Bandar Log

[Shovah32]

With their strong national astral mages i like to boost one or to up to a higher level(generally lucky S5 rishi's with skullcaps and maybe rings of sorcery) to discourage enemies from using astral mages in battle(and once you get your teleporting S9 magic dueling pretender out...).

[Micah]

Kissblade put up a Patala guide, some of the suggestions may apply for BL:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...b=5&o=&fpart=1

I'd certainly agree with his assessment that your pretender needs to be out getting his or her hands dirty to compensate for BL's crappy troops. The Log sacreds strike me as worthless. The only time I'd want a tiger rider over an elephant is against soul slay, in which case I'd much rather have 5 other troops instead of either. 10 HP, 11 MR, non stealthy troops for 100 gold? Thanks, but no. The white one warriors are pretty mediocre as well.

Oh, and don't forget to abuse your elephants.

[Shovah32]

I like to take a bless to increase the power of the sacred summons which i use as thugs/SCs(extra MR and either attack and flaming weapons or defence and +50%ap). That, along with the fairly high dominion score i take to spread my good dominion means white ones are both fairly good troops and quite avaliable(also work well with elephants due to normal move speed, good morale and blessings morale boost).
Your troops arent too sucky for MA and patala certainly needs more military help than bandar log as longbows and other non-AP ranged weapons are still perfectly viable in MA.

and like Micah said: abuse elephants.

edit: woa, i just noticed those blood summons. They arent particularly easy to get but wow, that seems pretty strong.
The description of the summon rakshasa spells seems to indicate they are WAD -

Most rakshasas are found in the demon kingdom of lanka, but some are summoned by unscrupulous monkey sorcerors

[Folket]

Micah try the sacred tigers. As far as I know it is the only sacred with three high attack, high damage attacks. With any bless they eat any ordinary unit. Also their other sacerd are just heavy infantry. But with a bless they will be heavy infantry with an edge.

Also I think Kissblade is far off on his assessments on BL's troops. Light Bandar warriors and Bandar warriors with iron cudgel should be the mainstay of your army, assuming you do not have a bless. I know what I'm speaking of since I played Patala in "11p very large" and managed to become twice the size of anyone else. Unless I have a bless I would always take prod 3.

[Sandman]

For a 100 gold unit, the tigers have terrible hit-points and protection. In big battles with lots of arrows flying about, they're likely to take heavy losses.

[MaxWilson]

On the other hand... Kailasa does have good access to Earth mages, right? I'm thinking of Iron Warriors and Legions of Steel.

-Max

[Micah]

Bandar log has a 110% one-in-four earth random on their cap-only mages, so no, not really. And once again you can buff an elephant's prot/make it ethereal just as easily and probably get more use out of it.

I'm guessing that the riders would be better against large units that couldn't be trampled, but that's a pretty small niche for them, and certainly doesn't justify dumping points into a bless IMO. The MR boost is the only main difference, but an 11 is still way too low for a 100 gold unit if you're fighting anything that's tossing a lot of MR spells at you.