[Executor]

If choice is good how can you approve of crippling Van and Eriu?
I think this of all things limits, or even more eliminates some choices for them.
All are affected, true, but some much more that others. Van on the other hand for example had pretty expensive blood hunters to begin with, add to that they just lose half of their blood income, and got a pretty lousy deal on their thugs. Higher item costs, lower brend damage.
I agree with Valerius on every point, their thugs are incredibly fragile,and the only thing they had going for them is that they were cost effective and could sneak in. Now they can just sneak in and raid provicnes.
The idea of increasing gold cost as to add brends or some other item to them at the start is plain terrible imo. That will only result in overpriced-underpowered mages that you wont even to able to mass in any meaningful number for a real battle rather than just thug them out.