Heroes of Might and Magic IV Duel Tournament: "Wisdom and Luck"

Zybr def Shnurov_hl(Death) 3-1

Zybr(Might) lose Shnurov_hl(Death) 0-1
We took one restart each and went on.
The army setup was poor, with no decent stack of berserkers; otherwise it was average. One way or another, in the end it was decided by the classic theft and subsequent takedown of the tactician.

Zybr(Chaos) def Shnurov_hl(Nature) 1-1
First, Chaos generated with only hydras. After much deliberation, I finally took the last restart. Chaos again, but this time with Black Dragons and efreet and some tactics. I took a tactician, a Death mage, eyes, minotaurs, 900+ thieves, efreeti, and Black Dragons, and went into battle. There were almost 100 fire elementals, a Life Mage Guild with griffins (maybe also a tome), beetles, satyrs, and leprechauns. But my morale was shining well, and my heroes were sped up by potions, so I first rammed the tactician with Black Dragons, removed the zone of control, then with efreeti, killed him, and then poured acid on the corpse. The opponent retreated to griffins, but I closed in more or less carefully, blocked his fire elementals with thieves, and brought the battle to victory.

Zybr(Chaos) def Shnurov_hl(Life) 2-1
And again Chaos. But this time with disintegration, a full stack of Black Dragons, a full stack of nightmares, and minotaurs. The only misfortune was having to fully invest in sorcery and buy 2 more levels to make the mage a Grand Master anyway.
It was standard there. The angels immediately attacked, but couldn't remove the zone of control from my tactician. And they also revealed the enemy's priest. Immediate disintegration, and goodbye to the Life Mage Guild. Shnurov went on the attack, made a martyr out of peasants protecting the crusaders. But he fully opened up, and despite the fact that with the crusaders he did manage to reach my tactician, his own died right after from another disintegration. Then it was just meat against meat, plus my Chaos Mage Guild was still alive. Victory.

Zybr(Death) def Shnurov_hl(Death) 3-1
A "corpse" layout, if you don't count a decent stack of venoms (36). At first, the magic seemed mediocre (chain lightning, hypnotize/berserk/blind, hand/general sorrow), especially since I was playing against undead. In the end, I took order just in case. As it turned out, I got lucky with artifacts - the shield of order (with a ward against chaos) helped a lot. But in overall troop parameters, I seemed to be even losing. I formed a square and closed in. The opponent tried to break my Black Knights with disintegration - 500+ damage, only one fell. It became clear that he was unlikely to break me with magic. I flew off to distract the enemy's Chaos hero with my Black Knights, while also blocking his line of sight (so he couldn't hit heroes with disintegration). My tactician actively ruined the enemy's morale. I also got lucky that both of my heroes didn't fall after the first hits from the devils (tactician) and 160 mummies (Order mage). This allowed me not to waste a round on zone of control, and instead have the mage, for example, cast hypnotize on 900+ of the enemy's imps. There was nothing there to remove the hypnotize. So on the next turn, when my heroes were still standing, the enemy's Chaos hero was already down, and the devils got hit with hypnotize — the opponent congratulated me on the victory.

Thanks for the games and good luck in the playoffs:)