[hoo]

Few pts of disagrement and other notes:

1) I think BL makes for a solid bless nation. White ones are recruitable in a fort with a temple, which is a big boost. You can crank out 20+ off these guys a turn. Gandharvas are the key BL troops and are blessable (as are your combat/thug mages...). Plus Celestial music gives them quickness for free. So in the middle stages you can have some double or even triple blessed troops.

2) I'm not the biggest fan of fire for BL on the pretender. If you're trying to rely on a rainbow mage to cast flaming arrows for you in combat, that's a losing proposition to me. I think a earth bless is key for reinv of your quickened gandhas and mages. I can understand a rainbow to get the death/blood summons going but I think it's too hard to focus on fire when there are better options. Any combo of death, astral, earth are good for a BL pretender. The Great Enchantress is arguably the preferred chasis due to the free astral gem, the lifeblood of BL. Otoh, a stealth mage could make the atavi work.

3) I don't think BL has to worry too much about an early game rush. Elephants are a great equalizer early on. So BL can turtle a bit and wait for its conjurations to come on line. So I usually have an asleep pretender or imprisoned if I'm going for a bless/max scales.

4) I'm not the biggest atavi fan. Your giant strength plus sticks and stones only works on defense and thus negates their stealth. They can't really stealth raid by themselves since moderate PD will obliterate them (of course this changes when the kinnara comes online and can fly to the battle and jump over a front line). Maybe you can decide your campaign around a fire/ stealth pretender that accompanies that atavi but that's a bit dicey.

5) BL are among the kings of communion spells. Every mage is astral with cheap slaves available. Control and other nasty spells are in the same tree as Celestial music and an mid-game + army should have rishis ready to hit bad units with control, soul slay and the other communed thau combat spells.

6) I love taking magic when designing my BL pretender. Your MR already sucks for most of your troops so you're already hurting from any spells against you. OTOH, you're gonna be throwing around controls, enslaves, mind hunts, soul slays and you need high research so I think it's worth the 40+ for each pt.

7) Not sure how viable The markata strategy is in multiplayer. The enchantment spells are way down the list of BL research priorities. Obviously, you need to take conjuration first otherwise you'll never get the earth mage to cast destruction/str etc. Then I'd rather go for Thau/evok both for offensive spells and site searches. Then maybe conj/alteration and enchantment is way down the list. Takes a while to boost up the markata forces to be good otherwise you can see a bunch of them flailing away at heavily armored troops.

8) Agree with you on the scales especialy with sloth. I think gold is nice too. BL basically only builds fortified cities so it's pricey to build a new mage/white one producing lair. I like the order/growth for those reasons. The supply aspect of growth isn't really needed but the income boost is nice and there's no reason to ever take productivity.

Key to BL is to survive till your Ganda's come online. Asparas should only be used if you're attacked and in dire straight before you've hit conj 5...or you're facing someone with no javelins, slings or arrows.

Edit: BL takes a while to windup. Unless you have an awake SC you probably won't be attacking on turn 2 b/c your starting forces stink and you'll need some elephants to carry you through. So you'll be behind the power curve for a while but then will catc up like a flywheel.