"Newcomer - 2016. Winter"

upon first meeting with the opponent, I collected 50 ducks from the Dragon Fly Hives, the opponent bought me off, then I continued collecting from the Dragon Fly Hives, gathered 100+ outd, red orb, elixir and started chasing the opponent and taking his castles and destroying his peasants, the game turned out long but instructive, the opponent fought until the last castle and hero but was defeated)
Thank you for the game!

The opponent crossed out the templates I knew - so I had to play on a template unknown to me. The template itself left a negative impression because you can't quickly capture the main castle, and the template's layout itself is not for beginners in my opinion, but the game itself turned out interesting, albeit not equal. The game itself is apparently a contender for the longest game of the tournament:smile26:

In general, the opponent did not build his castle, but started collecting from Dragon Fly Hives. From the very beginning of the game, he had an advantage in army size. I didn't expect to see a bunch of Dragon Fly Hives and started building up the Native and Elf castles. In the end, Shakti ran with the native troops, and Sephiroph with the elven ones. I built the Guild completely, but at first I couldn't catch Slow in either of the castles, and then Town Portal didn't work out - this nullified my game strategy. But I got Berserker and on the fifth level I rolled Fly - this gave me hope. But after the first battle, the opponent found the Sphere of Inhibition, then collected more Dragon Utopias than I did (I got a completely useless Dragon Utopia) and in the end collected outd as well.

He also had Dimension Door and Fly (taken from my castle). Looking at the map, I saw that he often cut across the map through obstacles and seemed to jump several times per turn (as if using Dimension Door) over long distances across the map, and I suspected a possibility of rule violation, but the opponent said he was playing fair. So it's possible that the game itself showed his movement during Fly as a slideshow, similar to Dimension Doors. And the duration of his movement was, according to him, thanks to the Stable, Expert Logistics, Logistics specialty, Gloves, and Boots - so it's quite possible.

I turned the game into the late game and started trading cities in a circle with the opponent, thanks to approaching from three flanks with the heroes Sephiroph, Shakti, and Aeris. They ran in different parts of the map. For a while, these maneuvers worked, but the army gradually dwindled, and the opponent didn't waste time either. After a bunch of battles and my escapes and buy-offs, the opponent finally pushed me to the end. I played in the late game for the first time, so I got a lot of impressions. Thank you for the game!