 misc slots.

Then, you could pass the ring among your other Astral, Blood, Death, and Nature mages each turn for purpose of boosting them +1 for summons as necessary so it would still have some use after.

That just occurred to me as well, but only after I had forged a moonvine bracelet for my 3N thistle-mace Gygja and summoned an Ivy King (3N), just getting him on my current turn. Giving hime the bracelet and thistle mace, the Ivy King's up to 5N, so I'll start saving up for GoH. (There's still no global enchantments up on the board yet, so it'll hopefully be safe from being bumped for a while). I also forged the +1 astral misc item, which enabled the coatl to cast Angelic Host Last turn. I don't have any 3F casters, so I'm torn between using the Arch Angel to build some items (Rod of the Phoenix in particular), or using the group to raid undefended provinces.

Passing the Ring of Sorcery around is a great idea, though, anyway, so I'm going to make one as soon as I can forge a dwarven hammer to make it a little less costly.

As an update otherwise, after my original post, I eliminated Pythium, and pulled all my forces back to a few consolidated defensive positions while I started producing archers, vaetti, spearmen, and assorted useful items while also putting together two Bane Lords equipped as Zen suggested.

Pan has suprisingly given me tons of time to build up, and has only attacked me once: It brought a relatively small force against (what it thought) was a mildly undefended province (just pd), but which I happened to move an army into on that same turn.

Next turn, I raided a mostly undefended province of his, and caught his pretender (!) there with a minimal force of just 12 units plus a small amount of pd, thus killing his pretender a second time. Why the heck was the pretender with a tiny 12 unit army on the front line, when he had two huge 180+ armies in meighboring provinces that he could have joined with?

So thus far I've avoided any more major collisions with the bulk of Pan's army, so I've yet to test out the archer and mixed giant/vaetti strategy, but things are looking up. The SC Bane Lord pair should be ready for their first trial next month.

Thanks for all the tips and info, everyone!

-LintMan