Abysian Yes, Black Forest No

[gibson]

I tried out Black Forest Last night, hoping to duplicate the results of people from the other Black Forest thread. I found them to be disappointing, but I must have been doing something wrong. While expansion was no real trouble against indy 3, it was all done the old fashioned way (pikes and shields). I stuck a blood 1 mage in each conquered province and started hunting, but didn't have enough slaves until at least turn 7. I made a vamp on turn 8, sent him off to an independent and he was promptly killed by a group of archers. Tried again against a different province, same result.

A build order or some basic strategy on how to exploit the uniqueness of Black Forest would be appreciated by this newb (especially with blood magic). While I can do well with Black Forest, the start doesn't really feel any different than it would with a normal Ulm (or plenty of other nations that I don't really know how to play).