[HoneyBadger]

Ok, this is specifically concerning a Bless-strategy for Mictlan, since there seem to be quite a few questions about it, and because every Colonel seems to have a secret recipe.

I'm using EA because I'm familiar with it. There are two really excellent Pretenders for EA Mictlan: Lord of the Night and the often overlooked Smoking Mirror.

Lord of the Night is great in-and-of himself, he's got titan stats plus stealthy assassin flying, a butt-load of fear, and he can see in the dark, and if the bug ever gets fixed, he'll summon Fiends of Darkness to aid him in battle. Currently he just summons giant bats, but that's ok, it's a good start. He's also got blood 2, death 1-again, it sucketh not, Horatio.

Still, the Lord of the Night is the Darth Vader to Smoking Mirror's Emperor. To paraphraise Rolling Stone Magazine: the Lord of the Night runs down the corner to fetch Smoking Mirror's ciggarettes. Here's why:

Smoking Mirror is your basic human, he's fire-retardant, but other than that he's got no special powers, EXCEPT!!! he's got 3-count them, fire, death, blood, 1,2,3! starting magic paths! AND! it'll only cost 20 points to raise other magic paths to level 1, that mean's he's a triple-bless master lich where magic is concerned. it sucketh VERY not, Horatio.

Here's what I get when I dump scales and go for a maximum bless strategy with an Imprisoned Smoking Mirror. I keep Luck set at 0, not that it matters all that much, but it will keep you in the game where Misfortune 3 can easily eliminate you early and hurt you late.

Every other scale I set to -3, Heat 3, etc. Now, looking at magic paths, I set Fire to 9, Blood to 9, Astral to 4, Death to 2 (because a little added affliction would be nice, but we really aren't going to need it, are we? no we are not.) Nature to 4 (just to cut down on pesky enemy afflictions), and Water to 9.

Dominion we leave alone. Perfect Efficiency.

Now, we don't care so much that we can only buy 2 sacred troops at a time, because even though we've got 3 choices of national sacreds-and they're all lovely in their own special ways-2 a turn is plenty for early expansion with the kind of Bless we've got on them, and what we really are after is National Summons.

And we've got great National Summons for Mictlan. A dozen of them, each one-as far as I know, sacred.

Each one of which now recieves Attack +4, Fire Weapons, Defense +4, Quickness, Magic Resistance +1, Regeneration +5%, Strength +4, and Death Curse.

We've also now got a Pretender with to Cojones to summon up every single Mictlan national summons, blood or conjuration. And he's got atleast a decent head-start on Wish, so it's not impossible to empower him up by mid-game or so, with clam-spam.

And if that aint Shakespeare, I don't know what is.