[13lackGu4rd]

as others have said, pretender choices are a lot more complex than what you've done in this poll. moreover, you can't really set the specific nations aside, as the nation you play plays a major roll in your pretender selection. for example, nations with horrible early expansion such as EA Agartha, UW nations(barring MA Oceania), etc just scream for an awake SC pretender to allow them to set off the ground. others like Mictlan, Lanka, etc scream for a bless strategy due to their awesome sacreds but otherwise very unimpressive national armies. others like Sauromatia, Vanheim(MA+Midgard less for EA), etc have awesome national armies to expand with, thus can greatly benefit from having strong scales or perhaps the magic diversity of a Rainbow. there is also the high Astral pretender for late game, mainly the Oracle, which can be used both in a bless(S9+?) or in a high scales strategy.

also, among SCs, there are the short term type(such as the Wyrm and that under water Octopus) who have terrible item slots, hence lose a lot of their effectiveness in mid-late game. others like the Cyclops, GK, PoD, etc have all the normal slots so they can function as mid-late game SCs with good items on them. also, some bless pretenders such as a F9+? imprisoned Moloch(for Mictlan and other nations that benefit greatly from F9 bless) are mainly a bless chassis but once awake they too can function as mid-late game SCs with items.

there are others of course, such as a scale based Titan pretender, gem generating pretender(Great Enchantress, Mother of Rivers, Lord of Rebirth, etc), the Forge Lord, etc.

thus there can never really be a favorite pretender, as it greatly depends on which nation you play, also the game settings, other players, etc can and should factor into yout pretender selection.