Re: Carrion Woods
Actually, you don't need Carrion Woods to field nice armies of manikins, and you don't need to make a pretender to cast it, if you decide to cast it at all.
For a pretender, I always take an awake Gorgon with 9E and awe. Put a rawhide shield on it (to counter the stray indie missle) and it's a province taker from turn 2. No normal indies can stand against it, and if it gets wounded, it has recuperation.
As far as getting manikins, you start off early on with your Carrion Centaurs reanimating. In your cap if necessary, but I usually move them to a nice forest with a temple. Both of those things help you reanimate more and better manikins. Granted, the centaurs don't animate very good manikins, but it's a start. And this is going to be a long haul.
Once you get the Carrion ladies, start using them along with the centaurs to reanimate. They get better manikins, and are decent mages as well. But when you get Carrion Lords, by all means drop summoning the ladies. The Lords summon the best manikins, and are awesome thugs on their own.
So, while you have been doing all this summoning and reanimating, your Gorgon has been killing indiscriminately, and hopefully your prophet has been kicking *** too with the incredibly buffed sacred Hoplites. Your enemies are not worried about manikins... they're worried about those girls. It's a bonus if you can keep your reanimation forest secret, but not essential, since they never seem to move.
About midgame things may be getting tough for you. You are Pan, after all... not a real powerhouse. This is when you unleash the 1000+ manikins, led by your Carrion Lords. It should come as a bit of a surprise, and force your enemies to change tactics drastically. Keep reanimating though. Those manikins are great, but they die like flies.
Towards the late game, if your strategy is working, then think about casting Carrion Woods. You'll have so many N gems you won't know what to do with them, and you can easily boost up a Black Pan to do the casting. If it goes down, no biggee. You are still reanimating them like crazy, and you can probably even cast it again if you like.
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