Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue

[OmikronWarrior]

I was digging through some old back up drives when I came accross this old file. At the time, I was thinking it'd be fun to ape Stephen Colbert's "Better know a Congressional District" and write guides centered around a Pretender instead of a nation, which is probably less time consuming. I apparently abadoned the project until I found this word document, and it was nearly completed. So, I finished it off and here it is. If anyone else wants to contribute to the project, feel free. Without further ado, enjoy!

Better Know a Pretender: The Virtue

A divine messenger, descended from the heavens and a physical manifestation of all that is good and right. As a chassis, the Virtue has a lot to recommend it, but ultimately needs help in a few areas to be competitive. Lets start with the basics:

Cost: 50
Base Dominion: 4
HP: 39
Size: 3
Strength: 13
Attack: 13
Defense: 13
Precision: 15
Base Protection: 5 (no armor)
Starting Magic: Air-2 and 80 points per new path
Starting equipmnet: Flambeau (13 damage, 4 attack, 2 defense, AP, x3 vs undead, Fire effect)
Movement: 3 and Flying
Base Encumbrance: 1
Miscellaneous: Awe+4, 50% resistance to Lightning and Fire, Magic Being
Availability: Caelum, Arcosephale, Pythium, Marignon, Bogarus, Ashdod, Gath, Ulm (MA and LA), and Ermor (EA and MA).

Pros: Should be fairly obvious. It's cheap, it comes with Awe standard, and has the same high dominion as immobile pretenders while being incredibly mobile itself. Also, it has the lowest encumbrance of any living pretender. Almost every other chassis out there has either 3 or 4 base encumbrance compared to her 1. This gives the player a little more flexibility in equipment. Finally, Air magic is one of the best for thugs and Super Combatants to have. It combines great mobility (Cloud Trapeze) with great buffs (Air Shield, Mistform and Mirror Image).

Cons: HP could be higher. Also, lousy starting equipment. Sure Awe will keep the weak from attacking, but if they do the Virtue cannot take a lot of punishment upfront, meaning research and/or construction are necessary to really use her. What might be worse, however, is the lack of effective killing or routing options. With out Fear or multiple attacks, the Virtue is limited to only attacking sparsely defended independent provinces, and even that carries risks.

Awake Strategy: In case you did not get my hints above, the Virtue is not awake SC material in the same manner as the Wyrm or the Prince of Death. Unless you pay to add another path and plan on doing some early site searching, you might as well put her to sleep so when she does wake up your nation has the buffs and gems to use her effectively. You might be tempted to think otherwise, let Awe nullify the meelee threats and Air Shield (a level zero spell) worry about the arrows. Unfortunately, in a world of undead and beserkers and lucky rolls, Awe (even with the +3 bonus of Dominion-10) can be overcome, and Air Shield will still let 1 in 5 arrows through. The odds of getting hit are small, but the margin of error is equally small. The Virtue has no default shield, little in the way of protection, no natural regeneration, and only a moderate HP total. As fatigue starts to pile up, she can get in a lot of trouble. However, once you take into account these weakness, the inherent strengths begin to shine.

Typical equipment includes: boots of the messenger, Weightless Scale Mail, Horror Helm, Fire Brand, Frost Brand, Boots of Quickness, Amulet of Anti-Magic, Amulet of Luck, Amulet of Resilience, Girdle of Might, and any encumbrance 1 or less shield. A lot of this will depend on what your nation has available and what your neighbors are willing to trade. Now an example of a good SC script is: Air Shield, Mistform, Mirror Image, Resist Lightening (if necessary), Orb Lightning, Attack Rear. Mistform and Mirror Image really are the best buffs, though, especially if the Virtue's meant to take out PD and under maged armies.

Bless Strategy: Almost non-existent. Air as a bless is very, very niche. The Virtue may be the cheapest way to get Air-8 or Air-9, but the Air Shield effect only benefits sacreds with a strong melee presence (such as awe and high defense), but have low or no protection and parry. 75% Shock protection is also points probably better spent elsewhere.

Army Strategy: Air has some very nice buffs. Wind guide is the second best Archer buff in the game granting +5 precision to all units. This bonus is not effected by Darkness or Storms, which is another spell the Virtue can cast to drastically reduce enemy effectiveness, along side its weaker (and lower on the research tree) syblling Mists, though the spells stack. Finally, the Virtue can cast the incredibly powerful Fog Warriors which grants Mistform to every unit on the field. Once a Virtue is done casting buffs, if it has any fatigue left, it becomes a powerful spell caster. The insanely high Base precision of 15 combines with the bonus provided by Air Magic to grant precision of 19 or 20 easy. Air or Wind Guide tacks on another 5. This lets the Virtue Cast Thunder Strike like Lightning Bolt and make any enemy SC pay for not coming equipped with Shock immunity. Put a little close to the front, and the Virtue will start casting Orb Lightning, a cheap fatigue spell that scales wonderfully with Air Magic.

Magic Diversity Strategy: The Virtue is a great way to break into Air. Remember, Air Boosters (Winged Helm and Wing Bag) can only be forged by an Air-4 unit, and even the magic heavy EA only has four nations with that as a default. Yet, there are a lot more nations with Air-3 in which getting the first Air booster means many more can be forged. By starting with Air-4 or Air-5, the Virtue can summon Air Queens for even more Air Magic and SC's. Unfortunately, additional paths costs 80 design points for the Virtue. In general, most Virtue builds will stick with just Air Magic. Still Death-5 gives the Virtue a Fear effect for greater Awake SC duties. Earth is another fantastic path for SC's (Earth Power, extra protection) and opens the door to forging Elemental Staffs(+1 to Air, Earth, Fire, and Water). Blood lets the Virtue forge Robes of the Magi (+1 to every magic path), and might be achievable through empowerment and boosters to blood nations (Assuming any blood nations get the Virtue).

Conclusion: The Virtue certainly lacks that “One province captured per turn from turn One” that the Wyrm, Prince of Death, and a handful of other Pretenders give players and thus will always play second fiddle. However, the Virtue's low cost, impressive Awe, high dominion, easy access to Air Magic, and full slots make it progressively more useful against opposing enemy armies once the land grab is done.