[Ferrosol]

Pretenders

A. Scales

Order/Turmoil: I Like an Order 3 scale to take advantage of the gold expensive troops and to get forts up ASAP to turn out the mages and priests you most definitely need to back up your armies.

Productivity/Sloth: Most of your better units are fairly resource cheap so I would recommend taking at least some sloth scale here.

Heat/Cold: Nothing particularly special here as the Skaven prefer a neutral temperature scale although you may want to think about going one notch either way to pay for a bless if you go down that route.

Growth/Death: I would recommend at least Growth 1 if you are planning to go blood hunting. I would not recommend taking any death scale though as your large armies will tend to eat lots of supplies and while none of your mages start with old age none of them are particularly long lived either.

Magic/Drain: I would go with a magic 1 here if your pretender build can support it as it provides a cheap boost to your Mages particularly your plague chantors and priests who being sacred make cheap researchers.

B. Blesses

Skaven has some fairly strong blessable units, So the question you need to ask is do I go for a bless to boost my mage priests or my sacred troops?

Earth: A minor earth bless will help keep your mages spamming spells longer and while none of your sacred units particularly need a major earth bless a bit of extra protection never hurts.

Fire: Skaven's units are one of the few sacreds that don't really benefit from a fire bless as they neither need the extra damage or attack as their AOE weapons do significant damage anyway.

Air: While an air bless has the benefit of providing you some protection against arrows which your armies could really use but it is not worth taking an air bless just for that.

Water: A bless both your sacred units can benefit from. A minor water bless can boost their fairly low defence however once your units berserk this goes out of the window. Still a major bless that gives quickness is always nice for any sacred unit particularly as you don't have any access to water magic as a skaven.

Nature: A minor Nature bless is great for your sacred units who otherwise rack up a lot of afflictions due to their close contact with their poison weapons. I wouldn't recommend going with a major bless however as you do not want your mages going berserk I would recommend no more than a mid range nature bless.

Death: A death bless is very handy as your poison attacks do come with the additional affliction chance meaning that even if your sacreds are wiped out by the enemy you can still count on them to really annoy your enemies.

Astral: A minor astral bless is not bad as it boosts your fairly average Magic Resistance however I would recommend instead that if you must take an Astral bless go the whole hog and get a full S9 as it makes your sacreds a lot more survivable and high astral magic is always valuable in the late game for wishes and the like.

Blood: A blood bless is fairly useless as the extra strength does little for you I would not recommend taking any blood at all


More to follow later once I have tested a few pretender builds and research strategies.