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[another_guest]

I always focus on heroes with ranged attacks, then beef them up with some artifacts. Then just hit and run. Sometimes it's a bit tricky to stay out of reach of several drakes, and it's risky if your opponent starts casting cracks call, but otherwise this method works fine for me.

For abilities I almost always pick artificer, plus the one that lowers the casting cost and upkeep of summoned creatures.
Once I was lucky to find the right retorts when exploring ruins and such, providing me with a very profitable loop: create artifact, sell it for more than it costs you to cast it, etc. Of course it still costs time, but it was nice nonetheless.