[FAJ]

I have to agree with Squirrillord, about LA Ulm at least. Trying to design a pretender for them is like having a leaky roof with 10 holes and only having 3 buckets to catch it all.

I don't so much agree about the fountain being a bad choice. You mention the need for S4 for rings, but I think it is a bigger burden to get S4 on the pretender than it is to just empower an S2 Fortune teller, then give her a coin and a cap. They have an abundance of S2, S1E1 and E2 mages, so coins and caps shouldn't be a problem.

Also, considering the high resource to gold ratio for Ulm troops, you aren’t very gold hungry in the first couple turns. Blood hunting your capital to summon a Vampire on turn 3 isn't impossible/crippling in CBM. Maybe not super effective, but hunting your capital is not the end of the world.

@Mardagg

Keep in mind, the argument here is that these nations mentioned are weaker than others, not that they are garbage outright. Proving that some negatives are possible to overcome, or that a nation can compensate for a weakness doesn't prove that a nation isn't weaker than others. In either case, weak or not, providing a specific example of how a very particular build can be effective is evidence enough that the race is AT LEAST constrained in terms of variety.

On a side note, I think that it is ironic the way that post (#27) is started, and then subsequently composed.