[Maerlande]

I disagree greatly with you militarist. I am on turn 79 of my LA TC game and in a near fight for the win with Jomon. It's not clear who has the advantage at the moment.

Here are some comments:

I took an imprisoned master lich with E9D9 wacky scales and Dom6. Its amazing. I don't recommend that build again but some parts of it are wonderful. You have near the best mages in LA all of which are sacred and a bunch of them excellent thugs with no gear and a bless.

For expansion, an ancestor smith leading 5 blessed ancestor vessels can take any independent province without losses. You can make one of those every turn with only Dom 5
That's 6 expansion parties by turn 6. Your initial expansion far surpasses a single awake pretender who can still only take one province a turn. I killed my first opponent by the end of year 1. It was Caelum and 5 of my AV's killed 10 of his mammoths with support troops. Until someone can field evocations, AV's are unstoppable with a bless.

You also have dirt cheap recruitable thugs under CBM. Khans have fear. With 5 heavy cavalry a Khan can take out a very large chaff army. And so what if he dies? He cost you zero gems. Or if you want, stick a demon whip on him for fun.

Ancestor smiths make great thugs with just Alt 3 and Conj 3.

The death bless is not required. However, there is nothing quite as satisfying as 20 AV's set to fire crippling 50 giants before they close. And when they close the AV's eat them. Add that to some evocations or mind burns and you have a lot of dead giants.

I sent AV's at a ratio of about 1:2 against vans. Almost lossless for me and the only Vans leaving were terribly crippled.

When my game is over I plan to write a new guide. The point of this build was massed magic with a few AV's. I never did make a lot but since I expanded fastest of everyone I just rushed people. My opponent with Jomon has gone with a turtle strategy and that may win. It's very hard to tell. However, TC is a mage bless nation IMO and any mage bless does wonders for AV's which is just gravy.