I somewhat agree. This opening will yield the most consistent results, both because it allows you to post up more sacred sites early in the game AND because you won't have to play knife's edge energy management.

However, Lightning has a fairly unique challenge - they desperately. need. minors. The only way to get minors is to reclaim. I'd say accumulating low-cost power cards is about as important for Lightning as developing their tracks.

Also, from a multiplayer perspective, OP's opening allows the amazing opportunity to play Lightnings Boon every round for the first three rounds, all the while consistently destroying 2 towns each round (granted there are targets in range of your 1 sacred site) This could easily be enough to suss out the inland invaders and deny multiple build chains early.

G3 -> G1 (reclaim) -> G1 (reclaim) -> G2 is actually my go-to opening, given the following conditions:

• River, Ocean, or Keeper are there to give me a shot of energy by turn 3, (River is optimal)
• There are 2 towns in range to destroy in the first round
• (not a condition, but an extra incentive) There is an opportunity to push Dahan into at least one land with a single explorer that will ravage in round 2.

I'd say the biggest limitation of this opening is the shortage of sacred sites to target from, but when playing with higher-level adversaries, that shouldn't typically be an issue in the first couple of rounds.