[Xietor]

I do not think there can be hard and fast rules for every situation. This game there were reasons for the insanely high magical paths-Ryleh. And there were reasons for making him insanely tough thug(i was outnumbered by gor tartarians by about 100).

In this case this thug was a difference maker in key wars that won me a 22 player game that had many good players in it. QM said it was a waste to give a gargoyle 2 air as well. But that gargoyle fought many a war and numerous battle and was a niche thug for me. And he was alive when the game ended.

There are also advantages to having an astral mage that can cast master enslave without a communion. When you are the attacker, it is nice to get your master enslave off 1st.

All those gems do you no good if you die. How many times does someone die in a game and give you hundreds of gems? So sure, i could have sat and wished for gems over and over. But I had plenty of gems. I needed things that could fight high level communions where master enslave and arcane domination were cast more than once during the battle. So there were actually very few troops of choice that I wanted to use.

There were also other Seraphs around. I wanted my seraph to be able to kill other seraphs, tartarians, and anything else that may cross its path-and it did. Including named horrors.