early fightin' pretender spells

[Cainehill]

A lot of the good spells require two paths. Air and Fire gives a nice early Sulphur Haze; fire/earth gives magma bolts. High level example in evocation is Nether Darts, and frankly - artillery mages / pretenders are often underrated.

Other spells you neglect : Shadow Bolt, which can be pretty effective on a high-death pretender (because of reduced likelihood of successful MR rolls).

Mostly though, like Truper says - don't think in terms of single path pretenders. Unless what you _really_ want is a powerful bless effect, a single high level path generally isn't nearly as good as 2 or 3 medium high paths, and if you want a soloing pretender, most want more like 4 low level paths.

[Heironeous]

Cainehill said:

A lot of the good spells require two paths. Air and Fire gives a nice early Sulphur Haze; fire/earth gives magma bolts. High level example in evocation is Nether Darts, and frankly - artillery mages / pretenders are often underrated.

Interesting. I had thought of an artillery pretender as something like a fire-9 moloch (that's pretty much the only one I've used), but a multi-path bLaster is an intriguing option. Do you have any specific examples? I've been looking at a partial rainbow for Man-Tuatha to cover some of the magic gaps, and adding in the artillery aspect fits nicely with Tuatha's power in evocation.

[Edi]

Phoenix is good for early expansion. All it needs is Evo 3 and Alteration 3 and it will mop most indie provinces quite handily on its own. Air Shield and then start raining fire darts and fireballs on the indies, they'll route in no time. Fire darts is especailly good, with Fire 6, you can just sit the Phoenix in the far back corner of the battlefield and start slamming them home, even the indie x-bows need to spend one turn running forward before they are in range (by which time Air Shield will be in place). Any infantry or cavalry that actually gets close is going to get hit with massive immolation, and even if the bird gets whacked, who cares, it's immortal and flying, so getting to the front is no problem. When you get fire shield and cloud trapeze later on, it becomes a virtual expansion engine all on its own while you can concentrate on building up troop strength, mages and research in peace.

My friend used it quite successfully in a co-op game we had on the Cradle map. He was playing Machaka and he had just one real army and the phoenix for a good long time, and easily outpaced my expansion with Abysia.

Edi

[Karacan]

I actually like an air phoenix much better. It's awe makes close combat spells actually feasible, and shock waves *is* a pretty good spell even against knights.

[Edi]

Well, an F6, A5 Phoenix is no slouch in that department either...

Edi

[Cainehill]

One problem with the phoenix is that it _will_ cast Shock Wave and kill itself when Immolation is just as viable a spell, and much better in that it's immune to fire.

So in a sense, a phoenix geared to air might be better, if you're planning to, mmm, waste a turn casting magic to become immune to lightning. Or if you're wearing a ring of tamed lightning.

Fire/Air combined makes a very nice phoenix; adding earth makes it even sweeter ( some armor spells, magma bolts, summon earthpower, bladewind, and higher level magma eruption are all very nice ). It's late here, but I think there was another path I had success adding to the phoenix as a third path....

[Tuna]

I'd just like to point out that fighting early indies is not the only thing a pretender is going to do. For example, if I'm doing a pretender for arco, it will most likely have at least death-4 for all those nice thugs. Most other non-nature nations will need some nature in case you will have to face a dead ermor, and for faery queens and the like in the late game. In games with only a few players, e-2 (if you have feet) for hammers. etc etc.

Because of this, when designing, I dont usually think "Now what paths will I have to take so that I will mop indies?", but, "How can I capitalize on these paths so that I can mop up indies?".

My current fave is a Prince of Death with 5-7 death (just put in all points you have no better use for), 5 air and 3-4 earth. Early, give him 2 water swords (or other high-def weapons if water gems are not availale), research alt-3 and off you go. Later, he calls death thugs, forges hammers and staves of elemental mastery, calls air queens and earth kings, and works as a decent battlefield sc/ artillery platform. Works well with arco, caelum, pythium, etc.