[Baalz]

It's not hard to beat a frost brand if you've got no water mages. Or if you're aggressively clam forging. Or spamming wolven winter every turn. Or you're trying to save for the Maelstorm. Or you want to crank out boots of quickness or bottles of living water or rings of water breathing. Or you're just simply trying to crank out 3 thugs per turn and have had bad luck finding water sites (a common occurrence, say, following my Eriu guide).

One of the concepts that I've touched on in several of my guides which I think I haven't done a good job expressing is how relative costs are. Sometimes water gems are cheap, sometimes they're expensive. Sometimes every other province seems to have an S1 indie mage, sometimes you'd sell your soul for somebody, anybody to make those mind hunts stop. Two different thugs, outfitted exactly the same can have drastically different "real costs" to two different players because the "real cost" is the opportunity cost. You using your pretender to forge those frost brands? They're not nearly that cheap if you are. In a very real sense 10E can be cheaper than 5W, and 10W on turn 30 can be cheaper than 5W on turn 10.

I give several good, concrete suggestions for things costing the same (or less!) gems than a frost brand which are often "good enough" and quite possibly using resources which have a "real cost" to you which is quite a bit cheaper. Certainly a frost brand is an above average weapon and there are plenty of times it's the right tool for the job, but from what I've observed in games I've played is that about 95% of "crowd control" thugs/SCs have a frost or firebrand. This is a significant misallocation of resources lots of times. You're raiding PD? My claim is you don't need a brand weapon to accomplish that goal most of the time and you can often get a whole lot more effeciency from your resources by putting to better use gems who have a small opportunity cost for the situation you're currently in. I'd much rather have 3 guys "good enough" to run PD off than one who kills the hell out of them - assuming I'm using them for raiding.

Also, it's absolutely not the case that you generally need fear to make awe work. I'm not sure what the exact mechanics of the vine shield are but I find the shield of beaten gold to be roughly comparable against "normal troops", and neither one is sufficient without considering the other factors of hitpoint preservation. Again, it comes down to "real costs", sometimes a N2 mage is not easy to come by.

The point of this guide is that if you limit yourself (as many people seem to) to thinking a thug has to have a frost brand and a vine shield and a bunch of hitpoints, you're missing a whole aspect of the game.