Ways to play Heroes 3

Most of us know of many fun ways of playing, that might not be so obvious nor all that effective, but are damn fun. I'm searching for more ways to play heroes 3 and while taking challenge from MeKick's youtube channel is one way to do it, I'm wondering how many ideas are hidden among the redditors. I will share my own gamemodes, challanges and playstyles as well.

game modes

These are for multiplayer. I often play online with about 4 people at once. The main problem we had was that once you kill someone they don't get to play and the whole thing begins to die off somewhat. These are alternative rules we came up with that might be a bit obvious, but fix the problem easily.

hold the grail

You may not attack other player's starting towns

You have to proclaim "I found the grail!" once you do so

You have to proclaim "I built the grail!" once you do so

The first player to hold a town with the grail in it for a month wins.

House rules: If you play on a big map, you may agree to tell in what town the grail was built exactly.

Conquest

The game lasts 6 or 12 months.

You can't capture enemy's starting towns

At the end of the game you gain 25 points for each town held, 1 point for each hero slain during the game (runaways and surrenders count!) as well as 1 point for each artifact you own, discounting spells.

Market battles

Game lasts 6 to 12 months

You cannot conquer a player's last remaining town.

Your heroes can only carry any 3 stacks of monsters

At the end of the game, write down everyone's resources and grade them from rare, to most common.

The rarest pays *8, the next one *7, and so on. Gold always pays 1/3.

Your final score is the sum of your pay.

There's not much to add to these. They're all tested and fun, but it's important to pick a map size that fits the gamemode and the amount of players involved.

Challanges

If you've seen what MeKick does you know what these are. I've got one, born from a friend making a bet of "I'll show you it can't be that bad!". It is.

Spellthief challange

Your starting hero has to have eagle eye. They can only use rank 1-3 creatures and only un-upgraded.

You cannot build a mage guild, but it's fine if the AI built it

You may not visit magic spell shrines

You may not use scrolls

Your only hope is to farm a lot of power and somehow steal good spells. You can get level 5 spells by conquering enemy towns.

Personal record: I managed to win an FFA vs7 on hard.

Play styles*

Simply builds I'd like to recommend. They're fun and often ignored, for whatever reason.

Power lich power stack

With how strong vampires are and how easy a skeleton snowball can be, people tend to ignore the rest of undead possibilities. Liches are one probably my favorite unit in the game. This one is rather easy to pull off. Build the mausoleum in the first week. Also get the citadel. If your start was very easy you might consider going castle for a boost to liches later, but you will be in the ass with your economy for a few weeks. After you get the liches you don't let them die. I suggest hoarding wraiths. They're great for your scouts since they're pretty fast as far as the undead go, and they regen every turn, making them rather decent blockers. If that's not enough their movement range allows to easily manipulate the AI and line up some good shots with your liches. Your starting hero is going to be Moandor. He's starts with learning, which is the only case where having that skill isn't so bad. You can get ahead the curve rather easily. Obviously you want earh magic for if things go wrong. But, if you can get clone and or teleport, then getting water magic might make sense.

Unbreakable Gorgons

My second most favorite way to play. A bit less effective but hilarious in some ways. You play as Alkin. Screw Tzar, he's too easy. You level Alkin up, max armorer and get earth magic, stone skin and shields. You also build the gorgon lair and castle week 1. By the second month you will have Grogons with 40 armor and something around 40% damage reduction with armorer and shield. That's on average and it's not even the full potential of this play. If you can get air magic with counterstrike, you're set. Your Gorgons will just stand there nearly immune and kill everything with their passive. At the same time going Gorgons doesn't inhibit the rest of your options, so there's no bigger risk for late game. The only downside here is that compared to power liches, Gorgons aren't ranged.