[Saxon]

One way I had seen to blow points was to take a pretender with a high cost for new paths, then make a rainbow pretender.

I am not sure the games would be boring, as you would still play dominions, but with a nation largely bereft of help from your pretender. Bless strategies would largely be out, which would face people to use the other strategies more innovatively. If nothing else, it would end the complaints about bless rushes! However, a few nations would probably be essentially useless. I am thinking Mictlan without bless would have a tough life…

Ok, how about this idea. You design pretenders/nations, then they all get put into a pool and randomly distributed among players. What strategy do you use for designing, knowing that you may, or may not, get it? Do you do a decent design, assuming everyone else does or do you design a dud in the hopes someone else gets it?