[KissBlade]

I should probably backup why I view MA Argatha and MA TC as "weaker" than MA Ulm. Assuming all equal player skills, MA Ulm doesn't share several notable problems with MA Argatha/MA TC. MA Ulm can effectively research only evocation to help with its military. You can branch off into construction for diplomacy but for the most part, they have a very straight forward approach when it comes to preparing for war. Its early game, while not spectacular due to the lack of archers, is decent since most of its troops match well against indies in MA. (Xbows/Cavs/Knights are rare in MA) You get a decent amount of free points from Drain to spend on your pretender and you don't need to make him a thug right off the bat since thugs are often used to help with fast exp/harrassment. Also smiths (if I recall) can take an arrow better than most mages. This lets you shuffle them closer to the front lines which is important to help aiming spells.

MA Argatha does have strengths in umbrals and golems but as you've already mentioned they're in seperate skill trees. Worse Umbrals require death gems and you don't start with any of them in generation not to mention your only death gem searcher has d1 AND costs 400g's. Very hefty and deftly not something that lets you flow in death gems early game. Statues are great but slow to acquire. Thus your initial few turns generally will feel very clunky especially due to the subpar attack/precision on your troops. This means in most games, you feel the heat pretty early on as the first few turns are often the land grab turns and you'll be left behind if you don't invest in an awakened pretender. Which is even less points for you to have especially since you are mostly likely going with magic 3 to get your summons up asap. I'm not arguing against what results you may have encountered, I'm simply stating my view of the situation. I have seen MA Argatha do decent and I have seen them flop. But the same I could say for MA Ulm.

MA TC is already realized by many to be problematic so I won't go too indepth with it. While they may look magically diverse, they are actually not very. Their path synergies to almost nothing useful at all especially since their best capital only mages are easily astral dueled away AND often the main things you're hoping for is the A3 thunderstrikers which are pretty damn rare. Summon wise, they are also pretty poor since they lack death magic and only possess minimum nature magic. They can craft nice items with their skill tree, which is decent since you're going to need a SC chassis with them. Sadly enough, MA TC's main strat is consort spamming and that simply doesn't suffice for the mid => late game scenarios where call of the wind is cheap and easy.