[chrispedersen]

Ok.. 22 games played to the end of year 3.

Three competeing philosophies:

1. Mine: Heavy blood/nature awake pretender. Luck scales.
2. Licker: Moderate awake pretender. Luck scales.
3. Dedas/Tolkien: Sleeping pretender. Order scales.

So here is what I found - all things considered, I thought my strategy was the hardest, with the slowest ramp up. Plus sides on mine:

A. Fully kitted out SC: Blood thorn, armor of souls, horror helmet, Eyeshield, Luck amulet, Boots of quickness, Amulet of MR.
Prophet.

HP: 55+. MR 30 ish; mid 20's. Regen like 13. With the blood thorn shredded even beat 4-6 bless niefles.

Occassional game breaking luck events: Each of the games got Incredible luck events. I have seen the 3000 gp event almost once per game. Magic item events - ring of wizardry!
Animists, and sometimes frost fathers.

B. National heros. More than 400 blood in the bank. Highest research.

2: Better gem income. Better scales meant better early expansion, 1 more castle than option 1. Still, slow slogging first year.

3. Much easier first year expansion. Magic averaged 280 pts less research than option 1. Gems in the bank was comparable to #1, due to luck events for #1 - however per turn income was higher due site searching with asleep pretender (when it awakened)

More than *twice* as many castles on the average - with 13 at the end of year 3. However, I still had yet to cast my first sanguine heritage; no vampires no counts, and no real blood economy. No national heros.

The question is - how would it fare against human opponents.

In my games - I always try to transition to SC's. Yet I have to say, that I think the transition happens to early in my strategy.

So overall, I am convinced that despite the design challenges of coming up with the extra 40 points, an asleep rainbow pretender with order scales is probably the best strategy.

I'd like to offer a small refinement to Tolkien: Obviously you wish a pretender with death access for your sanguine heritage spell. However, also valuable early on for your ability to lead
your ghoul guardians.

So, in short. I was wrong. I still think my strategy cool, neat and nifty. Just not optimal.