Carrion woods

In that particular game you would be crazy not to get as many different magic paths in order to utilize the huge magic site frequency.

I'd steer clear from Nature and Death since you have a perfectly acceptable mage of Nature and Death in the Pandemoniac. (Maybe take Nature up to 4, for getting Nature Gems ASAP, but death isn't a priority)

I'd look towards Air (since you can't make harpies), Astral (Magic Resistance and magic resistance gear is key) and then whatever else you prefer.

Use death summons like Banes for commanders (if you don't use pans) and other mages for summonable 'elite' units. Depending on what army you have your Mandragoras in (The Unholy 4 Commander) you will need other more survivable troops since most of your units, even the Behemoth looking ones, and the Ettin looking ones, have bad MR and lategame you will be staring large Groups of powerful mages in most armies.

[Pillin]

Im trying the theme out a little, my carrions seems to die if you give them a hard look tho. they get massacered against LI.. The bigger carrions are pretty nice tho, especially the trampler (75 hp).
However, when I try playing pan on a non cw theme I do expand atleast twice as fast as cw, I have more versatile mages and fast armies. Not sure if I really want to sacrifice that for the cw theme :/

[Pillin]

I actually still get harpies, they are so inexpensive that i can still build them without much difficulty.

[LordArioch]

I'd probably mess your scales up to get lots of pretender magic and rely on the high site frequency to give lots of gems for not only carrion but also other spells...your population dies anyway, so the scales won't matter long term. Maybe you can convince Ulm to build high res troops and spare you some money in the beginning.

Your dominion will tear down your homeprovince so quick it will be hard to recruit many later in the game (when you need them the most). You would have to rely on taking provinces that can stand your destructive dominion, spend the gold and turns to create a castle then recruit them. While not inconcievable, harpies die quite quickly and you'll need a good clip of them to create the effect you need (attacking the back).

What I'm saying is don't rely on anything you can build, think of it as 'bonus' and not as 'standard'.

[Norfleet]

Personally, I find Carrion Woods to be a very bad theme, because it essentially wastes a huge number of points: You're required to take Growth for it, yet you will gain nothing from having this Growth, since your population all dies anyway. As opposed to the Ashen Empire or Soul Gate themes, where the required Death scale is free points: Your population all dies anyway, so Death-3 for free points is simply beating a dead horse.

[Pillin]

Ah I see your point Zen.
Can anyone confirm that I dont get better og bigger reanimations by using someone with a higher unholy skill?