The New Hinnom Nation

[K]

Baalz said:
blood rain, leech, bloodletting, rush of strength, hellbind heart, summon imp (haven't really used hellfire much) and later go to hell, blood vengeance, rush of strength are all top shelf battle magic if you use them properly. Life for a life, sabbath slave/master, reinvigoration are all niche, but very useful. Several other blood combat spells are quite useful in small niches (call horror, hellpower, etc.)

How many other paths have that many good combat spells? Blood isn't used much in combat, not because of lack of good spells, but because of the pain of managing blood slaves. Heck, just look at how widely used the inferior (other than the need for blood slaves) versions of the spells I list above are:
terror/panic
strength of giants
drain life
charm (hellbind heart - much better because it's easy to spam with cheap mages)

It's not that Blood doesn't have battle magic, it's that it doesn't have real battle magic. Combine the fact that even with flyers bringing in tons of blood slaves to battles you still have massive fatigue and a huge cost in slaves, it isn't good enough to qualify as real battle magic.

For example, compare ten other casters in a big battle and ten blood mages with slaves in a battle, and you'll see:

1. The blood mages cast about half as many spells per battle because they keep passing out.

2. The blood mages spent 100 slaves doing it.

3. Arrows and battle spells sometimes kill your slaves, thereby turning your blood mages into expensive infantry.

Now, that's not to say that there aren't niches. Claws of Coctyus and its fiery brother are one of my favorite things to do to another player's SCs and god (mostly for the morale breaking), but that doesn't mean it's a viable combat tactic for regular play.

[Aezeal]

it isn't?

[MaxWilson]

It seems to me that making heavy use of blood spells in battles is just begging for an Earthquake. In my limited experience with blood magic, when the slaves take damage (e.g. from my own Soul Vortex) they stop being usable for magic and become regular mindless chaff. I guess damage counts as defilement.

-Max

[Lingchih]

I've seen it mentioned to take misfortune and just use your fortune tellers to balance it out.

That's fine, but then you won't get the heroes, and these heroes are something special. They are basically gods themselves. The first hero I received was easily more powerful than my SC Pretender.

[chrispedersen]

Yes, you will. I have taken misfortune 3, and still manage to get the heros in most of the games before turn 30.

[Lingchih]

Hmm, that's odd. Base chance of a hero is 3%, minus 1 point per point of misfortune = 0% chance. I guess the figures I have seen are wrong.

[sum1lost]

Or chris could be confusing misfortune, since I almost never get more than 1 or two heros by then unless I specifically take a high luck