5542 Spring Steel

[Lord Garth]

(Trumpets Blaring!)

 Hear Ye!  Hear Ye!   Come forth and gather!  Behold and bask in the aura of the Mighty Forest Lord, Gatherer of Leaves, Feeder of Birds  and Hugger of Trees, He who Pets Puppies, The Sower, The Reaper, the August Great Druid himself as he regails you with the tale of his masterful campaign ultimately culminating in the complete subjugation of the entire Realm of Maelstrom!!

(Wild cheers, tossing of panties)

Hi.  Uh.  I'm the Great Druid.  Sup?   Nice of all of you to come out today.  Oh there's Bob.  Hey Bob!  (wave)  Bob's great.  Oh!  So my Druid Helpers tell me we now rule all of Maelstrom so ... that's pretty good, Right?

(Loud cheers. Applause)

It's been some road to get here.  We started out growing radishes.  Then wheat.  And corn.  Lots of corn.  Good stuff.  Some other kings were doing the whole conquering thing so, you know, we tried that.  Didn't work out.  Bit of a mess.  Lots of dead animals and .. well lets not talk about that.   But we tried it again and, funny story, one of my Druid helpers couldn't read my handwriting on the dried leaf I gave him and, well, there wasn't an attack.  But, (shrug) by then my helpers were telling me I was already the king of the world!   Woo Hoo!

So I'd like to thank each and every one of you here today. Sally and Jean have put together a real nice vegan buffet.  Thanks, ladies. And Jimmy is making some of those soy burgers.  So help yourself and enjoy and . Oh .. and everyone here gets a Daffodil!  That's right.  YOU get a Daffodil and YOU get a Daffodil and YOU get a Daffodil ... Alright .. Thank you all!  G' Night!

(Cheers, Applause, Trumpets)

[Lord Garth]

1 DU Lord Garth 56,246 87,079
2 HA The Painted Man 48,565 84,457
3 IL Senior Tactician 57,800 79,248
4 RA Windstar 40,057 58,453
5 DE Pine Needle 28,884 51,261
6 PI Keeope 26,463 43,468

[Pine Needle]

I had a shot on turn 34-35 and got within a couple of thousand pop, but then the hammer(s) came down. I really like the DE- very mobile political kingdom.

I was attacked fairly early by the AM but had prepared with a fairly large army of orcs and skeletons. I avoided fighting her in the planes and took out her emis. She refused my offer of truce then dropped, so that worked out ok.

Perhaps most interestingly, the IL (Senior) showed up at my hidden capital with an invisible army while killing most of my agents. Very thoughtful preemptive strike. Was it just luck that you found my capital so early? I decided not to avenge this attack, and he backed off too, allowing me to expand in the AM's old regions, then I moved on Stormgate and Mythgar. Got close but you only get 2 turns to do it and ... not quite.

HA (Painted) made an attempt around turn 30(?) but IL blunted it, I think. HA stopped me in Diamond Coast. Nice game.

I thought HA was going to win on points as he had many legendary castles. Maybe IL took enough for DU to edge ahead.

Nice game, everyone.

[Senior Tactician]

I started looking for your capitol early, my first trick as the illusionist was to make the DE disappear in a single turn, I've always wanted to try that.  I hired enough emissaries to take every single PC and two armies, one for your city and one for your capitol, both invisible.  I think before I found your capitol, the AM attacked you and kind of ruined my plan.  Since you started taking PCs in Nyvaria, my attack wouldn't be the kind of magic trick I was interested in.  So, when I found your capitol I went ahead and took out your agents, but nothing more, it was a defensive move only.

I was practicing my agents on the LI, I took out more than a dozen of his agents and emissaries.  Before I could finish him off though, I realized the HA was steamrolling everyone, so again, I had to change tactics and I set all 4 groups to recruiting my big army to be able to capture legendary.  So the LI lingered long enough to bounce his army off my capitol walls, he dropped a few turns later.

I had to ignore the pirate as well to get this army going, I simply did not have enough orders to do all the recruiting and summoning and take back the few PCs that the PI would claim every other turn or so.  I even let the PI build a legendary castle in my region, I never had time to take it back.

I was too busy trying to slow the HA... but I realize now that when you grabbed stormgate, and was fighting him for Diamond coast, he probably wouldn't be able to get 5 regions, I could have given the DU and PI some attention.  As it was I took 7 consecutive legendary castes without recruiting, I lost only between 5 and 7% attrition each battle.

It was a lot of fun.  Your army must have been pretty nice too though, It was much smaller than mine but you were still taking legendary castles.  Very impressive.  I did enjoy the playing DE too, and with ruthless, orcs, minotaur, ghouls and specters, a legendary buster not hard to build.