[Pablomatic]

I'm no master at this, but I have found the Freak Lord to be useful. I started taking him with LA Jomon (mainly in vanilla because they need more help there). He is a rainbow pretender, but can be used as a light SC for early expansion once you get alteration 3.

This assumes you give him some air, astral, and earth. He can mistform, invulnerability, etherealness, attack rear. He tramples human sized opponents and spreads fear. Of course he needs a decoy element on the other flank to distract the first wave of melee troops, but even if he ends up attacking them, I have yet to see him come to grief against reasonable indies. He can reliably and safely add to expansion in this way, and then start site-searching when expansion is done. The one blood can be useful, or can be ignored. I like him for the trample, the fear, the cost, and the low cost of adding paths.

Sure a real SC is superior to him, but remember he has the added advantage of being a rainbow.

I guess I find him to be the only hybrid rainbow/SC expander available. He can do both if used properly, and the extra misc. slot can be an advantage as Omnikron pointed out.