Alneyan
Very good and informative post, thanks
However for the setup you describe I don't think the Virtue is the best choice ; a GK is cheaper and immortal, a Titan is marginally cheaper and more sturdy (they dont'fly naturally though).
And your scales are real crap, you'll have a hard time getting conventional early game armies, then you'll have decreasing gold due to heavy Death scale...
Personally I use high path costs Pretenders mostly for focused magic/high level bless (F9A9 Virtue, or even S9F9 Oracle) , and prefer to have 3, less often 4-paths SCs out of Nataraja, Moloch, Titans or other high-HP chassis.
Immortals are somewhat special as they allow to get reusable killers, and thus profit from having varied magic (think of it as "payloads"
).
Then you have the good'ol Rainbow, that you can mix with Immortal chassis to have very effective pretenders out of a GK or Lich.