Balancing Wrathful Skies

[Zen]

Kristoffer O said:
Half-way viable? I thought they were considered one of the most powerful nations by some players at a time. I never got the impression that the VQ was the main reason for this. But you are right, there is not much talk about BF Ulm anymore (in either direction, wich perhaps means that it is balanced ).

In actuality, BF is not what it once was, due to the Scout Bloodhunting. Most half-blood hunting nations (no nations with cheap blood hunters) were hurt when this change was done (which I was for). Because of it's mages, it's not at the front of the pack, but somewhere near the upper middle IMO. It has it's share of "What? Why would I recruit this when survivability/cost says I should just recruit Rangers so they can stealth" units, including Ghoul Guardians, Zweihanders and a total lack of priests. Their mages are subpar because there is no real mage in the selection, only half-mages that do other semi-cool things.

If I had to play Ulm and I wanted to have a competitive edge as well as wasn't in a game that has uberlow population so Blood Hunting has it's place, I'd still always pick BF. But it's still has Ulm's basic flaw. It's pretender has to do all the heavy lifting for that theme because nothing will really work without it. So your actual selection of Pretenders is much smaller than you'd really try.