RE: Army Non-Archetype Discussion: Ranged Destroy
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
Yeah it would make a lot more sense intuitively if you didn't post on the same account.
I do agree that they get weaker as the game reaches the end.