[licker]

The marginal utility of 20->24 is very small compared with 13->17 (even though the defense can degrade, but there are AP/AN...), the %gain in damage reduction is tiny going E9. I've also not seen the fatigue being an issue at all, but I've also not had too many huge battles.

Swarming the spiders is harder than you think if you mass them (8+) its unlikely for them to get attacked more than 3 times unless they are completely surrounded, but in a battle where the army sizes are that big you should have some other units to take off some of the pressure anyway.

Realize that money is the easiest commodity to come by, and to hoard. Most other size6 units are production or gem (summons) limited, which makes them alot more difficult to mass (talking early game remember).

I would like the E9 bless alot more if the mages benefited from it, but they don't, and the additional attacks from water is much easier to synergize than the additional protection (also realize that quickness adds more fatigue, and I still don't see it as a problem).

Now I'm not saying E9 is a bad bless for them, indeed my early efforts used it (because for some weird reason I thought they had holy mages...) with N and F, but I didn't like the killing speed, and the longer they stood around getting hit the more afflictions piled up. Water decreases the amount of attacks they face, both due to the higher defense, and due to the fact that they kill things faster.

I tried a sleeping sphinx the other day with W9F4S6 and liked the results there as well, though I normally shy away from immobile pretenders.