Monday, 1st May 2017, 22:52 by tasonir
I've always considered 4 races to be in the "tier 1" of best crawl races: VS, Mi, Ce, and DD. Since you already won Mi and want to exclude it, Ce/VS/DD are your next best options.
Close seconds in tier 2 are gargoyle and troll. You could argue for another one or two races here, but as of right now, I'm kind of feeling like only these two, and the rest go down to tier 3 or lower.
As for backgrounds, I usually go with warrior backgrounds because I don't personally like to play casters - fighters, gladiators, monks (These are somewhat weaker but I still happen to love them). Necromancer makes a great melee start which ensures you'll have access to one of the strongest magic schools when you're ready to branch out. Don't underestimate stacking regen even on races which already have high regen. Trolls and VS are on the top of the power rankings in no small part because of built in regen, and adding more to it is a great plan.
I agree with people saying IE is an objectively strong start, I just am not that partial to playing them. For casters I usually go with more straight forward backgrounds, FE (damage, damage, and more damage) or Cj (very nice in that nothing resists pure conjurations).
In short:
Tier 1 races (non-Mi): VS, DD, Ce
Tier 2: Gr, Tr
Backgrounds: Fi, Gl, Ne, IE, FE, Cj
Note on combinations: Most of the tier 1/2 races tend towards martial or Necromancer backgrounds, and less towards IE/FE/Cj, although you certainly could do that.