: A shade's disposal dream is nasty enough, they don't need
: to be kick butt melee units to be a pain in the rear
: against regular units (given that you have very few
: usually).
GURPS, which is the only place I know that has anything definite on the Shade vs. Avatara issue, says that Shades are less powerful than Avatara. They're equally knowledgeable, but when they became undead they lost most of their strength or mana-channeling power or what have you, so they rely on borrowed power from patrons like Balor or a Fallen Lord.
This seems to work pretty well to me. Some of the Fallen Lords themselves are ex-Avatara, so presumably the Shades, who are their inferiors, are at least a little weaker. (Besides, there are an awful lot of Shades, and if each was a match for an Avatara, the Dark would be unstoppable). Although of course Shades have an advantage over the living Avatara in that they don't age, don't need to breathe, and so forth.
: What would a dream duel be anyway?
: I assume it would be basically the two duelers casting
: spells at each other until one of them died, but you
: seem to have an arguement that indicatates there is
: something more beyond it...
Well, it wasn't obvious at that point in TFL that "dream" was a generic term for high-class spells. So it was natural to infer that a "dream duel" was some sort of telepathic battle in a dreamworld. GURPS shares this interpretation.
However, the Myth comic indicates that in fact the "dream duel" was a duel of powerful spells, as you suggest, and had little or nothing to do with dreams-like-you-have-while-asleep.
--SiliconDream
