[llamabeast]

How would you go about giving Zmeys fire shield?

Squirrel wasn't referring to the awe on Ris (Tir na n'Og), which was indeed OP. Eriu didn't have that, but Eriu's thugs are indeed available early and very powerful.

I think the problem is that dom3 is basically a game made up of "OP" things. If you have just been hit by a rush of E9N9 Niefel Giants, or well blessed Jaguar Warriors, or anyone using Fog Warriors, or a massive Eriu stealth / cloud trapeze attack, you could say quite legitimately that these strategies seem "overpowered". Luckily there are many opportunities to create overpowered strategies so a good player can generally create their own with any nation.

So, turn 20 zmeys would be really powerful, I agree. I don't really agree that it's more powerful than many other strategies. It does succeed in increasing the diversity of options available to Abysia, which I consider a success. I would be concerned if the Zmey strategy was difficult to counter, even by a skilled player.

Balancing for EDM can be difficult, because the whole point was to correct the lack of viable powerful summons for many of the paths. So if the Zmey, for example, stands out as an exceptional Fire summon, that's because there weren't any before, and that was the problem that EDM was trying to solve.