Curious :Lategame questions. I never was so far :(

[Cohen]

Soul Slay Questions:
It depends from which troops you're facing. Usually it goes for biggies but not always.
In a game against Vanheim who's using Militia as meatshield Soul Slays before killed the Militia then Vans.
In a game against Ryleh the Soul Slay ignored the infantry and went directly on Ether Warriors and the commanders.
In other battles often seek "dangerous" guys, but for dangerous guys AI means too Devils, or Earth Gnomes or such.
The nearer is the enemy the most are the chances to get targeted too. I'm talking about Soul Slay only however.

Gifts from Heaven is reachable by some nations without empowering. Some items, or summon earthpower or power of the spheres.
About Magic Duel was bugged before 2.14, so almost no pretender has astral magic unless he's by default. Even if Immortal a guy lose all its eq.

This is a little realistic situation. Mass of troops get spotted easily, and you'll try to lower their number by remote spellcasting. Even more probably you won't waste your SC along with troops due to the lack of mobility of those one meanwhile usually SCs fly or teleport/trapeze.
However if the player with SCs has good intelligence and for this has the right elemental immunities/high mr depending from your magic paths is going to win easily.
Otherwise when the SCs will jump forward they'll get closer than your troops will be targeted mostly by the mages and probably get killed by massive spellcasting.