OFB-8

Good road split, there’s an external market, found an external dwelling of birds — I’ll play. I couldn’t find any imbalanced picks either in the tavern or at spawn, but I quickly colored my native towns, took the bird external dwelling, got bears in castle via the market, found boots+gloves in carts/wagons, Crag Hack got Logistics, albeit alongside Resistance and Luck. From week 2, I gained very strong tempo, with repeated splitting and re-splitting, ate all the tastiest stuff underground, uncovered the Cartographer, stole the Grail via Fly, after first fending off the KV. Tiracsor randomly got Diplomacy, so I’m planning to switch to him, but the opponent appears. With 2 Dimension Doors I reach him and attack with superior stats; the melee is even, but Crag Hack wins the Fireball without a fight — only 4-11 and 30 mana there.
As the saves showed, the opponent had 8 Sprites + Cartographer at spawn :eek:, but a severe tempo drop; the diplomat managed to recruit 70+ Storm Elementals, and that seems to have been it.

Thanks for the game!

P.S. I’ve been meaning to ask — who decided that Blue chooses the template and castle?
Needless to say, the only Red template in the tournament is Jebus Cross (if you don’t count the crazy SMK that hardly anyone in their right mind would play), and Blue’s advantage in this regard is very significant.
P.P.S. I’ve wanted to write this for a long time, but somehow never got around to it.