Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?

[rdonj]

I'll try to explain this better then. 5D gets you the equivalent of more than 20 crossbowmen who you don't have to pay upkeep on, can see in the dark, and have magic weapons. These magic weapons will counter a large number of things, and remember that anything can be made ethereal, not just things with no protection. And these banefire bows are far more versatile than a bow of war is, because they can actually hurt things that have decent protection. Reanimated archers are actually some of the best ranged units in the game.

Further, consider what else you're going to be spending 5D on that would be as effective in battle. Banefire crossbows decay things, but they attack much more slowly and kill very slowly. For 5D you can buy maybe two wights, or a number of weak undead. You really can't do much to beat the cost vs versatility by using death gems. So I would call their niche "cheap, effective fire support".

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by rdonj

I'll try to explain this better then. 5D gets you the equivalent of more than 20 crossbowmen who you don't have to pay upkeep on...

20 crossbowmen with only 6 rounds of ammo each, and die like flies without lots of archer and undead decoys since they have no hp, no protection, and terrible MR on top of undead vulnerabilities, rendering the lack of upkeep somewhat moot.

I do see your point that they are rather more versatile than the magic bows, being better against soft targets than the magic xbows and better against hard than the bow of war. Though since by the time you get Reanimate archers, you also have flaming arrows, even that's questionable.