[Jarkko]

Lingchih, in vanilla Dom I would *always* take the Gorgon. In CBM not.

There are two main reasons why I would always take a Gorgon over a bull in vanilla Dom3.

1) The bull in vanilla Dom dies of exhaustion, period. In CBM bulls have reinvigoration 2, and that seems to be all you need for the early phases.

2) The price. In vanilla the Gorgon costs 50 points, which is dirt cheap considering she has Earth and Nature magic to start with (no new paths required to get her going). The bull costs 75 points plus new path(s). Even with the higher starting Dominion the bull simply is not worth it considering how easy the bull dies from exhaustion.
In CBM the Gorgon costs 100 points, the bull is 25 points. With the extra point in Dominion (it costs 147 points to go from Dom3 to Dom9, while it costs 196 points to go from Dom2 to Dom9) that oh-so-precious Dom9 *also* saves up points (making the "true" starting price of the Gorgon 296 points vs the 172 points of the bull).


Regarding summoning the Carrion critters. EA Pan has no death mages available, so to be able to summon carrion spawning commanders, you either have to empower a dryad to Death, be lucky with a wolf-tribe shaman (10% chance for N1D1 IIRC) or buy Death magic on your pretender. In my opinion it is an either or decission, a "choose before the game starts" thingy. Ok, if I happen to get a shaman with N1D1 that's nice and all, but I would for sure not plan the strategy on that. Also, considering manikin are in my opinion at their strongest early on (when there are few WMDs available for opponents), it sort of devalues their efficiency more (although I freely admit it is great to suprise offending SC's late in the game with a manikin rush, but that does in my experience succeed only for one turn and then the opponent is ready).