[thejeff]

Those are essentially my conclusions as well.

Except to nit-pick that you can't get to Death through Lamia Queens without already having some.

I never tried make Lord Warden thugs, without a bless they didn't seem at all up to it.
I did use some KoA and they did well, especially fog warriored and regenerating, but never had many of them.
A KoA thuggable commander would be nice. More survivable than the Lord Warden. The 3 move is just icing on the cake.

I hadn't thought of using the dogs as stealth raiders. Possible, especially since Mothers are stealthy. Still, they're expensive for what you get, unless you get a bless for them.

I'd disagree with the comments about the Crone's diversity. A chance at 1E or 1W is diverse magic? Water can at least get to 2 for site searching, but 1 Earth is largely useless.
The high Nature is good, but they don't have enough Air for boosters or Air Queens, so the pretender has to cover that.
I'd really like to see a little more magic on the Crones. They really need a decent chance at Air 4. Maybe bump up the 10% random, or have separate 10% chances at Air, Earth and Water.
Or some national mage summons?

I think you can get away with a sleeping pretender, longbows and lightning spam will keep most nations from rushing you right away. That's good because you need the points. Death access, Air boosters, maybe Astral (RoW instead of Air boosters), Earth for hammers and boots would be nice.

Most of the discussion has been about Man as an Air nation, but they've actually got better Nature magic. Is there any way to capitalize on that? I wasn't able to find one. There doesn't seem much synergy between the two. (Though Fog Warriors and Mass Regen makes for long battles)