"Out of the box flew all of the horrors which plague the world today - pain, sickness, envy, greed. Upon hearing Pandora's screams Epimetheus rushed home and fastened the lid shut, but all of the evils had already escaped.

Later that night they heard a voice coming from the box saying...

'Let me out. I am Hope.' "

Pandora's Box, Greek Mythology
 
ISIS & ISIS/SET TEAM STRATEGY
By:The Devil (AoM.HeavenGames.com)

Summary:
This strategy is designed for 2v2 or 3v3 games and should work best against Greeks, but still be effective against Norse/Egyptian players. This strategy seems quite robust and doesn't require you to either rush or boom; you can play it as the situation dictates. If carried out correctly, one of your enemies should lose his TC, forward base or economy at around the 10 minute mark.

Description:
Either you or your ally must choose Isis, then advance through Bast(Eclipse/Sphinx) and Nephthys(Ancestors/Scorpion Man). The other player could choose Set or Isis (I would recomend Set) and advance through Anubis(Plague of Serpents/Anubite) and Nephthys.

At the moment we're going with normal classics (5:30) and fairly average heroics (10:00) but you can speed this up or slow it down as you need. It'd probably be more effective with a 7:30 heroic but I'm not that fast yet.

Archaic: Early game scout once around your TC, then middle, then the enemy in detail (standard opening play). Normal archaic, hunt bla bla bla (don't forget at least one monument).

Classic: After advancing to classic I build 4 or 5 baracks and create around 12 slingers and 12 spears/axe (depending on situation). Aim to control the center but make a judgement on whether it'd be to costly to do so at this point. Don't slow down your heroic too much though.

Heroic: Coordinate an attack with your ally on one enemy's forward base, attacking with both your armys, some seige if possible and the Set player should cast plague of serpents to help things along. The Set player (in coordination with the Isis player) casts vision over the same enemy's TC, one player counts down '3' '2' '1' both cast ancestors and as soon as the Isis player sees both ancestors are active casts eclipse. This means you have 26 ancestors in total all at +50% attack +20% move (equivalent to 39 normal ancestors) and the enemy can't use cease fire, bronze, curse or flaming weapons. As long as there are no heroes around the base (hopefully they're at the forward skirmish) ancestors attack the TC... otherwise I haven't figured out what the best target of opportunity is.

If the enemy you're attacking is too engrosed in the battle at the forward they will lose their TC. If they're reasonably good (rook or better) they should notice and build a few heroes from their tc. Ideally you should have some mortal units at the TC as well to help mop up heroes but failing that you decide... can you take the TC down if you focus fire on it? or should one player divert their ancestors to kill the heroes?

Results:
Even if not lethal this results in a major economic disruption for one enemy player and thusfar has been a game breaker for us. After this the game usually turns into a 2v1 (or a 3v2) and the end is a forgone conclusion.

Further Study:
We've used it on the enemy with the highest score but maybe it would be best used to remove the weaker enemy?

In a 3v3 the third player could choose either Set/Isis and go with Anubis and Nephthys or Odin(for the ravens) and choose Njord (Walking Woods/Mountain Giant). I'd go with Odin. 3 or 4 walking trees with 12 hack/45 crush damage could be pretty nasty.

An enemy Isis player could cause major problems for this strategy... could use a pack of sphynx's to remove a strategic monument or two.

While this seems quite effective around the 10 minute mark I suspect it would be devestating if one could pull it off at the 7:30 mark and back it up with military... but then again maybe you'd make yourself too vulnerable doing that...