We played this scenario yesterday and I realized some things weren't clear on the rules. The setup didn't include how the empire blocks are deployed, and I decided it makes sense that they start spread out in as many cities as possible. Also, the chosen hero was a city hero, so movement through forests was pretty slow and I feel in this scenario it is important that the hero can move more freely, so I've lifted that restriction too.
We had fun and found the hero had the best chance of surviving if they used the decoy blocks to stop some units from moving, but also, there were some interesting raids where the hero escaped by a hair's breath from the chasing enemies. Overall, I think the scenario works pretty well, although it does make the game very different, as it becomes a cat-mouse chase instead of a wargame.
One thing I'm thinking is if the decoy blocks should have real units instead of just "smoke". The problem is that when the hero is revealed, the decoy units stop being decoys, and it doesn't make much sense to have real units disappear and appear near the hero…
Maybe it could be possible to combine both, and let the hero buy new units at cities with his gold. This would reduce his score but increase his chances of survival. Of course, by doing that he's revealing himself. After buying the hero would have both the bought units plus a number of decoy blocks. In this case, blank blocks of the same color as the hero are needed so players don't confuse real units with decoy blocks…
The reason I didn't add those things in the first place was that I wanted to experiment with the decoy rules in their most basic expression, and make a simple, short scenario using them. I think more complex scenarios mixing both armies and decoy rules could be done, so I'm hesitant to make this one more complex right now… but anyway, I may give it a try sometime…