[KissBlade]

I'm not certain if I see helheim being a weak late game nation. Access to death and earth is pretty strong and death opens astral for you anyway. With an imprisoned master druid under cbm, you get something like e9w9n4s1 with order 3, sloth 3, cold 3, death 1, misf 1, magic 1 dom 4(or splash to some other chassis for b4 instead of n4 ) and your valkyries will absolutely dominate any standard troops you face. Archers get screened by serfs easily if you really worry (you start with like 20 screens anyway). mid game you still have access to the same skull mentors and your valkyries will still kick the crap out of any pd's with thug Han's if they really crank it up. Late game you still get blood/death magic which is better than a lot of other nations can garner. The only real advantage to an awake pretender IMO is that you're gambling on enough death sites to make conjuration 4 pay off big time and that's a bit too idealistic isn't it? Not to mention, the BIG graphs that good players look at are your research and gem income so with a subpar bless and an assumable lead in those two researching construction 8 as your priority, you're not making many friends any time soon.