I played a game of BattleLore last night against myself. For the Uthuk, I had the scenario The Land of Our Fathers which is the one with the faction banner. For the Undead, it was The Banshee Wood, which has a building with a VP banner surrounded by 6 forests. Undead in forests can spend lore to force retreats and gain 1 lore if they eliminate an enemy in the building.

Turn 1, the Doombringer took the building in the woods, which also had the faction banner. This was awesome because it should take you 2 turns to get that banner since you have to stop in trees, but being able to bypass forests meant we could take it on turn 1. The building is a wonderfully defensible area since enemy units are rolling a max of 2 dice because they are in forests and you get to ignore 1 damage for being in the building.

The Undead responded on their first turn by attacking the Doombringer with a Wraiths unit, and as luck would have it, they got the heroic symbol and activated Possess, swapping hexes with the Doombringer. Then I realized how aweful that was. Forest hexes reduce combat dice before modifiers, so any unit attacking that hex will have its combat reduced to 2, and then it will be modified to 1 by the Ethereal ability of the Wraiths! Too cruel!

Unfortunately, I ran out of time to finish the game. On the other side of the map, a Chaos Lord defended the VP banner from 4 Bone Horrors, destroying them all. The only opposition remaining was a Necromancer. I did draw Surprise Attack as a lore card, so on a future turn, I was going to retake the Uthuk banner and building by adding 2-3 attack dice, hopefully destroying the Wraiths or pushing them out at the very least. But the Uthuk were behind by 1 VP when I packed up, so it's another loss for my beloved blood-letters.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who does this

I had a similar experience although the vp was on a forest hex and the wraiths took it with the swap.

They are more useful than I first thought.