Bless for LA C'tis?

[Squirrelloid]

Ok, lets assume for the moment that you really wanted to bless tomb kings and tomb wyrms. Blesses that might make sense:

*W9 - the obvious. 0 encumbrance is 0 encumbrance. Despite being obvious, this really isn't that useful because neither of your options are going to win battles by being speedy, at least not early. Probably more relevant once you can throw a flame brand on your tomb king, but if quickness is all you want, W2 on your pretender and forging some boots of haste is probably sufficiently fast to matter. The *defense* of a water bless is nice, but you don't have to go all the way to 9 for that to matter.
*A9 - both of them benefit from the decreased vulnerability to missiles and the LR. CR100 PR100 LR75 leaves you very few holes to fill in terms of elemental protection. Did i mention flame brands?
*E9 - ok, i confess, it does nothing for your Tomb Wyrms. It would be really nice if it did, because 14 vs. 10 protection on them would be a big deal. On your Tomb Kings, however, to whom you can give armor, +4 protection can be huge. A Tomb King with fire plate (easily researched/forgeable) has ~20 protection before E9 blessing. This is probably too marginal to care.

Strangely enough, the best of those is probably the A9. I've been trying A9W9 and have not been impressed with the W9. The real problem is that if you invest too heavily in a bless then you don't have enough early game to expand effectively, because neither tomb wyrms nor tomb kings are readily available early. And Tomb Kings without gear can not expand against most independents - at the very least they want armor, and a helmet would be nice. (Of course, the obvious helmet - horror - requires those D gems that you really want to use summoning more tomb kings).

Note that you probably also want E2+S3+ on your pretender for coins, hammers, and rings.

Expanding against indies is going to be really difficult if you pile on the sloth scale. While you can get by with poison slingers and light infantry against many things, you'll need to resupply every so often, and you absolutely cannot use that set up against HC. For HC you really want your heavily armored troops, which are slow and cap only, and take a *lot* of resources.

So, i'm seeing a pretender who looks something like this:
Dom 5 imprisoned Great Enchantress
A9 (W4?) E3-4 S3+, O3 H3 +good scales otherwise

Manual search early (one d site early on really speeds up tomb kings, and thus tomb wyrm generation). Prophetize your starting priest - he can animate tomb wyrms from turn 2 for you.

Rush Construction. Sadly, your d gems are really overtapped, so no skull mentors (its ok, you have great research), but feel free to pile on the lanterns.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

*E9 - ok, i confess, it does nothing for your Tomb Wyrms. It would be really nice if it did, because 14 vs. 10 protection on them would be a big deal. On your Tomb Kings, however, to whom you can give armor, +4 protection can be huge. A Tomb King with fire plate (easily researched/forgeable) has ~20 protection before E9 blessing. This is probably too marginal to care.

E9 might also be a good blessing for Sauromancer thugs to give you protection and 0 enc. Take one of the F2D3 guys, throw on bracers of defense and one of those F1D1 flails, cast Soul Vortex + Phoenix Pyre, and attack. An astral sauromancer standing in the same square should cast Blessing, Body Ethereal, Luck.

Yeah, now that I think about it this would work just about as well without the E9 bless, so maybe you still don't need it.

-Max