Don't forget they can also act as supportive models by pushing friendly models up to 8" per action. 2 damages is not that a big deal (especialy with Ironsides). 1 if the model you want to push has armor. And you should always talk about that insane warding rune while talking about Oxfordian mages. It's the best item a faction could ever dream of, if you manage to stay within 10" of the mages.
When i want to come close to the mages, i try to hide, but if one of them focus + attack, he just push me out of the cover for the 2nd/3rd mage to flurry my model to death. Also the "just engage them" argument is quite irrelevant, since the one with the melee ability will push the annoyance out before his friends just take care of the threat.
I understand in bombing heavy metagames, they could underperform but I've still not found a reliable way to deal with them.