I tried out the skelly spam. The results were not encouraging for you Nick.
I was setup as follows:
Van had 25 Vans + 1 Prophet.
C'tis had 80 HI + 1 Lizard King to use as "chaff". I then varied the number of sauramancers until C'tis won.
1) At a 1-4 ratio of Sauramancers to Helhirdlings (ie: 6 Sauramancers ) C'tis got smashed. Usually inflicting 2 losses to Van and losing all units in the process.
2) At a 1-3 ratio of Sauramancers to Helhirdlings (ie: 8 Sauramancers ) C'tis got crushed but inflicted more losses. Around 2-5 Helhirdlings got killed per combat.
3) At a 1-2 ratio of Sauramancers to Helhirdlings (ie: 12 Sauramancers ) C'tis wins consistently.
Just for fun I tried one time with a Scorpion King pretender ( with a nice F4 fire shield ) in front of block of HI. I figured that the Vans would get stuck on the Prot-20, fire immune pretender and they would then get swamped. I forgot that the Vans have lightlances ( and 39 AP ). The Scorpion king died on the initial charge
