[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by 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.

I stated that a lowering in price would be something I wouldn't mind seeing. That is not the same as saying he's overcosted.

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.

You're going into dangerous waters, my friend. First, kill rate IS important due to morale considerations. Killing 5 people a turn is going to rout them much faster than killing 2. This is important for many reasons, and let me make them explicit. The faster you kill the enemies, the faster they rout. The faster they rout, the less fatigue you get.

As for HP totals, the Wyrm starts with a base of 160HPs, and gains 10% per round (assuming no Nature magic), to a maximum of 160. The Shedu has a base of 230HPs. That means that the Shedu will have more HPs than the Wyrm for 7 turns after contact with enemy troops is made. Do battles against Indeps normally take you that long to accomplish?

In addition he isn't going to collapse in a heap halfway through the battle and require assistance from your other troops.

I'm currently playing a GE Arco game, and it's turn 12 or 13. My Shedu/Prophet/Peltast strategy is working very well, and he's never been above 55 Fatigue at the end of a battle. Never an affliction, either.

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.

If you say so. My own experiences with a Virtue early are quite different.

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.

Since you don't seem to understand the points regarding kill rate, let me reiterate them.

1) The more people you kill, the faster the opponent will rout.
2) The faster the opponent routs, the faster the combat will take to reach closure.

The Virtue kills _1_ unit a turn. This means that on higher indep settings, she WILL get mobbed, and she WILL take damage. If you wait until she has Alteration researched to get her buffs, I have a quicker start out of the gate.

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.

How is that convoluted? Further, who are you to tell me what is or is not efficient? A Nataraja or a Son of the Sun cannot take provinces early as well as a Shedu, and is not as efficient with Earth and Astral magic as the Shedu. You're trying to pick this apart and saying that you can do better in any one area. And maybe you can. But can you do better in all of them?

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.

Wrong on both counts. But then, you don't listen much to others, do you?

He's not a cost-efficient pretender chassis, and certianly not comparable to the other pretender gods available to Arcoscephale.

He is the most cost-efficient god for Earth and Astral magic. You can't name another one that is better for both, if you want either of them at a medium-to-high level.

While calling him useless may be somewhat of an exageration,

Which I note you're quite good at.

there quite simply are better ways to spend your design points than on this chassis.

I'll repeat my earlier advice to you: Those who say something can't be done should get out of the way of the people doing it.

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.

Oh? Tell me how a Mystic is going to cast Forge. Even assuming an Earth-3 Mystic, the easiest way is, depending on your gem income, Earth Boots and either the Sword of the Four Elements, or a Ring of Wizardry. That's a lot of gems that you can save by simply taking 5 Earth on your Pretender.

If you want to talk about a 2-Earth Mystic (which is the much likelier scenario), you have to spend another 45 Earth gems to empower him, or forge both the Ring of Wizardry and the Sword.

I'm not sure about you, but this seems like quite an effort just to be able to cast an Earth-5 Ritual.

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.

I simply pointed out one late-game use for him. There are others as well, which you seem to miss.

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.

Popularity <> usefulness, and the reverse is true as well.

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.

Don't claim it is useless, unless you qualify it to 'useless to me', since you seem incapable of figuring out how to use the Shedu.