I've played a few more games with this setup (Sage Master, Node Mastery, Conjurer, Runemaster, Artificier, with 2 Nature, 2 Sorcery and 2 Chaos) and I must say, it's probably the strongest setup I've ever used. The only thing is, I'm not winning by casting the SoM, I'm just winning really fast by conquest. It makes for such a powerful start. Other than the time I didn't break the Planar Seal, the only other time I struggled was when I had a really bad starting map. I was on an island with nothing I could take, there were very few neutral towns on the whole map, and I didn't find any nodes I could crack remotely nearby. Everything around me was like Death Knight, Colossus, Wyrms, Drakes, etc. And to boot, one of the AIs (Tlaloc) was on a large island that had a cluster of High Men neutral towns that they quickly took over and ran away with. So really, that likely would have been poor no matter what, but in four other games that all had reasonable starts I was able to quickly run away with things.
It's the combo of discounted Hell Hounds, with the ability to generate mana and create reasonably powerful artifacts, the extra power from nodes, and the fact that you speed through your research so fast. In all the games I was able to summon multiple Champions quite early. You quickly get to Summon Champion for sure, and depending on your luck, you also quickly get to some really powerful Rare spell. Yes, you can't really guarantee what you'll get, but whatever it is, you'll get it pretty fast. You get one Rare of each school, so three Rares to research.
In this last game I got Move Fortress for my Nature Rare, which I was very disappointed in, but it actually worked out because you start as High Elves, and I ended up taking lots of Dwarf, Dark Elf, Orc and Barbarian towns (I got High Men and Halflings also). So I had lots of unrest issues for a bit, but I got Move Fortress pretty quickly so I moved to a Halfling capital and fixed that. I got Invisibility from Sorcery, which of course was about the best thing I could have gotten, and then only Efreet from Chaos. But I find that in about every game I get one really good Rare spell from at least one of the schools, and of course you pop some from encounters and wizards as well. Plus you can trade with Create Artifact.
What you get from the elemental schools is unreliable, but at the very least you can count on Water Walking artifacts to ensure that your heroes have full mobility, Flaming artifacts for heavy hitting, quickly getting Summon Hero and Summon Champion, and of course starting with Hell Hounds, Phantom Warriors and Web, which is really powerful for taking nodes.
It's the combo of discounted Hell Hounds, with the ability to generate mana and create reasonably powerful artifacts, the extra power from nodes, and the fact that you speed through your research so fast. In all the games I was able to summon multiple Champions quite early. You quickly get to Summon Champion for sure, and depending on your luck, you also quickly get to some really powerful Rare spell. Yes, you can't really guarantee what you'll get, but whatever it is, you'll get it pretty fast. You get one Rare of each school, so three Rares to research.
In this last game I got Move Fortress for my Nature Rare, which I was very disappointed in, but it actually worked out because you start as High Elves, and I ended up taking lots of Dwarf, Dark Elf, Orc and Barbarian towns (I got High Men and Halflings also). So I had lots of unrest issues for a bit, but I got Move Fortress pretty quickly so I moved to a Halfling capital and fixed that. I got Invisibility from Sorcery, which of course was about the best thing I could have gotten, and then only Efreet from Chaos. But I find that in about every game I get one really good Rare spell from at least one of the schools, and of course you pop some from encounters and wizards as well. Plus you can trade with Create Artifact.
What you get from the elemental schools is unreliable, but at the very least you can count on Water Walking artifacts to ensure that your heroes have full mobility, Flaming artifacts for heavy hitting, quickly getting Summon Hero and Summon Champion, and of course starting with Hell Hounds, Phantom Warriors and Web, which is really powerful for taking nodes.