[maltz]

I went back to my old impossible mage save and tried the battle with different unit / artifact selections. Indeed this fight is very difficult.

I was pretty lucky to get the artifact that converts 5 Rage into 5 Mana every turn. Without that artifact I couldn't win - mana runs out. I also had two Ring of Snake King which made my snakes pretty effective guaridans. This is one thing that I really don't like this "strategy" game - too much luck. I think it may be worthwhile for you to go to Demonis first and see what artifacts you can pick up from the shops and castles - and level up to about 28. Complete all other quests you can to boost your rune and skills, too.

The key is to lower the health of the necromancers and skeleton archers as soon as possible - but you don't want to wipe out them completely or they'll get raised back to a pretty big number. I used the "teleport - time back" combo - very effective. After they are weakened you can concentrate on the crystal. When maxed Time out takes 20 rage and 3 turns to rest.

The hardest hitting unit are the lv4 dark knights. You CANNOT let them touch you (as you probably have seen, each hit takes 10,000 from your stack). The easiest way is to let a weak enemy blocking their way to you. Use spells to slow them down or Trap. With some patience in reloading you will know exactly where they are going.

Here comes my recommended action:

Turn 1. Rage: heavy ice thorn on the floor. Sheep (Lv 3) the necromancers. Teleport out my hitter stack to attack the necromancers. You expect to take out about 1/3 of that stack. Use ranged power to weaken the skeleton archers. Move a unit to the vacancy left by your power stack so the enemy bone dragon doesn't fly there.

Turn 2: Slow down the larger dark knight stack as well as the zombies. Keep hitting the necromancers. At the end of the turn, move away your vacancy-guarding stack and Time Back. Most of the enemy stacks have been attracted to your decoy - great.

Turn 3: Sheep the necromancer again. Keep hitting the resurrected dragon (now you have your power hitter back). Killing the reraised unit is actually a good way to deplete the enemy hero's mana (later on you want to move a unit to take the dragon spot). Use wall to slow down the advancing enemy more. Keep weakening the enemy skeleton archers.

Turn 4-5: Teleport out your power hitter and hit the necromancers and time back. Remember you don't want to kill the stack. Keep weakening the skeleton archers. Use Trap to avoid getting the hit. Use Glot's armor to avoid getting another hit.

Turn 6 to end: The enemy has reached you. Remember you don't want to wipe out a weak stack. By now you should have occupied the dragon's slot - so the enemy hero will instead reraise the stack you just wiped out - since it is weak, you are safe. They are here to provide cushion. Keep resurrecting troops back and use Teleport + Timeback to get rid of the 20000HP crystal AND to distract enemies. You need two such cycles. Then it is a slow process of wearing down the enemy.

- Keep magic spring up on some melee stack so you get the recharge.

- Make good use of time back (write down the number of your units at the beginning of every turn so you don't waste a Time Back chance.) I love to cast Magic Spring on a stack and Time Back to get free magic spring (and mana) back.