[Baalz]

Yeah, the obvious use is swamp survival or archer support, but there's a couple situations it's quite useful even when you don't have swamp survival and plan on slugging it out in melee. Its an often overlooked spell with a number of applications.

It stacks nicely with numbness (same school) bringing movement down to 1/4th I believe which can buy you a lot of time. Even without numbness it will often pretty much completely negate a lance first strike provided your troops have some armor. It also can be very useful if you plan on trying to route the enemy with fear/starvation - half speed running away makes for much more tasty casualties. It's not gonna let you catch them if you're slower, but if you can it'll give you twice as much chance to beat on them. In some situations it can also tip the balance for encumbrance - if you're fielding chaff vs heavy infantry it's really in your advantage to increase everyone's encumbrance.