Hehe.
Please post here if you find something that works.
I am still trying new strategies time after time as well. So far, just four victories. Problem is, impossible AI simply cheats, so in order to beat him you've got to find something broken (as in imbalanced) and cheat him back.
For that reason, I'm very happy with this patch as it FINALLY fixes cloak of fear. That's one more decent pick in starting death spells.
The more good stuff to work with, the more chances to find some new strategy.
Heroism is still way better, tho.
Too bad they didnt fix the way area dispel works. I was very disappointed to find out that Archmage + Nature mastery does not prevent mass dispel from ruining all your hard-woven unit enchantments, though in theory it should've made them 3x times as hard to dispel.