[Baalz]

Yeah, this covers the primary parts I was thinking. Darkness is your goto spell, Hannyas are serious artillery, and Dai Oni should be used for support as well as SCs. Here's a couple more angles you should consider as well:

Air magic really, really, helps Yomi. You're focusing on swarms of cheap flaming arrows, wind guide is an immense force multiplier - and it can add a round of evocations from the Hannyas who can skip eagle eyes. None of your troops have shields, arrow fend, fog & storm are all life savers in many situations. Fog warriors & mass flight were made for low resource swarms of heavy hitting guys - all your Onis fit this bill. If you take a pretender with air and earth he can not only lay down all these spells for important battles, he can site search for air gems to summon Dai Tengus. Really, having a couple of these plus an air pretender immensely adds to your power and flexibility.

Ao-onis are I think the hidden gem on the roster. Their ice ability is not a ranged attack, it's a melee one which does 20 armor piercing stun damage. Their great club clobbers for 20 damage with their strength (24 if you lay a strength of giants on them) so you've got a good amount of damage packaged in a defense dropping double attack with further defense drops and critical hits caused by the fatigue from the cold. Obviously this isn't your goto guy against niefels, but the cold stun damage should be pretty damn effective against anything big and not cold resistant (Hinnom, Formoria) bonus it's magic so pops mistform and ignores etherealness! The clubs will do a good job smushing plenty of smaller things. These guys only cost 15 gold CBM (20 base), so you can get about 3 of them for the cost of the flashier Kuro-oni which gives you much more damage outlay and survivability. Swarms of these guys are what I dream of when you start laying down mass flight. They're also my goto guys for clearing indies, I like them much better than the expensive Kuro-Oni.

Lots of flaming arrows are good, but lots of flaming arrows against somebody who wasn't expecting them are 10 times better. Definitely don't forget your archers are stealthy, sneaking in a couple hundred unexpected archers for a big fight can be absolutely devastating. It can be well worthwhile to hold all your stealthy archers sneaking around in reserve until a pivotal battle...that way your hapless opponent hasn't built up heavy archer counters.

If you should be able to break into blood through a lucky indie find blood lust is low enough into blood that it's worthwhile to swing over and pick up once your research ramps up. If not, don't forget strength of giants might be the best thing your Dai Oni can do if you're fielding swarms of flying Ao-onis. Stack weapons of sharpness on while you're at it and there's not really too much than can stand against them.


Oni generals make pretty respectable thugs for the cost with nothing but a E9/N4 bless. Use them in pairs and they'll clear most indies easily - their autospawn wolves even soak up lance charges so they can handle moderate amounts of heavy cavalry. This blessing is also quite beneficial to your Dai Oni. Also don't neglect the benefit of passing out cheap battle saint shrouds to your Hannya artillery - that reinvig goes a long way towards increasing how much damage they can lay out while the armor and regen brings them all the way up to relatively stout vs stray arrows/spells.

As an alternative suggestion to KissBlades very reasonable strategy I'll go ahead and swipe a page from his book WRT my Niefelheim guide. Consider the following CBM build. Awake Master druid, E9/A4/N4. Order-3, Sloth-3, Heat-1, Death-3, Magic-1. You've now added the very beneficial entry into air as well as a very solid blessing. The down side vs what KissBlade suggests is you're gonna struggle for astral pearls, but I think the benefits of the blessing & air buffs outweigh this. With this blessing you can use cheap pairs of oni generals for some of your initial expansion, stockpiling gold for very rapid castling up. Your awake pretender will help you get that needed early research KB suggests, offsetting to a large extent the hit you'll take in initial research from recruiting non-researchers. Your second and third castle have no need for a temple, just crank Hannya out and make up the gap pretty quickly, and those groups of Oni generals start getting real scary once you look at stacking iron skin/soul vortex/fire shield and some cheap items. You can also use Ao-Oni for a very respectable supplement to this initial expansion.