[Ironhawk]

Yeah Water and Blood seems like the way you'd want to go. Traditionally, F9W9 is the uber bless for the Vans. Technically speaking if you can only manage to get one major bless for the Vans, F9 is best since it results in the greatest damage potential. But W9B4 would be usable if you planned on relying on blessed units since it would also give you quick access to Ice Devils.

Also note that blood hunting requires an implicit sacrifice of gold income. Which can be pretty tricky if you are relying on the Vans as your troop backbone since they are pretty pricey (even tho they get the sacred upkeep bonus). And one other thing about the Vans in general: thier achilles heel is thier vulernability to missle fire. Not that they will roll over and die like militia, but for such an expensive unit, that it so easily targetted with orders, its something to keep in mind.

I'd also echo a comment made earlier that the low devil spells (Frost fiends, bone devils, devils, etc) are very mage intensive. So if only your pretender is equipped to cast them, then you really wont be able to turn out any kind of realistic sized forces. To do that you'd need a staff of mages like only Mictlan and Abysia can really provide in the early game. My suggestion to you is this: if you have normal/easy research just go straight for Ice Devils, give them lifedrain and send them out. If you have hard/vhard research, go up to B5 on your pretender and shoot immediately for Soul Contracts (Const) only later devling into Blood research. Soul Contracts effectively allow you to parallelize the summoning of Devils given only a single blood mage since you can hand them out to Scouts and whatnot. And of course dont forget the Dwarven Hammers if you are playing the theme that gets those 3E mages.