[rdonj]

Yeah, dominion of 3 is a very, very bad idea. In MP this is suicide. You really need to strive for at least dom 6, and should try for more if your pretender isn't awake.

S bless is completely useless if Dai Oni. HOWEVER, it can be useful for Oni Generals, if you want to make good early use of them. and you should. My pretender for a normal game with yomi is looking something like awake sage, e4, n4, s6 (for diversity, path strength, and oni generals), and then as many magic picks as you can get while still having o3 and no misfortune. This gives your oni generals a little extra early game kick (and believe me, they are quite decent thugs early game, and can easily be used as SC killers). They'll be able to survive a lot of the smiting and banishing that your other demons will be struggling with, and make your early game a lot smoother. An e9, nx or fx bless could also work, and in a smaller game is definitely preferable to my above. Just so long as the pretender is awake, because you badly need a little bit of research for early threats from neighbors. Which should ideally come in the form of alteration 2+, evo 1, and if needed ench 3 for some skelly spam. With either of those blesses, both dai oni AND oni generals should be competetive for the first few years even with little to no gear.

With your pretender, clegg, I would drop growth to 0, raise dominion to 6, and do e9/s4/n4. That's good enough on the n and s, and sacking scales any more than that is starting to look pretty unattractive. And try oni generals, they are a lot better than you might think. I do agree that skull mentors are very important, yomi drastically needs extra research especially with drain scales. And the fact that their cap only mage has the same research as their cheap recruit everywhere sort.

I will stress that dai oni don't *need* a high level bless to be potent SCs, but it will make them a lot stronger early on if you go that route. But they're not really that well-built to be early SCs in the normal sense, due to the lack of a shield. They should always be supported in some fashion.