I remember someone was asking for help with this one aswell, i used his save and did it with stoneskin target on paladins, then slow ghosts coz they deal cold dmg now and will be only one able to hurt paladins, spawn phantoms of paladins, from ur spells or rune mage if u have unused mind runes otherwise they are kinda weak. U can get royal thorns in verlon instead of rangers or evil beholders, and u have lots of summons and control over battlefield.

Good idea on royal thorns, but I think it wont be enough, as I don't have access to those Rune Mages and didn't even find Phantom scroll anywhere.

just use one EGD stack;)(EGD=emerald green dragon)

cast invisiblity on them and then rain spells at em like there is no 2morrow;)

another soothsayer tactic:
since I discovered it (around level 30, I'm level 38 now) I barely lose 1 unit in fights of 'deadly' or even 'impossible'.

rounds:
1 - cast 'oil mist' on the biggest group of enemies.
2 - advance your first acting unit to halfway of the grid, and 'summon' pheonix'
3 - use the rage to cast the 'fire rain' (or whatever it called)
4 - attack enemies that are close together with the phoenix. with int of 40+ it has ~2500 hp and ~200 defense!!! he almost never gets killed, and when he does - he has the option to be resurrected.

the enemies will concentrate on the Pheonix, since he's the closest, and you can use your ranged units to wreak more damage. concentrate on the enemie's ranged units first.

I also use a group of paladins to resurrect the few of my units who might be injured.

keep bombarding with spells and rage ability - and the fight soon over with no difficulties.

Didn't find GED either. Only reds, blacks and ice. Kinda funny. Any other army to use this tactics on ? I guess I need GED for mana purposes..right ?

@ironballs:

No way, my phoenix with 60 int still dies on one hit from any single enemy unit (just to make it clear, Zalnaron have bout 8k skeleton archers, 500 necromancers, 500 ancient vampires, 2x800 ghosts, 5k skeletons and appro 5x 6000 zombies)

8k archers wont even scratch paladins with stoneskin, 500 necro either, , 500 vampires aswell, 5k skeletons is a joke, 6k zombies might hurt but for them to get there will take some time, and u will have summons . So all u have to do is slow 2 stacks of ghosts, use burning and lightining rage.

Well as a Soothsayer, even with stone skin those vampires bites my paladins for 10-15 units on a hit. Ghosts arent really a problem, I'm able to almost kill them before they get to me, but after few rounds, I'm left with 1/2 paladins, about 20% of my whole army and still have to deal with vampires, zombies and skeletons/necros I could't finish.

Believe me, I've played The Legend, Armored Princess and Crossworlds many times, been thru many tough fights, but this one is really tricky. I need some abusive method, not cheating, but something I will be able to win with, no matter what I lose. The bad thing is I'm limited by units I can get (no Rune Mages and Green Dragons)

did you upgraded the pehonix to the maximu (3rd) level spell?
the storngest hit I got for him was ~700 marauders (level 3 unit) that took about half his HP....

in any case, a few pointers to help the battle:
1. use any buffing wanderer scrolls you might have.
2. use the Valkyrie buff before the battle (gives +initiative & +movement).
3. remember the phoenix attacks 3 adacjent enemies at 1 hit - so select to attack the weakest unit (so the retaliation will be the lowest) - and then all 3 will get the 'burning' state - which is deadly for large stacked units.

Of course, I have almost all my spells at lv 3. With 16 defense, its not problem for Zalaron's units to do 2,5k+ dmg to my phoenix in single hit.
1. I do
2. I do
3. I know

I need some tricky and clever tactic, that's all.

Well im telling you how i did it recently on somebody else mage char so strategy is viable. Just replace one unit with royal thorns, u will have 3 summoning units. As for my own playthrough this fight was a joke on paladin hero.