[Cohen]

Well, I've miswriten about Warlock, in fact I said in parentesys paralize, mind burn and such.
True Abysya uses Warlocks only when menaced, but it's pretty rare to see them in battle. You need them for blood hunt and research.

About a bless strategy, I've tried it once, and I will never try it again with Abysya.
Blessed troops are capitol only, cost a lot of resources and are far inferior to most other blessed troops. They can get easily arrowed (no shield, unless you go BoH ... but really there you lack in magic), and a plague or anything else in your capitol will cripple your holy troops production forever.
Sometimes I tried an AX bless to air shield Anthemaths, but nothing for troops.

Ant.Dragon is useful earlygame for keeping your morale high. But Aby troops really needs more than 1 priest behind them to keep them in line, their low number makes them easy to rout even from LI armed with javelins, or arrow fire.

Scales in the mod have been modified too to make them a good choice too (production, growth and fortune), or to make them less exploitable to earn points.

Yes I belong to the SC Pretender School. I tried other strategies (Great Warlock with air to Aim and good Fire to exploit flare at low fatigue, + water to quickness - Moloch as F9 blessing and massive fire battery - FoB to start early blood hunt and swith to devil earlier). Definitely it's the best way to lose, as the game it is. Any pretender, at least with Abysya, unable to take province by solo will make you dead. Any enemy can take 1 province with army, and 1 with pretender (til they get a 2nd army). Considering if your army is routed you're going to lose all your HI, and that you'll put 4 turn to set up a +/- 16 HI army this will totally halt your expansion.

To keep the pace you need so 1 army and 1 pretender to take possibly 2 provinces at turn, earn more money, and thus save Fire Gems ... because isn't an option to alchemize, it's a must for Abysya if you want to stay competitive, meanwhile other nations can recruit normally, and save their gems for later.