Equipment: which to use and what to avoid?

[Yonz]

how about bows? I've never used them on thugs (apart from batteries of banefire-bow-wielding commanders when playing la atlantis - that proved to be quite fun but there had to be several for the volley to have any serious effect, plus hitting my own troops was a common occurrence)
so how effective are they? off the top of my head I'd say a frost brand is always the better choice, but I could easily be wrong