Hi Jaericho,
Where you're in 9.6 SP1, you can now add a 'deploy image' action which replaces the need to manually map the imagew tool, map images, and deploy image. Where your 9.5 template is throwing errors, I would recommend trying out that action in your template in lieu of those 3. Depending on the number of customized actions in this template, I would recommend setting up a new deploy template which will make use of the new consolidated actions. You can do this within provisioning by selecting New | Deployment Template. See if this lets you correctly define your unc path within the new template.