Terra dei Demoni

09.11.2013 The_ (blue, Castle, Valeska, Vidomina) def Javdet (red, Necro, Charna, Charna, Aislinn) Terra Dei Demoni 132.

It happened.
Fresh impressions of the template:
I wanted to try something new — but it turned out to be the same old Jebus Cross, just a camping version. Just like in Jebus Cross, the generator decides everything, and there’s almost no way to recover from an uneven draw.
The center is pointless; with a complicated GO I see no reason to rush there in the future — just a waste of troops. The starting respawn and its surroundings are many times richer than the treasure zones. The only reason to hurry to the center is Dragon Utopias.
And it’s unclear what Vic was thinking when he set such a timer in the rules. The tournament’s gimmick is demonology, but with a 7-minute timer including battles, it’s hardly possible to do it well.
Also, the demons themselves don’t decide much; what decides the outcome, just like in Jebus Cross, are the Angels and the ducks, which are plentiful enough to kill GO by the start of week 2.

About the game:
I intercepted luckily, giving up the double Castle, which practically left my opponent no chance for demoning.
Week 1 went great — 280 skeletons, all secondary skills taken, and the necessary buildings constructed; with 122 I could start cutting. But — a terrible exit into the center — GO golden dragons on a teleport :(

Things went far from smoothly after that. In the rush, extra skeletons were wasted; a scout hero who ran all the way to the middle of nowhere for the Griffin Conservatory had to take the maximum — lost an angel and many skeletons. Dragon Fly Hives were scattered, and there weren’t many of them. I only reached GO on day 126. While gathering future skeletons from castles and ferrying them to the transformer — the timer started to stress me out. In short, in the panic I played both GO battles terribly, and at the moment when the game could have been decided, I made the wrong decision. I took the central town and then discovered that my opponent was also in the center (the previous turn he was still hanging around secondary heroes). I was just a little short — he grabs the Dragon Fly Hive on day 8, which decides the outcome; I think I could have handled 47 Wyverns, but 55 only with good morale.

Vidomina attacks, she has +1 speed, and I probably should have gone straight for the ducks. A couple of mistakes and there’s no chance to win the fight.

After that it became clear that if I hadn’t gone into the center, but just gathered demons and skeletons, I would have won easily. And demonology itself didn’t pay off — I converted almost everything except orcs and giants (I couldn’t bring myself to do it)))), and the demons were a joke — only 45 of them.

Thanks for the game!

Added after 3 minutes
It seems to me that reducing the mid-value goodies on respawns to standard SM levels and increasing the treasure zone area would improve the template)