Deep Mike - Captain 2,5-1,5
We played as many as 4 games. My opponent dragged me onto Balance, which I had never played on before in my life, and tormented me with mages, which was completely unusual.
1st game Captain def Deep Mike (Castle, red vs Rampart, blue), week 4. Everything seemed fine with me — I developed, ran fast, and built a secondary hero on the second week with elves in a Stronghold, but my opponent had everything go perfectly with magic. The main hero was Luna, plenty of resources, he built 5 mage guild levels and had Town Portal and Dimension Door. And at the end, I started to get sloppy and make mistakes, especially when Kirei rode back to my hometown and forgot to buy a spell book, forcing me to lose a day returning back, which turned out to be critical. While I was pushing through the roads into the wastelands, Luna jumped over a hill, captured my Inferno secondary hero, and from there, with Boots of Speed, she jumped right to my capital the next day, preventing me from getting the weekly growth. Kirya, however, fell a few tiles short of the opponent's capital before the weekly growth, and by then angels were already built. Luna Town Portaled home and bought the angels, though she didn't have enough money for the entire weekly growth. In the final battle, surprisingly, there were still chances, but what decided it was that after breaching the wall, I went to attack with unicorns in the rear of the cavalry, expecting them to only hit 1 tile of the fire wall, but they went through all 3 fire wall tiles inside the castle, and that was the end — my opponent had plenty of mana and finished off the dendroids.
2nd game Deep Mike (Barbarian, blue) draw Captain (Necropolis, Galthran)
I had an excellent setup, but my opponent had nothing good besides Galthran. However, I made an unfortunate draft even without properly building my town; by the time I arrived, the Necropolis player had amassed a huge pile of skeletons and also built the 5th mage guild level. And despite Crag Hack's superiority in parameters, a large army, and speed, I had no desire to attack a massive skeleton stack. My opponent offered a draw, which I immediately accepted.
3rd game Deep Mike (blue, Swamp, Tazar) def Captain (red, Inferno, Pyre), 1-1-6
Everything was great for me — lots of money, hydras in the town easily appeared on week 1, Tazar immediately leveled Logistics to expert, and there were 2 Griffin Conservatories on the respawn. My opponent, after breaking through a hundred archers, in euphoria attacked the dendroids he could have bypassed and couldn't handle them. Upon learning I had chocolate, he preferred to start a new game instead of auto (in the second game he gave me auto in a similar situation, so naturally I offered it too) since his setup wasn't good, so a restart was necessary.
4th game Deep Mike def Captain. At my opponent's suggestion, we played the same setup as in the third game again. We used all resets. This time, I was poor. Only a village was accessible, and even that was quite far away. The sawmill was inaccessible, but I had enough wood for the respawn. With great difficulty, through resource trading, I still managed to build hydras without cows in the town on week 1. But that was it for money, and I had nothing to buy an army with. After buying a few troops, I took the medusa nest for 4000, then used the horse to break through into the wastelands toward the sawmill — there were treasure chests there too — and with Tazar I took the crypt, after which some money appeared and I built cows on week 2. I went through a teleport off-road; on the other side I had to kill cyclopes at the exit, emerged in the wastelands of a Barbarian respawn, where there was 1 Pandora's Box with 5000 experience next to the teleport and absolutely nothing else — the horse scouted the area and found not even a single pile of gold. Tazar returned home to take the Griffin Conservatory on my own respawn on week 3. Here, through the GO hundreds of Great Basilisks, Pyre flashed by but didn't attack them. At the start of week 3, I took the Conservatory — it turned out to be a maximum spawn, but with 5 hydras and expert Armorer, I took it without losses. At level 11 I finally got Logistics; before that I was given Attack, and at the very start I was saddled with Leadership, which ultimately played a crucial role in the final battle. After buying as many troops as I could scrape together money for through trading, I broke through the basilisks, and behind them a second Griffin Conservatory of efreeti with an upgraded stack — they inflicted losses since I had no mana left. Soon I captured the opponent's capital with the horse defending pits and dogs. Pyre returned to the center and positioned herself a day's travel from my town. I decided to return home with my army and sit there with the horse; I couldn't risk fighting with Tazar, so I positioned him on dragonflies. Pyre, being inferior in army strength, didn't go for my town but instead went for her own, attacking Tazar, who fled. After being ransomed, Tazar again went to the center where the unclaimed naga bank stood. On 1-4-1, after receiving the weekly growth, he took it — got 12000 gold and 24 Sulfur. Pyre, after upgrading the efreeti, also went to the center. But with the money I received, I bought cows and basilisks and attacked. Tazar's strength parameters were higher, plus Expert Attack. My opponent's magic was somewhat stronger, but fortunately he didn't have that much mana, though still more than mine. I had to sacrifice the dragonflies to kill the ammunition cart of the archers and wait until they ran out of ammo. My opponent also stopped shooting, so I pulled up all my troops and went into melee. That's where morale made the difference. In the end, when both ran out of mana, I still had about 12 cows and 20 basilisks left against a pair of efreeti and a hundred imps — I caught up to them with morale. Thanks for the games.