[DragonRider]

27 gems plus equipment. Pffffft. My 50-gem Kings of Elemental Fire never did much better. 60-gem Conjuration 9 Ember Lords can beat them though! I never get the chance to put this into practice long-term because they'd just get banished to Kokytos instantly from most of the way across the battlefield with perfect precision and no save, but they can do it!

Back in the good old days I used to be able to take them out with mage shenanigans. Teleport squads of 4-5 fire/air mages at them and then Incinerate/Orb Lightning them to death. Boy was that ever satisfying. Those days ended when they just started equipping for 100% fire/lightning resistance, though. Lost a couple of good Harbingers that way.

Sometimes I wonder if swarms of smaller elite units would be a better bet, but quickened AoE attacks kind of reduce the viability of that a lot. I did totally see a Skratti laid low by a small squad of Bandar Log's tiger riders once, but that may have been a fluke. Royal Guards have never done nearly as well, in any case.

Their innate magic resistance is kind of lowish as far as supercombatants go (it drops to 14 in werewolf form when 17-18 or so seems to be a healthy baseline for most stuff), but that plus equipment is still a lot to overcome when they're in moderate numbers or supported by an army. An Amulet of Antimagic alone puts them at a 94% resist chance without penetration, and Gygjas have no trouble forging Rainbow Armor to bring that up to 97%.

At the end of the day, though, ambidexterity + auxiliary bite attack + high strength + Quicken Self is such a brutally powerful offensive setup even with lousy weapons that their defenses hardly ever even come into play.