Early Arcoscephale - Ephebophilia incarnate

[Alpine Joe]

I have a couple problems with this build:

1. dormant pretender: The pretender you have is pretty expensive and not really affordable awake. But you have sloth scales so without an awake pretender expansion is going to be really rough. And what if you run into an aggressive neighbor before your pretender pops out? EA Arco is a common rush target and EA is full of big nasty dual blessed sacreds looking for a tasty target just like you. Sure, sometimes you get lucky, but you cant really count on that. You really have nothing capable of withstanding say, a dual -blessed jag/sun warrior rush until your pretender arrives. Hell, a few skinshifters can annihilate you in the fall or winter, since you'll have nothing that can stop them.

2. You have national healers. Why not get an awake SC pretender who can be healed by them? The virtue or wyrm are the best choices here because, well, why not use healing if you have it. The POD gives you access to death magic, but conjuration isn't a big school for arco. You are much better off leveraging your huge research to construction and outfitting golems instead.

I'm sort of a noob so i'd love to hear the reasons the above is stupid.