MA Ulm Pretender

[Tuidjy]

Tawn, a great sage is better than anything but a rainbow ghost king unless you
are attacked. By taking one, you guarantee that if you are attacked in the
first twenty turns, you will lose the game. It is not just elephants that will
tear your armies up. A SC pretender backed up by a decent army and high level
priests will also make short work of Ulm's smiths and troops.

I just finished a three way MA game with Ulm against Caelum and Man. I was
extremely lucky as I found the Mirror Wall Palace, one of the enchantress forests,
and the Daoine Sidhe hill (never seen it before), and because the map placement
stuck Man between Caelum and me. Still, there was a moment in the middle game,
when my Pretender was everything that stood between Caelum's shock backed
mammoths/thugs and defeat. Yes, my sorceresses could deal with small numbers
of mammoths, and my Daoine Sidhe made fine raiders once I got enough druids to
lead/bless/berserk them. But Ulm still has a huge mid game period in which it
has nothing to throw at non-sacred thugs - Banes and Wraiths in this case.

By the way, my pretender was the air/earth titan, with 4A1W4E3D, and
Order/Production/Misfortune/Drain scales. A small map pretender, by all means,
and probably worse than Xietor's Father of Winter. Still, Ulm needs something
in MP, if the nation wants to hold its head high, as opposed to sending messages
like 'Please, please, let me live, I will forge anything you want until the
end of the game' I have gotten messages like this.

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By the way, I did not get a good feel of the usefulness of the new additions,
except for the holy smiths. Man went down too quickly, and my guardians did
not get a chance to kill wardens. The Iron Blizzards killed one thug, but it
was freakish good luck - he managed to get within spitting range, and ran
out of action points - he must have eaten 30 darts... that would have
probably taken out a Tartarian, let alone a wraith lord with no shield.
I did not go for Iron Angels, and as for the lightened armour, indies died to
Ulm just fine before.

But the holy smiths are Heaven sent. One can furnish a castle with lab/temple,
costs half as much to maintain, easily gets to 4E +6 reinvigoration... I love'em.
I hate hearing that they will be getting old age. Ulm is really short on design
points, and thus my Ulm will never get enough growth. Why should they be old,
anyway? Usually it is the young rebels that adopt new trends. And why the hell
are the normal smiths flirting with old age out of the box, anyway? If you're
going to age the holy smiths, make the standard ones younger.