[Baalz]

I agree with you Dr. P on the ones you listed as obviously good, but I think you missed a couple synergies on the other teams.

I'm a bit surprised MA Ulm didn't get picked at all for a team game. I didn’t pick it because I thought it’d be in high contention…

Patala/LA Mari - I'm not so sure blood slaves are being pushed to the monkey summons here. Patala makes an awesome forge ***** and fallen angels are just as cost efficient as any of the monkey summons – particularly with a nice bless. Could be Patala focuses on const while mari focusses on blood initially, then it may make sense for Patala to pick up the conj summons. Monkey blood summons will come out eventually, but I think fallen angels are the faster payout here which is something to consider with a seemingly weak early game.

Bandar/LA Ulm - This one does seem more likely to focus on the monkey blood summons, but theres also some interesting rushes that could be leveraged with these game settings with the monkey astral summons and Ulm's forge bonus. I don't think I agree this one is weak early, LA Ulm with high resources and hard research should be pretty intimidating early on if played right.

Lanka/EA Agartha - Hmmm, not sure but I'm guessing maybe a darkness theme? Utterdark could be a plan as they can get a good D income without really needing to spend it on anything.

MA Man/EA Mictlan - Hmmmm, maybe Mictlan is geared for mid/late game power while Man carries the early game. With no need to take crappy scales for an insane bless Mictlan can get a blood economy up real fast jumping up to their mid level summons while Man takes care of the expansion. Saving up bloodslave and b-lining for Tlahuelpuchi would allow arguably the fastest blood econ in the game, churning out civateteo thugs and enormous amounts of Onaqui freespawn without really needing a strong bless.

Saur/Mach - pretty strong early game, I'd see Sauro taking a bless the optimized thugging with Mach on the forge early on. Warrior sorceresses pouring out of a bunch of castles without worrying too much about research initially. This transitions into strong blood/death summons with Mach covering heavy evo.

EA Arco/EA C'tis – Arco takes magic-3/sloth-3 and rainbow, tossing in skull mentors to get a really retarded initial research while c’tis takes care of the early heavy lifting. Not sure where that research is headed but there’s probably a plan for something nasty, maybe a global they’ve planned around.

MA Arco/Kalasia - Arco takes a forge lord and great scales, picks up early constr. Kalasia takes a moderate bless and a rainbow to look for gems. Midgame Arco picks up support rituals with the forge lord popping out the big boosters and that fat gem income turns into a steady flow of astral summons supported by communions and alteration.

MA TC/MA Mari – TC has awesome research and site searching with no need for a pretender support. Mari takes a strong bless leveraging knights of the chalice early and climbing straight up to angelic summons which TC supplies gems and gear for.

MA Aby/MA Jotun – Strong early, mid and late games. They probably are hoping to leverage whichever temperature extreme is most damaging to their opponents with Aby clobbering the anti/thug stuff using heavy infantry/evo while Jotun does what it does.

MA Pyth/Shin – Probably the most obviously strong pairing, tons of options and no real weaknesses.

Yomi/LA Aby – Obvious strengths, but Yomi may have an uphill fight on this one. Lots of good archer nations matched with good anti-thug options. Also, overall team seems likely to have a rough time with banish spam/demon counters.

Utgard/Bogarus – Terrifying late game, but a real danger of not living that long. If they’re given enough breathing room this would probably be the strongest pairing but I imagine they’ll have a hard time keeping out of early fighting and depending on who they come up against that may be pretty difficult.