[Huzurdaddi]

I'm not fond of rb'ing myself, but I faced some tough rb pretenders, and have gained a healthy respect for rb strategies.

RB-ing (IMO) takes off around turn 25 or so when your pretender has somehow managed to get the following going:

1) A bunch of magical sites pumping a weird skew of gems usually of not much use to anyone
2) Forged/Acquired items to boost himself/herself to astral 4, death 1
3) Research Conjuration 6

All 3 of these things just seem to naturally fall into place between turn 25 and 35 depending upon independent strength and other factors ( I personally like indepedent strength 9).

Now what you do is you use alcehmy to convert all of those weird gems into astral gems and then cast summon ether gate like mad. It's not the best summon in the game. There are plenty of counters. They are not invincible. But they are dang tough and it's still pretty early in the game so most of the stuff that can whoop them does not exist yet. They are slow though ( strategic move 1?). But when they get to the province you want to smash they do a fine job.

This is really what I use RB mages for. The rest is gravy. Yes I could forge tons of items which are really, really, good. But really I find that the ether warriors pretty much clean house for a good 20 turns or so.

Oh and I think that RBs are better when the site frequency is higher. An RB with the site fequency set to 60 or 70 is almost decent. It's no substitute for a good VQ though, IMO.

Blue dragon has 2 water

Thanks for the tip! There was no little icon so I did not think that the dragon had any magic. My mistake. Works like a charm. Saves me a bundle and makes my strategy work much better.