I certainly got a nice leg up on the competition - the nature of a non-wraparound map already favors anyone in a corner (which I was), especially when that corner is hemmed in by mountains (which I was), and the mountain passes which should have given multiple avenues of attack on my nation were permanently closed because the Throne of Winter was sitting right there. Then, my opposing nations, who should've kept me penned in failed in their jobs - Noirbach headed exclusively East and South, to the point of leaving the province next to his capital still independent even after the first year; Simbaburg did head in my direction, but our expansion parties ran into one another, and his lost; finally, Scheiwald staled a bunch of turns initially, then went AI early - all of which conspired to give me unfettered access to both the NW and W mountains (as well as Scheiwald's capital.) From there, I had a massive secure base from which to grow the blood hunting operations which allowed me to mass demon knights (and later, various major demons.)
To his credit, Simbaburg did seem to notice the threat, but his attack was short lived, and he folded almost immediately upon my counterattack, also going AI. (Hilariously, his capital ended up falling pretty much the same turn as Scheiwald, since the Scheiwald AI was a master at massing chaff, and all my troops who were going to help the siege had to be turned to fight Simbaburg, and later Noirbach.)
As far as events - we had basically none all game. Notables included taking over the Throne of Bones shortly after Simbaburg activated it, which ended up giving us some unique-looking Mound Kings (without the horse), some undead chaff, and a necromancer; and a blood mage event which gave us a 3B mage, but lost us a province to a swarm of independent Devils and Fiery Imps.