Tonight I ran another island. It was way fun. As one of the challenges, the heroes had to "defend the corpse of the Golden Goar of Ion from the hounds of the hills while it rotted in the light of Artemis".
I ran this as a Hunt battle - the heroes had to set traps and listen and track the hounds while avoiding being lured too far from the boar.
I ran the hounds as minions. They very nearly kicked the heroes' butts, very cheaply. Like, it's alarmingly effective that I can buy a d10 Arete and a d10 in one other category and end up with whatever number of minions with 3d6+Name in attack+defence. I might suggest that the armour die for non-combat battles comes out of another ability category, to suppress this effect.
I'm not understanding your last sentence. Minions don't get armour.