Guide: MA Mictlan - An Introduction

[Horst F. JENS]

just discovered that nearly all MA Mictlan Mages are sacred. So i wonder, is there good battlefield spell that would profit from the extra 2 AN Damage of a D9-blessed mage ?

[llamabeast]

D9 doesn't give extra damage to spells. However, the affliction chance increase does apply, so if a death-blessed mage can cast earthquake or something it can seriously mess up the enemy army.

[sum1lost]

Astral tempest+doom seems like it has potential to screw up a large army.

[AreaOfEffect]

Indeed it does, and is not entirely outside the realm of what MA Mictlan can do all on it's own.

Revised Opinion: Eh, not so much. It seems that astral tempest hits a percentage of the battlefield every round. This leaves large gaps that I don't really enjoy. Something like earthquake or rain of stones would be my preference as they are sure to hit every unit, or at least attempt to. This however is not something Mictlan can do without help from the pretender or without a lot of empowerment/luck.

[Ming]

AreaOfEffect,

I forgot to add: Good guide. Sorry.

[AreaOfEffect]

Well thank you and don't be sorry. As for a rainbow god, I'm not about to dismiss the usefulness of such a god. Magic diversity of the such always keeps your god busy doing something and can really open up doors. I would never tell you not to do such a thing. I would however tell you what I think and why I choose to do what I do.

I personally don't play with such diverse gods for a couple of basic reasons. The first has already been pointed out, which is that such a god can't help but consume a lot of design points while giving you no early game advantage, either with good scales or a good bless.

The other basic reason is that your god is too busy. Such gods often find themselves doing all the work, and when they need to do work on a secondary task the primary tasks don't get done. An example would be the fetish and clam forging. Turning your god into a factory has a serious draw back. Ideally you would want to be churning out a fetish and clam every turn at some point. Yet your god can't make both clams and a fetishes at the same time. Also, if he has something better to do, such as cast wish, make a hammer, ect. ect., then you're not producing the items you expected him to. It gets even worse when you want to take your god out on the warpath.

My preference is to build a god who elevates your other units so that they can do the grunt work instead. For example, I'm in a game where I went for a 4E4S5D master lich (same as the example). One purpose in choosing earth and astral is to allow me to make crystal coins. The crystal coins so far have allowed me to spam more then one mind hunt a turn with only construction 4. Later on my Couatls will move armies around via Astral Travel thanks to crsyal coins plus stashine caps. The point is that after my god has made the coins he doesn't have to mind hunt or move armies around himself leaving him free to do a other things, such as exercise that death magic. Diversity is good, but it should still have a focus somewhere. If you really want to make a gem factory then I suggest you choose one gem type only. In your example I would drop the fire magic completely as clams are more useful to an astral 6 god (and it also requires less micro-management then fetishes).

Either way, I bid you good luck in your games.

[Ming]

AreaOfEffect,

Good points. Thank you.