Lookin for help, no loss

[prune]

I've been doing a fair bit of reading on the no loss strategies here but cannot figure it all out in-game. I just don't understand how you're meant to survive and keep your sanity in the early game.

Playing a paladin, and I have 45 mana at level 5. I'm simply trying to take on things that are a match even but run out of mana. I need 20 for the ressurection on my gryphons, say, or 20 for Gift on the Inquisitors, but the problem is with regenerating the mana. I use Magic spring, but it's so unreliable and it's not a failsafe method. For example, leaving a small amount of some ranged unit alive, it may decide to go for any of my stacks, thus I have no guarantee of getting mana back, let alone making above and beyond the 5 to cast it. I actually went to something silly like turn 92 in one battle.

This is insanity, and maybe I should just lay off, but I'm pretty obsessed with getting this done...Everything was fine in the very early game, just using vampires and archmages to handle things, but then the vampires, being limited in number with no sacrifice, outlived their usefullness and I could not ensure they made it with no losses in each battle.

I can imagine the mid-late game is fine too with Lina's chargers/Inquisitor holy anger, but the current point is frustrating me endlessly. I do not understand how loreangelicus did this, as stated in http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthr...ice+casualties where he claims (and I'm sure he did) you can kill most stacks in Darion pre-freedom isles.

It's just the mana regen that is destroying me, I don't have concentration, but I think that might be a better option instead of magic spring.

What am I missing?...