[13lackGu4rd]

sure, MA Marignon is not among the strongest MA nations, unlike Pythium which is top notch. however it still doesn't make them absolutely terrible. also, I wonder why you keep comparing MA Marignon to MA Pythium, is it because of the angel summons that they share? cause other than that they play rather differently...

for your armies, Royal Guards(cavalry with shields) and Crossbowmen are map move 2, the rest are map move 1. so your national armies should consist mainly of Royal Guards and Crossbowmen. it's exactly what you need, blockers and archers, without unnecessary slow fodder unless you need them for specialized tasks. fire magic+crossbows=flaming arrows, which is an obvious go to spell. KotC are great sacred cavalry, and they work well even with a rainbow bless, so you can still use a rainbow to diversify and still use the KotC effectively.

as for your mages, unlike the Abysias who have fire but pretty much nothing else, MA Marignon has Astral. sure, Pythium has more Astral, but you still can't afford to ignore what you got with MA Marignon. massive Falling Fires communions is great, but it suffers from the Abysia syndrome. all you need to counter it is fire resistance/immunity. there are other things you can use such as Magma Eruption(with your cap only Grandmasters), Astral Fires, Prison of Fire, Blindness(great against thugs/SCs), etc and of course the usual Astral battle magic.

Paladins make for solid recruit everywhere thugs, stick a brand+shield on them and they're good to go, they can even bless themselves. hopefully your bless includes at least E4N4. other than that, you also got recruit everywhere H3 Inquisitors who are also mages, so they can join(with items) and benefit from communions.

MA Marignon's main theme however is the inquisition, aka anti undead. it's the best nation to deal with MA Ermor and other death nations such as C'tis(though weaker death than EA and LA). the usual bonuses apply to both undeads and demons, so you're also very strong against blood nations, unfortunately in MA only Abysia and Vanheim have blood, but it's still 2 nations more to the list of hard countered nations. than again, a lot of nations benefit from bootstrapping into death and blood, so any nation that uses demons or undeads will have a very hard time dealing with MA Marignon.

now, a well built rainbow will solve most of your diversity problems. there are plenty of MA nations that aren't very versatile, just take a look at Vanheim, Abysia, Man, Eriu, etc. compared to those nations, you have a good amount of Astral, which can never be underestimated. any other magic you can heavily use can be easily bootstrapped into via a rainbow.

so yes, fire is considered as perhaps the worst magical element, angels without pearls are way too expensive to really rely on and bless rushes will only carry you so far. but there are still a lot of possibilities with the magic you naturally have, and a lot more with your pretender, as long as you choose a rainbow. the F9S9 Baphomet for the Flagellants is just junk, forget about it...