Looking for help from all the Pros!

[quantum_mechani]

Your best bet for a pretender is either a carrion dragon (great early fighter), or ghost king (combat doesn't kick in until a bit later, but more magical versatility).

In either case, you will at minimum want to put water (for quickness and breath of winter) and earth (for casting ironskin and later on forging dwarven hammers). The rest of the paths you can probably go either way (skip blood though, your pop dies to quick for that), however you will very likely want air and fire as well.

For scales, you should go as Ermor like as possible, as you won't be able to do much with gold for long anyway. The growth 1 is forced, but you can take full turmoil, sloth, and heat (and optionally full misfortune, it doesn't hurt you to much with population dying anyway). Make sure to take magic 3, research will be hard enough as it is. A watch tower is the castle of choice.

As far as troops, you will want to actually buy the minimum possible, and save gold for back dryads to research, and one or two panic apostles to summon and search. If you do use a few gold-cost troops though, use saytr hoplites.

Lastly, as far as spending your gems, don't overstock on carrion lords with your nature gems. Carrion ladies and centaurs are more efficient for re-animating.