Yeah, I came to cheer, but I got caught, wrestled down, and forced to play :) . In the 1st game I got an undeserved win, unfortunately, without a final. A bit more detail.

KostyaN (red, Tower, Nella, Nella) def Javdet(blue, Dungeon, Shakti, Tamika and again Shakti), 2sm4d(3), 211, TE-light, 4000+400.

What a blunder to draft Tower into Dungeon — that was my 1st thought after the draft :D . But then I made peace with the harsh reality :rolleyes: ... After one Roma restart and one of my 112 for 113 (started well, broke through to the swamp, took a crypt with 5 vampires, but moral gr. pokemons reached the caps and I had to restart a good layout :mad: ) — we started.

I didn't take 111, tempted by a mini-Griffin Conservatory at the doorstep and various Dwarf Cottages and crypts. And as it turned out, it was pointless — the distribution was unusually dull. Money-wise it seemed okay, we had nagas in the Citadel (took a couple of small crypts and a mini-Dwarf Cottage with a loh — by the way, in the last one the dwarves got moral like mad dogs, good thing it wasn't a 15-stack :o ), but on 117 and 121 I made terrible blunders. Had about 5000 coins, was thinking what to build: didn't want Castle just for buying, and for some reason I shoved in a Gargoyle upgrade — and that ended up biting me in the end :( .

Specifically on 121, "to not lose momentum" :D , I sent freshly bought Torosar into a Griffin Conservatory with just 4 basic nagas. The main thing is I even asked MediumHP, sitting next to me — will I take it or not? and he said unlikely or with losses at least, but what do we care about the opinions of authoritative Portal people — we go in and lose 3 nagas :D , where with sensible play I could have lost almost none at all. Then with this mess I ran around "like a fool with a written bag," finally broke through under about 50 gr. orcs into the underground, and caused a bit of trouble there (went into a treasure zone, which only had a warrior's grave with a crappy +1 HP — out of what was available), then took back the pearls, and Torosar also took a Dwarf Cottage. I only built the Castle.

On the 3rd I maxed Air, bought up, and climbed into another unexplored Griffin Conservatory, really hoping for 3-4 — but damn, again just 1 :eek: :mad: !! After it I was in a state of total prostration for a couple of days, because by all accounts the tempo was now unrecoverable. In the treasure zone I found only 1 tree with 8 (actually on the entire explored territory until the end of the game! + zero hideouts, either mine or any other), and there in the box they gave 15 Enchanters — well, at least something :) (gave a unique opportunity for triple cast per round: mine, Enchanters', and Genies' :cool: :D ). Then I nullified all of Air while only being a basic Sage :smile09: . And there was no one left to take Wings for the gold :( .

On the 4th I broke into another treasure zone (Roma wasn't in a hurry to come, and the 2-node with not the most pleasant GO gr. scorpions in the underground and devils wasn't conducive to it :) ). There were 15000 HP, a tome of water, something for stats, a library, and I stopped at a Dragon Utopia — was afraid to go in against the 10 Kornags — and there were no other strikers anyway :confused: ... (later after the game I checked with and without artifact bonuses to stats — it was easily taken even with 10 — their drakes didn't hit). On 211 with growth it was completely easy to take a 2 on magic stats (SP became 20 + I was planning to grab a globe for Air, and Lightning would already hit for almost 800 for 6 mana). But Roma said things weren't working out and had been for a while, and on that day he couldn't manage the max with leftover troops (with +6 and +4 to all, by the way...). Anyway, 1st pancake was lumpy.

Thanks for the game, good luck in the upcoming ones! ;)