[Wyatt Hebert]

Basic Strategies for Agartha EA

1) Use your National Summons. Umbrals, Magma Children, and Earth Elementals are all quite good.

Reasons:

a) Umbrals: Undead, Ethereal, Life Drain w/ High Str. Ridiculously cheap for their effectiveness. Guaranteed casters (even cheap ones).

b) Magma Children: Magic Unit (problem), and, iirc, an 8-pt Armor Piercing AoE 1 Flame Strike. Just so you know, this means that they hit the entire square for 8+(random) Fire damage, and the opponent has halved protection against it. And this is each individual Magma Child. Try to keep away from your other units, though.

c) Earth Elementals: Magic Unit that has Trample. Trample is useful, and their high morale make them quite useful for running through the opponents.

That's a basic synopsis of, imo, your best units, barring a particular bless. The game I played with EA Agartha, I played and E10 Cyclops. The bless gives all your mages Reinvigorate, and allows me to Forge useful equipment on the cheap (or VERY cheap with a few effects).

Other questions: 1) Pretender design? 2) Opponents?

My game was against Ulm and Helheim (at least), and neither one could really get past my defensive set up. Helheim, while usually tough (even AI against new players, honestly), just completely folds to the Flame Strike (btw, AoE (Area of Effect) attacks don't have to roll to hit... they just whack the whole square), and the tramplers are useful against them, too. Ulm just required a good deal of screen, Tramplers, and Magma Children.

Definitely research Conj 3 and Evo 5 (Blade Wind's level, right?) quickly, then Cons 2-6, as desired. Thaumaturgy 2, early, if you want to be able to remote search (Gnome Lore, etc.) your provinces.

Just some of my thoughts...

Wyatt Hebert