Reports on victories and defeats in online games of Heroes of Might and Magic V.

We were practicing before the tournament.
Ment(Necropolis, Kaspar) def JonnyP (Academy, Ora)
During the game, we determined: the "smile" build, medium difficulty, you can see the factions. The map was a bit poor, but not catastrophically so. There were no mines (other than wood and ore) not only in the starting zone but also in the adjacent one. There seemed to be enough artifacts (except for the dragon mantle appearing repeatedly). I start the game: Zoltán appears, Kaspar and Orson are in the tavern (well, I think I'm lucky). I immediately made some mistakes: in the first week, I underestimated the pikemen and goblins and lost. I bought a hero, somehow restored the army (added zombies from the city and dwellings, found Razzak in the dungeon, added golems). In the second week, I captured the crypt, went to the bears with the elemental belt, and discovered that the auto-battle in the crypt drained all my mana :( I asked my opponent to reload, and he agreed, so thank you very much. After that, everything went smoothly: I was a little more careful and didn't rush, but I advanced steadily, and the skills were great. Money came in partly from the treasuries, partly from the large bag of gold, and partly from the built-up capital. I captured the dwarf castle, and the income increased even more, plus there was an opportunity for conversion (who said that bone golems are useless fighters? ;)). The only problem was with mercury: even at the end of the game, my dragons weren't upgraded; I upgraded the undead in the fortress.
I was walking around one of the zones and saw Ora in a zone adjacent to the dwarf zone. Leaving the gem mine and a potential castle nearby, I made a portal to the city, bought some things, and went on the attack (before that, I ran into the artifact shop in the opponent's zone, bought dragon boots and a ring of speed, and the opponent took a ring of misfortune in that time). Jonny was in a financial crisis, so his army wasn't complete. After a short battle, he fled. I activated the chain and chased after him. When I caught up, the opponent was already waiting in the castle and seemed to have bought everything (or almost everything). I spent a turn waiting for Daedra with the rest of my army, and then he attacked. My army was larger, and the stats were also good (Jonny somehow had poor attack and defense, he seemed to be uneducated and without artifacts). Nevertheless, in the battle, I had to get a little nervous: the opponent, as it turned out, had a tome of darkness, expert magic of light, expert magic of darkness, and Sandro's cloak! He was quite effectively controlling the zombies, skeletons (of which there were few left), and even the phoenixes that I was summoning (plus berserk). The ring of misfortune also didn't work very well; many strong attacks were wasted. But still, I had a lot of ghosts and vampires, so the battle was decided in my favor.
I think we both gained good experience. Thank you for the game!