Lady of Springs

[Fal]

yes it's a strategy covered in Baalz's Eriu guide.

I'm writing a Tir na n'Og guide atm, yes Ri & Sidhe lords are excellent thugs, you only need Construction 4 + some Alternation & Enchantment to make them effective.

I'm not a big fan of double 9 blessing, because the lack of Astral and death makes Tir/Eriu weak in late games, and for Ri earth 9 bless really isn't necessary, earth 6 would be enough, but water 6 bless comes very handy. In fact all you need is to get their defense over 30, protection isn't needed in most cases as you will most likely case mistform. I disagree with Baalz's guide as I think nature is an utterly useless blessing.

They do kill fast, to deal with a large group of enemy, use:

Air Shield (always cast this as mirror image doesn't provide protection against arrows)
Bless
Mistform
Resist lightning
wait
Cast (in all my previous tests, Ri cast shock wave, try it out, you'd be even more impressed).

So standard outfits would be:

Frostbrand
Main Gauche of Parrying (an extra 4 defense)
Horror Helmet (if you have death) or a cheap black steel helmet
Chain Mail of Displacement (3 extra defense) or Rainbow Armor (3 extra reinvigoration)
Amulet of Resilience (5 reinvigoration)
Bracer of protection (protection + defense)

But do bear in mind that Ri/Sidhe lords are very bad when fighting troops with magic weapons (F9/D9 bless, Atlantis, Caelum etc). They aren't overpowered, and they aren't that effective in MP games (especially in later stage) either.

To recap, I'd take W6E6S4D4 for my pretender, Astral and death paths are too important for Tir/Eriu to take double 9 blessing.