[Tom_Scudder]

With the van's native magicians, you have a 3 earth and a 3 air mage immediately available with 1 random each so you have a shot at 4 earth and 4 air. Even without the random air-boost, you can still summon an air queen with the hat and bag boosters. You need a bit of luck (or empowerment) to get your earth guy up to elemental king levels, but you can still cast a lot with 4 earth, which is easy to build up to.

(And air can summon a 2-N caster (draconians) if you fail to find either druids or jade amazons. Though you need a 3-N caster to really self-boostrap properly. (thistle mace ->4n, treelord staff ->5N) Or a lizard shaman and level 7? conjuration for coatls. Yes, I've been thinking about this a bit too much.)

I agree about fire being a bit low in the summonable-caster department. With abysia and marignon both in the game, you could easily end up with no summonable fire casters at all available.

You COULD split the difference and run, say, a golden naga pretender (or a little weenie rainbow dude) and throw on 3N and/or 2D for pretty cheap - either of which is boostrappable to a pretty high degree, though boostrapping from 2D requires getting to the sceptre of dark regency first, which might be a challenge against human players.

Bear in mind that I'm a total newbie at multiplayer, so I don't know how much of an issue the race for artifacts and unique summons is.