False humility is tiresome, but Calahan is awesomely good at this game. A lot of the attention to detail was his, as was his vicious dismemberment of Yomi/Aby early on, which is what propelled us into a lead we were able to hold. We also settled on a double-blood strategy that was his suggestion. So >50% of the credit goes to him; although I played quite well myself, I think.
I was a bit disappointed that our last turn prep was for not. Those armies storming our last three VPs were outfitted to resist multiple teleporting raiding armies, fires from the sky and murdering winters, and we'd anticipated a major communion-of-death to teleport into EA Saur and try to stop me there.
Nothing manifested
. I had an absolutely fantastic army of slavering demons, and the castle was empty!
But to give you an idea of how fearsome Calahan is - we had forge orders replacing almost all of the at-risk inventory in the fort storms this turn, and you may have noticed teleporting squads of Asmeg thugs backed up with blood magic casters covering select retreats. As for winning the game faster: well, we might've tried, but that would've been the surest way not to win at all
.