Bards are insane!

[Boron]

The bard can also cast his reinvigoration song .

But Man has not much than the bard . LoT is forced to chose rather weird scales with luck 1 + magic 1 forced and the tuathas are basically like vans .
In general i would say LoT is like a weaker vanheim .

Classic Man has expect the bard only capitol only mages and those mages are extremely fragile .

Mans troops are very good though but expect in small games Man has not a too good winning chance cause you can cripple your 2 or 3 neighbors with bards but you won't be able to harm the players farer away soon enough .
Then your research + hoarding abilities are among the worst and you are overwhelmed by someone like abysia or caelum or ctis .

The bards are good but Vanheim has much stronger stealthy armies , Ctis or Ermor could attack quite quickly with lots of banelords , Blood nations with a couple of Blood raiding squads etc. .

Imo man is one of the 5 weakest nations . The only thing that saves them from being classed as low as ulm is that they have a good chance to get AQs .

[Cohen]

Man is good in small maps, and bad in large maps (due to good mages capitol only, both themes).

About bards ... well it's fine IMO.
I hope in Dom3 to see reviewed "instill uprising" as covert ops (like poisoning wells, bribing mortal commander, changing road signs to make an army delayed, or such).

[quantum_mechani]

Boron said:
Then your research + hoarding abilities are among the worst .

There is nothing wrong with Man's research, base theme can out-research anything but Golden Era Arco. There hording is not great, but the great research means you can quickly get the clam hoarding going with a random water pick. Also, everyone is overlooking one of Man's greatest units, the Monk. I mean, for just ten more gold than a scout you get a stealth preacher and leader, that is sacred so you even save money over scouts in the long run.

[Duncanish]

I think the Bards Stealth 30 is justified by the fact that he's basically just a funny little man who goes around singing songs and reciting poetry, so what harm could he do? ^^; That is, until he starts whispering into peasants ears about revolt and rebellion.