A Poisoner's Guide to LA Pythium

[Ylvali]

I tested some blessings. Most sucessful so far is, surprisingly, Air 6 astral 10. Protects agains arrows and cavalry charges as well as giving them MR 18, Which would be great in late game. Also a very useful pretender.

I tried fire thinking it would work well with all those heads, but it seems to even out because they lose their heads faster. F9 S9 could work but is hard to afford.

Water meakes them quick but also tired, and they still lose heads quickly which kind of ruins the extra attacks(like with fire)

Earth 9 didn�t do much for them but earth 4 could be worth it.

S9, D9 makes them fantastic SC killers. All those AN attacks with raised affliction chance. Would also make a great late game pretender. Hard to afford though.

I think my final choice would be: A5S9E4, A6S10 or S9D9

Edit: I�d like to add that fairy queens are great hydra buffers. They can:

Cast wind guide and later on fog warriors out of the box. Fog warriors is awesome with regeneration.
Heal your hydras afflictions, which could actually be worthwhile sometimes.
Easily be deployed through both flight and cloud trapeze.
Refill your ranks with wine ogres (or fairys if you don�have a lab there, those can fly to the rear and annoy archers so your hydras dont get shot at)

[Aezeal]

why do they loose their heads faster? I don't get that part.

I don't see the astral part as that useful except for the MR.. their heads would protect them from cavalry anyway..

on a rainbow mage would A4E4F9W9 be nice?

[Wrana]

You lose heads faster because you don't have protective (Air) bless. And if I understand author correctly he recommends sooner multiple-4 blesses than 9s.
On the other note - and what to do with large undead armies which are bane of LA? Except "banish-banish-banish"?

[Aezeal]

the hih bless of water and fire seem the effective part for the hydra.

I tried getting A4 E4 together with that but... you need to go VERY negative in dominion scales... since I don't like death or magic negative I don't go there..
A 4 is only 20 % air shield so not that nice either

I'm trying just W9F9 now (I think that would kill undead fast too )

[Ironhawk]

MaxWilson said:
F9 bless affects all melee weapons. This is good news for jaguars, etc. I imagine D9 is similar but I have not tested it.

Thanks for doing that work, Max! I'm really surprised as I was sure that JK/KO had said it was an extra attack but this clearly proves otherwise.

[Ironhawk]

MaxWilson said:
I don't know about boosters, but Arrow Fend is A3, 100 fatigue. It seems logical to throw together a 3-man Communion and burn an extra Air Gem. 2 slaves, 1 master with A1, boosts the master to A2 whereupon you can cast Arrow Fend. A staff of storms would be better (one A1 mage can cast Summon Storm Power to boost himself to A2 without a communion, plus Storms also impair missile fire automatically) but requires A4 to forge, which you've sort of ruled out already. However, it WOULD let you boost all of your Air mages. Combine the two approaches and you can have A3 without burning any gems, which means Thunderstrike is castable.

The ability to negate arrow attacks is a particularly useful skill for Serpent Cult which is not easy for it to do out of the box. As Max points out tho, all you need is to boost your native 1A mages a single time, at which point they can use gems. Personally, I took A4 on my pretender for the light air shield initially and then later to summon Air Queens in the late game. They show up before Tarts and are one of the best SC chasis. A4, of course, is the minimum path for the low air boosters, which I forged and gave to my theurgs. But even if you didnt do that, you could trade with an Air nation for a single booster. Or just cross your fingers and hope that you find an Enchantress site or something similar

Max's idea of using communions is a great one tho, that I had not originally considered. LA Pyth produces pleny of 1S mages for the communion and Arrow Fend is definitely worth boosting to. In particular your Astral-random Serpent Priest are perfect for the job of slaves here. They wont require a Poison Ring to go with that army and thier paths are a little too scattered to do much else with.

[Aezeal]

Ironhawk, the fact it benefits all attacks is why it's used on jaguar warriors.. the jaguars have 3 attacks

[MaxWilson]

Heh. I'm finally getting around to trying out EA Mictlan now, and F9W9D9N4 Jaguar Warriors + lots of missile support is FUN. And the jags are more resilient than I would have expected from looking at their stats (Prot 6). I suspect if I took this beyond a test game into a real strategy, I'd probably go for Blood and Conjuration (for the national summons and Tartarians) with backup in Alteration (Wooden Warriors) and Enchantment (Gift of Reason).

-Max

[chrispedersen]

D9.. imo is not optimal.

[MaxWilson]

D9 isn't an optimal bless, but Death magic is a lot of fun for me personally and I like having a pretender who can toss D9 Clouds of Death (HUGE area of effect), D9 Leprosy, Eagle Eyes + D9 Banefire, Stygian Paths, etc. I also like having the option of my mages doing tricky stuff with their D9 bless (like Earthquake, which afflicts everybody in the army). Therefore, D9 is pretty optimal for me since I'm not giving up either F9 or W9 for it. S9 would have been an option, but I just don't like Astral magic as much as Death.

Note also that D9 isn't half-bad either. I ran my Epony Chieftain test with a D9 bless and IIRC they were doing 20-odd points of damage per round to the poor archer. 2 AN damage is like an attack of strength "whatever your Prot is, plus two" (although you have to take the MR check into account too), which means it's often about as good as adding a hoof attack to cavalry.

-Max