My reply to this article (as f3 wrote it :p):

• ThunderMage screws over more than just LifeStone. In fact it probably screws over LifeStone the least (?) of all the immobile units. That is to say: Nexus, Fireball, Beacon exist, and swapping those out often ruins the planned layout of the army.

  It does have interesting potential interactions when your opponent's options are limited. If you put a Banshee on a square that's about to have Thunder on it, whatever captures the ThunderMage must move (very good if this is the King).

  You can also time Thunder right before a Butterfly+++ spawn, essentially preventing opponent plans of using a unit to telefrag it. (However, your opponent can time Thunder right AS Butterfly+++ would spawn, which is basically a hard-counter. Also Hostage on the square also hard-counters it.)

  It's also a piece that can bother the enemy King like every 2 turns, which may be important if you want to get Patience or PhoenixEgg to trigger. However this may not be the best unit for that purpose (Angel and Demon++ do this too, and don't slowly [Pay 1] your morale).

• FireMage: This unit does seem pretty crappy. Two ideas I had with it are some Bishop/Rook thing where you exert constant pins and use FireMage to push them out. Also FireMage can create a situation of multiple simultaneous actions. Someone has tried this with Fireball+'s. The problem is that all the pushed units will land on the same color of square, which is really bad for Fireball+ synergy.

  I believe the effect also starts on your turn. You can use this to create instant attacks - like pushing an Angel up one with FireMage, even if "up one" is threatened by your opponent. But it's very telegraphed and probably unviable.

• Arachnid (specifically +3) and VoidMage start out colorbound. You want to have multiple of these if you want to use their special abilities, or alternatively some swap.

• Ranged Destroy has some synergy with "attack punishment" effects such as On Kill and Gnome's ability. Your opponent will likely try to attack Ranger and VoidMage with other cheap champions. A Minotaur behind it will severely punish that idea. (Yes it's two degenerate strategies in one.)

• All of these pieces get worse as the game progresses. In endgame, VoidMage++ increasingly resembles a crappy Berserker, Ranger+++ a crappy Legionary, and so on. There is a point where you want to trade these away as their point value does not reflect their actual.

-main_gi