I had preordered it, and I am now starting to read the book. It's awesome! One thing I would like to point out is that in the beginning of the duel between Digur and Grax, Grax casted a construction yard and then sprinted towards the center of the arena.
This is a very strange if not terrible opening. Why no Battle Forge or Barracks?
And it also said that "The Grax won every battle the same way, by controlling the arena with conjurations long enough that he could summon huge, unstoppable creatures."
Normally I'd predict Earth walls, lots of mangler caltrops, traps, etc. with several goblin builders, garrison posts and barracks. But that's a Bloodwave strategy. I'm interested to say how the Anvil Throne does things. If I could hazard a guess, I would say that the construction yard and double move to NC means that he plans to cast a powerful earth creature or conjuration R2, maybe something we haven't seen before, that will help him control the arena. Or maybe he wants to cast two walls and extend one or both of them? That would require him to cast something to deal with the thoughspore. Probably a hurl boulder. Don't know what he'll do if there's a brace yourself on it when he casts the boulder. He's going to have to cast the boulder before the thoughtspore casts its spell. (I know it's a force hammer, but for all he knows it could be a teleport to get the Diggur over the wall.)
Since Diggur has clearly done his research ahead of time, my guess is a powerful conjuration or two.
Since Grax doesn't use Barracks, and therefore won't have time to summon a bunch of goblin builders or have the creatures to defend outposts for Talos, I'm betting that he'll either use a powerful conjuration R2, or use 2-3 earth walls to divide up the arena like murphy's famous trap build which I inspired. Then he'll either hurl boulder the thoughtspore right away, or wait and see if Diggur summons more before deciding whether to cast a Gravikor.
Then he'll use traps, mangler caltrops and other cheap delaying tactics to slow down Diggur while he summons several powerful creatures. My bets are on either Bloodcrag Minotaurs, Iron Golems and MAYBE Bridge Trolls. His best bet would be Bridge Trolls, since they're both powerful, durable and they're soldiers and cost less mana than the minotaurs. Minotaurs won't like having walls in their way. Iron golems aren't soldiers. Of course, Minotaurs do have a charge bonus, and would be useful for if the enemy destroys the walls. It could even give the enemy incentive NOT to destroy them, though it's kind of expensive for that purpose.
If Grax makes a bunch of rookie mistakes, I'm either going to call BS, or blame it on the lack of internet forums in Etheria. Maybe the lack of internet makes their "metagame" very different?
I'm hoping he doesn't make a bunch of rookie mistakes though. This book is already turning out to be really fun and refreshing. I was hooked the moment I saw the second sentence, which began with the words, "The Dwarven Forcemaster..." I reread that three times thinking wow, thank you Etheria for not being fantastically racist, before I remembered Yoda was a nonhuman Jedi in Star Wars. I'm really hoping Diggur isn't like Yoda.
Also, for those of you who are still wondering, yes, female dwarves in Etheria have facial hair. Well, either that or most female dwarves don't attend arena events, which I find rather unlikely, considering the Anvil Throne's pragmatic, although admittedly traditional and slow-to-change culture. Then again, maybe many of the dwarf women prefer to do more practical and useful things rather than sitting and watching a sporting event. Although since most of the audience are bearded, I would say either it's a smaller, local audience which is why there are few female dwarves, OR there are a lot of female dwarves, and all of them are bearded, but there are also some non-dwarves in attendence. The latter seems most likely to me. Therefore, it is most likely that female dwarves have beards, and that they are in relatively equal attendance to arena duels as the males are.
Maybe the thing about anvil throne dwarf culture is that while they're very traditional and slow to change, they make sure to get their traditions right THE FIRST TIME, before they get set in stone.
This is just my thoughts on the first couple pages. I'll keep reading now.
EDIT: I just realized Grax didn't double move to NC, he quickcasted construction yard in corner, moved once and cast barracks in NC. Sorry for the confusion. Also, it turns out that Grax does use barracks with goblin builders strategy. I suppose that with armory there's no need for vet tokens, hold the line gives them tough -2 as well as the extra armor, and the goblin builders wont' ever want to guard or attack anything anyway. So I suppose goblin builder strategy does work better with anvil throne.
