[Boron]

Panther's bless suggestion is good but a few considerations:
For a mere F9 bless a moloch is the best pretender, no other pretender gets F9 bless cheaper. A F9 Moloch with fire darts+ your starting troops are enough to take weaker indies.
Meanwhile make a lvl 3 van mage your priest and start building vans and alchemize your earthgems for gold.
Soon you have a van army also going.

Problems with Vanheim though:
-No natural lvl4 Priests, so only your prophet can do the battlefield wide bless.
The normal blessing has a rather small area of effect so you need 2-3 to bless about 20 vans.
-Vans are quite expensive, so a dualbless is prohibiting expensive. So Vans are only the 2nd-best blessable troop.
Place 1 goes to the jaguar warrior.