I feel like a moron but i do not know how to attack with my characters. the tutorial (stupidly) only covers movement and not how to initiate combat and/or attack creatures.

My front characters have a torch and a weapon equipped but when i go adjacent to the snail nothing happens. I've clicked all my mouse buttons and gone through pretty much all the keyboard buttons one by one but they just will not attack.

Using the right mouse button, click on one of your hands.
You will attack with whatever is in that hand.

Manual, page 10:

"The item slots display what the characters carry in their hands. Left clicking on an item picks it up from the slot and right click performs an attack or opens the spellcasting panel if it is a magical staff, orb or the empty hand of a spellcaster."

Sorry, but I need to point out that the tutorial indeed does cover that. From the second panel of the tutorial:

"The item slots are used for attacking and for displaying what the characters carry in their hands."

"Left click on the item to pick it up from the slot and right click to attack with the item."

The tutorial is a cure for ignorance, but you can't fix stupid. :(

Try actually paying attention to the tutorial next time; it tells you how to do this.

I'm gonna admit to having had this same issue at first. I had sworn I had tried right clicking the icons but I guess not because it works just fine. It seems obvious in retrospect, but I too managed to breeze by all references in the tutorial and manual.