[Dragar]

It's a tough choice when you see a rainbow pretender walking around early in the game.. do you go for the kill or let him search for a bit longer first?

For the main topic, I hadn't notice the cost drop in CBM 1.5, very interesting. It is still a pretty niche use though, worthwhile occasionally but generally not. Excluding conjuration bonus sites, I'd say the main driver to use it would have to be good astral income combined with other strong reasons to charge up the conjuration path before getting level 2 in thaum and evoc.

Certainly I'd say the main reason to use AR would be diversification, in particular if your nation is very limited in path selection and you aren't using your pretender to diversify.