[rdonj]

Well, you might be able to play decently without a bless, it's just very hard. Your units are pretty resource-expensive for what they're worth, and of course normal gold costs. And then they need several priests with each army to cast holy spells to keep your units alive. And your units are vulnerable to banish, dust to dust, and wither bones, the last one especially deadly to you. Their high mr is a bit of a mixed blessing since it makes the holy spells less effective. But they're much more useful on normal units than the astral blessed sacreds I had in our game.

Anyway, your early magic research is going to be hurt a lot from having to use so many priests early on, or you're going to have to take production.

It's possible you could do without a bless but it would make a lot of units much weaker.