The fourth stage of the "Van Kanighem" tournament.

A Witcher is understandable, but I didn't know that the first strike also applies to the counterattack.

Yes, a Witcher is just a terminator :) Especially if his combat skill is also upgraded to the third level or so, then he doesn't need first strike magic; he will have it anyway.

As I understand it, the chance of petrification is influenced by the expected damage that was blocked. Therefore, several Minotaurs always die. Accordingly, I couldn't just block them; I killed them with Beholders.

I honestly still don't understand. It seems that whether the Medusa's magic hits or not depends on the strength of their attack. Maybe the defender's defense also influences this. But if there are significantly more Medusas, then, in my opinion, there is no way to win; they will kill the Minotaurs with magic, and no load/save will help.

I'll be so bold as to ask how to kill Mages and Djinns, because I haven't been successful with casters at all. As I understand it, Golems can be defeated with Fairies, but I didn't even try to fight those guys.

No, well, what can I say, that's right. It's unclear how the battle was won; you need to ask. But I'll definitely have to resort to additional saves :) because I need to remember what and how I fought. Moreover, there were several battles with casters. Which battle are you interested in? I think the more difficult one was the one where the Mages were paired with Djinns. The general idea here is to lure out their mana, after which they become corpses. Also, I think in this battle I needed the hero to die at the same time as the last enemy unit. With the Fire Staff, this wasn't so difficult, but I forgot that my hero was a Witcher, and the Djinns constantly moved away from him by two squares. Here, I already had to use load saves in reverse; I wanted my Witcher to miss attacks, so I pushed the Djinns against obstacles and then cast a spell on myself with the staff when there were 1-2 Djinns left alive and the hero had little health. And I also drank a bottle of immortality before the battle. Someone was in the support, but not so that the enemy units would split up, otherwise it would be difficult to lure out the mana. At first glance, the battle seemed difficult, but it wasn't. With the help of load saves, it is easy to make them waste their magic in battle. The Mages, after casting poison on the hero (which somehow cannot be dispelled), calm down and start casting illusions on themselves and the Djinns, then they cast lightning bolts on the summoned Fairies. The Djinns try to cast some tricky magic on the hero, like fear or something else, but before they do, you need to remember and use load saves until the hero dispels this magic. My hero had some kind of initial skill for this - Magic Resistance - it works with a probability of 30% or less, but with off and load saves, we achieve that it works on every Djinn attack. In general, it is won with load saves. If you want details, I'll look at who did what there. Or maybe another battle with Mages needs to be described. Offhand, there were also Mages with Golems, and that seemed to be more difficult. The Mages attack and interfere with magic, and the Golems advance. I think I only managed to win this battle with a two-stage tactic. First, one unit is defeated, then we attack again and defeat the remaining unit. I'll look at it in more detail with the Mages if the answer is still unclear. But probably only tomorrow - today I'm trying to make it to the third blitz tournament. Ok?