[Nick_K]

Blood has some excellent low-level summons. Fiends of darkness don't require any other paths and you don't need many to make a big difference early on. Spine devils are excellent in terms of raw combat stats for the price, but don't fly. If you have elemental magic then any of the 4 elemental/blood lesser demons could be good. I especially like devils (best raw combat stats) and demon knights (huge prot, fear... easily better than, say, Ulm's black knights)

I dislike blood battle magic - the micro needed when every spell costs slaves is just too much hassle. I also don't like serpent fiends or bone devils.