Reports on victories and defeats in online games of Heroes of Might and Magic V.

Kolobokk (mages, orcs) defeated HeatEx (orcs, tilsek) 2-4-6 in the "Best of the Best" Tournament.

Confirmed.
I didn't want to play as a machiner on the labyrinth map, so I would have taken Keegan, but I decided to go with a specialist castle focused on warmongers. By the 4th week, after exploring the resource map and one of the centers, I discovered an academic secondary town. I took the maximum utopia there, sacrificing some kents and shamans, and moved underground, where I came face to face with the Hive. The Hive was running away, trading 180 gremlins for 60 centaurs, and after that, not only did I practically escort the enemy's units to the castle, but I also took it back for them :o

The General was located underground, where both the starting town and, thanks to scouting, I saw the Hive breaking through. I had to retreat home because the week was also on a negative morale-luck for dark races, but the Hive retreated. Then I found a mentor, forgot about leadership in favor of anti-chaos, and finally emerged into the battlefield. From there, I went back to the same desert with the second magic castle, where the second encounter took place - the Hive, unexpectedly bursting out of the castle, crashed into Tilsek, causing almost no damage due to anti-chaos. This was a real chance to catch her; I had unequipped manacles, but I simply didn't expect her to appear from the castle at that moment.

After that, there were two weeks of tense play, with Tilsek having logistics and path of war but no marching spells, and the Hive with gates and a portal in the city. Towards the end, I almost cornered her again, but she managed to find a gap in the walls, so I had to return home and, through the General, drag her away. There was nowhere else to retreat to, as she was near two castles with a well-established transfer system using jumps.

Of course, I suspected that my opponent had not only chaos but also darkness at that stage, especially since the trained tricksters were actively using it. However, I didn't make it to the mentor. In the final, the four-barreled machine ballista with a ring didn't fire once; the cyclops and catapult only managed to hit the gates once, and it didn't break them. The second cast of the Hive, the goblins could no longer deflect, and the controlled cyclops basically won the entire final, because there was almost no damage from the dwarven mixed army of the Hive's troops, and she herself could only cast control and plague from darkness, and chaos was also useless. Well, and there wasn't much money for a bribe, otherwise I would have escaped to retrain immediately after the kents wiped out the gremlins.
Thank you for the game; I think if I hadn't been given the secondary town, everything would have ended differently.

Tilsek, level 28, almost everything is filled from machines, logistics, education, attack, and chaos suppression, absolute blood rage with a pendant.