On Progamer, back when there were still Chaos League reports, you could often find mentions of this. And they played pure SoD, I hope you understand... so this isn't new. I also didn't get the part about the warrior's grave — is it a feature of Smd(3) that they aren't generated at the respawn??
On XL templates, no one is surprised by a warrior's grave at the respawn. On SoD, not on TE.
P.S.: I recall that the cause of grey Castles was thought to be placing a hero in the castle garrison using the space bar.