[Squirrelloid]

I like yamabushi for the glaive and the excellent attack stat. Not that the rest of your line has problems dealing damage, but those guys can *really* kick out the damage. Don't bother taking a bless for them - they're worth investing in even without one. Similarly, the samurai with a glaive has a niche since he's got the high damage potential, and is recruit anywhere. (You'd prefer the yamabushi, but you can't always have him). Against Gibborim or other bruisers, the extra damage starts looking pretty good. Sohei aren't even worth considering next to yamabushi.

I'm not convinced the samurai archers are *ever* worthwhile. Its LA, longbows are mostly useless. You'd do better forting some indie crossbows and recruiting those.

Some of the monks can be amazing in communions. Water and Nature signs duplicate PotS and Reinvigoration at no gem cost - so hand them a crystal matrix for great fun. The air sign is AoE2 Air Shield, which is actually pretty decent for a nation which looks like archer bait. (Earth and fire signs are worthless, but you can't have everything). For similar reasons, making one of your mages your prophet can be worthwhile, since it'll give him access to the signs.

Dai Oni are horribly overpriced relative to tarts at present, although I suppose if you can't get the chalice or GoH up then you don't have to worry about afflictions with Dai Oni...

Whichever the national summon is that requires you to be in a swamp, it is a nature summon which has death magic. If there are swamps on the map, you can go without death on your pretender and get death via this summon, and bootstrap your way up. Its a way to save a pile of pretender points.

For pretenders, I'd consider an imprisoned Oracle for mostly pure scales, or a sleeping Lord of Plenty with good scales to get his gem generation (2e2s every turn!) once he wakes up. You expand just fine against indies, and with early alteration research you can defeat rushes, so you don't need an awake pretender. And you don't really need magic diversity. So playing for high astral/scales/gem generating pretender seems like a reasonable thing to do.