I have more or less overcome my drain-3 research, actually. Mictlan can (barely) afford it because its dominion doesnt spread automatically, so I've moved all my researchers to another castle.
And the scales - well, try to squeeze a good bless in vanilla Dominion without sacrificing your scales. Mictlan is all about bless, after all. And Monolith allowed me to take N4 bless in addition to astral/fire.
All in all, it may not be THE best choice, but it was solid enough. I think I'd have a very good chance at winning the game, were it not LA Ermor in this game and Arco gone AI.
At the very least, we'd have quite a war over the throne.
Gratz.