Our story to date couldn't be more different ... we still have all our heroes (which is some kind of achievement in itself) but we don't have a good financial or mana situation. There's so much we want to do and nothing to do it with.

That was until today when we made the mistake of trying to take a dungeon. Our princess is dead. Our heavily armoured and enchanted princess was felled by a single doom bat. We mourn her loss. We avenged her death and were joined by one of our dark cousins who has sworn loyalty to us.

The next day (or two) will be crucial. We have to negotiate our lone weakling hero past the invading hero and we have to wait two days before our air galley can easily clear out our homeland. In theory, the invading hero can stop both actions, which will then be the end of our war. In practice, we are hopeful it will do neither.

Our homeland is being invaded too ... gobbo flyers which have always been the bane of my life. Elsewhere we move around destroying things and trying to stay alive.

Day 13 wasn't unlucky for human hopes - our hero picks up one set of items and along with his small spellcasting ability is steadily building himself up, and he is now out of range of the invaders. Also, it is highly unlikely they can stop our air galley coming next turn, which will be their downfall!

We are sloshing with gold, but have virtually no mana.

A small pre-emptive strike was stymied as we discovered we weren't actually at war with the humans That has been rectified. You think you've planned for everything ...

Well now, just as you think things are getting better, 3 elf heros turn up on your doorstep ready for mayhem!

Human troops scatter away from them, whilst our long awaited air galley at least rids our lands of the annoying hero, gaining a silver medal in the process.

Our brave archers fought off large evil invasions from 2 sides overnight. We mourn our losses but congratulate their bravery. We move onwards into human lands.

Humans shaping up for a batle with a warlord and ballista tomorrow. If that goes well, things should start looking up.

Our air galley clears up the homelands, and eyes up the elf heros. Instead, we will probably pick easier evil targets for an easy gold medal first.

Our archers were again attacked overnight and again rebuffed the evil ones. Made a silly mistake (confused the spells I have between this game & another) but it's easily recoverable.

We notice that none of the elf heros have wall climbing! Looks like they didn't realise this either, until they bumped their noses on our walls Taht should give us some important time to build a better defence.

Things go exactly according to plan in our battle with the warlord. so now we have a much better chance of putting up some sort of a fight.

Ah, was hoping you wouldn't notice the little faux pas with wallclimbing. However we weren't worried as 2 of the heroes were due to gain a level today.

A little more exploring, a little more destroying.

Mainly just moving into position, maintaining a skirmish line, so we can see what's ocurring.

Problems back at home with 2 Dark Elf heroes having broken through our archers finally.

In human lands, we fell over the air galley which was a little unexpected ...

Which air galley was that?

Punting one air galley forward... let's see what happens.

I have a very specific destination in mind for another one.

A third will be used for my main strike force.

One NE & 4 archers tried to take on the 2 DE heroes ... and failed badly. Our homelands are in imminent danger of being taken over.

On the bright side, we've spotted the human hero .. and another air galley (well, that bit's not the bright side)

Did a doubletake when I see my 3 hex has fallen! Nice touch on the elf rider with water walking etc. Now he is cloud walking.

Pity the air galley bait wasn't taken... it was a long shot.

Looks like something decisive will happen soon!

Not much to say ... things have been better ...

Something decisive happened.

Decisive, yes .. good, no. Our 3 heroes are gone, our homeland is gone - 4 DE heroes eventually overpowered our heroic archers and there doesn't seem much left that we can do.

Moving around ...

Our recently acquired frostling hero survived the battle with just one hp! Throwing in a few level one units took a small amount of fire away from my two heros and the stone-skinned blessed air galley. I expected the air galley to take all the flak but once it was left with just the heros, it sat making hits every now and then, whilst minor damage was being done from ranged hero attacks. I wasn't sure about the outcome by any means, just had a gut feeling it was worth doing, plus the other galleys could have picked up any pieces.

Now it would take an even bigger disaster than befell me at the beginning to lose this one. My surving hero is fully healed, has the pick of a vast pile of items, two air galleys to back him up and is heading into elf territory to finish things off asap.

Another galley is heading west, where it should be able to rescue another good hero all on it's own.

Eradicated a stack of folorn elves with our air galley.

Trying to consolidate our remaining units but not sure whether we have the time to do so.

Pushing forward with our galley and hero, we catch a few straggling elves of strange races.

Our other (damaged) air galley nearly gets taken out by dragon ship, but continues on it's designated path,

Still consolidating

Hmmm. The central dungeon has been explored. I'm hoping I've killed the hero that was in there!

Making a toehold in the far west, but the undead are there already.

We took back a village and killed a dark elf archer because we could - won't make any difference in the scheme of things, but made us feel better.

Engaged a stack and half of elves. As usual, General Art. Intelligence directs all his firepower at the air galley and, just when he makes some headway, he turns to the hero and ends up merely damaging both, and losing everything.

Looks like we will lose our galley production centre to the undead as there is a wraith we can't do anything about.

Killing some undead in the west, just a couple of days away from a dungeon battle that could be productive.

I despair of Gen AI - why did it suddenly stop attacking the air galley when it had lost half its health? More consolidation, but with somewhat fewer units than before.

Actually, there's some quite specific rules about how the ai "attacks", including one where hero's are exempt from being attacked for the first two (?) rounds, then get everything concentrated on them. The ai is not able to diverge from that, even when it has nearly finished killing an important unit, and it has no chance of killing the hero. There is a thread about it all somewhere.

And exactly the same thing can be seen in today's battle!

Cleared out 4 shadows guarding a pile of 4 hex rubble, and started a builder to create it in our image. Next turn we should be in the dungeon.

Managed to get an air galley back inside our starting 4 hex, in warmode as the wraith is in the other corner. I think that means it can't raze it, although it didn't do that last turn, for some reason.