Keelyn vs. The Erebusian All-Stars

Pardon the absurd title. I was playing as Keelyn, preparing my archmages to sweep the Sidar off the map, when it occurred to me: at her best, just how powerful are Keelyn's vast hordes of puppet-slaves? So I started a new game, and set this up in WB:
Two-square island. North square is a snowy hill with a castle on top. On the hill are the following, owned by Auric Ulvin:
Auric Ascendant
Avatar of Wrath
Buboes
Stephanos
Yersinia
Ars Moriendi
Eurabatres
Acheron
Drifa
Abashi
Each of them has 30 XP to play with as the AI sees fit.

South of that is a Balseraph force: Hemah, with exactly 100 XP. Four liches and four archmages, each at exactly enough XP to bring them to level six. The eight non-heroes have Combat III and Death III. Hemah has Combat V, Twincast, and Death III. The Balseraphs have only one sourch of Death Mana. This attack force, I should emphasize, is perfectly possible during the course of an ordinary game, although it would require a lot of planning beforehand. You would have to be planning to create it from turn one. Each mage summons as many puppets as possible, who in turn summon as many wraiths as possible.

Eight non-heroes, each summons three puppets over the course of several turns. Each puppet can summon three wraiths, for a grand total of 8 * 3 * 3 = 72 wraiths with Empower III. Hemah and his puppets all have twincast, meaning his six puppets can control six apiece. 6 * 6 = 36. This leads to a grand total of 108 wraiths.
I then set all of Auric's all-star team to defend, and end the turn to allow Auric to distribute his XP.
The turn after, after re-summoning puppets and wraiths lost to having only a turn left, I declare war on Auric and attack.

Results:
Auric Ascendant, being unable to cycle with other units when damaged, was slain.
The rest survived.
Drifa, Ars Moriendi, and the Avatar of Wrath were all brought to below half their maximum power.
Buboes and Acheron were moderately injured.
The rest were completely undamaged.

This is pretty cool and I look forward to seeing the results as a pure matter of curiosity (I have a thing for "clash of the titans" scenarios like this), but I fear that if Keelyn wins, people who don't understand the concept of overkill are going to take it the wrong way and start up the "Keelyn is overpowered, nerf, nerf, nerf" chants again.

Monkeyfinger said:

This is pretty cool and I look forward to seeing the results as a pure matter of curiosity (I have a thing for "clash of the titans" scenarios like this), but I fear that if Keelyn wins, people who don't understand the concept of overkill are going to take it the wrong way and start up the "Keelyn is overpowered, nerf, nerf, nerf" chants again.

Click to expand...

They were already posted, but I editted my post to make them clearer.

KillerClowns said:

Results:
Auric Ascendant, being unable to cycle with other units when damaged, was slain.
The rest survived.
Drifa, Ars Moriendi, and the Avatar of Wrath were all brought to below half their maximum power.
Buboes and Acheron were moderately injured.
The rest were completely undamaged.

Click to expand...

EDIT: Remember children, this is an almost optimal situation for Keelyn. Really, if you can field Hemah and eight archmages as anyone, you've got the game pretty much covered.
EDIT 2: Yes, MC, I know you're planning to make Auric heal after every battle. IMHO, though, being able to take our Auric by raw force of arms is actually pretty awesome. I love the image of him being swarmed by ant-like wraiths and brought low as they cover him and tear him into pieces. EDIT 3: But I fully support a strength boost. I don't remember the exact number, but I was surprised how few wraiths were needed.

The real terror is that Keelyn can summon swarms of mage level summons. It doesn't matter if the summons are weak if the mages are unlimited and the puppets triple their output.

Another problem is the fact that Auric Ascended is just weak in general.

Anyway, your Balseraph army should be able to beat that Illian group in a protracted battle. You attack with wraiths until AA dies, starting with those who are on the verge of expiring, then leave the rest of the wraiths where they are to absorb counterattacks. Then you do this again next turn, killing some other target and then stopping. Rinse and repeat until the Illians are gone.

And to think that it gets even worse if Keelyn uses more appropriate summons. Most (all?) of the AI units in the example above are immune to death damage.

Try some Water-Elementals for true awesomeness (they might bite it a bit vs. Auric though thanks to his probable immunity to cold.).
But for raw punching-power those might be the most fearsome (if yo want to get really mean + overkill give yourselves a city with the tower of elements in it... )

but then you will need death 3 + water 3...

Well take 4 water and death mana?