What is your favorite Pythium pretender?

[Dogboy]

I'm torn between a rainbow to get the gems and communion boost or a SC with magic in non pyth areas (fire, earth, death?)

What is your strategy?

DB

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Hmmm, a death 9+ Prince o' Death... having 64 Theurg Communicants drained out in a massive communion, and raised again as 64 useless zombie leaders - that's just so hilarious!

[PDF]

With Pythium anything is good, but I like Air-9 blessings (Vestals+Staff of Storm+Wrathful Skies)
A RM is not that useful, I'd prefer a sturdier FED mage over it.
And what about a Blood pretender, to get Storm Demons ?

[WraithLord]

I usually opt for a cheap oracle with best scales possible.
This gives Pythium great economic and research boost.
Then I research quickly the summons school to get SCs.
This is because I am sick and tired of SC pretenders.

When I in the mood for SC I either take virtue with 9-10 air bless or phoenix with 9F bless in serpent cult theme.
The virtue is an awesome indie cleaner and a competent SC.
Ten Hydras with flaming weapons blessing, well that is a sight to behold.

[Tuna]

For standard pythium, definately cyclops with earth-10. The great reinv bonus for commucants, couple with reinv from summon earth power and they rarely if ever die in battle. Also, the cyclops can easily cast Enliven statues with uber efficiency to provide chaff for the mages, do driveby shootings with earthquake x3, cast the great army of gold and army of lead to protect mages in battle, wipe out early indies with impunity once you forge him a water sword or two and things like that.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Tuna said:
For standard pythium, definately cyclops with earth-10. The great reinv bonus for commucants, couple with reinv from summon earth power and they rarely if ever die in battle. Also, the cyclops can easily cast Enliven statues with uber efficiency to provide chaff for the mages, do driveby shootings with earthquake x3, cast the great army of gold and army of lead to protect mages in battle, wipe out early indies with impunity once you forge him a water sword or two and things like that.

Do you truly find the +1 reinvigoration bonus for mages and slightly reduced fatigue cost from most spells for the pretender worth the substantial 56 design points you spend going from earth 9 to earth 10? My gut instinct would be that there has got to be better uses around.

To take an example, earthquake, when including base encumbrance, goes from 52 (L9) to ~45 (L10 or L9+earthpower) to ~39 (L10+earthpower). Add in earth boots or other earth boosting armies and the difference between the fatigue from L9 or L10 grows even smaller.

For those 56 points you could get an entire scale with 16 points left over. Boosting e.g. the magic scale if not already at 3 will cause you to "save" more fatigue in almost all battles in your own dominion than the +1 extra reinvigoration would except for the very long battles, and it applies to the Cyclops and non-sacred mages as well. Alternatively, you could get an entirely new path (such as 1W for quickness) with 6 points left over.

Genuinely curious here. Given that the fatigue reduction grows proportionally less for each additional point, there really is no great difference between 9 and 10 for most spells. The only spells where it would make a major difference would be Armour of Lead/Gold, but as they are Level 9 spells you are unlikely to be using them until such time as you are boosting your earth stat by +2 to +4 from items/earthpower anyway - or even more if you give the cyclops a crystal matrix for major battles - Pythium is the master of communion, after all.

[Vynd]

I favor the "SC with magic in non pyth areas" approach. My reasoning being that Pythium can afford the judicious use of Ascashic Record to find the sort of magic sites you'd be looking for with a Rainbow Mage. Also, Pythium is only so-so at summoning SCs, so its good to have one available right from the start.