1. Strato posts a lot of words, but he's right that FS was extremely attentive and responsive to changes in Pyro provinces. They contained everything that was containable. Pyro might have pumped some lower provs out of offense range with enough persistence, but as long as Raze/Massacre were basically ignoring nw-difference (one halfling lost almost all thieves to masses from provs >40% of his nw) there was nothing to be done.
2. Sampuan confirmed most of what we thought was going on. Last ditch effort to bring down the big Halfer when the Sapph flew away. I am not sure why this worked: a halfer should be quite difficult to prop, but obviously Pyro didn't think it needed a lot of TPA on that guy.