Is Longer Better?

[Fantomen]

Repel sadly makes very little difference in most situations, don't make it a major strategic consideration. Most arguments for repel being useful is wishful thinking and it has been extensively discussed over the years.

There are some exceptions. First repel can be useful for a SC or thug to defend against the spell swarm, this depends on the thug/SC in question having a high attack score. The reason is of course that dragonflies have only 1 hp and are instantly killed by the repel.

Second, units with very high attack scores combined with a fire bless and long weapon can sometimes score enough repels to matter, one example is EA Ulms steel warriors with fire bless against length 2 and below weapons. I'm sure there is other examples.

My theory for why repel has so much weaker impact than you would expect in theory, is that most regular troops with long weapons have mediocre attack scores. If you tried making pikeneers with 20 attack you could see what happens to the amount of repels.