My first large shard,
containing the Key N°5 (the third I think) in the Khorian bogs.

Three Masters and one native indigenous lord are cramped up that shard.
After not even a dozen of turns, I barely managed to poke at the second province ring, Oinor shows up already.
The other masters were very close as well.

The whole expedition to retrieve the key would have gone awry...

But on the forest province next to my citadel, plainly visible for my level 3 Commander stands a lonely beautiful
fairy tree
So while all the other masters were busy building their favorite tier I brigands and bowmen I was able to recruit faeries and even two tier 2 dryads.

Oinor didn't stand a chance. The other master were overun too, none of them had even one tier 2 unit, my army of fae-folk just walzt in and destroyed their citadel. By turn fifty I killed all masters and was overrunning the defenses of the locals only to stop in order to liberate the key from the Khorian bogs.

If I didn't had the commander or the fairy tree this would have been a very difficult and challenging shard, probably impossible with my skill level of play, but one little site in the province and some commander with the right unit slots just made the day.

Never going to play anything else but a commander as first hero...

Sounds like you need T2 units to win...

To be honest I prefer pikemen, but looking at your pictures I have to give swordsmen a try.

And while you prove that you don't need tier 2 units with dryads and faeries on turn 12 it's just sooo much easier.

Pikemen are amazing at beginner, because their counterattack pretty soon become bigger than neutral's hp.
On expert they are mediocre at best. Yes, veteran pikemen can stop T1 units. Except... high level Orcs can take 2 counterattacks, barbarians get damage boost because they get berserk status before first attack, high level goblins have agility, thieves have agility... and most T2, and every T3 can take 2-3 counterattacks.
They stuck as anti-T1 unit. Swordsmen scale in late game as unkillable tanks, because they can have like 10-14 armor on their own, plus 8-10 parry. They can go toe to toe with trolls, and some T2 units like harpies can't even scratch them. They have more ranged armor, too.

As for fairy tree at 12th turn... You can get it only in campaign. This tree have karma check, you need to have at least second positive title to get access to hirelings. Harpy nest is more universal, but they are paper thin. It isn't that hard to build own T2, I have seen "10 Commander starts pack", where average time until first T2 unit was around 15 turns, without reloads and rewinds, in one game that player buried 2 commanders in 10 turns(sudden barbarian attack, sudden harpy attack), still got thugs at 17 or so.

Sadly I have to agree here. When I first started playing I Absolutely LOVED Pikemen and their first strike. But I did come to see that they did, even with medals, not last to long vs T2 creatures. At the time my mage carried quite a few Healing spells.
Ounce I started using Swordsmen I saw how far better they fared vs things like Horsemen, Executioners and Knights I sadly had to stop using them. Although I do eventually replace both with Guardsmen T2 guys later on most of the time.

Also I now no longer build the Life Magic school anymore and it's been very useful to have that slot open now. Now I choose the following.

Death all the way to level 4 for Mass Disease and Cloud of Terror.
Winds upto T3 for Mass Slow only pretty much.
Wizardry T2 for FIRE BALL and Lightning, and even Flame Blade is probably the most important magic I get for quite a long time.
And last but not least is Sorcery which has the very super useful Astral Energy and Web Spells.

I use mostly the same schools.
Usually I leave winds at T1, use only for ritual.
Death+Sorcery at T2 gives ghoul under phantom form, which have amazing stopping power.
Wizardry - to T2 for Flame blade.
Usually game stops there.
If I want to continue sandbox mode, I upgrade to T4 wizardry. Realistically speaking, killing 5-6 high level stone golems with crushing blow, baked with catapults, is easiest for archmage with 3 dragon forms and some fireballs.

Are dryads that good? I mean magic attack is nice against typical units, but otherwise?

Heh, interesting story. So far my worst map was an early one(I think my second game cycle) where it was me, the Barbarian, and a Local Lord. I did my usual, get a Commander and start making the rounds, finding the Barbarian in a valley, where the Local must have spawned too, cause the guy died a few turns in. Anyway, one pass into the valley, so I avoided it, bottling him up with a contract I got early on, and then proceeded to conquer the rest of the map. By the time I came back, I found he'd decided to counter my bottle with a dragon. No, seriously, this had to be at most turn 10 on the Astral, and this idiot found a dragon guard contract. Luckily, a few turns later, so did I, and I countered his dragon with my own.

Of course, now we had a problem. I had only rank 1 units thanks to some bad Shard Generations, and a few rank 2 spells. You can kinda guess that I couldn't exactly take a dragon head on, so I started to grind like I'd never done before, creating 8 armies(2 of each hero), and getting their EXP up, and up, and finally, after I had 100% explored everything, I sent them at him. All at once. Took me all 8 heroes to finally take him out. It got down to my last scout, and even that was just luck that he went after all the other units first, letting me pelt him with arrows.

Naturally, the Barbarian sent a hero to take mine out, but the idiot never mass attacked my dragon, so after a few turns, some necromancy to bring them back from the dead, I sent my heroes in and mopped up. That still stands as one of the more interesting maps I've seen to date in any TBS style game.

Against a single dragon? Or does a Dragon Guard have multiple dragons?

A single high level scout or warrior with good equipment and green T1 recruits should have no problem with that I'd think.

My most difficult maps (aside from the defense mission that cost me my first campaign which I lost due to forgetting about reversions...) have all had me barely surviving due to a lucky find of a strong guard, while my Warrior levels up till he can make it to the enemy stronghold, and then levels up some more till he can defeat their strong guard. Example.
I play only on Skilled though.

Actually it was a bit different in my last campaign - the most difficult shard was #2 where the local lord just kept pouncing on me and I had no idea what to do, the most annoying shard was the one before the doomed defense mission, where Ul-Dagan placed the Monster Guard on every province, and only my own (and oh-so-expensive) Monster Guard kept me safe while my Warrior made it towards his Stronghold inch-by-inch, at great expense of expendable troups purchased at brand-new outposts for every province I needed to capture.

Well depends on your playstyle.

They are my first choice of external recruits. The are tough, especially while defending or fighting in forests.
They use magical attacks that negates defense which is excellent against ghosts and other heavy armored tier 1&2 units
They regenerate health normally, not like stone gargoyles (which are my second choice) they work well with haste and healing from the faeries which can be recruited at the same time and they get poison immunity and aura of healing if you keep them alive long enough.

I do prefer minotaurs though, but that is a story for another time, kids...

Scout can kill dragon in 4-5 double shots. Give him stamina rings, maybe hire monk(s)/fairies from tavern for stamina regen, and something cheap in all other slots.
Strategist (com/scout dual) can do real things with only crossbowmen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDXv9qk-x9M

Aww, selling off the Indestructable Armor? As a Warrior fan, that makes me shed a tear...

Also, a Phoenix on Turn 22?? That seems a bit OP. Do you even need any other units at this point?

Edit: But I'm really not sure what's going on here - are you attacking an Arena instead of participating in a tournament? Never saw that option...

This is video of old offline championship, where point was to kill custom site in least amount of turns.
Winner, Sunnyray, got item named after him, but it was missed during translation - Sunbeam sash. His video even scarier (he killed this site in 16 turns)

Winner's game(not sure that it is final variant, though): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_69kw0SCnj8

I was freaked about it,too. So here's some more info about it:

http://www.gog.com/forum/eador_series/exploring/post10