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I got it. Wicc, you just don't understand that you can't turn Heroes into a game where an old-school or variant playstyle will work simply because the game is different. Here, much more time is spent on maneuvering around the map than on fighting the opponent. Moreover, many games end only with that (map maneuvering), because opponents give up or bring such a weak army that defeating it is no more difficult than defeating any group of monsters. And if you cut out all the "imbalance," the map maneuvering will turn into, or has already turned into, a boring mess.
It's really funny to read that SOD players are just casual players who like to play while drinking beer, while VT players are the elite of Heroes and true sportsmen, since most of them play Jebus until they're blue in the face and snidely laugh at SOD/SM players :D

And if you compare Heroes to a sport, it's not like football, but like poker. Where, as in Heroes, luck plays a big role in a single hand/tournament/game, but over a certain distance, a strong player is always ahead of a weak player. Let's continue the analogy: HL corridor is like a high-stakes cash game, SM is like a simple Sit & Go, and balance on the map is like a super-turbo :).

P.S. I just realized that I have no idea if you play poker and will understand at least half of what I wrote, but I don't want to delete what I wrote.