Beta Duel Games

[Lord Diamond]

Game 1000 'Dragon Rule'
JumpingFist (Red Dragon) VS Lord Diamond (Black Dragon)

The RD won on turn 7 after smashing my BL including taking two of my capitals. It was a serious beat down. I was able to hire my first brigade of wyverns on the last turn and my army has a abysmal morale of 71% with a 23.2% attrition.

Place Kingdom Player Results-7 Grand Total


1 RD Jumpingfist 9,720 10,245
2 BL Lord Diamond 1,400 1,650

[Jumpingfist]

1st time seeing the RD setup and T0. RD military is impressive about 29k combined with the speed to get them together quickly and a very impressive superior defense for kingdom brigades, of course there is a price the starting maintanance cost of 22k+ food and gold forces you to either attack or get left behind. You have a nest egg of gold but will need more quickly. Likely the worst spell list of any kingdom. Can not even protect hero/wizard to start out.

In this format I decided I would only focus on what my strengths were troop strength and speed. Being able to have 5 groups I could scout 40 squares a turn. I had two groups scout Westania (BL territory) and the other three scouting Ezerbrite and getting my main military to the center of the board to attack any PC on the map the following turn.

Turn one I discovered three of the 4 starting BL PCs only missing the capital. The BL landed a brigade on my 2nd town. This would actually work to my advantage knowing he knew my PC location.

At this point analyzing what I had found I decided the best tactic would be to try and cripple the BL production especially food knowing he would be going into winter on T5.

Turn two I raised defenses on my secondary town figuring he would bring his groups there. At 13k+ defense he would not want to cause so much damage to his troops. Looking at the setups afterwards he could have taken the town with under 20% casualties due to his 20% flying bonus. I double food for my main group and moved to his secondary town in my region to both cut his production and help me get the region. My other group moved to his village in his home region.

Turn 3 with my main group at close to 18k attack I took his 10k defense town. The 20% bonus for flying would put me over 2:1 ratio so I knew would be exceptable losses. It gave me a bunch of veterans as I few into the BL region I combined my group on a mountain village in the lower part of the region. I had already scouted the upper region so knew his capital had to be in the south. I would also find it while scouting this turn and be in range. I destroyed his starting village as part of the plan he could not just flip it back when I moved off. I had split off a WY and bat from my secondary group to go after yet another human village

Turn 4 I would destroy the village my main group was on so I could recruit 3 WY before advancing on his capital. This is why I landed on a village vs a town. My secondary group was barely strong enough to siege the human village. I had to make a standing order to double feed them just to keep them from loosing to much strength from the moral hit I took each turn being hostel a price of being a destroyer. Not sure where the BL went at this point he was not on my PCs. We would each take out regions this turn. I may have even helped him by destroying the PCs but was worth it keeping the food out of his hungry mouths.

Turn 5 with a now 34k strength group I took the BL capital and moved to a PC he moved an Emmy to so I could capture it next. The game was basically over at this point the BL owned no PCs in my region and I was rampaging through his

Turn 6 and 7 I finished what I needed to do to take the second region as the BL began to take a couple PCs in my home region.

The winter effect on one kingdom has already been corrected. Maybe next time this will be less a one sided fight

[Lord Diamond]

I arrived at your ton with a 17k army and didn't think I could take it. I didn't consider the flying bonus. I was wondering why the defenses were so good! I should hve sent my baron there instead!

[Atuan]

Thanks to LT in our NO vs UN Dual. The NO was a fun kingdom to play. Nearly forgot about being devout and the benefits from having a priestess. Bless really helped cover the warding and protection needs in this conflict. He made sure I had nothing but captains for leaders running around. But in the end my emissaries and warding proved to be the difference.

[Lord Thanatos]

Thanks to LT in our NO vs UN Dual.  The NO was a fun kingdom to play.  Nearly forgot about being devout and the benefits from having a priestess.  Bless really helped cover the warding and protection needs in this conflict.  He made sure I had nothing but captains for leaders running around.  But in the end my emissaries and warding proved to be the difference.

Good game Atuan.

Maybe when this contest leaves Beta we can have a rematch when it counts?

I was focused on getting a handle on how the UN kingdom plays in The Choosing and was issuing some fairly esoteric orders to make certain some of the things I like to do with the UN were still viable.

Also, I wanted to get a sense of how this variant plays and it was definitely interesting.

I was fortunate to play the NO during one of the beta tests and I think that is an excellent kingdom.

Thanks Atuan!

[Atuan]

Would love to. Let me know if you want the turns. I wouldnt mind seeing what the UN has to offer.

I will say watching all my leaders die every other turn was frustrating to say the least

Thanks LT!!!

[Atuan]

RA vs TY.... man this was a back and forth with us exchanging regions and the city of Zalazar about 4 times. I thought I had victory last turn but he slept a governor of mine and that made the difference. Luckily I was able to keep Ezerbrite with him taking the city due to snagging back a couple of villages. I ended up placing a Army Group on turn 3 at the lower city in his starting region. Screwed up the seige trait as I thought it would work on the city and my army group would have taken heavy losses. This with the fact by turn 3 I knew where both of his starting PCs were in his region. He had already moved his capital to his starting town in region 2 by that point. I was extremely lucky with artifact finds and ended the game with 6 and knowing the location of an excellent US(failed to grab after taking his prior capital town) and a fine location just discovered. I know I was not the only one to gather up artifacts as he had a few and a bunch of warlords. At the end my 29 brigade group was valued at 120k (would have been more but couldn't feed them last turn. His army group had 3 warlords, 20 brigades a p4 and 2 p2s.

Thanks again to JF for the challenge and experience. And a huge shout out to UM and Rick. These duels are a great experience!!!!!!


Place Kingdom Player Results-11 Grand Total

1 TY Atuan 11,400 12,150
2 RA Jumpingfist 4,950 5,688

[Jumpingfist]

Great Job Atuan!

My death blow was plundering a village when I was friendly in the region trying to turn a city far from the TY main army. Winter was a nuisance that kept me from advancing my much need wizards. But was not a sole factor in the loss. Atuan played a great game especially at the end advancing his armies and taking chances. My group was easily stronger than his groups split apart but he would keep his groups close to each other so I had to respect that he could combine them. He kept them apart and could cover more area. On the final turn our full armies would have clashed in the plains. Likely to his demise. A flanking ranger with many elite troops and magic superiority. Maybe next time. The TY status quo is a force of its own.

Glad this was a beta . Already looking forward to a rematch on equal footing

[Tomag Ironfist]

Tomag Ironfist DA vs. Imperial Tark DU

After both of us taking our regions at turn 3, I knew I had to use my military to my advantage before the DU could up his wizards. I had a phenomenal turn 1 scout (finding enough pcs to take region on turn 3), so on turn 2 I combined some of my forces in the DU's region.

The next turn, I moved my 2nd DA division onto a village where, unknowingly, the 2nd DU division was residing. It was my 3 brigades vs. the DU's 4 brigades. I had superior leaders with no attrition, whereas the DU had acquired some attrition from sacking a village from a previous turn. The 2nd DA destroyed the 2nd DU division and suffered 46.73% losses. The DU lost a lot of precious wizards in the engagement, which really set him back.

Over the next few turns, I tried to take some more PCs diplomatically, but ended up getting my Duke and my Count incarcerated, likely due to rookie mistakes.

After a couple of turns, I had two medium sized groups, so I decided to combine them into one mega group to take the cities. Due to incredibly ill fortune, Imperial Tark intercepted my group the same turn I combined my forces, making for an easy clean-up of the opposition. I took the city shortly after.

At this point, I had 3 level 7 agents, and started investing into the search for the DU hidden capital. I had every square in the region scouted, so I started #970s the 'void' area with no PCs around. Fortunately for me, on the 2nd set of three #970s, I found the hidden capital, and moved my ~60,000 attack 1 DA to it next turn to take it out. IT conceded once he noticed my army landing on it, plus multiple assassination attempts vs his priestesses and emmys.

This game was a phenomenal experience, and I am hoping to play more duels in the future! I definitely felt the advantage of not having to worry about the winter months. Maybe Imperial Tark will want to challenge me again once that is no longer a factor so that we can be on more equal footing