If you want to give your followers a glorious death in combat, your best options are wolfpack ambushes and forest retreats. Semi-megabeasts, dragons, and hydras just don't pack enough of a punch. The followers will block/dodge/deflect most attacks and their armour will prevent fatal internal injuries from the crushing attacks.
On the other hand, unless they're retired adventurers your followers don't properly layer their armour and don't have huge armour user/shield user/wrestler skills. When you see a wolfpack just get out of the way and wait. They'll have no trouble... mostly. A throat torn out here, a weapon arm injured there, and before long a third of your followers are dead, a third are unarmed, and a third are armless.
Forest Retreats are fairly obvious. Annoy the elves, find somewhere to start sneaking, watch the carnage that ensues until the last follower falls with a magic arrows through his heart/lungs/pancreas/spleen/third finger, left hand.
Also, consider keeping a couple of your best followers alive, especially if you have any modifications in place that make things more difficult. I was actually on the way to ditch a pair of axedwarves last night when i ran into Giant Wolf Spiders (Orc mod). They took down the GWS's while I was paralyzed. Died doing it, but better them than me.