I managed to kill the merc and one of the armored dogs. I got my three characters near the victory squares and pulled a whirlwind, which I used. Lord Stafford was blown by the bookshelves but one of the armored dogs was still there. I managed to get two of my characters on victory squares. Gary only needed ONE star to beat me. The turn ends and I get a star for having more characters on the victory squares than Gary. Come next turn, I kill the dog and....DEFEAT! Edit: Gary killed my wizard which got him another star and so he won. I thought I killed the second dog but my memory was playing tricks with me. Difficult stage.
I noticed quite late that each of the squares leading up to the victory-area was a DIFFICULT terrain square, so ended up using two "step-and-attack" cards (with no viable target) on my Warrior to get him into the victory-area when Gary had one more star to get. Once I was in there, killing Lord Stafford seemed extraordinarily easy, but it was definitely a close-call in actually getting one of my characters onto a victory square to contest. I was helped even more by the dogs starting the game with Ill-Fitting Armour, so they could barely move. It meant I could kill the Mercenary before the dogs got out of the single-width corridor, so could also kill them one by one...
