How to get the "For the Audience" achievement?

Question

Is there a way to ght the For the Audience achievement in Might & Magic Heroes VI?

The achievement says Kill Michael with at least 4 minions still alive., but every time he takes damage it is redirected to his minions. Only when all the minions are dead, you can kill Michael. Is this a bug or it is possible to prevent this damage redirecting ability?

Answer 1

From this thread on the Ubiforums:

So to come back to how I manage to do For the Audience, the main point is indeed to manage to petrify 4 gardians at a time. To do so here are the prerequisites :

• A magical tear heroe with full Earth branch boosted (including earth elemental, petrification and 3xEarth power)
• If possible avoid taking counter-attack talents (not to kill too much gardians with retaliations)
• Being a Sanctuary hero will help (Tsunami incapacitate the gardians for 2 turns and Race ability gives an interesting ponctual damage boost)
• Buy as much scroll of Earth Elementals as you can
• Staff of Asha lvl 5 is mandatory
• Vast archer/casters army but not too vast not to kill gardians upon retaliation on Michael (archers have most of the time a lesser retaliation power). Avoid at all cost infinite retaliations units (griffins, hell hounds etc.) When you have all this, here is approximately the sequence you need to perform :
• First round: Petrification (with Staff of Asha lvl 5, it should last at least 9 turns), spread your units all over the map.
• Second round: Invoke earth elemental in a corner of the map, gards every other unit
• Third round: Tsunami, this will stun all gardians and get rid of retaliation kills
• Fourth round: reinforce your highest attack unit stack. Gard all units.
• Fifth round: cast petrification once again (it should last 4 turns), make all units wait, including your earth elems. When the earth elem turn comes again, make it petrify a gardian and go to next turn.
• Sixth round: this is it ! You should be first in the order, so cast a new earth elem spell and anything that could help your damage so far (Sanctuary racial ability for example). With these new elems, petrify the fourth gardian stack and FULL ATTACK. The goal is to take over Michael before any of the gardian de-petrify, which is a very short lapse of time. If this happens, STOP ALL damage and wait for being able to cast a spell again. When possible, cast a new earth elemental using a scroll (no cooldown) and re-petrify the gardian. There is a big part of technique (/luck/improvisation) to make the plan work but it is feasible. You just have to insist. Maybe there is a simpler way but I did not find it (yet).