Most powerful racial skills

[Orfinn]

Hmm yeah you right about it, wonder what I was thinking when I wrote that

[Caradoc]

For me it was between Counterstrike and Gating (even though Sylvan as a faction rocks; it is my favorite faction )
In the end I voted for Counterstrike (200+ Marksmen in week three is just abusive...not many things can survive a shot from THAT that early in the game).

Doesn't that use up a hell of a lot of gold?

[Mytical]

Actually not always. With the 40% off building built it can be resonable (sometimes). Never cheap mind you, but somewhat reasonable (for peasants to archers only mind you).

[Alamar]

On the maps that I tend to play I would tend to go with CounterStrike [Training]. Knowing that before long you can have tons of Marksmen that the AI & humans will have a hard time dealing with is hard to resist.

Gating is next. You always have gating no matter the map. Getting those reinforcements for early map clearing is so CRITICAL [and Inferno would fail so miserably without the skill] that there are good arguements for this being most powerful.

Avenger is a little too map dependant for me. It's great when you've got it but it's not-so-great when you don't. Having to go back to your castle to shift things around is a real pain.

Artificer is next. If you're on a resource rich map they're great but I find that I don't have to resources to excersize this ability in the early game as much as I'd like. Still a short boost of power just before you take a mine then crunching the artifact can be handy. It's not as useful as it could be because you can only use it in your castle.