I'm playing (SP) as Ashdod right now, and I'm relying on heavily-blessed Adons to take provinces for me. It's worked really well so far. In fact, I've only built one actual army, and the Adons have done all of the rest of my expansion.
Until I ran into a D9-blessed Machaka. I didn't know he had a D9 bless, so I sent an uber-Adon charging into a nest of those sacred spider knights....
My Adon limped out of the battle with a Limp (go figure), a Never-Healing Wound, and an injury to his vocal cords that left him Mute. Yuck. I have to agree that Death blesses can be a serious deterrent to a strategy that relies on thugs and/or SCs.
...
Just to finish the story, I pulled my injured Adon back to a province which was strong in my dominion and allowed Gift of Health to do its thing. A few turns later, he's just about back to 100% effectiveness. Meanwhile, I'm advancing with a new army, a few more uber-Adons, and a lot more respect for the evil spider knights.
Revenge shall be mine! Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!