[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Jazzepi

I guess great minds think alike?

If you're going to turn your forgelord into something other than just a blood stone ***** (BSB), I would consider dropping the silliness of all those high level paths. Give him S3, F1, E2, B3. Forge boots, a hammer,a crystal coin, a starshine skullcap, then you can push out the next two levels of rings from there. Personally, I don't know where you're going to get all this astral from. With no natural mages, you better hope you find some lizard shamans. Not that you can afford to dump a temple + lab into an empty province with such bad scales

To me, Argatha is a lot like Ulm, but with national mages who don't happen to have a forge bonus. I wouldn't even bother trying to get secondary bloodstone mages up, I would focus exclusively on making the forge lord your sole source of bloodstone forging.

But I think I'll get in on a CBM MA game with Argatha, and see how I do.

Jazzepi

Again, I don't think you should underestimate the benefit of the minor blessings to your holy statues. +2 attack means that awesome damage gets delivered *much* more often. +1 MR helps against the biggest threats you'll have to face through most of the game. +2 strength really adds a significant amount against ultra-heavy opposition, and the 2 reinvig not only helps your mages (significantly) it makes quite a difference in fielding your non-cold immune troops under grip of winter, etc. Those points you're paying for the blessing, not for the forging.