Had a bocan/war hero last age, then they removed bocan, did not quite get as high as I wished on off but could compete and somehow still had the highest off in the kingdom.
Even if there is ways to deal with it, if your opponents start out AW'ing an Orc they are probably not doing what they wanted to do most with those rogues. I found that most tried to chain my bocan, and since I was able to bounce back, and generally speaking is one of the better people when it comes to coping with getting chained in the first place they was not dealing as much dammage as they otherwise could have. Had the kingdom been better at warring and the wars more evenly matched we could easily have gotten wins from such play.