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Update 6: Level 2 finish
Welcome back, last time I thoroughly trounced the first two castles using 3 hippies, 3 space cases, 30 little girls and 4 Robin Williamses. This time things will be different, for one I only have 2 Robins left.
Day 12
Say hello to Vatawna. She will be going sailing and rescuing that guys log.
Jojosh is going Grand Elf hunting, so he gets to pick up some extra units from the second castle first. After that he’ll just slowly move on north to take on the final enemies.
The freemans foundry, like the hill fort in the previous level offers to upgrade certain units for free. A very nice building to have near you.
Day 13
Having collected some extra units Jojosh heads out to learn some spell power. Barbarians don’t get this stat very often, so that building is most welcome.
Carlawn is going to tangle with some zombies.
It’s a miracle that they didn’t flee.
I'm going to borrow a page from PC Snob's book and I'll be posting the prepromote version at the same time from now on. The champion is the knight factions secret weapon. One of the two creatures that has ultra fast as a speed which ensures that you will always have one of the first turns. It also gives them excellent range. The champion is the upgraded level 5 unit for the knight town, keeping that in mind let's compare to the genies. They have the same attack and defense, but are 10 HP short. The big difference however is their damage. Genies do 20-30 in damage.
Cavalry cost 300 gold and Champions cost 375 in gold, they really should've had their damage boosted for that extra cash.
Champions really would like your blessing. They're not bad units, but suffer from the usual knight problem of having low HP.
Behold my mighty thunder! And bask in the sillyness of the zombies hit animation.
Rangers:
Archers are bad. They make a valiant attempt at getting the worst unit of the game award, but will never get it for a simple reason. Peasants and zombies exist. Rangers are great. Rangers fix every problem the archer had and doubles their damage output (literally as they shoot twice while the archer only shoots once) for a pittance more (150 gold vs 200 gold).
No longer is it the sound of a broom hitting, instead it now sounds like swish. I'd post it, but it's just not very special or fun to listen to.
And we're done, there really wasn’t much to say. They were just zombies after all.
Day 14
Week of the raven, fresh units and more importantly more phoenixes!
Carlawn visits the gazebo and gets another level.
Tomorrow we'll listen to some old tree.
Note the effect of navigation on Vatawna’s range while in a boat.
I’m a ruler that cares about nature. So Vatawna will be picking up all the flotsams around here. Maybe she can recoup some of the 2.500 I spent getting her.
Sometimes there’s money to be found as well. Maybe it will be enough to repay the cost of hiring her, probably not though.
Day 15
Finally Jojosh reaches the standing stones and learns proper spell casting. He’ll collect the sawmill and head off to fight some elves.
Vatawna finds a chest floating in the ocean containing very worthwile stuff.
She waves to the guy floating around and picks up the other flotsams first. One of them contained nothing.
The breastplate gives you a +3 to defense. Jon van Caneghem still couldn’t part with his many ways to screw over a player and as such these grateful shipwreck survivors can be outright dicks and give you cursed artifacts as well.
She gets to hand it off to Jojosh immediately.
Carlawn discovers that the tree hands out level ups for 10 gems.
She pays the price and gets lucky as a result.
Day 16
I wish you had Wisdom Jojosh. Wearing his blue ice resistant cloak he's like the Enrothian Elsa.
I blind the lower one. The genies will block the top 2 and my elves can weaken one other stack. I wonder who the elves will aim for.
The druids are their favorite target, the breastplate is really doing some nice work here. We will probably survive without losing any units. The druids will kill the non blinded largest stack. The sprites will kill the single dude and next turn the genies will finish the job.
And so it was done.
In preparation for the arrival of Jojosh another mage guild level is bought.
Day 17
I saved up a lot of money so I can give Jojosh a massive army and finish this level with it.
A few units are “special” in the sense that they get animations in the army window. Among them are the phoenix and the genie. I love the phoenix and I’ll gladly tell you why later. We say goodbye to the sprites as the genies are coming along.
And there he goes. Meanwhile, I actually buy some units for Carlawn.
Day 18
Now we’re walking with carts even harder.
Let’s see who’s home.
This won’t do, this won’t do at all. The red looks terrible on them.
A quick visit to the freemans foundry fixes the problem for free. Had the AI used the Freemans foundry properly it would've made this map a lot more difficult.
Day 19
I found them already. This should be easy. Who cares what they have, I have Jojosh.
He´s pretty decent.
So let´s talk phoenix. 
The only other ultra fast unit in the game. Costing 1.500 and 1 mercury per unit it's not nearly as good as my love of it should have you believe. It has only 100 HP. For comparison, the next lowest is the cyclops with 75, next up is the Bone dragon with 150. Combined with lackluster defensive skill means that they are quick to die. They do have partial spell immunity as elemental spells don´t work on them. However lightning is apparently not an elemental spell. Compounding their problem is that they´re classified as a powerful creature. It hasn´t been mentioned yet, but there are two growth rates in the game. You have the powerful magic factions and the less powerful might factions. The might factions attempt to make up the difference in power by having a higher growth rate, like how the crusaders have a growth rate of 2. Two crusaders or 2 cyclopses will easily defeat a phoenix in hand to hand combat.
But let´s not forget utility, something in which the sorceress units excel. Same for the phoenix, the high speed, flying, good damage and breath attack go a long way to fixing the issues. Don't forget to bless them to double their damage output.
While looking around the internet for information I stumbled upon the following pic, saved by a user named Orzie on the heroescommunity forum.
It´s a concept art image by the artist Tracy Iwata, showing the incarnations the Phoenix went through before settling on the current one. You´ll notice that the first one is posed the same as the bone dragon, giving it a slightly more draconic look (actually reminds me of a secretary bird), whereas the second one looks more like a bird of prey. The second pose was re-used later on for the rocs.
The current version cycles through colors giving it a subdued glowing ember effect, combined with looking like an actual bird of paradise is what has endeared it to me. I will never not hate on Heroes3 for removing it from the base game.
It’s a bird and it’s easily the prettiest creature in heroes 2 and I’ll always nominate it for the award as the prettiest creature for all Heroes games. Note that I say prettiest, as I consider the Bone Dragon to be one of the most awesome looking creatures.
My druids show the superiority of their druidic magic to the mages.
This killed half the of the Rocs in the stack. The elves kill the 50 halflings.
Mass curse, this guy knows his spells, but I was expecting an offensive spell.
Also, my unicorn totally moved and I don´t see it doing anything worthwhile this map anymore, so let´s talk unicorns.
Costing 500 gold, they´re probably the closest the sorceress has for a bad unit. Not that it is a bad unit mind you, but it doesn´t have the same clear utility the other units have. HP is only 40 and it´s speed is only fast. For the level it does pretty decent damage at least. It does have an extremely useful ability in that it has a 20% chance to blind enemy stacks when they attack. I guess they poke out peoples eyes with those horns. Obviously, hope for a blind and go to the next stack if that happens. Like all sorceress units, it's a good unit, it's just not outstanding in any way (other than it's specialty) and it can't fill in a niche in other armies like some of the other units can, which is why I rank it as the least good sorceress unit.
Roast birdcrotch is considered a delicacy in Enroth. 
The two druids died to the towers. The three defense towers have different attack ratings, the primary tower deals the highest damage and killed a druid in a single attack.
We’re pretty much done with this map, but there is another enemy, so I’ll pick pathfinding. Road fury!
And there is the last enemy, according to the thieves guild he’s the strongest they have. I’ll just make myself comfortable before hunting him down like a boar.
Welcome to Blackridge!
Home of mass curse and view heroes. Jojosh can’t actually learn those spells since he has no wisdom. Instead he just makes humorous doodles on the scrolls.
I see that there are no units to buy, so the enemy has all of them and should be in the possession of a decent army.
Mass curse: Mass curse is the upgraded curse and casts curse on all enemy target, ensuring that they will always do the minimum damage of their range. It costs 12 spell points.
View heroes: Is pretty great in the beginning of the game, but once the map is clear it's useless. It provides you with the same view as view mines except now the heroes are highlighted. It only costs 2 spell points. It makes you wonder why it's so high in the tiers.
Day 20
Emulation on this machine isn’t perfect. Not only does the game stutter, but it recently started having the occasional glitch in the graphics. When I use the version I bought in the humble bundle these problems are absent, but are replaced by different problems. This is actually also the reason why I haven’t posted the equally nice Phoenix sounds, it’s not playing for some reason during this play session.
Unless I can toss those rocks at the enemy I don’t care anymore.
Before I finish this map, a short intermission as Carlawn does something useful. She picks up this artifact.
It protects from Death Ripple and Death Wave spells. We haven't seen death wave yet, but three guesses as to what it does.
She’s not getting those gems. This map will be done before the next turn.
It’s an army!
The other hero was stronger.
As is my hero. 
17 overcooked pigs coming right up.
The druids scare the archers into submission with their 
face.
The genies are showing that their usefulness has ended. This only killed a single roc.
The phoenix show how fabulous they are, despite the knifing from the Halflings.
Expect loads of Phoenix shots as long as I have them.
No kill like overkill and it gives me a nice opportunity to show you the Phoenix again and my stats.
I like that the phoenix fire animation looks completely different from the dragons fire as you’ll see in due time. I will sing praise to them like a slightly offkey bird of paradise all day long.
Klunk!
Klunk is the sound of victory.
You were a good leader Jojosh. Did you know that in dutch Leader is a homophone with the word for sufferer and at the same time it's a homophone for the word unfortunate in German.
The map isn’t over yet? There is another victim somewhere! Looks like Carlawn is getting her gems.
Day 20
That white building is called the ruins, you can recruit the neutral Medusa unit from there. They will not be appearing in this update, but I thought that I'd mention it.
Found him.
I’ll nick their goldmine first. Orange had a lot of resource mines for themselves compared to me and the other two Roland converts.
Hi Kastore!
More burnt pig smell please.
And the druids finish the job.
My unicorns really made a difference this map. It’s not surprising as they have the unfortunate fast speed. Looking at the document PC Snob and I keep I just discovered that I completely neglected posting about the elves. So let's get that out of the way real quick, I can't believe noone except PC Snob noticed.
Elves are great, they're not enough to carry an army but they're really great third level units. They do good damage thanks to their double shooting ability. In addition, the average speed of the elves is enough in the start of the map, but the very fast of the grand elves is enough to last you the entire map. You can't go wrong with these guys, just be sure to protect them as they're frail.
And let's talk briefly about the greater druids whom were also forgotten.
They've fallen down the tiers compared to their Heroes1 incarnation where they were the second best shooter. They're currently probably the fifth best shooter. Still a really solid unit that fixes everything that was inadequate in the original druids. Just be sure to protect them as they're frail...didn't I just say the same thing?
Join me next time as we enjoy the smell of victory and decide what we’re going to do next.