[Poopsi]

Blood and astral are a good combo. Astral by itself has many good spells, both battlefield(soul slay, astral geyser, master enslave, communions), and out of it (wish, strands, etc...). Blood sort of has all sorts of spells which would fit in other categories, only they are cheaper by virtue of using blood slaves. Plus, with astral you get the nifty send horror spells. It might be interesting to use astral corruption as well, albeit it will force you to focus on blood spells.

I think that taking blood in the pretender is not a good idea, through, as the bless is very bad, and you can boost blood easily thanks to the high ammount of slaves you´ll get.

If anything, I´d include enough blood dots to break into blood if you dont have native blood hunters. Otherwise just boost your god's power through mass human sacrifice.

In fact, here is an idea: take a SC pretender with a blood nation, and when his SCness starts to be challenged, turn him into the uber-blood god through mass empowerments.