[dainbramage]

Essentially. First turn is lord of the north and if I'm lucky a followup of whatsername's rage or regina's messenger. That's 75% freeze and 80% burn on the majority of the enemy army, as well as a good 3-4k damage and a bunch of ice shards to slow their melees. Warrior maidens spear of wrath a target that I don't like (like skele archers). Archmages and inquisitors (which I use much more often than horsemen given how many undead enemies there are) also work on high-priority targets. Usually the berserkers wait and paladins give WMs or archmages the extra turn. Then at the end of the turn and start of the next berserkers get two turns which generally corresponds to 2 dead stacks. WMs revive anything that died, paladins and inquisitors can do the same. If there's a truly dangerous stack then paladins get parked in front of it with stoneskin and archmage shield, at which point they're essentially invulnerable (amusingly, 500 demons failed to kill a single paladin with a crit). So far everything's been pretty easy once I got this up and running. Most used spell is probably dispel (lol) for when I don't want my berserkers berserking any more. Actually on second thoughts it's stoneskin, but 95% of the uses are spam to get the medal.

I bumrushed the spider to kill it quickly for the achievement (berserkers and royals can take it down incredibly fast if you're not going for no loss), then reloaded and did it no loss, but no achievement. But I did it in something like 16 turns, you can probably get it down to under 15 without losses. Or you might need a lucky early AK scroll for that. I'm not sure.

As for the bird, the only thing I've had it write for me is AK. Before I found one I had a tactics treatise equipped instead. I've found everything's been pretty trivial once you get to greenwort. The tough battles are the two guys on the first island and the spider, and having wanderer scrolls then is entirely up to luck.