In my opinion, he chose well, except perhaps he could have taken vampires instead of flies.

There weren't enough for vamps after selling the artifact for 15k. It would have been better to take vamps and flies with the leftover instead of basilisks or wyverns. I only realized later, after I had already bought everything, that all the two-hex creatures except flies had been taken! I didn't dare take the auto-buy in the second game. The flies were great at weakening everyone, I really liked them. Overall, the position wasn't bad, and I'll say it again - I let my black knights get killed twice, in the first and second battles, through basilisks and 12 of them were left! And without even landing a single hit!!! That's the key point, I think. I spent the rest of the game trying to finish off his twenty remaining black knights, while my eyes were under Forgetfulness, Blindness, and Demoralization.
Demoralization was distributed equally to everyone, oddly enough.
Well, really, it's down to personal preference and taste.