kontra(demons, Grok) lost to oneman(dwarves, Karli) 1-3-6 Spider

We played without restarts. I got a very lucky hand (not that I know how to play it :)). I got Karli and a character with priests. Nearby I found a dwelling with spears. The portals weren't offering anything particularly good, and they wouldn't let me have the tent; I only started breaking through on day 7. Karli was leveling up incredibly poorly. By the end of the game I only had 3 secondary skills (soldiering, tent, and BB), the rest went into primary stats because at each level I was given 1-2 useless skills from the luck tree. I quickly scouted all the adjacent zones with war dancers. I couldn't break through the guards there even by week 3. So I farmed the small treasure zones, built up my castle nicely, and saw that Grok had teleported into my adjacent zone. I returned the main hero to the castle, learned useless runes, and sat down to wait. On the next turn, Grok accidentally ran into the wrong portal and lost 12 horses there, although in the end it wouldn't have made much difference. I was expecting Armageddon or another hit-and-run tactic, but the opponent apparently just decided to attack. Both heroes were weak mages shooting 2nd-level spells, and I had much more fodder, so the siege failed.
In the end, I still don't understand how to play these dwarves, because even with a great starting hand, you can't break through the guards even by week 3.

Many thanks for the game; it was funny how we couldn't load a couple of times – sometimes my internet dropped, sometimes the opponent froze, sometimes I got an error :)