1v1 Duels... what are fair nation matches?

[Maltrease]

I played out the duel over the weekend. It was very interesting. While my opponent (Neifelheim) won almost every major confrontration I was able to win most skirmishes and take over the majority of his lands. With the ability to use call of the winds to rapidly bring in reinforcements for beseiged fortress and to take low PD lands being a large key in the victory.

Probably the biggest turing point is when he attacked with his uber SC god (with beserk) but a lucky arrow pegged him before he could cast the crucial "mistform" buff and he was promptly destroyed by a group of flagrents.

Interestingly he didn't go with the Air9 bless or even use his nations sacred troops (they are very expensive resource and gold). What turned out to be incredibly effective were the skin shifters. With 70 hp (35 in both forms) it takes a good solid 3 thunderstrikes to take one out. An unbuffed (with items) Eagle King can cast 3 thunderstrikes before being fatigued.

As a big plus the shifters don't take any resourcs so a sloth 3 scale is possible, however that wasn't fully apparent when the game began so he was only running Sloth 1.

Two castings of Call of the winds would always take out a PD of 6 (only 3 giants for Neifelheim). If he increased the PD higher (7 or more gives a different message for scouts) then I would bring in an eagle king and some archer chaff to take it out.

Was a fun game... I had thought I had lost before taking his god out in that lucky battle. If we played the same two nations again I'm not sure the result would be the same (although I've got several new ideas to try the next time around).