pretender magic paths advice/midgard strat talk

[OmikronWarrior]

Shielding Skinshifters from arrows should be second nature for Midgard, without a doubt one of the best air nations in the late era. Furthermore, you WANT to cast storm anyways, as it will allow your A2 mages to power up to A3 to cast Thunderstrike. You have a natural a capital air gem income of 3, so you're just one 210 gold mage and Thau-2 away from site searching. Then, a single arrow will NEVER kill a skinshifter, just damage it. Unless the opponent can overwhelm you with arrows, your skinshifters will survive to melee, where regen and two forms give them a large advantage over Einhards, dual weilding aside.

@Azael, your scales look fine, but you don't mention whether the pretender is awake or not. Let me emphatically say that imprisoning your pretender is a waste if you want them to set up your boosters. Merely asleep would fine, though. The only suggestion I'd make is to go Misfortune-2 for Growth-3. Growth is funny in that the more you have, and the better your other income scales, the much more desirable it become to have even MORE growth.

As for paths, D1 on your pretender is almost certainly redundant, as you're almost gaurenteed a D1 mage (7/16 chance). D3 would allow you to do site search much more effectively, and with a skull staff you'll be able to build skull helmets, netting you D5 and wraith crowns, if you're considering thugs or SCs. W2 and F1 are judgement calls, as you will not have any national mages capable of using those gems, just indies or your pretender. Obviously, it will net you some different equipment and magic diversification is always a good thing.

Consider who else is in the game. For example, if Ermor's there, it might be worthwhile to get 1-magic just to make banning easier.