Looks that both of you got unlucky. Here most important question is how much does mercenary hurt opponent, engine potential here is relatively weak. It would win versus bigmoney but otherwise there is no payload.
Here for draw get laboratories, Herald and city here are meh as they act as unreliable lab and delayed lab. Extra actions are mostly useless here as only terminal is mercenary, Only other use of actions could be drawing golds from taxman.
A better engine here is get lab on 5, ironmonger on 4 and forget about heralds.
I am not sure what opening is best, I would probably try remake silver and on seoond gain urchin and remake estate into urchin and get second silver.