Questions about LA Pangaea manikins

[Amhazair]

I'll be playing LA Pangaea in a MP game soon, and I have a few questions about the Manikins and how to use them.

First off, what (if anything) influences the type (& number) of Manikins you get when reanimating? corpses? temples? luck scales? growth? magic? I've run a quick test, and apparently you seem to get 1 manikin of some kind per priest level of the reanimator, regardless of other factors. Unless I missed something at least. In my test the vast majority were 'regular' chaffy humanoid or small animal types, with a few rare more useful bear, elephant, and centaur archers. I did not notice any influence from the presence of temples or corpses, though the sample size was really too small to prove anything. I only ran it with one set of scales so far. (growth 1 misfortune 2 magic 1)

Apart from those I mentioned, are there any other kinds of 'better' manikins available through reanimation that I didn't get so far? I seem to remember people mentioning using an ogre manikin or something like it as a SC chassis? I might misrember though, I definitely never saw anything like it myself.

You can get reanimators by using Pan's national spells in the enchantment tree, there are H1, H2 and H3 versions. Any prophetised undead can reanimate them, and any exotic trick you use to produce undead priests will presumably also allow manikin reanimation. The Carrion Woods global will produce manikins, and there are manikin and mandragora summoning spells in the construction tree. Did I miss any other means of acquiring manikins?

And then, finally - but most importantly - how useful do you rate them? Their sleep vines attacks definitely are nice, and lifts them above regular undead, but their stats are absolutely crapastic and they are of course vulnerable to all the usual undead counters. The national holy spells aren't bad, but it's not like Pangaea is swimming in holy magic, so basically it'll be the same national summons you want to use for reanimation who'll have to do the buffing. Meaning they'll no longer be reanimating. Bottom line: I have my doubts about paying 25 gems for a summon who will then be able to reanimate the grand total of three chaff units per turn. Not to mention the research necessary. So what's the opinion of people who have used them already? Am I missing something? How have you made use of the Manikin spell line with Pangaea?