EA Caelum

[Corwin]

Zenzei said:
Assuming you find astral enabled indy mages (your pretender likely has more important things to do than forging armor for thugs, if he/she has astral) and get decent astral gem income that isn't bad alternative at all. Personally though, I might still be inclined to save any astral gems I manage to scrape up for those Amesha Spentas.

True, astral may be a problem for Caelum, since they don't have astral mages. But astral 1 indep mages are relatively easy to find (for example lizard shamans are arguably the most common type of indep mages), and you will want to get astral mages anyway for national summons, luck items, et cetera.

As for Amesha Spentas (which are indeed good units) - Battles Shroud only costs 5 astral gems, so 2-4 shrouds for your EK SCs are unlikely to make much difference. On the other hand Mirror Image on Air4 EK can make a big difference, especially if your opponent is using mages against your EK or using troops with magic weapons, as you have pointed out earlier.