I was the one behind C'tis.
I took W9E4 awake Blue Dragon, becouse after few initial expasion tests I found C'tis troops to be pretty weak to expand against indies 9 on their own, so I needed an SC. C'tis had lot of sacred troops, mages and summons, so SC with a good bless seemed to be good idea. After few more tests I found water bless to be most sufficient as it made sacred serpents a lot more effective in early game and turned Tomb Kings into unstoppable killing machines later on. Earth was taken as a bless for mages + hammers and possible earth summons.
Alas, I had the worst beginning I ever had so far. I started in the area with only forests and mountains around. For the first 7 turns I had 3 indies attack on my provinces (misfortune 1), one of them destroyed my early fortress
at the building stage the very same turn I moved my pretender away from the province (ironicaly scales in that province atm were order 2, neutral fortune
). Ouch! Retaking provinces was a hell, becouse mountans and forests were annoyingly slowing my movement. Then, my pretender got a disease affiction from indies, and got muted the very next turn. Ouch! But I wasn't the one unlucky around - my scout reported Arco's pretender was lost to the indies, and I took it as my opportunity to climb out of the pit. Bogarus was also displaying interest in Arco, so I desided to launch an attack as soon as possible to capture the capital first... And it was my mistake, I should have just continued taking indie provinces around them, growing in streight. Arcoscephalians repelled with everything they got, totally devastating my invasion force, and launching counterattack afterwards. I managed to overcome them in a bloodshedy war, but was considerably weakened and lost my pretender twice.
Bogarus player acted wisely and stayed out of our fight researching, bloodhunting and building forces. He striked precicely after I took over Arco capital with thunderstrike spamming reverse communion never giving me a time to recover from the war. The research level of Bogarus was the gratest at the moment, while I had to place most of my mages on the battlfield in order to defeat Arco and thus having the lousiest research in the game. Had Bogarus brought more mages out of his labs - I'd be a lost cause for sure, but with some 'cat and mouse' games I managed to win some time and to withstand the invasion by the price of a loss of Arco's capital. After reaching a sertain level of research I finally managed to bear of my fangs. Rigor Mortis, Quagmire, Winter Grip and their combinations were a nightmare for Bogarus's comunions, I took the upper hand in war for some time and even managed to break into Bogarus's capital destroying ~30 comanders, mostly starets's and 2 Queens of Air... but it was my magnum opus for this game, Bogarus started using Life after Death and focusing on building skeletons, vampires and tartarians. Having way less resourses then Bogarus I started slowly fading.
In the meantime my intelligence informed me of Patala, gathering forces for the reasons unknown. Keeping in mind Midgard marching all over the rest of the world, I decided Patala prepares an attack on him, but still had an itchy feeling and built some forces in my capital... And it was a right decision, Patala attacked me with such a number of artifacts I felt almost flattered. But from geopolitical point of view they had unbound Midards hands. Seeing Patala is occupied with me Midgard atacked Pythium - the only other nation who could make a difference for him beside Patala (and possibly Ashdod) the very next turn. Even if I managed to pull first Patala wave away - second one was deadly for me, but it did not really matter, becouse Midgard rockes the World, baby!
But, anyway, I really enjoyed the game, and special thanks to my opponent, Wraithlord, for that.
Thanks to all participants.
Very special thanks to rdonj for being a perfect administrator.
Looking forward for the next RAND game.
P.S. Glad to see you back, Cal.