Good Pretender design for Marverni?

[Graeme Dice]

SelfishGene said:
First, i think Marverni should take 3 Productivity, because this underpowered nation doesn't stand a chance unless it can really pump out the troops (and even then it might not matter in the long run).

That's probably a decent idea, so that you can get more Ambibate nobles, which are almost as good as principes.

OTOH, i think that a "Rainbow" Pretender with 3 or 4s in many path would be preferable because you'll need lots of summons and magic in order to survive.

I can think of few situations in which you'd want a rainbow pretender. A magically diverse nation like Marverni is definetly not one of them. You have guaranteed access to astral, nature, and earth site searching spells, and are likely to eventually have a water 2 druid.

PLUS, you HAVE to have blood on your Pretender (and preferably high scales) in order to make any use of the Blood Sacrifice ability....

Don't waste your pretender's time by having him search for blood slaves. Use scouts for blood hunting if you need slaves and have no blood mages available.

Or you could wreck the scales and make a Vampire Queen SC Pretender, but this isn't very thematic or unique to Marverni's abilities in any event, since anyone can do that...

Realistically, if you aren't planning a bless strategy for a nation, and aren't underwater where you won't have to deal with land-based sacred troops, then I would almost always pick a SC pretender. Doubling your expansion rate is a hard thing to pass up just for a potential minor advantage later in the game. That said, I definetly wouldn't use a VQ, since she's extremely overpriced.