[Kobal2]

Well, you have astral mages with *5* other random paths, and the ability to craft crystal matrices in bulk to hook up any other mages you find so large armies supported by communions casting from an extremely open spellbook are a go - fog warriors, army of X, mass flight, weapons of sharpness, gaia's blessing, will of the fates, mass regeneration, relief, quickness... really, with the exception of death spells you can pretty much cast *anything* from *any castle* in the fullness of time.

You also should have a large and varied gem income - the only paths you're missing remote site searching in are death (which you can take on your god) and blood (which is semi-easy to bootstrap into with scouts and a death god, or that you can just ignore entirely). There's very little mundane equipment you can't make.

If you take D magic on your pretender, and you most definitely should strive to, you'll have tons of Shuras to raid with - without equipment a pair of them can take just about any amount of PD with little or no equipment. Sure, a proper SC will cream them, but you can make a lot more Shuras than the other guy can make SCs. All other things being equal, if you can take 2 provinces of his while he takes 1 of yours, you win.

Or you could indeed go Dai Onis (as I said earlier, with a D3 LoP they're just one booster and one empowerment away), but honestly they're not that great for their gem tag (not to mention they still carry upkeep over from the EA, so unlike other summons they'll wreck your bank account). I would take 4 Shuras over 1 Dai Oni any day, especially without a bless tailored for them.

If you're playing the latest CBM, treants are pretty neat and you shouldn't have too much trouble recruiting them using your bootsrap Nature summons (Kitsunes). Mechanical Giants are also good additions to your armies, and your E4 god will have no problem summoning them. You can get Grendelkins easily, too - any W1E2 Master Shug can get them with easy to forge boosters.

If the other guy is fielding communions too, you can pull a really nasty trick with your Dai Tengus and minimal equipment (a hat, MR & luck amulets, gems ): Cloud Trapeze in, Rain of Stones, retreat. Rince, repeat. Very tough to counter for anyone who isn't Pythium, especially if you put astral mages in the provinces he could retreat into so your opponent can't just Mind Hunt him.

Try and look up Baalz' guides to Tien Chi for more ideas, or even guides to Arcoscephale, both nations are comparable with Jomon in that they have lots of varied but weak paths. But suffice to say, as Jomon, don't sweat the endgame. You *rock* the endgame.
It's the early game you gotta watch out for.