Just finished GOTM2 in 116 turns (score isn't very high tho).  I'm thinking it can be done in less than 100 turns.  Here's what I did and would differently so maybe you guys can try this:

SPOLIER ALERT

• Used Magnar to summon skeletal hordes and cull the weak on them for lots of mana
• Upgraded traits to Death Level 5 for Kill spell to use in Master Quest
• Got a second mage in case I needed help countering the Despair spell in Master Quest
• Beat up on Yithril just because it's fun
• I started using the Destiny's Insight spell (+25 exp for one hero), but I probably should have used it more
• Since I didn't have a Commander, I spent a lot of time walking around wish I had roads
• Perhaps I could have used Consume to destroy shards for even more mana

I put a lot of effort and thought into this GOTM (much more so than the previous) one.
In my third try I finally finished it in 79 turns.

I tried a couple of different strategies but in the end I settled on something similar to how Trojasmic played, but with a few twists:

SPOILERS

-I Used Magnar to summon skeletal hordes (and single skeletons) and casted cull the weak on them for free mana.
-I also casted cull the weak on a number of slave militia (to exchanges 1 turn of production into 20 mana).
-I used detailed knowledge of the map layout to quickly establish 4 cities.
-My second champion became a road building commander specialising in lore.
-I didn't wage any wars with AI opponents, and just concentrated on the Quest. Why would I, when they were happily paying tribute?
-I used consume on 1 shard relatively early to get going.
-I used the kill spell (death 5) to finish off Waerloga. I only had a 12% success chance per spell attempt. Even though I was always able to cast the spell 3 times (which amounts to a 36% chance to win the fight), I still needed 5 reloads before I got the desired result.

Possible improvements
-I should have consumed 2 fire shards as well. I thought I perhaps needed them, but in the end I didn't use fire spells that much. I mainly used kill, horrific wail and touch of entropy, so only the death shards were in fact used.

/SPOILERS

Wow at _flector_ turn 79 is indeed impressive.

Did a second try to use the faster strategy. Sadly the game crashes turn 12 and loading autosave makes it crash turn 14 turn 16 and so on.

So when is the next one?

What kept you away before the patch?