They are easily defeated, of course, but I didn't have much mana at that moment... although the maximum mana is quite high, but in fact, prayer, mass bless, and mass shield solved everything... because 40 creatures and 48 axes... dealt almost a full stack of damage per hit, and all that was left was to finish them off.
I passed the whirlpools later by saving and reloading, with my entire army :-[ and there were no problems with killing the deans ))) although I could have just used magic to defeat them. In general, you don't even need to save and reload; just take a pack of goblins and you need 2 free slots - in one, put all the goblins, and after each whirlpool, detach one unit and do this with the entire army in all the other 5 slots.

In general, it doesn't quite work out as intended... and to make it work as intended, you can't do it with standard means (( you need an editor... here, take a look at my map; it has clear restrictions made with the editor (for example, the most important thing is the ban on losing any unit from the army, like in Bitter 17, there was such a game, where you also couldn't lose anyone), the map is based on Lord of the Rings http://phomm.narod.ru/homm3maps.htm