[VedalkenBear]

Well, they are insulated somewhat from the common anti-big troop spells (such as Soul Slay) due to their multiple heads. (They only kill one head at a time.) I would say that IF you wanted to do a hydra strategy, make sure they are using the quickfix mod that keeps them sacred if they lose a head.

IMO, 250g for the Hydra is not 'ridiculous'. I would say that a Water-9 Bless is pretty important to them (in MP) because that gets them into melee quicker. They don't _generally_ need more damage or attack, so Fire is not really necessary. Astral would be quite interesting as a way to boost their attack. I would assume that the Twist Fate effect only affects the first head. If it affects _each_ head... well, that would be great. A small Earth bless might be good for reinvigoration. Air and Blood can probably be skipped (but see below).

As for other strategies, you can really leverage the heretics, done properly. If you like raiding, you can have 4 or 5 heretics backed by an army (dare I say hydras) in the opponent's backfield, reducing their dominion everywhere. They're also useful in rapidly switching dominion from yours to theirs in recently conquered territories.

Another strategy that dovetails nicely with the heretic plan is to saturate the map with satyrs. You would get these from the Blood-1 summon Orgy. To get this started early would probably require a Blood pretender, or getting lucky with a Reveler. Once you have them, though, every blood slave/mage combination gives you an assassin that is pretty good for a chassis, at least. Given rudimentary equipment, they're not bad at the job. As a side benefit, you get Maenads that you might want to consider giving to your mages as guards (depending on the prevalence of assassins).

Those are the major areas you can work with, IMO. You have good flexibility in your mages as well, but that is a more supplemental strength rather than a core strength. YMMV.

Resident Serpent Cult Freak