Are you happy with your choice of race/pers combo

[HerpNDerp]

An update on my opinion regarding my faery/mystic -- maybe next age will be different due to change in elite values and cost, but faery defensive losses are garbage and insanely crippling if you get hit more than once or twice. 4 hits on me dropped me from 600k mod def to 425k mod def (no pitfalls or bg). At this point I've eaten 12 or 13 attacks and I've dropped below 200k mod def. insanely crippling. I've never experienced an attacker losing defense as rapidly as this faery, even as the chain target.

[StratOcastle]

@ HerpNDerp.

Indeed, it's different if you're built pure t/m. I ran a dwarf cleric and was instructed to boost wpa as high as possible and tpa in the 4 raw vicinity. Well, I ended up turtling and could barely attack. Some of this was due to our penchant for choosing enemies that were just not dwarf material. We faced a faery core, a halfer core and two others with active avians in my range. You simply can't engage a faster attacker with higher offense and ambush immunity at max range and expect to retain any semblance of continuity. I had to explain to my boss, if I attack I'll be doing them a great favor. I'm better doing ops and providing aid.

When I ran a faery sage attacker another age it was quite enlightening. At first I was unsure how to build the thing and got a bloody nose in war. Luckily the defense offers some forgiveness and I'm adept at running attackers. Eventually I had reasoned out the effective balance and went on very confidently from that point forward. What it comes down to is that dedication to damage exchange. Faery can be a misery inducing attacker with fringe ops and sabotage to compliment. For you to understand this I was in direct combat with any of the traditional attackers you can imagine: undead tacs, orc warriors, avian clerics and even humans and dwarves which I found easy to manhandle. I was even engaging much larger humans without fear. I couldn't break them initially but I'd whittle away with ambushes and ops.

I wasn't alone. This was in The Faery Circle. Unlike you might think, we were not organized enough to do NM waves. My numbers were too low for some time to be an actual threat as a hybrid, but by heavily leaning toward attacker it was easily on par with what anyone was bringing from a traditional standpoint. I then experimented with a faery cleric yet another age and with some early fighting became totally convinced of the viability of faery attackers.

Now, I've also run elf cleric attackers and they were the cats meow. Very durable and magically inclined to op/march combinations. Those days have passed where NM can augment a lone attacker as easily as before. I'll have to go back to the drawing board to experiment with these new elite numbers and spell array. Suffice to say it's fallen to a deeper team system, which isn't necessarily bad. As t/ms it's more vital now than in the past to have attacker escorts to pummel randoms and clear space for t/ms. You never want to be in multi tap range of an avian. It's pure death. They're just too fast. I'd love to have an avian buddy by my side though.

[Coffee]

Halfling Rogue. I always enjoy playing rogue. Prop is just plain fun, like a slot machine. This was my first round as a halfer - in the past I've run fae on rogue. I did very much enjoy the overall sustainability with the cheap thieves and troops. I started out as an a/t and that was a lot of fun - halfer definitely started well.

Mid-age I moved towards playing as a more defensive province. This was OK, but I found I was never really able to achieve the defense numbers faeries and even elves were capable of, at least while also maintaining enough tpa to do my job properly. +pop helped, but didn't really compensate for the overall weaker military defense.

Although overall I'd say I still prefer faery, I enjoyed trying out halfer. I don't think I'd go back and change the pick if I could, although I'd definitely have made different choices early age with the benefit of hindsight.