[Micah]

K - The proof is in the pudding, as they say. You've got a total of 1 win vs 4 other opponents in a newbie game, whereas I think I've got a pretty solid track record of MP wins. You can present all of the misleading evidence you'd like, but at the end of the day you simply don't have the same level of understanding of the game as some of the MP vets, myself included.

Take, for example, your statement about fear. Pretenders are immune to it, at least from everything I've tested and seen. This is a clear-cut issue of game mechanics. They can and do rout when they are injured badly enough, or when they are part of a general army rout, but fear doesn't bother them. It's hard to truly grasp the subtleties of strategy decisions when you don't even grasp the game mechanics.

Your statements about efficiency and general game flow are also flawed, although it is somewhat harder to prove, especially when you swap around your arguments. You said "And on a final note, are you seriously trying to tell me that Con4(Carpets of Flying) and Thaum3(Teleport) are not doable by turn 16 with Bogarus" and all of a sudden you start talking about having thaum-5, which is another 420RP, and Leeching Darkness, which is a D3 spell when you only have D1 mages. Sure, I guess you can communion together enough mages to get that to go off, but it's a pretty lousy idea in terms of efficiency. Plus you don't have S3 on the D starets without a 10% random, so you can't actually teleport in at that point.

Teleport ambushes and other magic can kill a pretender, it's true. Saying that's a liability is like saying having a queen is bad in chess because your opponent will be trying really hard to eliminate her. Resources are finite, and if he's aiming his magic at your pretender he's not aiming it at your other assets.