[Frostmourne27]

allright, i have to defned my position (even if this is kind of going of on a tangent) i wasnt think early game, if you have arcane nexus and a couple of other gem giving enchantements active or have searched a substantial number of provinces it isnt really that much of an expenditure to give your god, or a summoned biggish unit (ice devil sized maybe or possible a king/queen) a few of the cheaper artifacts of lvl 6 magic items (amon hotep for instance is really quite cheap) the problem with the ten banes with rings of regen and pendants of luck is that they will have some problems with anything other than chaff. A few dusk elders casting disintegrate (in the late game) or even (against BE a few nether dart chucking thaumaturgs or (if we can extend this beyong ermor) a couple of starspawn or some abysian fire mages. Its not so much the little stuff (which the banes will beat quite handily) or the big stuff like gods (those are usually a fairly rare) but its the things that are a step up from chaff but arent SCs and are cheap and massable (none of the above cost gems- except summoning the dusk elders (does that count)) although they are all fairly expensive mages. There's also the time consideration- it takes three turns to creat a bane with ring of regeneration and pendant of luck, and if you want more than one the amount of time it takes goes up rather drastically whereas one (wished for if you really want- i didnt sugest wishing for a natarajya) natarajya or even just an ice devil with amon hotep, a ring of regeneration, pendant of luck and a harvest blade (none of those are expensive really) probably will do as well as at least a few of your banes, takes much less time and may well be about the same price- the total cost for a bane w/ ring of regen and talisman of luck is 8 death gems (the bane) 5 astral pearls (pendant of luck) and 10 nature gems (the ring) as compared to an ice devil (77 blood slaves) ring of renegeration (10N) Pendant of luck (five S) harvest blade (20 B and 5 N) and amon hotep (40F 40S <- are these numbers right, i dont have a game going right now where i can forge it and i cant be bothered to look it up) Net costs, (assuming 1B is the same as one of any other type of magic resource) are Ice devil: 197 gems (97 slaves and 100 gems) vs. a bane that costs a total of 23 gems so theoretecally approximatly 10 banes equiped as you sujested should be the same as my theoretical ice devil. If however we discard the price of the ice devil and replace it with something like a nifel giant or a god or even a mid game non unique summon the cost for mine goes down to only about ~120 gems which is about the same as five of your banes, and i think (somebody might want to correct me as im not too sure about this) the forces are about equal. ewww- theres alot of mistakes here and i dont really want to spend twenty minutes fixing them, so plz excuse the spelling and/or grammatical attrocities.