Duel 2 Alamaze - Game 105 Remembered

[Ry Vor]

Congratulations to Tripwire leading the Troll Uprising to victory in G105. How did it happen? Who did what to whom? What were the key moves? Did mostly a group of new players hang in until the end against all odds?

Don't forget to nominate here your Recommended Commendations (described again in the 108 thread), and its personas, not kingdoms, and some explanation for why you nominate them. Sounds like there could be plenty in this game that has gone the longest so far in Classic!

Here was the player roster:

The Dark One Witchlord
Nikodemus Demon Princes
The Silent One Red Dragons
Otto X Elves
Sarokith Rangers
Stillgard Dwarves
Destitute Noble Warlock
Hawk Ancient Ones
The Upright Man Underworld
Daikkan Giants
Tripwire Trolls
Kulvac Black Dragon
Nitnux Sorcerer
Ben Delat Dark Elves
Manager Gnomes

[theDarkOne]

Well, that was my first game of Alamaze and it was a lot of fun. I think the best thing I did was take Hawk up on an offer of help early on. He pointed me in the right direction and left me alone to do what I wanted. My personal goals were to get the 'feel' of the game and hunt artifacts. So that's what I did. My goal was to snag the Ring of Power, so I started working on that right away, but it took a long while! I was able to gain region 2 early and made a bunch of non-aggression pacts with my neighbors, which I upheld with honor. My one official ally was the Elves, and Erik and I spent a bunch of the early turns trying to figure things out. Hawk helped out with advice as I needed it, which was often. I didn't want to / plan on actually attacking anyone all game.

And that worked out. I didn't have any early hitches and worked on powering up my wizards. Frankly, I was terrified that someone would show up with even a small army, as I had like zero military and as cool as the wizards are, you can't be everywhere at once. Fortunately, no one did. The only real hiccup was that I loaned D. Noble (WA) a ring of protection, but he got mauled by the TR and they took it...

Finally on turn 18 or so I managed to get the Ring of Power. It turned out I already had found the Ring of Spells and stumbled across the Ring of Invisibility, so I also managed to achieve one of the in game quests, which was highly cool!

With rings in hand, and everyone telling me to 'Get Involved' I decided to be a little more aggressive and decided that since I was already in Region 10 to get the Ring, I'd see about taking some PCs there. Since I was already friendly with everyone in the North, that seemed to work best.

So I ended up rumbling with the RA, and it turns out that high level wizards are really, really cool. Fortunately I was able to take some territory in 9 and 10 and eventually take over region 9. Had some good fights with both the RA and the SO along the way. Learned a lot more about how combat works and what to do with those high level wizards. Along the way I managed to get Ry Vor up to LVL 10, but about a week after someone else already achieved that quest, dang it.

And so the game ended. Here is my list of artifacts:

FULL NAME NAME POSSESSOR TYPE PTS
PALANTIR UNIKAR 75244 MOVIUS COVERT 300
STANDARD OF VALOR 20908 2nd WITCHLORD WEAPON 300
STONE OF ALL MINDS 27851 2nd WITCHLORD WIZARD 400
GREAT AXE OF HURBLIND 55441 1st WITCHLORD WEAPON 400
ELAN, FLAMING SWORD OF THE NORTH 63739 2nd WITCHLORD WEAPON 600
RING OF SPELLS 71502 1st WITCHLORD WIZARD 300
GREAT RED BATS OF THE LOST CAVES 82387 1st WITCHLORD BENEVOLENT 400
RING OF POWER 14280 2nd WITCHLORD WIZARD 600
RING OF INVISIBILITY 83876 VIPERHEAD COVERT 400
ANCIENT ANNIHILATOR 42558 VIPERHEAD COVERT 200
RING OF PROTECTION 94831 MOVIUS BENEVOLENT 200
STAFF OF DISDAIN 42222 MOVIUS KING 400

Finally, my highlights of the game were:

Taking Region 2 on Turn 4, which was cool
Trading assassinations of our kings with the SO
Finding the 3 Rings and solving the quest
Level 10 Wizard!

My thanks go out to Floyd/Nikodemus for setting up the game and offering advice, OAB (The Silent One) for also giving me some tips, Erik (Otto X) for being a great ally and most of all, Hawk, for helping me through the growing pains and not laughing at me when I screwed stuff up.

Finally just a few notes about what I liked about Alamaze:

I really enjoy hunting artifacts. Great aspect of the game.

I like the magic and the balance of it. Not sure why the invisibility aspect of the game is getting changed, because wizards are helpless militarily. If you can see them coming and kill their wizards, it's all over, baby. Seems unnecessary.

I think the map should ideally be more randomized, but that's another thing. It could also be larger to allow for more exploration before conflict is imminent.

Emmisaries seem too powerful, rebelling and flipping PCs at will... Seems like that could be a little harder.

I like a lot of the subtle and detailed orders - very cool - shows a lot of work went into the game.

Mostly though, it was a fun time and I enjoyed it! Looking forward to playing again!

[Hawk_]

For game 105 there were 3 D2 players who had played before. Our organizer, Nikodemus was the DE, Paway was the RD and I was the AN. I started off by making a deal with Tripwire the TR where he would take control of Torvale and I would take substantial for my ESO. Then we would invade another region to try and reach our ESO’s but not until our neighbors had taken control of the region. I wanted to give the new players a fair start.

Our strategy was somewhat flawed because it works poorly for one player to take 55% of a region. The problem is that player can easily be knocked out of control. That was what happened on turn 6. The TR had attacked the GN’s R4 town to gain control of R4. The GN’s counter attack caused a loss of control of Torvale and created a map looked like:

Turn 6
OAKENDELL (1) ELVEN
THE NORTHERN MISTS (2) WITCHLORD
THE TALKING MOUNTAINS (3) DWARVEN
TORVALE (4) NA
AMBERLAND (5) NA
THE EASTERN STEPPES (6) DARKELVEN
RUNNIMEDE (7) GNOME
ARCANIA (8) DEMON PRINCES
SYNISVANIA (9) RANGER
THE SOUTHERN SANDS (10) BLACK DRAGON

The next few turns went well for the AN-TR as the TR regained R4 and proceeded to overrun R7 with orcs. Then we started to attract more attention from our neighbors. Suddenly EL emmies, WA emmies, Demon Princes and Red Dragons started showing up. Luckily we were able to get the EL to take a peace treaty. I think that was crucial to our success as there was no way we would have been able to fight that many foes at that point.

The other move we made was to start coordinating efforts with the GI Daikkan. He was being overrun in R5 from all sides and so he decided to help us out in R8 against the DE. He helped balance the numbers with his military.

On turn 12 we used Ancient Intervention offensively as a way to neutralize a killer RD army outside of Avalon and attack the city with a smaller TR army. A couple of turns later I cast the AI spell 3 times in one turn to allow TR armies to take the DE capitol and RD capitol all in one turn. The plan was a huge success freeing the AN duke and capturing the DE King while the TR gained control of R8. We suddenly held 3 regions and both achieved ESO.

Turn 15
OAKENDELL (1) ELVEN
THE NORTHERN MISTS (2) WITCHLORD
THE TALKING MOUNTAINS (3) DWARVEN
TORVALE (4) ANCIENT ONES
AMBERLAND (5) NA
THE EASTERN STEPPES (6) DARKELVEN
RUNNIMEDE (7) TROLL
ARCANIA (8) TROLL
SYNISVANIA (9) RANGER
THE SOUTHERN SANDS (10) NA

But we were over reaching and had grabbed too much too quick and would not be able to hold it together.

The GN and UN had dropped but our remaining opponents intensely rallied. They started working together as a team more and the RD went berserk and started destroying AN towns and villages each turn. Now we were really a target and the DA and RA started to come into attack us as well.

This is the second point in the game where we could have been destroyed but the WI decided to enter the battle and attack the Ranger in R9. The GI went after the DA in R6 and slowly removed him from the contest. On turn 23 the map was the most chaotic it had been during the entire game and almost everything was up for grabs. It looked like this:

Turn 23
OAKENDELL (1) ELVEN
THE NORTHERN MISTS (2 WITCHLORD
THE TALKING MOUNTAINS (3) DWARVEN
TORVALE (4) NA
AMBERLAND (5) NA
THE EASTERN STEPPES (6) NA
RUNNIMEDE (7) NA
ARCANIA (8) TROLL
SYNISVANIA (9) NA
THE SOUTHERN SANDS (10) NA

The arrival of the Witchlord Ry-Vor wearing the Ring of Power and wielding Elan, the flame of the north basically tipped the scales our way. We gained back our lost pop centers and regional controls. As things went better for us I was able to send more resources to the GI so he could wage a better war against the DA and SO. The EL attacked the DW allowing the GI to operate effectively against his opponents and eventually take R6. From this point on the EL, GI, WI, TR, AN coordinated efforts to clear the map.

The last few turns saw the elimination of some players but the majority of the starting kingdoms played about 30 turns. TDO’s WI SVC would have taken a few more turns to complete so he helped the TR end the game by sending him an artifact. I tried to declare SVC as well but was too conservative with Emmys in R8 because I was afraid I would knock Tripwire out of control and mess up his victory claim. In the end I was just happy to be on the surviving end of the massive war we had waged.


My special commendations go to-

INFAMOUS Paway- The RD was a fearsome opponent and caused me to second guess my decisions for several turns. He made some very entertaining posts on the forum and really added color to the game in general.

CHANCELLOR - Nikodemus- The DE Organizer of game 105. Primarily helped the SO, WA, DA, & RA. Nikodemus played a conservative opening game slowing his own expansion to help other players. He even handed out artifacts to help others reach SVC’s. Had he played a more aggressive game from the beginning things would have much harder for the AN-TR

IRON WILLED- Destitute Noble- never gained a region but fought on to the bitter end. Every time I thought the WA was out he kept coming back with more monsters. We killed his king and most of his wizards but on turn 33 he was still able to capture a WI town and had wizard powers 6-4-2 left. You have an Iron Will D. Noble.

[Destitute Noble]

I approached my first game of Alamaze with some review of the materials, and conversation with Nikodemus about how the game functions. Playing as the warlocks, my main goal was to train my wizards, and working loosely w/my brother in law Kulvac who was playing the black dragons, try and expand our overall sphere of influence.

I got a great tip early on from Nikodemus to make an agreement with the Giant kingdom to allow me to take Evanon in exchange for not taking more of r5 other than what I already owned there. I had also decided to try and get wizard artifacts to tip the scales more in my favor. I used priestess to divine for wizard artifacts and learned of the ring of power, then used her again the following turn to find out where it was. Unfortunately, she died then, and I learned later of the necessity of a key to get into the encounter when I failed the US. I learned too late that you can divine for the keys - but didn't get another priestess until turn 15 when I attained ESO (one of my proudest moments of the game - except for the being loaned the artifacts to achieve ESO, then subsequently losing a loaned artifact to the eventual champion). I took the city on turn 4 - right before winter started. That and the fact that I was unable/messed up too many orders to take other PCs really crippled me for the Winter. By turn 6 I had expanded to 6 PCs overall, and turn 7 had me slotted for 30.6K food production and 51K gold production - I thought I had died and gone to heaven after 3 turns of around 1K/26K production. Unfortunately I missed my input for turn 7 (sent it to .com instead of .co), and turn 10 saw my 2WA brigade group with a P3 and a P1 (my 2nd toughest group at the time) get wiped by a masked sorcerer group. Such was my introduction to the chaos spell...

By turn 11 I was down to 3 PCs as the battle raged in Amberland, and Torvale where I was trying to establish a foothold and I had dealings with various players over turns 10-16 begging not to take my PCs and working various small deals to stay in the game (otherwise I would've been out very early). It was through this sort of communication that I was able to pull what was to be my shining moment of the game.

I had been speaking with AN and/or trolls trying to work out a deal for food (as I recall) - I needed like 30K or so. They agreed to trade me the food if I would tele an invisible group to an area in Arcania and surprise attack a DE group there. To make a long story short - Nikodemus (the DE kingdom) is a long-time duel2 ally, and though we did not work in concert this game - we did speak often, and the Trip/Hawk offer came up in conversation. Being the sneaky ones that the demons are, he did not ask me to do use the info against Trip/Hawk, but he did not discourage it either. I teleported my largest invisible group to the area, and surprise attacked both of Trip's troll groups that were there on turn 14. I learned my second valuable lesson of the game...that is the inability of the warlock's armies in battle. At the end of the day I had lost 3500 of my 10K troops, he had lost 6700 of his 29700 - and that was with him totally surprised and 2 of the 3 magic users cast offensive spells (the other slew one of the troll leaders) - hardly the coup I had hoped it would be.

After that I muddled along and was a food source for the black dragons - but by turn 25 my capital had been taken 3 times and was ultimately taken again, and long before that my 8.5 influence and low regional reactions made it impossible to use emissaries and I ahd lost all my agents long before that. I did end with a P6 wizard, and the largest army group I had the whole game by turn 28, when they were destroyed by a smaller (though invisible) ancient ones group that surprised me.

I did some unusual sightings that were cool (including getting a level 2 wizard and finding and using a portal). Will definitely continue to play as I love the depth that the game offers. I'd like to make my nominations as well - and they are:

INFAMOUS - Tripwire...whether it was the gigantic armies, the regions he controlled over the game, or the 250K he dropped on turn 27 to get on the high council - Trip did it and did it BIG all game long!!

CHANCELLOR - Though I got help and had conversation/emails with quite a few players, Nikodemus gets the award here for having the fortitude to get us to all play this, and teaching me a lot about the mechanics of the game. Kudos!

IRON WILLED - Don't know if this is "kosher" or not - but from what I saw in the game I'd give it to the DA/RA/SO combination. They aided in keeping me down throughout the game, and they really turned the tide against the black dragons through what seemed to be a well co-ordinated effort despite our attempts to turn them back.

[kik1661]

I played the Demon Princes in this game. Hawk , myself , and the Silent One, having played before, decided between us pre-game to not go after other kingdoms until at least turn 10. This would allow the new players to get their collective feet wet with the game mechanics before having to face competition.

I took my region fairly quickly , turn 3 or 4 if I remember correctly. I then just spent time looking for artifacts and leveling wizards. I didn't have any real contact with other kingdoms besides answering a random question here or there. I used my wizards and agents to watch my neighbors , many who struggled early due to messed up orders and missed turns, sending turns to .com instead of .co ( this happened to at least 5 people in this game.) I could have expnded easily early but it went against the spirit of the game we had started so I sat pat and just did my own thing. This turned out to be a BIG mistake.

Around turn 12 I got a visit from the combined forces of the GI,AN, and TR. I was a little blind sided by it as I assumed everyone was plodding along doing their own thing like I was. Oops!!! They quickly gobbled me up over the next 3 turns. By turn 15 I had not a single PC. I was lucky though as I had built up quite a food and gold stock pile that it allowed me to hang in there. I ran from Arcania into Runnimede where I was able to regroup. I was also very lucky to get out of Arcania with 3 of my 4 demon princes left , 2 big decent army groups around 45k each including a nice group of wizards( skeletons rock in this scenario as not having to feed/pay them saved me big time.)

I was able to break the TR hold on Runnimede several times over the next few turns but I was never able to get back into the game in any real manner that would affect the outcome. The fact that the TR,AN,GI was so well organized , later adding the WI and EL , in contrast to the rest of the kingdoms who kind of all worked very loosely together made all the difference in the later game. I hung in until the bitter end and tried to be as annoying as possible to the TR and AN.

A big congrats to Tripwire for his game well played. I knew from facing him in Hyborian War that he would be a natural at the game and his win proved me right.

As for award nominations ....

INFAMOUS: Tripwire is my choice here. His TR armies seems to be everywhere and he mixed it up with almost every kingdom on the map. His 250,000 gold bid for a HC seat late game was something I likey won't see again!!!

CHANCELLOR - Hawk gets my nod here. Not only was he the mastermind of the winning alliance. ( their alliance finished placed 1-5 which was pretty sick!!) He was very helpful to the new players helping check order entries, answering game mechanics questions , and helping with strategy.

IRON WILLED- Destitute Noble- Never gave up despite early set backs. Was a continous thorn in the side of the AN,TR,GI alliance. Like me was down to no PC's and despite that mananged to hang around until the end game.

I am really looking forward to our next game. Of the 15 that started in 105 we are going to have 13 continue on to our next one. We are thinking of a team format ( 5 teams of 3 ) where there will be no diplomacy or help outside your teammates. We will have the regular victory checks but are also going to have a team winner that will be determined by the avg placing of you and your 2 teammates. Should be a blast.

Nikodemus
106 UN
110 ???
112 GI

[Jumbie]

Rick, could you edit the first post to show the finish order?

[kik1661]

Rick, could you edit the first post to show the finish order?

GAME END STATUS POINTS
PLACE KINGDOM PLAYER RESULTS-33 GRAND TOTAL
1 TR TRIPWIRE 4656 7478
2 WI THE DARK ONE 7098 13430
3 AN Hawk 4423 7158
4 EL OTTO X 3619 6858
5 GI DAIKKAN 3471 5151
7 DE Nikodemus 610 2279
11 SO NITNUX 0 628
12 WA DESTITUTE NOBLE 42 411

[Nitnux]

So that was pretty fun.

I played SO in game 105. We had three players of recent Alamaze experience in Hawk (AN), Nikodemus (DE) and paway (RD) but the rest of us, mostly recruited from the Duel2 play-by-mail community, were all completely new to Alamaze. Because of this, the three pros made a point of going easy on us (at least while we were all floundering in the early game). They all gave out tons of advice and let us find our feet at our own pace.


EARLY GAME

IRL I was travelling a lot and my early game was abysmal, not only because of immense misunderstandings about rules, misreading the reaction/emissary tables, and my terrible proof-reading of my order sheets, but I also did a lot of inefficient things with my armies and personnel, and I mis-budgeted several of my early turns, meaning that many orders were wasted and I actually got no PC gains until turn 6.

Most foolishly of all, rather than focusing on the land grab I had been itching to see some different dynamics early on, regardless of proper strategy, so I ended up losing a level 5 agent in a failed assassination against Rangers in the R9 city, and I discovered how weak SO troops were when I was thoroughly beat up by a neutral village I should never have attacked. Still, I eventually had a battle victory and also got to exploit the broken Chaos mechanic to devastating success, when I landed on a stray WA town in Region 9 where he had two brigades and decent early game wizards sitting very peacefully. None of these actions were of any value diplomatically or strategically, but being a noob I couldn't resist trying them out all the same.

When the scores came out with turn 6 I was in a very poor last place, though I had finally gained a first town. Despite that assassination attempt I made early peace with RA and also with DA and DW. I ceded my control claim of Region 9 to the Rangers to guarantee his ESO and we hoped to arrange mine for turn 15 though it ended up proving too tricky. DW took Region 3, DA took Region 6, and between the four of us we wanted to get stuck into war as soon as we could, planning to hit the Giants in Region 5 and the Black Dragons in Region 10.

Elsewhere on the map, WI was first to get regional control, taking Region 2 in turn 4. He was allied with EL who took Region 1 very soon after. The two of them kind of turtled for a good 10 turns, working on artifacts, training and economic consolidation, while the rest of us got stuck into various costly battles.

But the biggest dynamic within the game was unquestionably the AN/TR alliance. From turn 1, TR wanted to come out fighting, and boy did he pick fights with pretty much everyone around him. AN focused on keeping DE and RD disrupted (for honourable reasons he didn't attack new players but was happy for TR to do so) while TR started marching all over the southwest.


MID GAME

From turn 9 or 10, Rangers invaded Black Dragons, and Dwarves invaded Giants. I sent a couple of emissaries into Region 5 with the DW but I focused mainly on backing Rangers up in Region 10. Dark Elves were also present in both regions.

In Region 10 we had a pretty fun war. BL was allied with WA, but WA was defending himself against AN/TR. So we hoped BL would be an easy campaign, though it was anything but that. He fought every step of the way, winning several battles against RA and our progress was slow, though gradually our numbers advantage worked in our favour. Progress against the GI was also good to start with but he too proved himself in combat against the DW and halted our progress.

In the western conflicts I saw that RD and DE made some deft manoeuvres and for a long while it wasn't clear who had the upper hand, but AN/TR recruited GI and EL and by that point, essentially had unstoppable armies. At somewhere around the turn 15 mark, AN and GI swarmed into the DA in region 6, and EL attacked the DW, effectively neutralising my allies' offensive opportunities as they had to go into defensive mode.

UN and GN dropped in turn 16, having not made much impact in the game previously. I think they were already inactive and were defeated by TR long before that point.

By about turn 18, RA and I had taken most of Region 10, and I had an invisible p7 poised to strike the main BL army with Summon Deaths to finally try and take him down for good. However, the game-changer for us was the point WI announced his plans to invade Region 9 to start working on his SVC. He was pretty gentlemanly about it too, giving a couple of turns notice, and being extremely reluctant to fight anyone anyway.

At this point, me, RA, DW, DA, and the other beset-upon nations DE, RD, BL and WA realised that an SVC was imminent but might come out of the blue from any of GI, WI, AN, TR and EL. We had to defend together with whatever we could.

RA and I brokered immediate peace with BL/WA and I ceded pretty much all my Region 10 gains back to BL so he could try to feed his armies. So I never got to fight the BL on the field, which was just as well in retrospect because my army would certainly have been annihilated. He was a fun opponent. I would definitely fight beside him or against him in another game.


END GAME

From about turn 23 we tried to engineer a counter/defence/final stand. While Rangers and Dark Elves attacked AN/TR, DW continued fighting EL and I supported DA against GI in region 6. With the imminent arrival of WI we knew that it was going to end badly for the eastern coalition anyway. DE and RD were now out of the running but kept harassing AN/TR for as long as they the units to do so. They also kept the strategic advice coming, for the rest of the game.

When WI arrived in Region 9, he first apologised to the RA and then attacked him. Then he apologised to me and attacked me.

My armies weren't worth much, but with Summon Demon I killed the GI king as we speculated (maybe incorrectly) that he was closest to his SVC and then right after that, I killed the WI king. Those two turn results were the best news I got all game. WI returned the favour, but only after he had spoken to me and confirmed that we were going to continue fighting, and had reminded me that he now had artifacts protecting his new king.

In turn 26, AN and GI had knocked me out of Region 6 but for one short, glorious turn I gained the city and control of Region 9 before WI's numbers advantage started to tell. He swatted away my troops and emissaries and when his Summon Demon killed my king, I lost 10 influence in a single turn.

By turn 28, Rangers had been evicted from Region 9, Dwarves from Region 3, Dark Elves from Region 6, Black Dragons from Region 10 and I was down to a couple of PCs but with a few turns of gold to keep my emissaries busy, an army still hungry for enemy contact, and a P7-3-3 wizard team still itching to make someone suffer.

Turn 30: RA, BL, DA, DW and RD were all eliminated or dropped, having nothing left to fight with, but mostly all keen to return when we get a new game started.

At this point the eastern coalition was just WA, SO and DE, we were all bankrupt and probably had only one or two PCs between us. It became a concern to WI that his allies had taken too much other territory and he'd probably not be able to gain his SVC without stabbing one of them, which he was definitely not prepared to do. It was also likely that they might not have room to gain their SVCs and that we'd possibly be fighting until one of the other game-end criteria was reached, either turn 40 or the elimination of all the smaller players. So WI and I agreed to continue fighting in Region 9 anyway. I didn't know he'd given an artifact to TR but it figures with his sense of honour that he'd sacrifice something to help bring the game to a close.

On turn 32, the penultimate turn, at the gates of my final town, the main SO and WI armies were to finally meet on the field, but with a P10, P7 and P7 at his disposal, the WI was able to wipe away 11 innocent SO brigades before they could even finish their breakfast. So, when the battle commenced, I had a demoralised and devastated single brigade left, who felt it their duty to charge into a row of spears and mark their place in history.

Both AN and TR tried and failed an SVC check, and AN landed his immense army at my final town too.

For turn 33, WI asked again if I was still going to fight him. With both him and AN on my doorstep with massive armies, I only had one answer. As the TR claimed his hard-fought and well-deserved victory, my p7,3,3 and a rag-tag band of survivors were faced off against the enemy, and were crushed to the last man, at the gates of Fort Goliath, where now the banner of the AN proudly flies.


POST MORTEM

The scoring system did not reward me. 8 players finished the game and I ended up in 11th place, behind others who had gone out. I had had a slow start, was always short of PCs, never made HC, owned a city only for 2 turns all game and controlled a region for just 1 turn, and I never owned a single artifact all game, so my point earnings never really got off the ground.

The finishing players in order were TR, WI, AN, EL and GI, the western coalition who had all been ultimately successful in their campaigns, and then DE, SO and WA. We weren't the only players from the losing coalition who fought hard, we were just the ones that were able to hold onto something until the end.


SOME HIGHLIGHTS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the late game TR won a bid for the HC with 250,000 gold, being the most remarkable example of conspicuous consumption in gaming history.

Whether on the giving or the receiving end of king assassinations, Summon Demon was great fun either way.

In turn 32 I speculated with a 1 gold bid for an empty HC seat. I didn't win but it would have been a funny way to earn extra points.

In turn 32 I was comprehensively zapped by WI's p10-7-7. It was fitting that I could meet a noble death at the hands of a P10 called Ry Vor.

One example of my poor ordering: In turn 5 I had a 2 brigade group on 2 ships, and mistakenly tried to recruit another brigade, obviously illegally. The game auto-processing sunk my ships, my 2 brigades and a p2 wizard, all to my immense horror. Thankfully Cipher rectified the adjudication so it just disallowed my recruitment, and restored the brigades and wizard to life. Thanks Cipher!

I imagine this was an atypical game because of the learning curve for all involved. There was a lot of banter shared in the D2 chatroom between allies and enemies alike, and we shared lots of questions, battle reports, SVCs, and other tactical clues/details which would probably remain very secret in a second game. There was one accidental emissary usurping between DA/DW which DA was very apologetic about, but as far as I saw, everyone played with the utmost honesty and treated friends and foe with equal honour.

Thanks for arranging the game and recruiting me, Nikodemus! Looking forward to the next one.


MY COMMENDATIONS

Iron Willed: Destitute Noble (WA). He was fighting against the odds, up against the biggest players for the whole game. Apart from my one-off surprise early battle, I didn't directly campaign against him while we were at war, and when we teamed up I wasn't in a position to support him directly. But he was stubborn as hell and when we formed the 'losers coalition' he kept going with energy for the fight, the whole way through. Kulvac (BL) was also a stubborn opponent for me and RA, and paway (RD) has to get a mention for the way his armies kept AN/TR at bay for a hell of a long time.

Chancellor: Nikodemus (DE). He recruited most of the players and made the arrangements to set this game up. He, Hawk (AN) and paway (RD) all helped the newcomers immensely, generally giving advice at the expense of their own game interests.

Infamous: Tripwire (TR). His desire to fight fight fight fight fight from the get-go was the dynamic that shaped this whole game, as he overwhelmed one opponent after another. He was funny in the D2 chatroom and dropped in to laugh at his own mistakes and (few) military defeats, mainly at the hands of RD. I didn't meet him in combat or even land in a PC of his, all game. I'm pretty grateful that I didn't.

Honorary Mention: There isn't a category for him but The Dark One (WI) was the most honourable player. He upheld all his agreements with allies, even to his cost. He wanted to play an artifact-based game rather than a war-based one so he was consistently apologetic about attacking people, and kept up a regular communication with me the whole time we were at war. He clearly got the game and played extremely well from the outset - it was just too crowded for him to engineer his own victory. Would definitely enjoy fighting with or against him again.

[Ry Vor]

My two favorite threads on the whole forum are this one, and the similar one for Game 108. Outstanding by all, thanks for sharing and good hunting next time around.

[Tripwire]

Me TROLL Rule the world! :Slobber:

Back at start me trolls couldn’t find our bungs with a stick! Me had many problems and cried to Ancient peoples “Why me?! We poor trolls can’t find bungs!” Ancient peoples helped trolls and we were friends. Me told Ancients, “We only care about Ancients and Trolls, me no like to talk to others. Me eat them all.” Ancients said, “OK, me help you find bung.”

Trolls smiled and said, “Me eat your face!” and fight everyone. Sometimes even friends of Ancient Ones by accident! They other people were in towns and trolls eat towns and sometimes villages. I think we even ate Ancient Ones towns a few times or were going to but Ancient say, “Troll that’s me!” I say, “OH whoops I no mean to eat you.”

Big moment very early came when Ancient one say, “Troll you make floating sticks and float your trolls to the big city and fight!” Troll say, “We no float before! We no likey!” But Ancient ones show trolls how to make big boats and trolls surprise bad guy on water and smash them! Bad guy said, “WTF!? Why troll on floating sticks!?” Troll say, “We eat your face! And then we ate their face and took city on water!”

Then nother big moment when troll came to fight 2 big fights against giant lizards who like to fly in and blow fire and beat up trolls then fly away! Trolls no like fire! So Troll cry to Ancients, “Big lizards whipping my bung! Me need help!” So Ancients cast spell thingie and make the lizards go to sleep so troll can eat the face from the town while lizards sleepy. So we take 2 capitals from enemies without having to fight big lizards and some other bad guys. We ate the capitals faces though and it was good!

Then bad time came when Warlocky people appear out of nowhere! Then they eat troll army faces and fly away! Troll no like that so we go hunt Warlocky people and eat their faces and their momma’s faces and daddys too!

Then trolls get confused and start eating more faces of ancient one friends and troll says, “Ancient one has lots of friends! Troll want to eat more face!” Ancient one says, “nononono! You fight that way!” So troll say “Sorry” and move on to other towns and villages and take those instead.

Then troll start buying talky trolls to talk to towns! Every town we take we put talky troll in it and we start to take towns without eating anything! Was very strange.

Then trolls ate some more.. And talky trolls talked some more. Then Ancient one says, “What your SVC?” And troll say, “WTF is an SVC?” And had to go and look back and find out what that was. Then troll started pushing towards getting SVC to rule the world and eat all the faces. But Troll not have artifacts he needs. He has only looky artifacts. So he trade with other good guys and get artifacts.

Trolls had lots of shiny coins! Troll saw talky group that liked to talk and said, “Ancients! Me want to talk on talky group!”. Ancient said, “Use many shiny coins and they will put you on talky group.” So troll load up hoards of shiny coins and put them and he got on talky group! People say, “WOW! That lots of shiny coins!” and Troll shrug and say, “We got many more shiny coins!” And people no like that.

Then troll get key to open artifact he found but that was all troll needed to eat everyones face and win the world. The END!

Awards

INFAMOUS: Paway (The Silent One) and his Red Dragons! This was probably the only ASS whipping that the Trolls really got aside from the Warlocks surprise attack. Man the attack 1 is really a punishing attack on trolls. If they can’t get in your face so to speak they are in trouble and none seemed to do it better than RD and their fire!

CHANCELLOR - Hawk definitely for me. I told him early on I didn’t want to get into any huge alliances and regardless how it ended up and you can ask any of the allies that we had, I only went through him and just wanted to play an aggressive and attacking game. I never asked for much and gave gold away like crazy all game. I think I needed food 1 time in the game but that was it. And a few traded artifacts (Thanks guys!)

IRON WILLED- Destitute Noble- Definitely! I thought he was out like 3 times and he kept coming back. Near the end we got soooooo lucky. We saw he was back and we guessed that his AN3 I think it was would attack my group by surprise so “Just in case” We had TR1 attack on a 2 vs AN3 and then attack the town and sure enough he did attack and I slaughtered him bigtime. Another instance where Hawk saved my butt suggesting we do that.

Thanks to all I couldn’t have done it without everyone elses help and the win definitely doesn’t feel deserved with all the help I received with orders!