My comments all refer to early game.  As others have mentioned, in mid or late game its easy to buff the *** out of leaders: at the start it isn't.  Without magic, most pretenders are just prot10 hp100 losers who go down under 40-50 hvy inf.  I remember the first time I used one, assuming it was like in all other fanatasy games... and my naivetiy was somewhat shattered 
