Are there any good Mari Players out there?

[Boron]

if you want to keep the fire 9 moloch you could play marignon diabolic faith . you get blood for fire then .
you have very cheap blood hunters this way .
only drawback is that your best bloodmages are astral 2 blood 2 .
so you have only access to fiends of darkness + serpent fiends but not to devils like abysia or almost everything like mictlan .
but you keep all the normal units which normal marignon has

[Vynd]

I don't see any way out of the problem of feeding your men without getting some nature mages and forging wineskins or similar stuff. You already have a good fort for supply purposes. One thing to consider is if you can get by with less flagellants and thereby cut down on the starvation.

As cool as flagellants can be, I wouldn't neglect Marignon's other troops. They're all pretty good, but Marignon practically begs you to build lots of cheap crossbowmen and send them out with a mage scripted to cast Flaming Arrows. Of course, your crossbowmen do not play well with your flagellants. But sooner or later your opponents are going to notice this and bring their own archers to the party, and you're going to need something that can kill them. Marignon's mages are also quite powerful in combat. Holy Pyre is a nice spell to have right out of the gate.

[archaeolept]

diabolic faith is fire and blood, not astral and blood. I like it, but the forced turmoil makes it a bit difficult to really use.

the moloch is ok, but his fire magic is redundant and he is not capable of being a true SC, as he will retreat from battle when his imps die/rout.

flags are fun, but i'm not sure that F9 is enough to make them viable, at least against human opponents. they are extremely vulnerable to everything, especially missile fire. you could try A9 and use them as picket troops for your flaming crossbows. or you could try the classic F9S9 giant flaming head, as that quite helps their surivability.

you can get the flaming head but you'll need atrocious scales: order 3 sloth 2 death 3 misfortune 2 magic 2 mausoleum, w/ F9 S9 baphomet. However, all you need are the flags for fast early game expansion.

[djtool]

I wouldn't worry about feeding your flaggy's mand the woodsmen/druid provinces are so common your practically forced to have one in your kingdom.

[Spacepain]

One recurring issue I see is the Moloch.

Is the increased damage given to blessed flaggellents worth the 9 fire?

[archaeolept]

well, if you want to buy flagellants at all you have to have a serious bless strategy because, otherwise, they are utter crap.

as such, the F9 Moloch is the most economical bless chassis. I'm not sure, however, whether F9 is enough to really make a flag strat work. I usually go w/ F9/S9 but, even w/ that, its easy enough for flags to become so much discarded offal.

however, at ten bucks a pop sacred, you can't go too far wrong.

I only wish i could somehow adequately exploit the paladin as a thug - they always seem to cost too much to equip for what they can do.

Another advantage of the F9S9 is that mary's magecorps benefit nicely from the increased MR and bonus twist of fate. As well, shrouded assassins at least have a chance against non-death mages.

[ July 03, 2004, 20:24: Message edited by: archaeolept ]

[spirokeat]

I have mainly played Micti blood and Macha games but I recently started messing with Mari...I have to say the thing I noticed first about them was the crossbows....cheap, powerful combined with mages that can flame arrows and also a little like Macha you tend to be able to field a lot of fire darts mages in early expansion.

But with Diabolic faith I have no idea why but I seem to be able to get a blood economy going easier than Micti...maybe its the need for micti sacrifice to spread dom, but everytime I play Mari blood I end up being able to forge 2 or 3 soul contracts before I have a serious use for the slaves in other areas.

The national troops are good, but the 1 move is shoddy and doesnt mix well with a flier culture of armies at all. Thats probably the hardest thing I have found so far, I tend to have large armies of devils and stuff but they have little back up in terms of being able to move about and respond.

Spiro.