U do have a point there... Defenders first turn makes communions easier to use on the defence. But there is some ways around the problem as attacker. Cheap armor works well on first turn when mages fatigue is still at 0 and there is no chanse for criticals. Using SoG takes gems so if u can make the opponent waste gems before the battle it wont be problem. Two ways i usully use for this... 1 remote attacks like that skeleton raiders spell which name i dont remember right now... 2 Teleportin thug to mess things up before the battle...
One nice counter to communions which my friend used on me on my last game was to use 20 astral 1 mages to magic duel the whole communion to death =P
After that i seriosly started to think about using Baalz type non astral communion
