[Cor]

these are just my opionions, its your game play however you want...

Have you ever played a dual bless? If done right its much better than an awake pretender IMHO.

The problems with pretenders is either you have a SC, which can be taken down and will get afflictions or you have a powerful mage, which will take a while to research any spell for.

You can manage to avoid death scales. Take misfortune 2 order 1 ( only 5% more random events with a bonus in gold)
And take cold 3, not 2. you dont need production if your going to be recruiting alot of holy woodsmen so take -3. Make sure you have an okay dominion, so you can recriut lots of woodsmen. 7 or 8 should do. Take drain 2.

I have had very good luck with this build. just 10 woodsmen with the bless can decimate most indies. 20 can take knights with ease.