Interportal 2011

Draniki(Haven) loose Havr(Chaos), Circle of Life, 1.4.3

Good starting conditions: dragon dwell right next door, a level 4 book with a protection ring in the corner, death in the witch's hut. Yet, a terrible start. I rescued the Lord, headed for the castle and decided not to bypass the minotaurs and thieves, but to wipe them out. There turned out to be way too many of them - I got melted down to a sliver. Then I repeated the feat at the castle - ran out of mana, but at least managed to escape this time. In the end, I took the castle on day 7. Later, I somehow scraped together enough for CDs, which I placed properly on day 6, and generally things started moving. Because there were good artifacts for a tank (agility sword, health ring, club from a rescued hero), I decided to level him up. Though for some reason I decided to do this with a necromancer (even though both melee and resist were sold at the non-magical university), whereas it should have been done with an archer. And if I really wanted an assassin, there was the witch... Also, a tactician could have been made from that same archer using the altar... Oh well. The runner categorically refused to level up; I sent both available altars into stealth. In the end, I entered the metro at the start of week 3, when it's usually time to start (or even finish) poking around the edges. When I got a runner with 434 in the metro, I decided to try and force the game (I really didn't want to drag myself across the whole map) and slip through the portal. I struggled to get him the necessary levels (since at that moment he decided to finish leveling running), the last one being on the Dragon Utopia guard. I didn't take the same utopia, as it would be a waste of a day to resurrect a couple of dead heroes, and without them it would be difficult. I killed off the remaining heroes, except for the thief, at the portal guard, and resurrected them in the sanctuary already on the other side. Raised levels at the tree, didn't go for the utopia - my immunity reserve was small, so I held back. I managed to sneak through the "backyards" all the way to the opponent's castle, which I captured, and then ran to the 2nd one. Here I messed up as usual, a couple of times even. The necromancer bought from the opponent could have easily reached the empty second castle. Instead, I raised a level on the ring, learned raise dead in the castle, and joyfully joined the army. And the second mistake - on the last step, I reached the magic school and didn't notice that I had no money for purchases. Now, I had a chaos unit 3330 in my army; he could have raised his level and gained ownership of the book, since the main chaos hero knew some things from the castle. That's where they got me.
So, the opponent had:
6 titans, 28 djinn, Haven Mage Guild, Life M, runner - advanced Haven, tactician (Mage Guild tactics).
I had:
Assassin (combat 5413, advanced death), chaos Mage Guild (though only knows M, but the full set), chaos expert (but only level 1 from the book available: chaos, death, and haven), tactician (which kind - not very important, since there was no army anyway), ninja (advanced death) and one more advanced death.
The ninja and assassin had cancel, morale +5.
On the first turn, I moved almost everyone before the opponent's turn (only titans shot, to prevent the djinn from getting in, I grounded them with a high-morale tactician), removed immunity from the priest and launched an inferno into him, catching the djinn as well. Priest is dead, my necromancer raised one djinn, who then "song-mirrored" the titans, not letting them really move.
After that, I basically controlled the battle and didn't let them do anything, even though the assassin was hanging by a thread for one turn.

Thanks for the game!