MA Abysia tips?

[Starshine_Monarch]

MA Abysia is one of the nations I haven't really worked with much. I was wondering if any of you had any advice for them, particularly in the area of overall strategy.

Here's what I have so far:

My first inclination was to go with a Rainbow pretender to make up for their somewhat lacking magic diversity, as well as to provide quick research so my mages will be free to go out and support my armies or blood hunt.

Using CBM, my first pick was an Awake Great Sage with F4,W4,E4,S4,D2,N4,B4. Scales set at Order 3, Heat 3, Death 3, Misfortune 1, Dominion 4.

I'd tossed around the idea of a Death scale before and decided to try it out. It's probably not a great idea for longer games, but I needed more points to put more magic on my pretender.

The Death will severly cut into the supplies when my enemies start invading while my own armies remain well fed inside the dominion.

My old mages will only suffer until I can get Boots of Youth for them, but until then, the diseased Warlocks can have Sacred Shrouds and heal themselves in battle with the N4 bless. The shroud will also give them some reinvigoration since only a very few Warlocks will be able to Earthpower themselves.

Also, I was considering Drain 2 as well. Abysia's national mages are all kind of expensive, but Warlocks have pretty high Research points anyway. With my pretender researching with them, we can probably pull a good amount of research before we get Lightless Lanterns to pull more of the weight for them. Drain would free me up to take a D4 bless if I shave one level off of Fire and replace it with A1. D4 would be more useful to blessed Anathemants or Shrouded Warlocks laying down battle spells on enemy troops. 2x chance for afflictions will definitely hurt anything not immune to their spells.


So far that's all I've thought of. Any tips, comments and advice would be greatly appreciated.