Machaka and a W9 bless

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by licker

I disagree that the spiders are resource intensive, other than the first 2 turns you are not resource limited compared to your income (assuming you also want to recruit mages...), and eventually its the holy which limits you anyway.

What scales does machaka need to be effective anyway? Order3 obviously, and they get Heat3 for free, so you can easilly take Mis2(3) and Drain2, hell you can even throw in some sloth and still not have a resource issue since the spiders are the only unit you need resources for and your early spider armies clean out indies very quickly with zero casualties (this is all before turn 10).

Now I grant that I don't know the MP game very well, so maybe this early expansion/rush power doesn't translate into anything, but that would seem to imply that all bless based rushing doesn't translate into much of anything, not just for Machaka.

How much research/mages do you have to effectively neutralize 20 spiders on turn 10? What else have you sacrificed to do this?

Again I don't know the answer to those questions, so I'm posing them. The best thing for me to do would be to try it in MP obviously, but I don't really have the time for that right now

Compare Machaka to the good bless races:
Mictlan, Lanka, Vanheim, Tien Chi,Tir (I forget). Heck, you can even compare to Pythium (ME), Ermor's Shadow vestals,

Machaka's spiders are WAY more expensive than mictlans, jaguar or eagle warriors, WAY more expensive than Tien's sacred warrior.. Way less effective than Lanka's Tiger, Donkey heads or Kamas.

Is what I meant when I said they cost too much.

With Lanka, Tien, Mictlan - I can afford to go , Heat-3 Drain X, Misfortune X,, just like machaka - however I can also afford to go sloth-3 (Donkey heads work just fine for lanka).

Regarding being holy limited - the question will be - are your holy troops built at any castle, or are they capital only. This question is one of the main reasons why Pythium is not really a bless nation - Capitol only bless recruits.

But for most of these other nations, you are going to be popping up another castle and temple and doubling your sacred output asap.

One last problem aspect about the spider riders being two capital/resource intensive.

Building a few high value units at the start is excessively risky. There are indies that will trash even respectable numbers of your spiders.. tthe ancient prescense, the 3 air mages, probably bogus, the hydro mancers.

Additionally, hi value units are especially susceptible to open ended die rolls. If you have 100 units - you don't care much if you lose 20. If you have 4 units - you care a lot if you lose 1
(if no other reason than the morale checks you face every round).

I've played probably 20 games trying to make a machaka bless work. Its fun, and its fine in SP - just not what I would call competitive in MP play.