[Blitz]

Back to the original topic though: I tend to prefer a fire 9 blessing with the heart companions rather than a death (or any other). They never come in large enough numbers for the death blessing to be much good, being resource intensive and capital only (unlike flagellants, where death 9 is rather awesome), and with the fire blessing they are an excellent unit of choice to put in the way of nasty things like niefel giants, ethereal units (ermor), etc. But I tend to use them without any elephants at all. Pretty much the only thing they're vulnerable to is trampling units (which they kill off quickly). Body ethereal works well on them too, of course.

Death blessing isn't very good. If you read the section where I talked about it, I mentioned that the effect was a byproduct of using a lich pretender, and not a strategy unto itself. At times their slow speed costs you elephants however. For the most part hypaspists are superior to them.

It was worth noting the effect of the fear bless combined with the elephants was effective at routing. A very effective bless strategy for Arcoscophile uses a W9 N4 Lady of Fortune. I prefer this to a fire blessing, but to each his own.