Fairness

[Kellenved]

I believe The Mouser hit the nail on the head. DW is a kingdom where people look at the military first, but whose strength really lies in the politicals. The DW can certainly take the TM, even in the face of RD assaults...

[Kalrex]

Sure guys

[Cloud]

I've now played the RD to turn 13 and the DW to turn 8. In both games I have control of The Talking Mountains.

In my RD game, a standard Steel, the DW player was a new player who made some aggressive moves against me but did not move on Hammerhold on turn 1 while I did, so control of the region seemed inevitable. Maybe it was, I won't know because the player dropped after our first scuffle. I can tell you I was afraid to meet the DW groups in any mountain area for fear of losing kingdom brigades and his superior political strength (and its concentration) made the prospect of trying to win the region a dicey thing. I claimed the region on turn 5 by a thin margin.

I feel like I made as concerted an attempt to gain R3 as most RD players are going to, tasking nearly every kingdom asset aside from 3RD and the R7 stuff to the purpose. I'm also still new (only started in Feb) and I'm sure I could have executed better. Still, I am not at all convinced I could have done it against an experienced player in the DW role.

My DW game is a contrast in nearly every way. It is Exploratory Steel, a format that should favor the RD. My RD opponent is one of the leading players in this game. I took the Mountains on turn 4 despite the RD making a focused push to win the region. Almost entirely down to the DW political strength at home. On turn 8, yeah I have a monster army rampaging through my lands and it makes me almost incapable of looking abroad for new adventures, but the RD position no longer has any hope of taking the region and hasn't had for a while.

There's a low-n problem at work here and indeed in any of these discussions about which kingdoms are good and which aren't. We just don't have enough games to judge the statistics people are trying to use. Further, the data we do have is spread out among several different formats rendering all conclusions the weaker for it. The only judgement, then, is experiential in nature and highly anecdotal.

My experience leads me to believe that a knowledgeable and determined DW player has a considerable, even nearly prohibitive edge in winning The Talking Mountains in a contest against against the RD player, even a highly skilled one. Mock it if you must.

Cloud

[VballMichael]

Nothing to mock. Dwarf has all his assets up there. RD is spread. In that region, Dwarf wins the early rounds.