The Pretenders The Best Of The Pretenders

[Maria]

Thereare a few main options for competitive Pretenders you can choose from. Scales builds, Bless builds, Expander builds, Specific Spell builds, and Rainbow builds. I would also like to add that these are the main things pretenders can provide and a good pretender will likely fall somewhere between/in several of these categories.

Full Scales builds are for nations (or players) that can expand well without needing an awake god that want long term economic value. MA Ulm, Ctis, etc. are primary examples of nations that really want nothing more than to max out their scales with an imprisoned pretender. The bless is minimal/irrelevant, the scales are glorious, and life is good as long as you don't develop a nasty case of elves. My favorite example of a full scales build would be a Shinuyama who took mostly scales on an imprisoned immobile, with just enough magic on their god for their sacred big mages get the Unaging bless (and maybe fire resist or MR boost or whatever. Depends on god chassis and if you have a specific forging goal or whatever for him).

The most standard version of a bless strategy would be a basic bless build. You have good sacreds- you want an incarnate skill or two, but don't want to full tank your scales. Maybe your elves could use lightning weapons or whatever. You do you. Here you might drop a few less important scales like temp and misfortune, possibly turmoil or sloth depending on what your nation needs. Often you get an awake immobile with most of their points put aside for magic, but it's also not unheard of for a nation with really good sacred units that can expand without a bless to take a dormant immobile with a mix of incarnate blesses and passive blesses so that around the time you want to start fighting non-indies your bless wakes up.

Congrats! You decided you don't want things like "growth," "money," or "research." That shit is for the weak! Your land may be a place of death and drain, but hot damn do your sacreds EAT EVERYTHING they come across. This is mostly done by Mictlan (whose dominion doesn't spread normally so the effects of taking bad scales can be minimized plus they have scary sacreds out of every fort), but any nation with overpowered sacreds could in theory try to hellbless. This style of play only works as long as you are eating other players, and tends to suffer the standard fate of absolutely wrecking their immediate neighbor then dying out as soon as other nations get enough magic to fend them off and simply bring more gold, mages, and research to the fight than the hellbless nation. Scary shit though, especially early on. Nations with domkill effects like Ermor and Lemuria sorta do this too. This is going to be an awake immobile god to maximize points for MOAR BLESS, unless you are even more crazy and go awake expander for an extra expansion party turn one.

Expanders are gods whose sole purpose in life is to single-handedly take provinces from turn one to guarantee a solid expansion (and deter people trying to continue their expansion into your lands). Almost exclusively monster chassis', they aim to be efficient at their task and save as many points for scales as they can. The great bulls, pigs, Drakon, really any chassis with earth can pretty reliably do this. Nations that are weak early and don't expand very well will often run expanders, for instance I am currently picturing arco. Terrible troops, god awful sacreds, really only want to survive until their communion setup can actually be relevant.

National Defenders are pretenders taken with the plan to turn them into an SC for your first war. This is often seen as a dormant titan with decent scales and a few magic paths. The goal is generally to have some magic buffs and construction researched for when they wake up in the second year. They then are able to be outfitted to deal with the early armies that your own troops are not able to handle at this stage. As noted, these are most often the titan chassis, as with just some preparation they can wade through armies. There is a consideration to be made as to whether more points should be put into scales or paths. The end result may look more like an expander, but with the extra points from being dormant, can justify better scales. At the same time, it is also possible to shift further into the bless should you have decent sacreds or into scales should the income be more necessary.

One of the main purposes of a god is to cast a specific spell. Maybe this is a global you really want, maybe it is a battlefield wipe your nation needs to be viable, maybe it is a strat you want to try out, etc. In this case you design your pretender to be able (with boosters) to cast this spell. Think the Wish spell, or perhaps you want to guarantee you can get Well of Misery or Mother Oak, or maybe the idea of a teleporting immortal god dropping Winds of Death sounds like a fun idea. Now of course this doesn't mean you ignore the bless/scales, it usually just means you pick a bless/scales build from above and tweak it just enough to be able to also do the spell you want. These gods will almost never be awake, so what will often happen is you have dormant or imprisoned god with passive bless abilities like fire/shock resist, strength boosts, blood surge, etc. then when he wakes up you drop the spell you have been prepping for and life is good.

Rainbows imply two things- first, that you have basically all the magic paths and second that you are awake to site search for said magic paths. While somewhat more viable now what with the dom5 bless mechanics, you tend to run into the issue that taking a crappy human HP pretender and then walking around slowly site searching with him is generally a pretty poor and risky use of a pretender. It would allow for an incarnate bless or two and some minor blesses, but it's tough to take the scales hit this would necessitate (remember the awake part?). Under no circumstances should you take this god dormant or imprisoned, by the times he wakes up he would be irrelevant.

Again, often a good god won't fall perfectly into one of these categories, but will actually embody two or more. Maybe your expander god with E/N paths picks up N5, so that the second you finish researching alteration 5 you can claim Mother Oak for yourself. Most common would be a cross between bless and scales builds. Do you want all the scales? Do you want an uber bless? Take an immobile imprisoned chassis, get a nice fat selection of minor blesses that are always active like stack a bunch of strength and stats and roll with that.

I sometimes feel the same. It often feels as if other people are superior to me and what I have to say is not important. I keep my mouth shut when I am actually supposed to let people know my feelings.

Before you can learn more about YOUR purpose here on Earth, you have to learn more about the human race. You have to understand others before you can even attempt to discover yourself. You have to learn why we are all here and compare yourself to others so that you can see where you fit into the equation. This is what I have learned so far:

Each and every one of us has a purpose here on earth. Even if it is only to be part of something greater to help someone else. We might not all know our purpose yet, but before we have not completed our purpose, we will not leave this earth.

Many people should rather be called pretenders than people. Most of us have met these pretenders and we trusted them for a while until we realize that they are not what they say they are. People can be two-faced and fake.

I am still on the road to discovery! Perhaps I am going through a mid-life crisis, but every day I learn a little bit more about myself and realize what I want to be. I am constantly working on it, but as you know, Rome was not built in one day!

When college football's early top 25 rankings released every year around this time, there is a tendency to latch onto certain teams as playoff contenders while others stick out as possible pretenders. Rosters are just about finalized with the second portal window now closed and two-deeps coming into focus.

Looking back at various preseason rankings through the years, there are always big misses among voters. Two years ago, TCU went from unranked to making an appearance in the national championship game. That's an outlier of sorts, but you get the idea.

UNC and Texas A&M ranked inside the preseason top 10 prior to the 2021 and 2022 seasons, but both finished with losing seasons despite lofty expectations. Lincoln Riley and USC, with the reigning Heisman winner at quarterback, failed to impress last season after opening at No. 6.

If NC State's transfer portal-heavy roster revamp shoulders expectations and can get out of September with one loss or fewer, after all, the Wolfpack play Tennessee and Clemson away from Carter-Finley Stadium, this squad has a legitimate chance of being a playoff contender. But where NC State is slotted in the preseason poll matters a great deal when considering program trends. If the Wolfpack are outside the top 20, the contender label feels accurate. If they're inside the top 25, that's considerable pressure and pushes the narrative over to the pretender side. Doeren has four nine-win seasons and is hoping to get his first 10-plus in 2024.

Contender or pretender: Notre Dame projects as a College Football Playoff team if the Fighting Irish beat USC in the regular-season finale and finish with, at worst, 10 wins. Not all colleagues agree with the high-profile billing, some of that due to injury worries with Duke transfer Riley Leonard at quarterback and other roster questions. However, the expanded playoff format will always be beneficial to an independent like the Fighting Irish who, compared to their other Power-conference brethren, will play annual schedules conducive to success.

Notre Dame addressed worries at playmaker spots, and added a key cog on Marcus Freeman's coaching staff with Mike Denbrock from LSU as the new OC. He led the most potent offense in college football last fall, helping develop Jayden Daniels into a Heisman winner and No. 2 overall draft pick. If Denbrock can work his magic with Notre Dame's talent at the position and the Fighting Irish can fill a couple sizable production holes defensively, buying stock in this team now is a good idea.

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