The Fall from Grace

I registered on the forum just to leave a review, because the scenario has too few positive ones. I liked the map — you can tell a lot of effort went into it. At first I didn't even think I'd finish it all the way through (I learned from the comments that it's very hard); I was just curious how far I'd get.
The hardest fights were against Wulfstan (after which I realized just how useful the AI's favorite spell is here...) and Kujin (it's hard to even describe how I got through that one).
The most useful things I did, which is what allowed me to beat the scenario, were:

Spoiler

Deflect Missile / mass Deflect Missile, thanks to which only my shooters weren't being hit, and not fielding peasants in the fights against Ilaya and Zehir — without that, the enemies would wipe me out before my turn even came

About the final boss

I was also intrigued by who the final boss would be (I'd read the spoiler), and I kept guessing who it might be. I bet on the real Isabel — after all, she did take part in the battle for the Claw canonically, even if only in a cutscene, and she was bound to show up. So I was in for a letdown)

Good luck with your future projects

Finally, the first documented playthrough of the map! Thanks for a proper review — everything factual and no whining about supposedly inflated difficulty. I've played through it many times myself without using the Deflect Missile bug, only using mass Deflect Missile. I wanted to add Isabel, but it wasn't clear where to put her — all her allies are defeated, and there's no Freyda. In the original story, she wouldn't have accomplished anything without her allies and Freyda; she'd have stayed rotting in the dungeon, or her feeble attempts at rebellion (and that's without her soul or proper sanity) would have been crushed by the Red forces.

"Documented" is a strong word. I don't have much in the way of proof, other than "screenshots" of the results of the last three battles and the saves, which isn't very informative (but I'll keep them just in case: https://disk.yandex.ru/d/R2wL_0NRjvCIYg).
Since we're on the subject, let me also note what I liked.
— The locations are as close as possible to those from the original campaign. Not only are fragments of the maps recreated, but the same scripts are used as well (for example, the Curse of the Netherworld over the garrison and the sunset effect before the fight with Arantir).
— The battlefield designs. Some fights have interesting details in the background. This stands out especially in the battle with Wulfstan: zealots and warriors are locked in melee, archers are attacking, masters of the spear are shooting from the walls, a half-destroyed garrison stands in the middle of the battlefield, and behind it you can see those very catapults that breached it in the cutscene. Beautiful! Too bad the later battles don't have anything like that.
— The battle scripts. First, the computer's heroes here don't spam single-target Deflect Missile; instead they cast quite serious and dangerous spells (the kind they almost never use in Tribes of the East), actively use mass buffs and racial abilities. Second, on top of that, the enemy hero can cast something before the battle or cast several spells at once (for example, seven right at the start). Third, all sorts of surprises can happen during the battle itself, both bad and good: sometimes the enemy summons something, sometimes reinforcements arrive for you. All of this adds variety compared to the usual PvE fights.
— The very concept of battles with a preset build, army, and spells. Paradoxically, the lack of a strategic component is exactly what added variety for me. In this regard, the map reminds me of the "Knowledge is Power" scenario. I got to try playing with builds and creature upgrades I normally don't use. For example, I knew it made sense for the Knight to take "Master of Fire" — to halve the enemies' defense — but in a normal game I'd never try something like that. At first I thought the build changes were justified by the story (like, you're turning to the dark side, so Light weakens but Darkness and Chaos appear), but no, it's more of a gameplay convention. Many of the local builds can't even be assembled in a normal game, so the game offers a somewhat unique experience.
But, as it seemed to me, while in the first half of the scenario every battle played out differently, starting from Gotai and up to the end the build didn't really change, and I no longer had to use any new tactical tricks, unfortunately.
As for how balanced the battles themselves turned out, I can't really say, since I'm not much of an expert on that. Some fights seemed much harder to me than the ones that followed. But at least they're all doable. The outcome of a battle is heavily influenced by luck and starting initiative, and that's a roulette. Slight changes in how you play through, and luck will work differently. Don't field some of your troops — and the creatures act in a different order, and you might get a chance to have them die on something of the enemy's before someone else kills them. Thankfully, there are autosaves (sometimes I also made regular ones to skip cutscenes), so you can retry endlessly. But how anyone could beat these fights on the first try, I can't imagine.