MA Ermor advice please

[Aezeal]

I don't need to know all the details, I like to find out stuff myself too, but I don't want to make ALL the basic mistakes either

I've never played an undead race before and I have no idea how ermor (in any age) plays out

I'd like a few pointers in the right direction about pretender build (incl scales etc)

-which blesses would be best for ermor and why
-would you play ermor MA with blessings
-which scales are important and which are not
-are there any scales I should put on the negative to save points?

a few suggestions for pretender builds would be nice. I'm doing a SP to practice for the MP I voluteered for

my current build is
Imprisoned Lich queen
A4D9
income 1 or 2
prod 2
heat 0
luck 3
growth 0
magic 0

dominion 5

I took high prod cus I read the quality units have high resource costs. Even though I'm imprisoned I only have a 9+4 bless because I'm very hesitant to take negative scales

I have no room for higher dominion in the build as it is and I never take a lower dominion than 5 either (like with the scales I like to be a bit save)

the only thing I might think about is drain 2 for 80 extra points which I would invest in higher astral and 1-2 dominion

another option would be death 4 astral 9

is the death blessing better than the astral one
(I usually play "good" races with earth/water/nature blessings so ermor is a whole new experience for me for my first MP too..)

[Endoperez]

Shadow Vestals are ethereal, which already makes them rather good at staying alive. Their spears are magical and deal decent damage. However, as almost always, Fire or Water bless will work better for just pure damage, and pure damage is very good when the units can already survive without the help of a bless. Minor Death bless is interesting, but doesn't win games. It can be used to bring thugs down, though. Death 9 isn't good for magical weapons. It's a bit better for mundanes, because it gives a small chance of magic damage (to get past ethereal), and a good chance to get past armor (AN, and most massable armored troops have lower mag res than most ethereal troops). Fire 9 Death 4-6 would be a nice offensive, "evil" bless. Of course, you should start that with a Fire pretender, to avoid negative scales.
Ermor gets away with Dead quite nicely. Death magic protects mages from old age afflictions, so Death scale doesn't hurt you as badly as other nations.

Most good Astral damage spells are in Thaumaturgy. Mind Burn is nice. Soul Slay is awesome, and Enslavement is nasty. Alteration has Body Ethereal, which isn't quite as good for MA Ermor as it already has ethereal units, but it is nice to make some ethereal Principes or something. Also, any S1 mage can cast Body Ethereal and Luck on nearby units, like your pretender... That's nasty on a Wyrm or something.
Death gets good summons from Conjuration, mass summons from Enchantment (including Raise Dead, which can be used to swamp battlefields with endless undead) and Drain Life (but not much else) from Alteration. Shadow Blast is very good Evocation spell, but it costs gems.
Astral/Death doesn't have many combinations, but they are rather powerful. Conjuration has Nether Gate, which is hideously expensive and summons a group of ethereal giants all armoured and wielding magic-slaying Moon Blades. Evocation has Nether Darts. Every caster gets at least 15 darts... And as Ermor, you have dozens of casters.

[Evilhomer]

Shadow vestals are very nice since they are ethereal and sacred. Also they cost almost no resources so you can go heavy on sloth and free up points. I have played against MA ermor several times, and a common build tends to be an astral-9, water-9 bless. Basically giving the vestals twist fate, more mr, more attacks, and very high defence.

You can achieve this for example with an imprissoned oracle and the following scales:
dominion: 8
order: 3
sloth: 3
heat: 0
growth: 0
misfortune: 2
magic: 1

[Aezeal]

So for a bless you'd advice water9/astral4 or something?

that would be kinda hard I think and is it wise to have a pretender without death magic?

I would like to keep astral since it's nice for end game (or so I'm told)

I could put in death 1 and drain 2 for 120 extra points which would enable that option if I take a pretender which start with some water magic.

on how to play.. I started with building high thaumateurgs for 5 turn and let them reanimate horsemen then I'm building those guys again only now for research. (once I have my 2nd fortress I intend to start buying the cheaper theurgs there for research though.) I dont'see myself having much problems with resources either since I'm not really buying much of the other troops atm. so I could drop the production scales a bit for more order scales (money is more a problem for me atm)

any advice on my thoughts as typed above?

From endo's remark the most important and straight forward advice seems to be to not take death 9 bless and spend points elsewhere (water to combine with the high def of the vestals and option of extra attack?) his reasoning seems sound.. what do others say about that?

[Shovah32]

Death 9 isn't a great bless and you have fairly nice access to death magic anyway.
The Astral 9 gives your vestals a good MR boost to prevent banishment and twist fate to negate the first hit that gets through their ethereality(twist fate is also great on mages against rain of stones and such).
The Water 9 you seem to already have the general idea of.

[Aezeal]

lol I read the strat wiki so I have a general idea of all the blesses.. just not completely on which is best and when so I'm always open for advice (I intend to win my first MP game )

what about how I started the game, neglect research till I have a steady horseman factory in my main city then switch to research (in the meanwhile building a lector from time to time use with the horseman and when I want to use the shadow vassals I would send a high theurg for the blessings out with them)

[Lord_Bob]

Nobody seems to be impressed with the D9 bless... but a D4 or D6 can give you a pretty good affliction boost with normal damage AND magic spells.

So D9 is probably not worth it, but D4 or D6 is a much, much cheaper "lesser bless". However, you already have strong Death magic.

W9 is strong. BUT the water path is not so much.
F9 is close and "boosts" W9 nicely.

You can raise legions of chaff.. but remember that MA Ermors regularly troops are quite strong just by themselves. Sloth may be a bad idea.

Bane Lords!

Astral magic is helpfull under most circumstances. Astral or Air provides late game mobility.

Easy booster paths:
Construction-2
Earth-E2
Nature-N2
Water-W3(with a W1 later)
Astral-E2S2(with S3 later)(power boosters at S5 and S6)

Later,
F1-D1 for fire

Air is VERY VERY HARD to get started with construction.
Hard. Hard. Hard.

Nature/Water has good and easy summons to get it going.

Death/Earth has some summons.

Air has the Fairy Queen.

[Sensori]

Lord_Bob said:
Air has very later summons. Hard Hard Hard

Uh, if you can get Nature going, what seems to be the problem? You forgetting Faery Queens? Which have costs only in Nature but have, what, 3 air?

[Lord_Bob]

Yes, I did miss them. It's not obvious from the spell description so I never summoned one.

Sorry.

[Aezeal]

ehm now someone is saying go sloth 3 and another says I should not. My own (about 20 turns experience) says that so far I have not builds much regular troops and that cash is always nice. with cash you can easily build more fortresses to give more places to buy troops even though there is less per site (but you need to be able to spread you troops over the whole dominion to defend it better so I'd say going 1-2 sloth and then 3 order would be nice.

I getting convinced that at least water 9 is the way to go.. but bout death I hear conflicting things now..
The reasoning to go for astral 9 after water 9 seemed very good though so those (lord bob) who are pro death.. can you tell why taking death in stead of astral 9 would be better?