I've been loathe to actually bring this topic up recently because I didn't feel I had played enough games with and without them to make a determination.

Now that I have, I just wanted to ask a few questions of the players, and hopefully the Dev's to see their perspective or answers to the questions.

This is two part question, really. First the Racial Specifci Pretenders, and the second the Human Pretenders.

The Racial Specific Pretender(s)

Has anyone noticed that very few of the Racial specific pretenders are worth their cost vs the "favored" pretenders?

Things the Developers avoided, maybe too well, was to not make the racial specific pretender too good that you *always* take it if you are that race.

Now this is not all the racial specific pretenders. There are good ones: Void Lord, Void Lurker, Dagon, Smoking Mirror, Jade Emperor, etc.

There are other, not so good racial specific ones, i.e. Skratti, ***** Queen, Arch Seraph, Serpent King, Divine Emperor, Great Seer of the Depths, Great Warlock.

Now I do know that a good portion of this may be personal preference.

This is my reasoning. When I pick a race, I am looking for a pretender to:

A.) Utilize the Gem (Blood Slave)/Mage power of the Race and amplify or summon what the mages could not already.

B.) Fill the gaps magically. Either for Searching, army construction (Summons to fill a weakness in the races design) or ritual/battlefield spells that add to armies.

C.) A Supercombatant.

D.) A bless effect Pretender that is also a Supercombatant.

I am trying to do this with my own preference for a pretender with the least amount of points used designing the pretender to get the scales to make up for the races default playing style.

Now in looking at most of the races, their racial specific pretender is used for A and D. Except that in a % of the cases, there is a better more survivable pretender for that.

Anyone else notice that? Am I crazy? Am I wrong?