Beastmaster doesn't play tree against another swarm. You don't get any vet tokens because your guys can't get any melee kills, an injured bird won't be the one to attack a guard so your have to get very lucky for a grunt to survive and kill a fresh bird in a counter attack. Playing ring of command isn't worth the action, whichever swarm achieves dominance will win and that will happen before round 4 of the game. Swarm vs swarm is very swingy.
The biggest problem I had is making my mage melee attack valuable. I was defending which got me pushed through a wall of thorns effectually losing 3 actions for his 2 since the guard is now irrelevant and I have to walk back to the action. I think a reach weapon is needed, which sadly means mage staff for the warlord as a meta play against aviary. Either that or Torak the sky hunter (who can get a very token too...)
![Huh ???](https://forum.arcanewonders.com/Smileys/default/huh.gif)
Ring of command is absolutely worth the action. With all the command based support your mage should be dishing out it definitely pays off.
Dominance on one side or the other before round 4?? Id like to know what happens in your games to make that happen, it sounds a bit ridiculous to me.
Maybe I shouldve made this point sooner but yoy dont always guard them with grunts. As soon as you have your economy down butchers become your main melee troop most of the time, or like 50/50 grunts/butcher. Even so, birds are statistically unlikely to kill grunts in 1 hit (3 dmg vs 4 health) so barring any other kind of buff to their attack grunts will get the counterstrike. It doesnt matter if grunts/butchers get vet off injured birds, theyll die to slingers if theyre too afraid to attack anyway.
You dont need to utilize your mages melee just because he has melee buff. Running many creatures means you need to stay as far away from combat as possible because your mana is sunk into creatures and not your mage. Good thing Warlord has the horn to perfectly support this.
Done right swarm vs swarm isnt swingy imo. Sure if you onlt play lvl ones and then dont really support them that could be more true, but imo that isnt "swarm". Swarm is lvl 1-3 creatures and support from a mostly unbuffed mage. At this point I feel you dont really care for my logic so I dont really have much else to say. Ive literally been playing creature heavy Warlord since FvW release and ive never felt ring of command as not worth casting (except as AT Warlord) along with other sentiments of yours.