[VedalkenBear]

I'm a bit leery of a bless strategy in general unless you get outstanding rewards. The Knights... well, they _are_ rather up there, but I don't see them as quite good enough.

Personally, I'd go with extremely good scales, and use Mermidons. They're excellent no matter where you go, can be massed fairly easily, and considering the ease that you find Kelp Castles, very few worries about mix/matching. I'll note that your mages aren't that bad at all with helping expansion.

As far as Pretenders, I see two primary options. One is to make an Astral Pretender to take advantage of your excellent Clamming ability. The other is to take a no-magic pretender (like a Wyrm, if you can) to maximize the points you can put into scales.

Regarding MA Rlyeh... IIRC your troops have fairly good MR. The Centaurs can definitely be effective in outmaneuvering Rlyeh, especially when combined with a high-Astral bless to give them even better MR.

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts.