[Shovah32]

Today (after reading this) i tried a f9w9(though i usually dont like big blesses) imprisoned mother of rivers with drain 1 (i went for few big mages), sloth 3, misfortune 1 or 2 and some order and growth+dominion 6. I took my starter army, added 12 warriors of the 5 elements (and recruited 6 more per turn which i occasionally added to the army) and cut through lvl7 indies like a hot knife through butter.

The warriors get very high attack, 19 defence and 50% quickness combined with 2 base attacks and flaming weapons. With them just behind the starting infantry and my archers set to target archers (and my prophetised noble casting divine blessing and smite) it felt almost too easy (after conquering 6 provinces i had lost 4 pikemen and 1 warrior of the 5 elements...) so, after meeting my enemy i established a border and withdrew this army.

I searched all my provinces with a combination of remote searching spells and CMs and quickly made a good amount of raiders (CM's with a few cheap boosters/reinvig items leading celestial hounds) that i didnt use right away (doing so ell felt like cheating)and while building them my pretender emerged. After making around 6 squads of 1 CM and 10 hounds each i flew into enemy lands, destroying all the temples i could find and the hitting his high income provinces (turning tax's to 200 i had a huge income). Eventually i felt the need for SC's(would have went for them earlier in mp obviousy) so had my pretender summon a fire king who was quickly kitted out and sent into battle, destroying all in his path.

This was only against hard ai's but, it seems S&A is very strong with cheap, 2 attack, high defence sacreds and powerful mages and cavalry. The only weakness i can really see for them is, unless your pretender has good paths getting decent Thugs/SC's could be hard without some empowerment.