I hadn't played this game in a while and discussion in another thread got be wanting to play it again. I'm playing 1.51, which I recommend. The issue with 1.51 is that the AI is so much better that Hard = 1.3x Impossible or 1.4x Extreme.

Anyway, first game out of the gate and High Elves didn't let me down. I started with the following setup:

Conjurer + Chaos Mastery with 9 Chaos books

My starting city is inland with Wild Game, but no other bonuses.

On turn 3 I found Ruins with "a few Hell Hounds" so I started summoning Hell Hounds. Once I got a stack of 4 I took the Ruins and got something like 200 mana crystals. I went ahead and made a full stack of Hell Hounds and was able to take a Chaos node. Then I found some neutral cities. Bad news, they were all Klackon. I started just razing the cities. There were quite a few. I eventually found 1 High Men city and took it with Hell Hounds. I got another Chaos Node. Then I found Kali on my island. She had taken 1 Klackon city and had a full garrison with some Barbarian units, 2 Heroes, and some Nagas. I took her town immediately with the full stack of Hell Hounds and put her out of the game. This was still very early. I think at this point I was just building a Shrine or something.

I went around taking some additional encounters and nodes. I did get Brax, who I took because he has Mountaineering for Pathfinding with Elves. I cleared all the Klackons. This was a shame, it was about 8 towns in all. Had they been any other race I would have had an empire. I had also put some HE Setters on Mithril.

I built some Barbarian and High Men Settlers. I started getting invaded by Nagas from Horus and other units from Sharee. I got Chimera, pretty luck as they showed up as like my 3rd spell to research. Sharee was on another island but I could see she had a lot of fame and power. I moved my Summoning circle to the town closest to her and summoned a Chimera that I used to scout her Fortress, then I summoned 2 more Chimera and sent them her way.

She was Gnolls and had Wolf Riders, 4 Heroes, and some Barbarian Shaman. The 3 Chimera easily took her capital, despite 2 of them getting Confused.

I cracked a tower and took some Trolls, and found Sharee with a large Draconian town. I'm getting ready to move my Circle to the troll town and summon some Chimera to start taking town down there. I just got Flame Strike (only costs like 36 to cast too) and am now researching Warp Reality.

Flame Strike + Warp Reality + Chimera = game over. The only issue is that I haven't found Ariel yet, but she cast Just Cause so i know she's on Myrran. She may pose a challenge, but I'm coming on so fast I doubt it. I've got some Elite Chaos Channeled Elvin Lords already, so those mixed with Chimera and Warp reality will be unstoppable at this point in the game. I forgot to look at the time to see how many turns in I am, but its not many.

I see people say that High Elves are slow, but its so not true. High Elves are super fast, because the fastest way to offense in this game is summoned units, and the best race for early summoned units is High Elves. If not for the stupid Klackons I'd have an empire of over 20 cities already. No other race/combo lets you get so offensive so fast.

This is also why Life is so overrated. Life is the slowest school, because it has no good early summoned units. You can't get offensive with White until you start making Normal Units, which takes WAY too long. Now, if you take 2 Chaos books for Hell Hounds, then maybe, but it's too inefficient to really do that. But 2 Chaos books for Hell Hounds and Conjurer with Sorcery works really well because the Conjurer retort is still effective for Sorcery into the late game and it works great early with Phantom Warriors. If you get Flame Blade with a mostly Sorcery setup it can be rally good too since you otherwise lack offensive buffs.

Anyway, it's not very far in and I've already taken out 1 wizard, banished 1, the other is no threat, and I still have 1 to find, who I will attack as soon as I find her. I'm just now researching my 2nd Rare spell.

Well, Sharee came back and quickly started summoning up a bunch of Wraiths in her capital. I had to get some Longbowmen over to deal with that. While that was going on I put a Chaos Rift on her capital seeing as Wraiths don't heal.

By the time my 6 Longbowmen got there, all Elite Mithril with Flame Blade, they were at about half strength and I was able to take her capital fairly easily.

This again shows the advantage of High Elves, given that they have diverse units. You have ranged attackers for when that's needed (Longbowmen), you have powerful (and mobile) melee attackers (Elvin Lords), and you have Magicians in case you need them (really only against enemy Archers/Slingers). So they are very versatile when it comes to units. Yes, you can always hope to acquire some of those things, but it doesn't always happen, and even when it does it may take a while to get unit production on-line, whereas your capital should be prepared.

So all that's left now is Ariel, but she had just turtled up, so she shouldn't be that bad. Only thing is she cast Planar Seal , which is a pain, but luckily I had already taken some towns on the other plane, but I can't get any Longbows down there, which is a bummer. I've got 6 Elite Mithril Longbows, all with Flame Blade and Chaos Channels. I still haven't found Chaos Surge though, but when I do.... :p

The Chimera are still going strong, but they can't take on Wraiths, so I'm having to use them for taking towns that don't have Wraiths in them.