[Micah]

I think he has a niche, though it is a pretty small one. I think I'd likely give him a serious look for the monkey nations, especially Bandar Log and Patala. They have pretty crappy sacreds out of the box, starting E income to pound him out some armor quickly, good S access so you don't have to give him a magic duel Achilles Heel, and they benefit from taking air, which you'll want for air shield for early expansion (it helps a lot since arrows > awe) and they don't have D to start, which he also has. They also don't need production, which frees up points to play with.

A GK can SC out the gate with air shield and awe, since his high defense + eth makes him pretty resilient to normal melee attacks. You'll get an unlucky hit eventually, but you have to hope that'll come after you can get some armor on him or some buffs up...ironskin is a life saver. Later on in the game he becomes pretty effective with cloud trapeze and stealth to be a spot-killer, and he'll come in with a ton of extra HP to those encounters since you can port straight out of your cap or other high-dominion location.