Pretenders: Rainbow vs SC

[TheDemon]

Honestly I think part of the problem is a bit of a terminology confusion. SC or Rainbow to most players refers to the purpose of the pretender, not to its chassis specifically. At the very minnimum, the general purposes would be rainbow, SC, bless or scales, and they often mix it up. A rainbow with low paths can have decent scales, a minor bless build like E9 N4 can be given extra paths and function as a sleeping rainbow, a pathless wyrm with dom 10 can have incredibly good scales, the lich and ghost king chassis can be used as SCs with extra magic.

To go back to my first point, for example, an E9 N9 bless build for a giant nation usually takes medium dom, and therefore can get away with using a mage chassis like the CBM master druid. It's also unlikely to be able to afford extra paths. No one would call that pretender a Rainbow.

Honestly it's shortsighted to classify some pretenders as "other" or niche builds. The scales oracle with high astral is actually very common, as are double 9 bless builds. Sometimes you'll even take an awake titan chassis and use it as a researcher and never as an SC, like the Lord of the Gates for his freespawn or the Lord of Plenty for his gem income.



So I guess my point is to look not at the chassis as determining "rainbow" or "SC" but instead look at the end purpose.

[Lihaässä]

I tend to got with awake rainbow to maximize gem income. However last large game I played with CBM 1.5 EA Ulm and POD

Build: Sleeping Prince of Darknes
Dom:7 - Ord:3 - Pro:1 - Cold:3 - Grwth:1 - Misf:1 - Magc:1
S4 - D4 - A3

This guy got me through Caelums and Tirnaogs earlygame hostitlities. Pretender is designed to cover lategame magic as well as early fights against giants. Huge bonus is the ability to fly, which gives you freedom to pick provinces before others.

Not the most common build but works as a SC, Forger, Wisher (empovermeent needed) summoner and highly mobile battle wizard.