[Yvelina]

I play exclusively Vanheim, so what I say may not apply to most nations, because the majority of Vanheim's mages are extremely mobile, sneaky, and anything but fragile.

I seldom use more than five or six mages in one task force. The majority of my force is Vanjarls, which are usually set to horror spam. I usually have a one vanadrott who casts warthful skies, and then summons air elementals. Sometimes, I will send a specialist, who will be hand-tailored (selected and equiped) for the task. She may be an air queen scripted to attack the main target, or a dwarf who will petrify a dangerous enemy, or a fairy queen that will charm a valuable enemy, or a Tartarian that will hold the enemy hordes while the wrathful skies destroy them.

These armies are teleported on top of their target, and their scripts reflect my latest knowledge of the enemy's script. Usually, after the victory, the Vanir hide among the local population, while the dwarves or Tartarians build a lab. This way, the enemy's retaliation is less costly. In any case, the idea is that the cost of the inflicted losses exceeds the cost of your task force.

Recent examples:
In my current game, I teleported three vans and one air queen on top of Anya (Abisya's pretender) She had just taken a province of mine (the local warden and his lone bodyguard died gloriously) and I knew exactly what her equipment was. She had, of course, a chest wound - these are surprisingly common when you have pissed off the Vanir. She was equiped and scripted as a standard SC - life drain weapon, lucky coin, boots of quickness, starshine cap, anti-magic, etherial cloak. I used my vans to summon horrors for five turns, while the air queen waited until Anya had tired herself with buffs and by killing the lifeless horrors. When Veni attacked, Anya was at 84 fatigue. After her first hit, Anya went to sleep, and never woke up.

Later, in the same game, I sent three vanjarls and three vanadrotts to contain a Caelum mamonth/seraph army inside a castle. It was important that the birdies did not get loose inside my lands (they had just jumped me) so I also cast 'Imprint Souls' on the province. The jarls and one of the drotts spammed horrors, and the elephants spend some time chasing the chaff around. Meanwhile the other two drotts buffed themselves, and at the end of the five turns went elephant hunting. One elephant escaped. The battlefield was in flight range of Caelum's capital. So on the next turn I teleported Vidi (Air Queen #2) scripted to attack rear on turn one, in case Caelum counterattacked. But on that turn, he had lost his pretender, two armies and a temple... he has stalled since.

In another recent game, I teleported a army in the middle of C'tis lands, right on top of a castle bursting with troops. The original detachment was just a wrath squad, but each turn, I was adding some surprise for the lizards who tried to break the siege - a Tartarian or two, an Air Queen, an empowered magma dwarf, devils, a nature mage with Mass Regeneration, etc... The purpose of that army was to hold a province with about ten neighbors, provide some intelligence on his troops in the neighborhood, and tempt C'tis into attacking.

What do these armies have in common? Not much really, except that they were tailored for a specific task, and that they arrived by magic on top of an expensive enemy asset.