[velk]

Of course, sending an SC pretender out to kill a single random enemy commander seems to be a little excessive, especially when you can just kill the entire army.....but hey.

That's why a pretender with innate assassinate is vastly more powerful than a lord of the night with a black heart. It takes *time* to get the black heart, by the time you have it the loss of a single random commander has a relatively small chance of a major impact on armies. During the first 10-15 turns having your commanders repeatedly assassinated by a virtually invicible pretender is crippling, and doesn't suffer the drawback of regular assassins ( specifically you aren't using the 1/comander turn to churn out mages and melee commanders )