Good Pretender design for Marverni?

[Edi]

I'm playing a co-op hotseat game with a friend where he has Marverni. He took a dormant F9 phoenix and enough production to be able to crank out a good number of sacred troops, which he promptly used to squash the indies around him. With hard research and powerful indies, the first 12 turns allowed him to get research up to spec so that the phoenix was usable as an artillery platform against indies by the time it awakened. Don't know how useful that would be in MP, though.

Marverni can make use of several evocation and thaumaturgy based magic strategies, especially when coupled with certain magic and penetration boosters.

The last thing they need is a rainbow pretender.

Edi