[Warhammer]

I am not a huge fan of MA Marignon. They look good on paper but they are vulnerable in a number of ways.

First, their crossbowmen are great, but their rate of fire is slow. The problem is that you need to set them back from the front lines a bit, so they can get more than one shot on the approaching enemy.

Second, you almost have to take some magic scales with them. If you take any drain, their witch hunters are terrible at research. Their big mages are nice, but their old age really sets them back quite a bit. They also do not have a lot of precision, so unless you get a lucky step in air magic, you're going to be whiffing quite a bit.

Third, their scales are hard to balance. You need good magic, good production (to produce plenty of troops) and you need pretty good order to make sure you have the money for your mages. Where are you going to pay for those scales? Don't even think of taking misfortune. It's one thing to have barbarians plunder a province, its another when it is a bunch of knights!

Fourth, their magic diversity is absolutely brutal. Yes, astral magic is powerful. However, you need a lot of boosters to do that. If you want to pursue a mind hunt strategy you really need some penetration boosters to help you out, and for those you need more paths than just astral and fire.

Fifth, I think their best bet is to take a Water or Fire bless. This makes their knights a very good unit, and one that can absolutely put fear into your opponent. The problem is that is very expensive, and you need your pretender to have some decent magic paths for site searching as well as scales. I'm not sure what is the best pretender to have, but there are too many weaknesses that need to be shored up by him that you don't see with other nations.

Sixth, they really need to have a good starting location with plenty of resources. To really be able to send out good armies early, you don't need cash, you need resources. This nation is very vulnerable to a bad starting spot. One more thing, if you start next to Abyssia, good night. Unless you have an ally, you are hosed because their units are immune to fire, and rage, paralyze, and other early astral and fire (non-damage) spells you need to have a ton of mages present to win.

Again, they look good on paper, but in practice they are a hard nation to play. Coincidentally, I think LA Marignon is a very powerful nation the more I dabble with it, even though it doesn't look as good on paper.