This section is vital. The chanty will only get involved in about 50% of your games, but of those 50%, she will singlehandedly win about 25% of them. She's just that good.
Now, the chanty is a mighty weapon, but has one major weakness: the scout. If she gets attacked by a melee unit when she is not recovering, she can simply freeze the offending unit, be healed, and barriered again, and you have another unit trapped. The chanty is only of any real use when you use her in conjunction with a BW, because if she gets attacked while she's still recovering, you can say goodbye to her.
When using the chanty, you have to take down the ranged units first (see the tactics section). After that, if you've got enough units left and the chanty and BW still intact, you should never lose the game. Imagine it's your cleric, BW, chanty scout and knight vs. 3 knights and assassin. The enemy has to attack you, or get picked off slowly by the scout. So you draw in one knight to freezing range, make sure that no other knight/assassin can attack you where you are moving to, and freeze the knight, being sure that you don't freeze your BW at the same time. (Freezing one of your own units doesn't matter that much; indeed, it makes opponents more likely to attack them, meaning that they can be frozen too.) When another knight charges up to attack the chanty, you barrier. 2 turn recovery left. The knight attacks the barrier, and you heal. 1 turn recovery left. The knight still has to wait, and maybe moves up another knight. You snipe the frozen knight with your scout, so the enemy is more desperate to get the chanty. 0 recovery left. The recovered knight attacks the chanty... and you refreeze. Now you have 2 knights.
The enemy, by now, will be desperate. He'll send in another knight. As soon as he gets within striking distance of your chanty, you barrier her again. (Heal if possible before barriering.) He will attack the barrier, killing it if he is using a knight. By now though, both your cleric and your chanty should be recovered. Use your cleric, and move him up next to the chanty. If the enemy attacks the cleric, you freeze the knight that does it as well, and now you have 3 knights trapped. If he attacks the chanty, the chanty freezes again. The chanty is then surrounded on all sides and unable to be attacked. You can then pick off the assassin with your scout and knight.
As you can see, a seemingly weak position (4 attackers vs. 2) has been won by the chanty.
The other main use of the chanty is against 2-cleric formations. It takes a heck of a lot to kill a knight backed up by 2 clerics. The answer? Don't play to your enemy strengths. If there's no easy way to kill the units, don't kill them. Use your chanty to freeze the knights, as shown above, and you don't need to worry about the double clerics.
Remember that a good player will know the potential of the chanty, and deal with it. Send in 2 knights and have a scout hanging around, and even the best chanty/BW formation will have serious problems. If the scout is not recovering, the chanty will be shot before she can be barriered, and then she has 3 recovery and a few angry knights next to her. Not good news. For defending against this, you'll need knights and assassins for your chanty to hide behind. But the danger then is that a witch will move up through the area where the enemy knights are, you'll be unable to send out knights to kill her without being broken through, and you'll lose your cleric. Then you're in trouble.
Surprisingly, a chanty form is best suited to attack, similar to the furgon. But that will be covered in my Tactics section.
