[Verjigorm]

I favor the Immortal Thug chassis. They can't truly be considered SCs since most are too weak to defeat an army on their own, but they can be very powerful when paired with some meat shields.

The Phoenix has paths that are too expensive to be rainbow (60), but this Phoenix build is great for a nation that starts slow:

Phoenix (Body 608, 15 hits)
Magic: Fire 6 Air 3 Astral 7
Dominion 6
Scales: Order 3 Sloth 3 Heat 3 Misfortune 2
Awake

Pretty high precision, deadly fire magic (Astral Fires, Falling Fires, very strong Hydrophobia, etc.) can craft air boosters once you get rings, can cast Wish late game. Low income is the basic problem I had with this particular build, but she's very effective for a long time.

The Master Lich chassis is usually done as a partial rainbow due to his cost--taking him awake allows him to site search early like a rainbow, but as the game progresses he becomes incredibly deadly in combat even with his extremely low hp.

The Lich (40-path) is an excellent combatant even early in the game given a tiny bit of alteration magic.

I haven't used VQ since Dom2.

Immortal pretenders don't really fit into the SC category or into the rainbow category (with the exception of the Master Lich), so I would be in the other column.

The big SCs (titans and similar) are very powerful combatants, but once the game progresses, you can't use them for their original purpose as well because once a player sees you fighting with your SC, they'll use several tactics to put the SC pretender out of commission (relegated to lab duty) or kill them indirectly.

1. Stacked Horror Marks
2. BBOB, Vision's Foe especially if you don't have national healers.

I find that for that reason I tend not to pick titans.

I would say that my list goes:

1. Awake Immortal Thug
2. Awake Rainbow
3. Dormant/Sleeping bless or excellent scales

Any time an SC pretender is called for in a strategy, it is usually because you need something to attack or defend with. Since I'd rather be able to throw my pretender at anything I want and not have to worry about him dying, I love Immortals. The CBM phoenix explodes with Phoenix Pyre, so it can still kill indies even without any spell research.