Wow! It is such an honor to have you here! I'm a huge fan, and have been following your and Jon Caneghem's work since Heroes of Might and Magic I. Thank you for making legendary HMM and MM series.
This doesn't seem to be played on the hardest difficulty settings. On higher settings, all enemies cast runes every turn. It's incredibly overpowering. Chevaliernoir10 made a bunch of errors, including not casting mass haste early, waiting his griffins, not blocking the gate. When you have mass haste + mass deflect, your ranged attackers become stronger than the enemy's. You can hurt them using a shootout. Park angels at the door, wait them to keep having retaliation turns, and heal using paladins. Divebomb the Thanes or the Rune Priests. Your level 7s are stronger than Tolgar's, so you can afford to have two stacks stand next to each other. The Thanes can't resist jumping out and dealing one painful blow to your two adjacent stacks. But that's the last they can do, because after that everyone focuses on killing the Thanes. You need to conclude this battle quickly. On easy it really looks easy, but on higher difficulty settings the rune casting will make the enemy stronger and stronger if you don't end it all fast.
Also, try not to let the shieldguards and godzillas come out. Shieldguards don't do a lot of damage, but are hard to kill which wastes your time and possibly disrupts your ranged attackers. The dragons will create fiery hell if they are allowed to get near, but shieldguards will walk in front of them and block their own side from burning you.
