Blood Nation Woes

[Aleph]

If you're having trouble with bless, LA Ulm might be a good place to start (in that they don't use it).

You might also try MA Abyssia for a low bless blood hunter nation - ridiculously good fire mages recruitable everywhere and no friendly fire on your own troops + demonbreds from capital make for good bloodhunters (costly, but sacred, highly mobile, and excellent in battle). Again, you'll be mixing regular troops with blood to get your power (and demonbreds are too expensive to go pure blood anyway), but boots of youth, demonbreds leading five gates raiding parties, infernal disease, and eventually Astral Corruption (backed up by Infernal Prison to let your ubermages still cast non-blood overland spells, although you'll also do fine with just fire battle magic) will let you experiment with blood while also annihilating enemies hand over fist.