[thejeff]

Not really. At least compared to not having SDRs at all.

If you put SDRs at B2B2, they'd cost 20 Blood, that's only 5 less than an actual booster. Do people really spam 25 slave boosters just to hunt with?
If you only have B1 mages then you'd have to empower to forge them, but if you only have B1 mages, you're going to empower anyway since you can't do anything with just B1s.
You'll start off slower than nations with B2s, but once you've got a B2 or two you'll start keeping up.

The nations with cheap B1's still won't forge much. It's cheaper to just spam Mictlan priests than to equip them all. The nations with recruit anywhere B2+s will use them. It's the nations with expensive, random or capital only B1s who'll make use of expensive SDRs.