pretender magic paths advice/midgard strat talk

[Aezeal]

I'm gonna play midgard in a MP game and I've already decided I'm not gonna go for a bless strat (comments on that decision are welcome too) because IMHO the van's are a bit expensive and with them being capital only in the end the bless won't be that important for my game.

my idea's
I figure the shapeshifters are nice units (read that elsewhere too) and low on resources so I guess I'll start pumping them from the start. My few turn experience showed me the berserkers (einhere) are pretty resourse expensive but they do seem to break to indies without much losses so when I have low cash and resources in abundance I'll take them too. The rest of the units don't look that appealing really.
For research I'll take the volva (stacks with their luck ability), for combat the galderman though they will probably do a bit of both really.

The van leaders are a bit expensive and not that good in magic and a bit low on HP to be real good combatants, but they do have a nice high defense so I guess I can use em for that especially with larger armies, the magic is a nice addition then though I'm not that impressed.

I think blood will not be that easy to play so the blood seems a bit wasted though you are paying for it.

Now my real problem is:
I'm going to play relatively high scales in order, productivity, at least neutral in growth, of course -1 cold. probably neutral magic, I'm figuring that with the order (3?) and the volva I SHOULD take a negative luck scale.
(comments on this part of my thoughts are certainly welcome too)

For research I'll go for anything that disables missiles getting at my troops and direct damage --> evocation seems THE path I'll be using (lightning, thunderstrike, mist, storm if I can get some mage to A4, fogwarriors maybe even for the hardest fights later on (how to get a A5 mage though?) and then probably some alt, construction, conjuration etc (advice is welcome)

Ok that are my thoughts so far..

My MAIN problem is: what to do with my pretender, what sort of magic paths to choose?
-high death for some tartarians? (but who will GoR them?)
-Astral?
what can my pretender do? site search? summon later on?
I need idea's for the picks on my pretender and linked to this I need to have a purpose for my pretender what should I do with it
This usually is my problem I need midgard advice now but a general good advice on options there are wouldn't hurt either since it's often my problem