[Taqwus]

I found the masses of mandragoras rather interesting, myself. Each length-5 Sleep Vine gets up to three attacks per turn, for 33 armor-negating fatigue points each. But you do need to have a large critical mass; even pretty hefty numbers get slaughtered by knights and longbowmen or even HI+crossbows, due to lack of shield, armor, speed, or good back-up battle magic (compared to death). So early expansion might be slower than Ermor.

AE (and especially SG, which gets free unholy priests) wins the leader race -- CW doesn't get free leaders auto-spawning, nor do even its Carrion Lords have death magic, so it can't chain-summon the way Ermorian Dusk Elders can.

There may also be a bug with Puppet Mastery; I've watched it be cast over and over, on large hordes, and through random right-clicking have never, ever seen it actually appear to get through unit MR. Perhaps it's not working, or perhaps it does but the bonuses don't show. It's mostly a waste of a leader's turn.