He seems to always transform to the 3rd creature in your lineup the first round. Personally, I bought a snake and put it there, and then wiped all his snakes before he got a chance to transform again.

It is on the main menu screen. Simply click on that campaign, he game will prompt for a re-start, click yes and you'll be all set.

I haven't gone that far yet, but it looks like a ridiculously hard battle. If that transformation can't be dispelled, maybe you need some very fast, fire resistant units to minimize the losses while the units are transformed into black dragons. I'm grasping at straws here and assuming what I read from your post and saw in your pics. Red dragons or Archdemons with good level adrenaline skill and haste level 2 should outrun the black dragons he creates till they revert back to their regular state.

Another option... does he transform units based on the ones present on the battlefield? If so, making an army of decent level 1-2 units will be an interesting idea, as you will probably have the upper hand.

Maybe this battle requires a different approach... I'll see when I get there. So far I'm still working on optimizing the early battles.

EDIT: Here's some more info. I decided to spend all my money on black dragons. My paladin has only 4.7k leadership, but that's all the same, since it allowed me to test Lew Klisan's "I need money" line (Requirements: Less than 5000 leadership, less than 50 gold).

He gave me a potion to drink. I drank it, and got +5 mana and +5 rage, along with 20k + 10k "tip" from him. If that is a built-in event, it will be a great option to both earn some money and get a boost to your rage and mana values.

You can beat the metamorph guy by having a bunch of level 1 creatures so that when his army transforms, you can wipe them out easily.

The boss battles get really easy when you get access to stone skin and divine armor. Cast those spells on a tough creature like Paladins and they can pretty much solo the bosses.

brutal tactics
 

Hi all, i found accidentally very brutal combination of units, companion and item on the beginning of this campaign. This combination helps me finish campaign in two hours without problem on hard difficulty.
I bought from first NPC three royal plants, diploma in botany (+10 att, +10 def for thorns, ents and dryads ) and as companion choose gardener Hagrid. This companion is really overpowered because my plants were indestructible, he has huge hp boost for plants but what is really strong that he can ressurect plants every round.I won 90% fights without loss thanks to ressurect from gardener.
But be warned there is no chalenge with this combination, but i was very lucky on the begining. POWER OF PLANTS :-).

When I drank it I got -3 Attack. I still got 30k gold though.

Hmm... so it is random. Well, in that case, it pays off to save the game and try doing the no-money trick from time to time and see what you get. I'm positive anyone can get a positive outcome.

Yup, I just did it and got +2 defense. Same save file to, so it seems you can just save right before talking to him and then retry until you get the bonus you want.

I gathered some info on available companions:

1. Sirius Dark [+3 attack/+1 morale of undead]
   
2. Lucius [+100% attack and defense of dryads, feries, demonesses]
   
3. Almaran [double crit chance against demons and undead]
   
4. Kulukhan [+1 initiative and speed of orcs]
   
5. Captain Kidd [+300 leadership/+1 speed and morale of pirates,sea dogs, marauders, robbers, devilfish]
   
6. Torburn [+20% crit chance for archers]
   
7. Illiar [+4 intellect/mana restoration after battle]
   
8. Artang [+3 defense and +1 initiative and speed of humans/summons orc stack equal 1/2 hero's leadership]
   
9. Hagrid [+50% health and 10% resistance of thorns and ents/summons plant stack]
   
10. Amber [+1 initiative and +50% dmg of assassins/+10% crit chance/attacks enemy during battle]
    
11. Torre [+50% lightning damage/+5 defense of mages/summons magic sword for 9 rounds]

:grin:
I hope I didnt missed someone

BTW, all you need in the fight with the metamorph is a single stack of black knights, stone skin, magic spring and Eviln. 200 of your knights (even as a mage) will own 5000 of his :)

Get to the edge of the arena where only 2 enemy units can hack at you, kill them, port away so that you always have 2 fresh corpses for eviln, get to another edge of the arena, kill some more, use magic spring and calm rage to recover mana and the metamorph goes down easily.

Here is my imp/mage result with "0 loss" against Giant Spider..



Used only 4 Royal Thorns...

Do Not intersect the Royal thorns...
Do Not spawn any plants during the fight bcz of Hagrid random heal skill..

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/4820/spider1o.jpg

After 193 rounds..
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5051/spider2g.jpg