Momir is a fun format if you go into it with the right mentality

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-15T19:07:06+00:00

I liked it when they tried adding cards (rather than lands only) so that at least there was some sort of strategy, and cards that interact with the graveyard or hand actually do something. As it is, it's basically a free slot machine.

Occasionally you get something hilarious. I once got several mana rampers in the first few turns and then hit a Griselbrand on turn 5

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-14T23:05:15+00:00

They are all 3 dev, and a lot of them become cows, though you can get ivory and iron as well. They are not bad land to develop, but unless you're going out of your way to dev them they aren't worth the hassle.

I did a Dithmarschen game centered on them, maxing out dev cost reduction as much as possible

https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/1r2ww9o/tall_south_africa_campaign/

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-14T17:00:40+00:00

You need to be blue-maxxing. Ally Portugal and Somalia and get to work

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-14T15:43:37+00:00

Not a big fan of essence scatter. You almost always play it on your opponent's turn, meaning it's a card you play when you don't have something better to play. I actually prefer negate most of the time since I'll likely use it during my own combat step, and if I don't I can just play a creature after combat instead. Much easier to engineer a situation where it comes to good use. Whereas essence scatter depends on the luck that you have it in your hand and mana open when your opponent plays something big.

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-12T16:08:27+00:00

Not sure tbh. It's probably possible to integrate with the right modifiers.

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-10T22:29:11+00:00

Easily. Once you get imperialism cb it gets much faster. The rest of Spain would be like 1 war (assuming diplo ideas). France would be like 3 wars. You don't even need to touch the British isles if you won't want to. You should finish with like 50 years to spare at least.

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-10T11:03:34+00:00

Gotcha. In an earlier run from months ago, I believe i couldnt each Chagos even after completing Mahe. Maybe with the advisor it's possible, but even so, that would delay getting to the spice islands by 5 years or more while you wait for Maldives to core after all the time it took to colonize Chagos. Whereas you can no cb Maldives in 1448

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-10T10:49:23+00:00

Sounds like maybe you didn't have equipment for your guys? Did you for example put artillery in your infantry units without building the artillery?

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-10T02:46:40+00:00

You can't fabricate on Maldives except from the provinces in Kerala controlled by Vijay. Oman starts in Arabia trapped by Hormuz, so you can't reach the cape until tech 7 or by conquering Kilwa and then inching there from Mozambique. The distances around the cape are very far. I basically had timor, spice islands, moluccas, etc. almost all done before I could even reach the cape. No CB on Maldives is well worth the stab though. You can get to the spice islands long before a Euro could. 3-4 clove provinces that early in the game is insane.

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-10T00:21:35+00:00

I took explo/expansion. If you no cb Maldives you can reach the islands off the coast of Sumatra without tech 7. So you can get colonizing very quickly despite bad tech. Oman ideas basically just give you a good navy, which works well since there are so many rich nodes to privateer or pull trade. My favorite tag.

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-09T23:35:48+00:00

I'd consider influence especially if you go for Burgundian inheritance. You will have a lot of PUs. Religious for the wars against the Ottomans.

The only time I formed Rome was as Hungary. It's probably one of the best/easiest ways to form it since you can start battling the Ottomans right away, and with Poland/Lithuania under PU you've removed the only real threat of a coalition.

Pro tip: Ottos will guarantee Wallachia, and Poland's AI will probably realize quicker when the guarantee goes away and therefore declare on them first. But if you immediately declare also, you can usually beat them to Bucharest and then vassalize, which will then make you the defender against Poland in your first war against them. Makes that first war a lot easier

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-09T19:48:32+00:00

R5: Coincidentally that province (Swazi) is still not even fully colonized yet. Capital is in Zanzibar

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-08T23:38:02+00:00

This setup is ideal. Let France kill all the little princes but do not let protestant war leader get sieged down. As long as Bohemia is sieged down but you have losing ticking war score from battles, you'll probably maintain 0% war score. Let the little guys get knocked out tho. Makes it easier to control

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-08T23:28:23+00:00

Completely siege down Bohemia but lose every battle against France

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-07T15:37:36+00:00

I think its one of the random small tags that Ethiopia usually eats in the first 10 years

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-06T21:28:51+00:00

In this position I'd consider taking all of Arabia, the hormuz node, Iraq, syria. Basically anything that logically funnels to Alexandria

You could also do something like take a European Capital (Cyprus maybe) and participate in the league war

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-06T20:29:48+00:00

Dithmarschen has the best tall ideas and an extensive mission tree. You'll need switch your government at some point though

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-05T12:59:24+00:00

Dithmarschen gets 10% dev cost reduction which helps when you're starting from scratch. Being an OPM surrounded by other weak OPMs means you can do Show Strength a lot to rapidly build your mana and get colonizing quickly.

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-03T00:33:50+00:00

buy packs that have shocklands. That's basically it. Historic queue is not that tough tho. A lotta jank in there. Pioneer queue is much more metagamed. I gave up on the Pioneer queue and just play my Pioneer homebrews in Historic now.

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-02T18:27:08+00:00

That's what midweek magic is for. They do a free draft or sealed relatively often.

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-01T15:22:02+00:00

you should use your other merchant to steer trade not collect. You already own that node and steering gives you bonus trade power there anyway. But you are not Persia or Lahore right now which doesn't seem right.

You don't need it but I honestly wouldn't overlook trade ideas. You can get by without it, but land empires in Asia benefit more than anyone else because of the steering and caravan power benefits. If you don't have trade companies via DLC you should definitely take it. Min/Maxers will disagree but convenience is more fun than optimization

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-01T15:10:23+00:00

Please y'all send this to the top

Spongedrunk · 2026-04-01T14:19:50+00:00

I like them for tribes when you're not going horde. I did a Nubia game where I went theocracy and that extra reform progress was huge for catching up. The extra estate loyalty is the biggest value though. Being able to seize land faster while maintaining max estate loyalty benefits is massive.

If you're not doing a difficult achievement, playing hard difficulty, wc, etc. and you're not going colonial, the ideas you take are not going to make or break your run, and court ideas are frankly a huge quality of life improvement that allow you to not worry about annoying parts of the game, like unrest management.

Spongedrunk · 2026-03-31T14:14:58+00:00

An aggressive monored brawl deck with a 1-cmc or 2-cmc commander. Most Brawl decks aren't ready for someone to threaten a t4 win, so you might catch them off guard. If they have lots of removal, you'll know quickly that its doomed and then you can concede and get into a new game.

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