Steadwick's Fall

After a great deal of tunneling and dragon slaying, my Kreegan army has arrived at the outskirts of Erathia's capitol city. Catherine's march has been delayed, allowing the evil army exactly three months to figure out a way to capture Steadwick.

The siege is no cake walk. While the time limit adds a level or urgency to an otherwise straightforward scenario, it's the map design that will frustrate you the most.

Steadwick is stationed in the center of the map, protected by magical garrisons and a huge army. Additionally, the enemy has forts with large armies and moderately high level heroes surrounding Steadwick. The northern half of the map is separated from the southern half of the map by two additional garrisons, both armed to the teeth. Enemy heroes will be able to move freely through the garrisons, forcing you to split your army in order to hold all of the forts. Amidst the constant skirmishes, you'll need to raise a large enough army to knock down all of the garrisons (without the benefit of spells) and then raise second army to invade Steadwick. The capitol city is guarded by a very high level hero called Gen. Kendal. He has a huge army, a garrison advantage, meteor shower spell, and powerful artifacts.

The difficulty lies in the fact that the castles, ramparts, and towers you capture on this map don't allow access to creatures above level 5. This means your armies won't have unicorns, gold dragons, cavaliers, or angels to match Gen. Kendal's seemingly endless supply of Cavaliers.

In the 5-6 times that I've played this scenario, I've always resorted to trickery to capture Steadwick. Specifically, I would use a hero to lure him Gen. Kendal away from his post and then try to capture the empty Steadwick with a secondary hero. This time, I was determined to defeat Gen. Kendal the correct way: on the battlefield!

The three strongest heroes (Nymus, Rashka, and Calh) loaded up on troops from my towns. Calh led my castle units, Rashka my inferno units, and Nymus my dungeon units. I softened Gen. Kendal's defenses and drained his mana with some hit and run tactics. Then, I went in with Nymus for the kill.

In the final battle, I immediately cast Blind to disable Gen. Kendal's stack of champions. Then, I used black dragons and scorpicores (both flying units) to block his marksmen and zealots (both shooters).

Finally defeating Gen. Kendal in battle so many years later was an incredibly satisfying experience. There were two major advantages that led me to victory this time around.

First of all, Nymus learned the Expert Town Portal spell early in the scenario, which enabled her to quickly recruit large armies by teleporting from town to town. The map makers must have realized how effective Town Portal was because they surrounded some of the towns with cursed ground to prevent abuse.

Secondly, Rashka's diplomacy skill enabled him to quickly maintain an army while pressing into enemy territory without having to backtrack to a fort. Rashka was able to cut through random creature stacks effortlessly and conquer enemy castles early, preventing Erathian forces from fortifying their positions.

These two advantages allowed my heroes to disable the enemy's secondary army and then amass an army by the second month. Gen. Kendal had no other option but to sit quietly within Steadwick's walls as my army closed in from all sides.

Here's Shadowden, my dungeon.

Here's Tartaros, my inferno.