I played through most of the Adventurer's Club 1 and 3 with a singleton. In both scenarios I started using Frrrr (for the bonus skill points), maxed out Mage/Priest spells and threw everything else into Strength.
I found it wasn't even worth my time to spam blessings until I had a few levels - Sleep Cloud is a strong enough shutdown spell, and if you can find places to abuse terrain, I found Flame Cloud/Conflagration to be fairly effective. I don't know what the malus is for sleeping enemies, but it's a lot - more than enough to compensate for my singleton's idiot flailing, and it remains wonderful so long as you can find non-immune targets.
Obviously in other scenarios you would have to vary your start build a little bit, but I find this to be the most effective start in more Vogel-styled scenarios.