[MaxWilson]

The nice thing I see about Blade Wind is that it comes fairly early in the game. The downsides are that it costs massive fatigue (80-) and more importantly that the effects are missile attacks, which means it gets blocked by shields. I agree that it's nice against unarmoured or shieldless troops, and the scattering is nice if you're using it against a mage-heavy army, but for general-purpose, gem-free destruction I'd rather have Cloud of Death or Magma Eruption.

-Max