[Baalz]

Oh man, I couldn't justify using A gems that way. When I've got A2+ mages I'm alway, always, always strapped for A gems. Flying boots, cloud trapeze, thunderstrike eat up everything I've got in the early game, then storm/wind guide/fog warriors/wrathful skies/mass flight...dumping gems into Amphiptere would make me very sad assuming I somehow managed to line up an A2N1 mage early enough to be in the same time frame I'm talking about. As to the D summons you're again gonna have the problem planning on having them early on (is your pretender awake, expanding, forging soul contracts, site searching and summoning stuff while you bend research to otherwise mostly useless enchantment all in year one?) and even if you do the strategic flexibility of having map move 3 flying is very pronounced over non flying or map move 2 (Geotic Masters with boots). Saving your A gems for flying boots and cloud trapezes while you've got map move 3 flying devil herders is going to make you drastically more nimble.

The suggestion to use the harlequins as raiders is really during the early game, and it's reasonably safe to do that assuming you've got some scouting and plan escape routes. The devils fly up on turn one and the harlequin will fly immediately to safety if they die..there's really not much that can snatch you in the early game unless you're fighting somebody with flying troops like Caelum (in which case you obviously wouldn't do this). And, as I mention there's just a lot of flexibility having a bunch of flying guys around herding devils, gems and blood slaves to the front lines when the combat is too hot for them.