[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Hrm. Well - Thunderward would stack with an air 9 blessing, except Ulm doesn't get sacred troops. Nonetheless, I have to disagree slightly.

The problem being that due to the way resists are evaluated, your mage will balk at the prospect of casting Thunder Ward upon your troops once they are blessed. The coverage on Thunder Ward is also a bit hard to control. There's higher level alternative with much better coverage, "Storm Warriors", which does the same thing for all your units. This one is less likely to balk or miss.

Given decent troops, seems like Thunderward might keep them alive long enough to kill the caster of Wrathful Skies. Caster dies, the spell dies, right?

If the caster is still *THERE*, yeah. If the caster decides to remove his august presence from the battlefield, it won't end until every Last enemy is dead.

Thunderward allows even militia to have a chance at surviving long enough to inflict some casualties.

Empirical evidence from the field says that this is not the case: I am unable to observe any obvious difference between an army protected solely by Storm Warriors or Thunder Ward, and an army that isn't, under wrathing. They all seem to die just the same. Maybe if your troops were exceptionally fast, some would survive, but Ulmish infantries are slow. Even if they were fast, this is not likely to change the fact that they will still be savaged! This is no way to fight!

after all, that heavy iron / steel armor should, with magic, act as lightning rods.

There *IS* an earth-gem based item, which provides this lightning rod benefit...to your commanders, anyway. I don't think that being part of the lightning rod is beneficial to your health, though.

The primary thing to remember as Ulm is that you should not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are flammable and conduct electricity.