[Sombre]

Nice to see a bit of debate going on regarding the best UR bless. Let me weigh in on this briefly


Bless: Your sacreds are many and varied; recruitable Neugeboren Guard (elite heavy infantry), Black Templars (Knights), Penitent (Upgraded freespawn flagellants), Anchorites (High prot armour mini-golems who turn into penitent when hurt). Virtually all your commanders are sacred and you get quite a variety of sacred mages. You also get a flying undead sacred troop summon. Clearly a good bless is very iportant for this nation. Arguably, so is a high dominion if you're going to make extensive use of anchorites or penitent (you'll need high dom to mass them). The cap only sacreds are expesive enough that you won't be too restricted by the holy limit.

Water: A low water bless isn't a good pick. It's marginally useful on the Templars but that's about it. W9 is very nice on the Templars and greatly helps the NG/Penitent/Anchorites get to combat before taking too much ranged damage.

Fire: NG and Templar don't need that much help hitting or dealing damage, while anchorites deal enough damage but can sometimes find it hard to hit. The real unit that benefits from the F9 bless is the Penitent - they have a weapon with two attacks and with F9 they suddenly become hard hitting though fragile suicide troops. If you're going to use some sort of penitent heavy strat, it's probably the best 9 bless available.

Earth: Anchorites, NG and Templar already have stellar protection and as such an E9 blessing is mixed. On the one hand it makes them /very/ hard to kill, on the other their main vulnerability is to stuff that ignores prot anyway like poison, mr spells, shock etc. The reinvig bonus doesn't help the anchorites but is very effective on the NG and pretty good on the Templar. Additionally you have a slew of sacred mages who benefit quite a bit from it. The problem with E9 is that the penitent don't benefit from it AT ALL, so if you're going to be using them as a major part of your forces, you shouldn't take it.

Nature: Basically Penitent and Anchorites have no interest in this bless at all. Black Templars have some interest in it, but it isn't optimal for them. To the thug commanders it is useful and a nature heavy pretender isn't a bad idea at all, because UR have no access to nature. NGs do benefit quite a bit from this because of their solid hp, high price and tendency to survive a long time in combat, but it isn't the hottest bless for them imo. UR doesn't really have old age problems, so the regeneration vs disease trick isn't very important.

Air: Obviously don't take A9 here. But a minor bless must be considered. For NG and Templar, it's worthless. For Anchorites it's actually ok as they hate crossbow bolts and turn into penitent who retain the bless. For penitent this is obviously rather useful. However even with a relatively high air shield, if the shot gets through, the penitent is most likely dead, so it doesn't allow you to stick them right in the line of fire.

Death: Theoretically this would be good for Penitent to chip away at high prot units. Also be aware you have many sacred casters and they are capable of casting stuff like blade wind, earthquake, rain of stones etc.

Astral: All UR troops can use the mr, that's for sure. Twist fate is also very handy on penitent who die in the face of a slight breeze. If you're planning on using penitent extensively, it might be an idea. It's also ok for anchorites, but basically worthless for NG and Black Templar, who can afford to get hit.

Blood: The strength is unimportant for all units except the penitent, who benefit greatly from it. Still, offensively fire bless is better for them. I tried F9B9 in one build and it was overkill. Why B9 you ask? Because if you're using a million penitent you expect them to die /a lot/ and you'll actually have to lose them fairly often to avoid starvation. If they die and leave behind curse and horror mark, they get a bit more annoying for the enemy. Penitent are almost the tailor made unit to redeem B9, but it still isn't actually that good.