[Vynd]

I would not make Ascashic Record a pirority with S&A. It seems to me that one of S&A's biggest strengths is the site searching ability of their mages. Going for Ascashic will pretty much ignore this.

I like the idea of taking a combat pretender like a VQ. Use the Pretender to capture territory and spend your limited funds on mages. Use a few mages for site searching and/or site searching spells, and pour the rest into research. Then use your hopefully strong gem income to make up for your poor money income by using lots of summoning spells. If you give your Pretender reasonably strong magic in two or three paths then he can make some magic boosting items for your low level mages. And then your low level mages can forge lots of equipment to slap on Bane Lords and the like.