yeah, I did it most the time like you said: pick creatures up immediatly and drop em behind the barricades and sacrifice my imps in the dungeon heart (thanks for that god damn cooldown!
Last try I was so close! A couple of creatures survived and there were 2 magicians and 2 bow left and when they went for my dungeon heart I tried to drop my creatures the other way to lure them away from the heart... and all the sudden another knight appeared! (not sure if he came from the north or if he survived the attack and did not find his way)
Ok, so now I'll fine tune the order where I drop the creatures and hope for a big pile of luck. I feel a bit ashamed that it looks like I am the only one having a hard time here... but I have played DK2 since its release in 1999 so often, maybe I have developed bad manners or smth ^^
About the thunderbolt: you did not tell me if it is availble at mission 2 (on purpose?) but I guess it's not (then the start would be too easy, I think) so maybe you wanna edit the changelog about the thunderbolt cooldown for mission 1 and 2 to prevent future confusion about that?
btw: Great stuff, I love your missions! Keep on with the great work and I really hope the campaign will be finished some day in the near future