Agreed, their low speed make them pretty unattractive for anything right now. The area covered, which is the main selling point of those shields is bypassed by the magical energy barrier created by a shield skill above 4. It is also necessary to note that they're even inferior in width compared to the round shields, and barely beat most of the mainstream shields in both width and height. This leaves the board shield with its only advantage being hit points, easily overturned by terrible resistance ratings on all of its variants (below 20).
