[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Festin

Oh, of course Jomon has its strong points. It even won a game once(according to HoF)!

I do not think it is a most productive use of time - trying to convince everyone that Jomon mages are perfectly nice, when they are obviously not.

...
-recruitable mages with E+S is nice.
-Recruitable mages that cover 6/8 paths, where one of the excluded paths is blood (and thus easy to access if you really want it) is nice.
-Recruitable mages capable of remotely searching all 6 of those paths is nice.
-Access to a summons which grants sufficient access to bootstrap the 7th non-blood path is nice.
-Access to E1 + 2 chances at E randoms is nice (early game alteration to counter rushes).
-Access to E2+ with boot slots to permit hammer forging is nice.

Jomon's mages cover so many bases for which many nations have to use their pretender, its hard to consider them 'bad'.

Try comparing their mages to other LA nations. There are a few LA nations with powerful mages (Patala, Rlyeh, and Bogarus spring to mind), but most of those are capital only, and Rlyeh has other issues (hard to find the gold to buy mages). The only LA nation with better recruit-anywhere mages that I can think of is C'tis, and their mages don't cover their holes very well (they need an E+S pretender to forge hammers, coins, RoS/W, etc...). Well, and Rlyeh, who has other issues, and can't wear boots, and thus can't forge hammers without a pretender.

If you can't come up with good things to do with Jomon's mages, you really aren't trying hard enough.

I do not think it is very reasonable to explain that Jomon is unable to use most of its national summons because it was not supposed to have them at all. Meh.

That you have access to them at all is an advantage regardless of how hard it is to use them. But demanding the nation have good access to them when they aren't intended for them is ridiculous. Shinuyama similarly has access to some summons (eg, Dai Tengu) it would really like to use but can't, because they are intended for Yomi or Jomon.

Not that anyone would summon Dai Oni over Tarts given the difference in gem cost.

And I would so like to listen about the way you managed to enter water with Kappas.

There is *one* water nation in LA, and it is often banned (for stupid reasons) or has expansion issues. I leave acquiring a water province as an exercise to the reader.