[Edi]

Maybe it was just a freak lucky incident, but I had a randomly equipped (scavenged items from dead mages) bane (yes, bane, not bane lord) that made a truly heroic battle performance.

My castle was being invaded by an army of about 100 mechanical men, an archangel buffed with items and powering to F7, a harbinger Wrather, two fully equipped natarajas and a fully equipped golem. My forces were the bane (charcoal shield, rune smasher, copper plate, burning pearl and something else), a scorpion king of E8/F7, some 300 statues (most wiped out by wrathful skies) and ~200 banefire archers (also wrathed).

When all was said and done, that lowly bane almost single-handedly whacked both natarajas and the golem and did in his share of mech men too. The SK kept petrifying one of the natarajas and the golem concentrated on a few surviving statues and the bane just picked off the SCs one by one in individual combat until the enemy routed. I was left picking my jaw off the floor and so was Soapyfrog who had expected his army to perform better. There is still a question of whether the natarajas actually died or routed, as our battle replays seemed to be different.

Upshot: Use petrification if you can, because even a successful MR roll results in several turns of paralysis, allowing your weak thugs to stomp on the SCs without fear of retaliation. Just how feasible this is for most nations I haven't really looked into.

Edi