Minotaur Berzerker and Mummy Summoner of Sif Muna, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

I'm determined to conquer the Lair again in Crawl and to get past the middle game which has been giving me trouble since I started playing Crawl over 2 years ago. This time, I'm playing a Minotaur Berzerker, and Sigmund doesn't stand a chance. This is an awesome class/race combo, and worshiping Trog is always a great idea for melee. The Minotaur has all the aptitudes he needs (+2 Axes, +2 Armor, +2 Fighting) to become a death machine by the end of the lair. The trick is somehow staying alive until Trog can grant you an epic artifact executioner's axe.

I find and destroy my NEStalgia guildmate's ghost. Player ghosts are rarely a match for Berzerk.

However, soon I'd die to poison. A typical death, and annoying. I abandon the Minotaur and try my hand at another Mummy Summoner, eventually worshiping Sif Muna, and the results were:

A pretty easy early game, and I took it slow until finding this altar. Now things could get serious.

Summon Imp Spam on a player ghost.

It's a good thing I summoned some monsters before going down the stairs.

And all I lost was 4 HP :D

I never stop using summon small mammals. It's a cheap way to increase the ranks and protect the monsters that count. It can also be used to quickly position your Mummy in a favourable position before sending out wave after wave of spammed summon.

Narrow passages suck for a summoner.

Sending this Ice Beast into the passage took care of Sonja.

This gnoll sergeant wasn't fucking around; he killed a good number of troops, but he couldn't kill them as fast as I could summon them right back to battle.

This was an epic battle with a Hill Giant and some Yaks. I'd found the "Shadow Creatures" spell, so I was able to summon all sorts of things.

Like these awesome wights.

And some more awesome wights. We eventually won the battle.

But on the next level I died. I honestly can't remember how--I played several games since then and none of them were very exciting. This however, was a disappointing end to a great game. I never found the Lair, which would have made things easier. The Lair is pretty much a ton of free exp, and it has to spawn on level 13 or above. I still feel Mummy Summoner is an awesome class, an will probably continue to be my "main" combination on my quest to retrieve the Orb of Zot.