A few questions

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Legendary League

Fire and Death blesses overrides any weapon effects that the blessed unit has (fairly certain of this), which means its suboptimal if you plan on using blessed thugs.

I agree it's suboptimal but it was pointed out to me by Rytek that on a miss the brand's AOE effect does go off. See the attached save game. In the log it says the following when the fire effect goes off:

965 striking with weapon Fire Brand. att23 def40
NextWeapon Small Area Fire has aoe 1 anim 10113 5

So I think Rytek was correct. Like I said, it's not optimal but you can get something out of using brands with D9 thugs.