Using your pretender early: How?

[BigJMoney]

I'm weird in that I like to go against the grain while playing games just to see what I can come up with. With Dominions, I'm always tempted to forgo bless strategies and go for having a pretender right out of the box. The trouble is, I've never played a game where this has done me any good. (Talking SP here.) My games seem to have a lot more momentum and are easier to win when I go with sleeping pretender and bless strategy.

So I'm wondering, who uses the early pretender and what/how do you do it? What is the advantage besides rainbow searching and thus gaining a lead in gem gathering? Or the extra ~12 research points right off the bat? I've tried a few builds that get my pretender into combat early on, but none of them have been very good. (Again, however, I go against the grain and avoid the most popular 3 combat pretenders to see what I can make of the others.)

I remember being tempted to offer that the blesses shouldn't work until your pretender is in the game, but I'm sure that will never happen, hehe.

=$= Big J Money =$=