Involuntary Shape Shifting and Items...?

[Agrajag]

NTJedi said:
The death match is never worthwhile to attend during singleplayer games unless you have a diseased/dying commander looking for a more honorable death.

That's not entirely true.
First of all, if the deathmatch takes place very very early in the game, it could be worthwhile to send good commander to take the trident, which can be useful early on, especially on above-average recruitable commanders, which can be easily replaced. And if that commander is also immortal, that means you could easily get rid of the item and avoid having to participate in future matches (by suiciding in your own dominion).
Second, since the AI seems to send his pretender to the death match (and more often than not - quite weak pretenders), it may be wortwhile to send in a powerful thug or SC to kill the pretender and cripple the AI a bit.

EDIT: Just to clarify - I still think that most of the time the deathmatch seems quite useless, but it has its uses, and is quite interesting