[licker]

LA Ulm gets 1s1e on 25% of their forge priests.

As to thugging out the counts...

Well I've had great success using them as raiders (for out of dominion) giving them horror helmet and golden shield, the combo of awe and fear means they don't get hit much, and as the chaff surrounds them they eventually rout due to the fear effect.

Granted, you don't want these counts going up against anything 'tough', but for clearing PD they work very well. Now, depending on the PD you stick on an appropriate armor (if they need missle def, fire/elec res, or just as much prot as you can give them). Fire/Frost brands are nice for the AoE damage, but swords of quickness, or the one that gives luck (forget the name at the moment...) are also options. Chi boots are actually not a bad cheap footwear, as they give +4 def and an extra attack, but boots of quickness are probably better if you can afford them/forge them (10W to forge, and Ulm has no natural W mages).

Miscellaneous slots can be whatever you need boosted, or just whatever you can forge cheaply.

If you are going to use the counts offensively out of your dominion you want to be a little more careful with the potential equipment, or be fairly certain your army is going to win (so the gear drops to other commanders). Using them in your dominion is a no brainer, but better to couple them with a real army if you have any gear you don't want to lose on them.

Soul Vortex sounds nice, but the cost to get it on a count is too high, unless you have tons of death gems and just empower to D3 (45 gems), so long as you don't commit that count outside of your dominion you won't lose him, the cost of the death raising helmet is 25d (I think) and it doesn't offer much protection, the skull staff means no shield so I don't think that's a good idea.

The other thing to realize is that even at 33 blood slaves they are pretty cheap once your blood economy is humming along, so you can afford to even lose a few if you need to put them in harms way out of your dominion, just don't suicide any gear you can't afford to easilly replace.

LAUlm can forge with a 40% reduction if you give a hammer to a forge priest, so sticking a few 5gem items (3gems with the discount) isn't such a bad loss if it improves their overall effectiveness.

But to recap, the counts fly, are stealthy, regenerate (10%), have 30 hitpoints, and decent attack/def. Their protection is ZERO, which is a huge hole if you do nothing about it, so giving them some armor or etherealness is needed unless you just want them to jump in spam some death spells and then retreat.

Really they make ideal raiders with a small amount of const4 gear, as they can sneak if you need them to, or just jump around to any province within 3 of where they just were.