[thejeff]

But blood is easy to empower in, since blood slaves are easy to get if you have good hunters. If you don't who needs blood on the pretender anyway. Now I might take blood if I was playing a blood nation that didn't get a particular combination on it's nationals. A water/blood pretender for Abyssia to summon Ice Devils for example. Of course, you could just take the water and empower in blood and use boosters your nationals can make.

You take fire on a pretender for the bless, not the magic. If I have national fire mages, but no death, I'll sometimes take a fire/death pretender for flaming skulls.