Posted some thoughts last night, but seems I closed the window on the Preview screen... Anyway, here I am again.

I think an easy way to spice up things could be adding something special to each race. For now, you could start with a Pixie, a Centaur and a Dwarf, and still end with what I call "clones": 3 characters with exactly the same stats.

We could add some bonus and malus to each race vs another race. For example, a gnome could have a +1 bonus to attack vs a kobold, but a -1 malus to attack vs a golem. A dwarf could have a +1 bonus to defense vs a giant, but a -1 malus to defense against an elf.

Also, some "crafty" races (dwarves, golems) could have some discount when buying a weapon, while some "magical" races (pixies, brownies) could have some discount when enchanting weapons. At first glance, the magical races would have an advantage after the preliminaries, when it "really count". But if the crafty race saves on medical cost in the preliminaries, it'd be interesting to see how it balances out.

Another thing I wanted to suggest was to give magical items instead of raw gold after a battle. If you receive a staff with +1 Agility, or with +2 vs Earth, at which point will you sell it to buy a broad sword? At each round, there could be a bank of items of similar value, or perhaps two banks, one for the a winner player, one for a looser player. That, added to the idea of having a few choices of opponents in preliminary rounds, could make things really interesting...