Fire vs. Death heavy bless

[K]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

It's not like Utterdark = you win. If you're facing Ermor, the darkness will be irrelevant to them for instance, and they may not worry about the income loss either. Blood nations will be happy with it too. Spending hundreds of gems to empwoer someone so your pretender can cast a spell which is not a game-winner by itself looks a bit excessive, but it is a strategy. I'm not sure it's necessarily a better strategy than rushing your neighbour with sacreds and killing them before turn 32 and then use a bigger army, gold and gem income to win.

Ever fought a blood nation in a post-Utterdark game where you have a real army and they only have summons?

I'm not saying that you auto-win. By turn 35 or 40 a few well-scripted mages or thugs/SCs can still turn your armies into goo, but I'd put it in the top three tactics that let you steamroll nations or break the hearts of your enemies and cause them to go AI.

As for Bless Rushes, they are not the top three tactics. Having broken the back of more than one bless rush with such exotic tactics as "archers" or "level 2 magic", I don't rate it terribly high.