[militarist]

Psycho, I agree that fatigue should be spent on in-battle rebirth rather then spell casting,that's why I hold xx and attack. As for bless - I would support this idea if they had no chariots, which are very good, plus I just want some diversity - I play several games, and in many with strong bless, but there nations are bless nations.

The only thing I'm strongly disagree - "But he can only take on weaker provinces." When you are expanding solo, your biggest problem is not death of pretender (which can be avoided by avoiding heavy cavalry, dark vines, etc), but getting affictions. And here immortal pretender is much safer. Especially when you strategically need to get some heavy protected privince. Phoenix is the only pretender you can use in early game to soften it.

The situation when Phoenix is not the best - on medium provinces, where he can loose extra turn, and provinces with no friendly dominion, which still could be taken by stronger pretender, especially with awe.

But really, for the price of phoenix without real need to get high dominion to get those expensive AWEs you will not find anything even close by effect.