[Yvelina]

I was talking about drain being suicide... now, if you are saying that Magic 3 is not worth the 40 design points over Magic 2, that may be perfectly reasonable. When I decided on magic 3, I mostly did it by comparing the loss of research to the loss of gold from death/sloth, and decided that magic 3 made sense. It is also the difference between getting to Alt2 in two turns, and having to take one more turn before sending my pretender on a rampage.

I can believe that for even slightly different pretender designs, magic 2 may be better than magic 3. But I have trouble imagining how drain can be a good idea. Do you mind explaining why you would take drain with Ermor? Even without drain, you can easily afford a monster pretender. Investing 6x40 more points in it will not allow you to do two things per turn, while it would deny you 6 more research points per mage.

As for the suggestion tha I use quilts of dwarves, I will just assume that you were joking. There are better uses for air gems in the early game, especially for Vanheim.