Well the Forge Magician does go down quickly to archers if you just send him in alone. With a few troops to attract the initial fire he has time to cast invulnerability and then alternate between firecloud and bladewind. Thug is probably the wrong description but in my initial test five of these guys held two opposing nations at bay with just twenty Enlivened Statues acting as bodyguards.
I know the AI is a poor substitute for a real player it's just that these units are extremely efficient for their cost. Since they also get a forgebonus you can quickly give a bunch of them dwarven hammers and the churn out 1 fire helmets and 1 earthboots at very good discount.
If you ignore a bless strategy and go for heavy gold scales instead you can mass a respectable number of these mages quite quickly, use earth gems to summon bodyguards and fire gems to fuel battle spells.
The elite stats comment implied the unusually high stats for a mage unit, which wasn't really explained by their descriptions.
If the armblades are based on Katanas, instead of say indian Katars, it feels a bit odd. I understand the idea though, which would look great in a movie, but I feel it sort of works against the design of a sword. The units are sort of wielding katanas with their elbows, which is a bit curious. In RL you would get a lot better results by simply using reinforced bracers (or perhaps two smaller bucklers) while wielding two shorter blades.
I of course have nothing against your vision, which for a modder is by far more important then realism. Heck, if I can dominate the battlefield with a rapid snakewoman, that has two stacks of dogs coming out of her sides, armblades seem like the very foundation of logic.
I'm glad you keep working on this mod. Would be great to see you expand on this idea with national summons. I'm sure these guys could come up with some nasty improvements on Clockwork Horrors.