[dirtywick]

Keeping an Awakened Sage, or Enchantress maybe, with at least 2 Air, wouldn't be a bad idea. Once you get a smith with an air random, you can continually forge Quills. You'd want to get the gems early, though, so the Sage would help with that by looking manually until you get the site searching spells.

But I also think they have a problem getting SC/Thug commanders, so the pretender can fill that role. You'd be sacrificing that option. You'd have to get lucky or spend a lot of gems empowering to even get a Bane Lord.

Anyway, I agree an awakened pretender isn't really necessary unless the map is really small. Their starting army is kind of crappy, but you can build a good indie conquering force quickly.