[Baalz]

Well, I played around with fear and banshees this weekend, and there are some interesting things you can do, and as you'd guess there are some pretty effective niche uses for the banshee. The thing with the banshees is with that 0 protection and no shield you're gonna take casualties and they're so damn expensive you're not going to want to use them for run of the mill expansion. They're also not terribly effective in very small numbers, they're definitely in the bucket of stuff that needs critical mass to work right. With the opportunity cost of the death gems and caster turns I really couldn't come up with an effective use of them until you're getting "Greater Lamentation", at which point you've got some other really nice stuff to cast to.

So, what does this PITA to use, fragile and expensive unit buy you? A hellaciously offensive weapon. Their attack is a AOE 1 soul slay, and if the MR roll is made the target is still struck with a greater fear effect (which seems unresistible) and stacks with the fear aura they radiate. The practical effect of this is when you bring a dozen of these ladies up to melee you'll see a whole bunch of little red 999's floating up and the rare guy who saved is gonna have a -38 moral (I'm not kidding, that's what I saw). Nobody ever really counterattacks.

On top of the obvious use to punch a hole through enemy lines (at fort gates in particular, where LA Ermor tends to struggle) it seems like this would work well against SCs to. A dozen MR checks vs death (AOE 1, so defense and protection are useless), and even if they're passed the fear effect should be enough to overwhelm anybody (probably ineffective against golems or other unbreakable units). If you're anticipating the SC fleeing and cut off his retreat....seems like a good way of dealing with that artifact laden badass who just waded through 5000 of your undead.