Carrion Woods Reanimations

[Molog]

Been playing with Pangea carrion woods now.
Also have a shortage of nature gems, but plenty of death gems.
Some things I've been doing.

I use mound kings to round up all the undead spawning. Also keep a couple of mound kings around in provinces to prevent all carrion critters disolving if there's a combat.

I use revenants for research. They research as good as the carrion lady or dryad, but are cheaper.

I let the expensive pans cast twiceborn and send them of to die against the closest enemy in my dominion. They return as undead wight mages which I think don't cost any upkeep and they get +1 to their death level.

Quik question, do shape shanging stuff like twiceborn, transformation, lycanthrope amulet work on pretenders? If yes, my crone is going to be reborn .