[Executor]

WL - I have no idea how M goes with L. It would be nice if it gave more gems certainly.
I find no use for any troops but cavalry. The starting army is just dreadful, it can pretty much be compared to militia. I think even some light indie infantry would kick their ***. And their use as archers is unexisting, doe you could use them with WG and FA but, you can get far better indie archers, well unless you're a cheap bastard and would rather trade 2 gold per unit for a -2 precision per unit.

Anyway, the starting army can usually take the first province on turn 2. Make 5 of those archer cavalry, they are very good, and a smiter of course.
In some cases, like Demon stated you might get blown away by indies, cause the Voi troops moral is horrific.

As for early spells, I find sulphur haze can rout just about anything due to it's poisonous effect, it really synergies well with undead chaff but you need some small communion for that.
In any case, you have A/F 2/3 path accessibility with Starets. The ones with 2F can cast phoenix power and spam living fire with additional gems.
The A3 ones can cast it the same way. Or again you can use a communion, doe I think that would kill the slaves pretty fast.

One mage should be able to cast at least 2 Living somethings during the battle and that's a fair amount. Gems shouldn't be a problem and the living something spells go well with sulphur haze since the elementals are poison immune of course, and mindless, meaning they won't rout, and can inflict elemental damage that can save you even from bless nations and regenerative giants.
Also, the elementals pretty much eliminate a threat from any early SC pretender, thug or whatever as one can seldom make a F/A resistant high MR unit (communion paralyze of course) so early on which still has good defensive capabilities and wont get killed.

thejeff - given Bogarus magic diversity I'm not sure it would be a very good decision to waste points on taking nature and even more by taking a dormant pretender so he can site search nature. That's a whole lot of trouble for a path that has quite common indie mages. If worst come to worst you can empower to level 2 or use a ring for forging boosters.
Empowering to blood is always cheap so you can even forge that blood/nature armor for a +1BN.

I think we have pretty much any issue covered, the only risk here is getting stuck with some tougher indies in the start which might slow down your expansion a bit more, other than that Bogarus is set for just about anything.

Oh, and Shadrach, I believe Startsy is plural.