[Blitz]

Honestly, I am sick of this. Both of you have already admitted that the Shedu is overcosted, which pretty much is the whole damn point. While yes, the Shedu does fill the niche of "early flying trampler for people who want an earth-astral blessing", in all honesty that is a very limited role of extremely dubious merit.

Can you give me data showing this? Even aside from the tactical considerations (such as the difference in kill rate), the fact that the Shedu flies means that strategically you are less constrained in which provinces you attack.

Kill rate is pretty much irrelevant. What matters for a pretender used for expansion is that the chassis can clear out a province of independants. The wurm, with it's huge regeneration bonus will under most circumstances be operating with a much higher hit point total. In addition he isn't going to collapse in a heap halfway through the battle and require assistance from your other troops. If you really want to achieve a fast opening with Arcoscephale, I'd probably reccomend the Virtue. Her impressive awe rating means that she's virtually invulnerable to damage from indepandants. She also flies, is much more useful in the lategame, and her lack of trample is quite frankly seen as a bonus by most players who know what they are talking about.

Now that's the surface. Now, considering that we are talking about mages, that means the Enc will be doubled for the purposes of fatigue, to 2. This makes the effective Reinv of the Rainbow Armor +1, not +3. Assuming that Quickness is put up (and when we're talking about Arco's Mystics in Communion, this assumption is pretty fair), this Enc should be removed twice for 2 spells being cast per turn. This makes the effective Reinv of the Rainbow Armor -1.

Again, a convoluted strategy of forged shrouds of the battle saint and an earth 4, astral 4 blessing just really isn't a very efficient use of a pretender god.

Finally, a friendly piece of advice for you: "Those who say something cannot be done should get out of the way of the people doing it."

Frankly I doubt either of you were doing anything at all with the Shedu before, and I highly doubt that either of you will play much with him ever again. He's not a cost-efficient pretender chassis, and certianly not comparable to the other pretender gods available to Arcoscephale. While calling him useless may be somewhat of an exageration, there quite simply are better ways to spend your design points than on this chassis. Your mystics can already cast most high-level earth and astral rituals without help, so a pretender god with earth/astral is really not as valuable to Arcoscephale. You don't need a "golem summoner" when you can simply forge a starshine skullcap and cast it with a fairly common 2-earth mage.

While this thread was meant to be a discussion of the golden era theme, it has become a forum for defending the shedu... a chassis that I've never seen in a MP game. If you find absolute terms such as "useless" so offensive and need to take it upon yourself to prove otherwise, by all means be my guest.

[ June 21, 2004, 18:06: Message edited by: Blitz ]