Covid team rematch game 5474

[Senior Tactician]

             Victory By Team (7 Regions) Is The Cimmerians Kingdom!
                           Game End Status Points

        Place Kingdom    Player                Results-14  Grand Total

          1     CI     Senior Tactician          23,012      30,518
          2     TY     Wookie Panz               18,089      22,219
          3     DU     Draugr                    14,603      17,955
          4     NE     HabeusCorpus              10,821      13,736
          5     AT     Gibraltar Adams           10,691      13,168
          6     HA     DuPont                     7,247       9,673
          7     WA     Brek                       7,276       9,448
          8     LI     The Painted Man            6,124       8,471
          9     DA     Rellgar                    5,200       7,475
         10     EL     Strongwill                 4,373       5,711
         11     NO     Windstar                   3,400       5,408
         12     DW     Strylian                   3,430       5,071

[b]Teams[/b]
1) Cimmerians        Druid             Tyrant            
2) Dwarven           Halfling          Nomad             
3) Dark Elven        Elven             Necromancer
[b]4) Atlantians        Lizard Men        Warlock[/b]

[Senior Tactician]

I can't honestly say that I paid a whole lot of attention to this game, other than the first 5 turns and the last 2... so I guess about half the game.  I made at least two mistakes that slowed me down, perhaps a turn each, but Wookie was just dominating so countered me nicely.

Being a weaker strategist, my first instinct was to take out the LI, since he was so close to both myself and Dan.  But Draugr and Wookie saw the big picture, attacking the middle (zanthia and Pellinor) would simply allow the DW, HA, NO team, and the DA, EL, NE team to build up as these two teams had no adjacent regions.  To my credit though, I was easily convinced.



The kingdoms our team ended up with were unexpectedly dominating, in my opinion.  As the CI, I went directly for stormgate with my starting forces, as soon as I could muster a power 3 for windstorm.  After my first capture of the city, I recruited 3x stormgate guard.  Next turn I captured again, recruited 2x more, and was off to start our attack on the DW in Darkover with a very nice army with a lot of elites already on turn 5. I routed 1DW and 1NO, then proceeded to Diamond coast for the HA capitol.

On turn 11 or so I informed my teammates it would be 5 turns until I landed on the HA capitol. Dan and his Tyrant, who I think was carrying the team in terms of his dedication was just running roughshod over everything.  Draugr and his vast experience claimed a gut feeling we could win in 2 or 3 turns.  So for the first time in many turns, I actually took a close look at the game and tried to solve the puzzle for "mate in 2" (as my pseudonym implies, tactics are more my forte).  Sure enough, he was right.

There were several hurdles, but we got them answered.  In darkover, control rested on a single town that the DW had just moved 2 emissaries into.  We had to pour back through all our turns to find out the possible names of these guys.  We only found one guy unaccounted for, and slept him 4 times due to the DW resistance to sleep.

In Nyvaria the NO had moved 2x Princes into the city, and Dan had only moved in one.  Nothing would stop the NO from being able to rebel the city, so we had Dan usurp it again, predicting they would rebel, as their usurp would not succeed if Dan maintained status quo.

In diamond, all the land based PCs that we could see totaled about exactly 60% of the census.  Having not prepared to personally control the region (until my fleet had reached 12 ships), I had to split a large group into 3 small ones, something that has not always gone right for me.  Even then, we weren't sure the census would total in our favor.  In all three Diamond, Nyvaria and Darkover, we decided to build census-increasing buildings, and probably just made it in each of the three regions by a very narrow margin.

It was a valiant effort, the DW in particular was very tenacious, but I think the DW, HA, NO kingdoms are simply outmatched by the CI, TY, DU kingdoms.  Certainly for their militaries, which obviously contribute strongly to an early attack and win.

[Pine Needle]

We only found one guy unaccounted for, and slept him 4 times due to the DW resistance to sleep.--- This line made me laugh

[Wookie Panz]

This was my first time every playing the Tyrant and it sure was fun.  Having two great partners in Draugr and Senior was key though.  These two are a couple of the best planners in the game and did the large part of the planning while I picked up a very big share of the grunt work with the 6 TY groups.  6 groups just gives crazy flexibility.  I was reorganizing something every turn, often attacking at least 4 pc and still having an inactive group to make shifting troops and leaders easier next turn.  My leaders were weak and it did take some time to get the elite unit and marshal combo to recruit Hill Giants and Mammoths.  Add in some trolls and a pile of orcs and the level 4 wraith and that's pretty much the Tyrant game plan. 

As Senior Eric stated we were nervous about the very experienced LI player in Zanthia but if we attacked there it would leave the best magic team way too much time to grow.  By going after team HA, DW, NO we hoped the other two teams would fight each other  and it did work out that way.  CI went straight for Stormgate while my TY secured Krynn quickly and speed marched for Darkover.  We invaded Darkover on turn 5 taking 3 towns and CI took the DW capital.  My TY was on the city on turn 6 and it was loaded with DW emissaries.  Poor DW never had a chance but he did his best to put up a good fight.

Both CI and my TY were funding DU wizard development in a major way.  In return DU had our backs all the way with food support and also had the priestess's to find us new targets.  Blinding lights on the battle front and an occasional bounty back in Crown Coast gave us the support we needed to keep the momentum.  We never paused in Darkover before rolling right into Hobbit land in region 3.  The CI went for the city in the north while TY went for further south and swung right into Navaria.  DU was mopping up and building up those wizards and making food food food.  Boy the CI and TY can eat!  
In the final turns I took out the NO capital and the city at NU and then landed on the latest DW capital which was a town in southern Nyvaria.  Here was the very powerfull NO 1st army group with 24 units to 15 for the TY and he could and did flank attack.  Our leaders were about the same but he had 3 wizards, a 3,2,2, to my wraith p4.  The difference was the troop quality and with 7 elite units TY managed to hold his own against the flank attack and fight to a draw, both of us losing a little over 40%.
The final turn we had our fingers crossed but Senior and Draugr had the numbers figured right and with DU doing increase census spells and Ty building bazarrs and improving the important pop centers we had enough to make it over the top.

Thanks to everyone that played another team game and especially my partners for letting me ride with them again.

[Senior Tactician]

I'm curious to know how the battle in the south went if anyone would care to share?