EA arcosephele - bless strategy?

[Zenzei]

Give me a break. Onead, good thug? With 10 hp, attack and defense, 9 str, capitol-only and 400 g. cost? Ouch.

This is what I thought too so I went and tested it a bit. My test oreaid had frostbrand, vine shield, rainbow armor and no bless of any kind. Buff sequence was summon earthpower+ironskin+mistform+personal regen+air shield+attack. I then pitted her against blocks of 40-100 troops of varying difficulty, probably around 500 units in total. The oreaid won all fights easily, in fact I think she won most fights without taking even a single point of damage. Awe +5 combined with ability to self buff into stratosphere is a massive defensive barrier, which does make oreaid a good thug.

Of course mages will kill oreaid thug easily enough but that is the fate of any thug really.

Also, I think EA Arco is good enough in astral magic without help from pretender because they can forge crystal coins. S2 mystic empowered once into S3(45 gems)+coin+skullcap->RoS->RoW is pretty much all the astral nation needs. For combat astral magic, communions are the key.