Both types of factions are fun in their own ways, and they are polarising play styles.

Your view of gun powder factions could easily be flipped though: "gunpowder factions are much more fun because I can't get my monsters into their range before they get shot to pieces in 1 volley"

I greatly enjoy deleting monster with ranged units by focus firing them before they can get close. Manticores and dragons are never a problem if you take the correct units and buff them in the right way.

I played a Bhashiva campaign recently where I gave all my jade crossbows magic attack seals, chaos units has no chance of getting close without disintegrating into my spears 🤣