LA Abysia: Discussion and a Proto-Guide.

[Carcaroth]

For MA Abysia, you trade out all that lovely death magic for Demonbred mages, packing F2B2 and flight. Where LA Abysia is similar to LA Ulm, starting slow and tough and just getting tougher until you're throwing down massive everything, MA Abysia seems to feel a bit speedier.

The sacreds are still slow, but have dual weapons, so a weak fire bless might be viable, and if you take a moloch you're going to hit like a bomb. The aforementioned demonbreds make excellent thugs/assassins, they can sabbath up for real, ahem, firepower, and their mobility doesn't require a certain level of astral and pearls every time you want to do something sneaky. You no longer have Darkness, but you do have all-flying, all-destroying, royal flying circus armies of devils, imps, and demonbreds dropping blood lust and potentially earth buffs flying in on PD and/or castles. Where LA is the king of the blood stones, you're going to want to be the king of the Infernal Contracts in the MA... and prince of blood stones. Don't underestimate the value of Mechanical Men, because you can still throw Fire around with impunity. I also typically aim to craft a warlock to teleport in, cast Crumble, and rapidly speed up sieges so that my singing dancing gypsy troupe of demons can keep moving.

Beyond that... much of the same applies. Earth and nature still rank at the top for blesses, heat three, fire and blood make fine secondary bless effects... However, here, you don't want drain, because you don't have Death magic. You want Magic 1, and this means you need to be a bit more economical.

I like the pretender design someone here mentioned, that being E4S4B4 Great Enchantress with good scales, but you can pull it out with a Great Sage if you want to shoot straight for construction to thug out. You can also slap N4 on there to counteract the disease issue via shrouds and have a very nice weak multi-bless. Boots of Youth on all your important mages who got nice random picks is a given, but the regen lets you keep mages around a bit longer.

[WraithLord]

Good advice

Few remarks,

demonbreds are not natural assassins, they are not even stealthy. Excellent mages/thugs though.

Why do you need to teleport a warlock for casting crumble, isn't it cast from a lab?

[Tifone]

yep that was what i was thinking. ^^ It's a ritual iirc.

Tnx for the nice guide n further advices

[Carcaroth]

You're absolutely right on the part of crumble, the warlock isn't necessary to teleport in... Not sure why I remember doing such, in fact.

Second: You're right on them not being NATURAL assassins... but they're one of the best targets for a Black Heart in the game. Black hearts are cheap, effective, and clock in at that same Cons 6 you want for Boots of Youth anyway. Flight, Life for a Life or Infernal Prison, Phoenix pyre, or simply lobbing ranged damage spells, with incinerate, if you have it researched, being the winner. Honestly, they're probably better than the same slaves spent on gear for either of LA Abysia's mage-assassins.

On that same token, apart from their speed, I don't feel they're really that great as mages... they're going to be the ones who wind up casting your summon archdevil, they're going to be the ones who spam infernal prison against tarts in the lategame, but the everyday heavy lifting apart from leading those specialized strikeforces is best left to Anathemant Dragons or Warlocks, IMO. The two benefits the demonbreds bring to the table for your average battlemagery are Not Old and Eventually Has A Million Experience. Those are both awesome, but when you're looking at an anathemant dragon or a warlock instead, I often go for the raw firepower. Great assassins, very good thugs, quite reasonable mages, but usually I'd rather have them doing one of the first two than standing in the back and casting fire magic. An exception is made for large sabbaths, but as much as I'd enjoy such an occasion, those come along rarely.

[thejeff]

If, as Wraithlord says, demonbred aren't stealthy Black Hearts won't make them assassins. They may get the order?, but can't enter an enemy province to use it.

[Carcaroth]

Hundred percent correct, I finally managed to get a game going... and you're right.

Both of you, a hundred percent, which I suppose will remind me to check what if any mods I have somewhere on the computer, ahem. I won't edit my folly, because they'd be great assassins... if not for the the total lack of stealthyness without mods. As far as I know you can't mod items, so I suppose there's a sigh of relief to be had by everyone else in the MA.