Involuntary Shape Shifting and Items...?

[NTJedi]

Agrajag said:

That's not entirely true.
First of all, if the deathmatch takes place very very early in the game, it could be worthwhile to send good commander to take the trident, ........

Well if you're only playing against two AI opponents this can work. Usually the single player games I do have at least 7 AI opponents... thus sending any good commander during early game is still suicidal since one or more opponents could be a dragon, wyrm, lich or some other powerful pretender.

Agrajag said:
Second, since the AI seems to send his pretender to the death match (and more often than not - quite weak pretenders), it may be wortwhile to send in a powerful thug or SC to kill the pretender and cripple the AI a bit.

I've never seen weak little mage pretenders sent into the death match... and I've played many games. There's so many opponents already attending the death match that your SC will do little or no effect for the results. Whether you send someone or not all of them will die except one. And the one which wins will most likely never meet your SC. As a test see how often you win the death match early game against 10 AI opponents... after a few of these tests you'll see it's better just to sit in the stadium and watch the results.