[sector24]

I don't think LA Pythium gets angels unfortunately.

Only Hydra commanders would have 2 slots. LA Pythium gets a national hero Hydra, or you could Gift of Reason a Hydra, but you can't recruit them as commanders.

Some notes:
Awake SC pretender is preferable, all your infantry are resource intensive, your hydras are 250g each, and they don't mix well at all. E4D5 Prince of Death is a good choice.

Order 3, Sloth 2, Misfortune 2, Magic 1 would probably be ideal, I don't recall if you can afford that with the PoD above. You can always take Heat 1 if you need points, but Sloth 3 is very hard on you (you can only recruit 1 infantry unit on turn 1).

Heretics are annoying. They're great offensive mages for reducing enemy dominion, but LA Pythium has awful paths for combat magic. You want 1 F2 Heliodromus, then you'll probably never recruit them ever again. Epoptes are poor healers, but better than nothing. It would be really nice to get a N1B1 Reveler, but it's a crapshoot. In one game I recruited 50 Revelers without blood magic before I quit out of disgust, in another game my 2nd Reveler had blood. Most of your mages will be Serpent Acolytes, Renati(?), and Serpent Priests, and Thuergs for late game communions.

The national spell Orgy is very nice. You get a 15HP satyr with 40 leadership and seduction for 1 blood slave. They cannot seduce male commanders, but it turns into an assassination attempt. Equip them with the skeleton earring and send them out en masse. Your investment is 3 death gems and a blood slave, so you are almost guaranteed to win from an economic perspective. You force the opponent to use bodyguards, or possibly even Mind Hunt you.

For indys, place your commander in the bottom left corner, with 8-10 infantry in the bottom right corner set to guard commander. Place 4 or 5 Hydras in the middle right with orders to attack rear. Your infantry will suck up the arrows and stay out of the poison and you should come out of it with no losses. However, if you're fighting really large armies (80+) the enemy may bleed around your hydras and kill your commander, so be careful.

Serpent Priests with W1N3 can cast Foul Vapors (Enchantment 5) and have innate poison immunity. For whittling down large armies, I like to set a handful of Hydras all the way to the right set on Guard Commander with the Serpent Priest all the way left set to cast Foul Vapors. The Hydras will retreat very slowly, but the way turns are resolved, the poison will hang in the air on a 1 turn delay, poisoning all the infantry chasing you to the backfield.

In particular, I like to leave my satyrs in the path of attacking armies and pick off all their commanders, then attack with the poison strategy above. It's annoying to have your hydras strewn all over the map, but recruiting large amounts of regular commanders to corral them works for me.

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There's a more extensive post where vfb wrote a very detailed walkthrough for LA Pythium if you want to search for it. Personally, I find it one of the least enjoyable nations in the game. Hydras and infantry have no synergy, (including Hydras killing your own PD) and 90% of the commanders are made obselete if you find a magic site that lets you recruit enchantresses.