I actually prefer Soldiers in T2. Not only do you have 4 of them to help the rest of your defense, but they're great for autoblocks, can use horses, and can get rid of characters forever. Head of Gold plus a whole lot of other cards gives you the fodder, then you blow them up (even in your opponent's LoB) to blow up artifacts or draw. In T1, you can completely and permanently remove heroes. In T2 you can blow up a whole lot, chump block, and keep coming back for more.
Deceiver requires the LS to be in a site, which is hard enough to keep lock on, and does not scare me nearly as much.