Urgent Thug advice needed

[Hoplosternum]

I appear to have blundered in to a MP game for newbies and now find that some newbies are more newbie than others. And I certainly fall in to the former category So I am hoping to get a bit of advice without giving my whole position away. But as this is a newbie game I am taking it as a bit of a learning experience anyway so if this thread invites my destruction thats just too bad And hopefully any advice will be useful to me and others in later games.

I am looking for some Thug advice specifically. Hopefully before its too late My typical thugs leave something to be desired - usually being something like a Commander weighed down by expensive magic items

Here is my game position. Sorry for not being completely open but these boards may have enemy eyes upon them

We are in what I imagine would be called the mid game....

The only magic path I am weak in is Blood. I have a small blood economy but have done little research here and I have no blood & fire/water combination mages. But if pure blood is worth pursuing (or blood/astral/death combinations) I can expand my blood economy and research here relatively quickly. Every other path I can put together a decent levelled mage with boosters including most combinations.

I can construct just about anything I want. Sadly gems are not unlimited and I am especially short of fire gems - while having decent astral & earth incomes.

But what sort of equipment is best for thugs?

I have a relatively low Summon & Enchant research levels at the moment, but have a 20% discount site for the latter.

I don't have a decent national Thug chassis - either summons or recruitable. So I'll need to summon those commonly available to all.

So what should I summon as thugs or should I even summon thugs at all?

What level in Enchantment or Summon do I need before I can summon a reasonable chassis?

Limited Gift of Reasons are an (expensive) option. Presumably this is not worth doing on a Behemoth or Gargoyle type unit but should wait for a 'proper' SC chassis? And is this worth doing to get the slots or do you really need to start empowering to make this worth while?

Or should I not bother with further Thugs and just wait for SCs or go with none leader summons (Gargoyles etc.)?

I am a lot closer to Iron Dragons/Jugganauts/Siege Golems than I am to Abominations & Tartarians. But I imagine any Thug chassis will be found on the way to the later and I can always reuse the Thug equipment on SCs when I get to them? Which way should I research?

Mage support of most paths and combinations including communions are an option. I don't have any thugable mages but could communions themselves be an alternative to thugs and so should I just go for more battlefield magic protected by chaff instead?

All advice gratefully received.