[Chazar]

I see that I noticed this thread a bit too late to discuss Caelum's pretender design, but since I love Caelum, here are my humble thoughts on the topic:

- Caelum's Mammoth toghether with Wingless and a Seraphine-Prophet casting Fanaticism are enough for early game expansion, hence a magic pretender and very strong scales is a must-have for me.

- Order=3,Sloth=-3,Cold=3. Apart from TempleGuards and Iclads, one does not need resources but one needs money for the mages - plenty of mages. One also better builts several Forts with all the money one has to get enough Iceclads/Stormguards and fly them together instead. Forts are also sensible to feed your troops, which are constantly starving if they move to far away. Hence I usually take growth 3 as well, but any positive growth is enough. I am not sure on the magic, but a postive scale is good if you have the points, so I usually distribute leftover-points equally between growth and magic, but I dont feel magic that necessary as others do here on this forum.

- Magic: I've decided that blood3,earth3,death3 on a Ghost King is pretty nice, but requires luck-1 to pay for (which I hate, because bad luck is bad for my morale). A fountain of blood is also pretty good, with blood3 and earth1: Why blood & earth? Simply to forge a blood-stone, which gives +1 earth (and earth gems), therefore giving you access to earth boots (earth+1), which in turn gives you access to dwarven hammers (if pretender does not have earth3 already) and, most important, staffs of elemental mastery. This gives you a high seraph with 4Air, 3Water, 4 Earth, who can cast nasty things like petrify and still has an armor, helmet & one misc available! Such a staff of elemental mastery is pretty nice on any other high seraph as well and I usually go for a high construction research anyway, since water bracelets are cheap and give all my high seraphs the capability to cast falling frost, which is pretty cute against most foes.

Having blood is nice as well, since even 3-4 sages with sanguine rods give you enough slaves to get an IceDevil or some StormDemons (via a Blood Seraph having a brazen skull for blood+1). If you use your fountain of blood for hunting (hey, your scales give enough gold anyway) on every other turn, you can easily get IceDevils pretty soon.


Comments?