Oh that’s a shame Will. I was thinking about being nice to you on the next outing 
Hi there Will,
the lack of time shouldn’t be an excuse … but be sure we would have been able to do some things much better.
… and it really looks good for the DS!
Have Fun!
Gixxx
Hi all Turn 10 has just rolled by. 1804 is hosting a convention of odd freep types - will this be the turn they kick Murazor out of his ancestral home? Two successful assassinations for Will at 1804 and 2305 which is just plain bad sportsmanship Might as well round out the rest of the freep character wins - Ashdurbuk Zalg PC’d and killed at 1804 and Grasty of the CL PC’d and killed at 3026.
On the DS side Telumehtar PC’d Hargrog of the LR at 3026 and died
Argirion and his large army burned 2835 to the ground in the far south and then had his head turned into a bowling ball.
A Corsair character was kidnapped and his guard injured.
An Eo comm kidnapped.
And a couple Woody characters whacked at the capital - one of which yielded up Vilya and Helkaluin
The freep should also have heaps enough troops to take out 2135.
There are 5 freep icons around NW Mordor and a few at the back door.
By and large Harad remains intact minus 2430 and 2835. QA has lost 3533 and will likely lose 2135. Other than that, the Harad saw off all 3 enemy attacking armies for the loss of an unfortified town. So little damage to the DS so far in the south, and lots of damage in the north. Agent game starting to pick up now.
Cheers
Winsten Wun Toof
… Ash was killed two or three turns ago, not last turn!
This turn they killed Lomelinde and Ulrac.
Doesn’t really matters as long as we’re able to take out much more of the Freps.
… and we did it and will do it further on!
Have Fun!
Gixxx
Game over!
Will laid down his arms.
Thanks for the interesting game Will!
All the Best and have Fun of course!
Gixxx
Hiya all - yes Will has surrendered and well done Will. The DS weathered the game pretty well…
Angmar has fallen, but Gixxx’s WK is alive and well in N.Mirkwood for the time being. With the DS pumping their character game, we bought time with Gixxx’s sacrifices schooling our assets for a big blow rather than frittering any resources. With 6 artifact augmented CL agents, and 3 of them about to hand off the arties as they had reached levels where they could be consistently successful without them - the counterattack was about to begin in earnest. S.Mirkwood was taken out by the freep with all but 2809 in Freep hands.
Apart from that - pretty dread for the Freep - Mordor in it’s entirety is still in DS hands with Osgiliath due to be threatened away this turn. The bridges are down and on top of the agents, the DS gathered EVERY curse arty leaving not even the freep ones for Will. Our first curse squad would have come available next turn, and we had the arties to field two more.
Harad remained pretty much unmolested with 2430 captured by the Sinda (and getting flogged as a training ground for our agents to steal on what we were guessing as around 15 loyalty and 2835 was burned. The rest of Harad was still in force with the T11 character namings allowing me to pump both north and south full of recruits. We were about to visit the Corsair capital with two super agents and begin dismantling them for the approach of our armies.
N.Harad had 9000HI and was about to march 8000 of them to Ithil to join around 6000 FK HI put the bridge back up and stream over with dragons, agents and cursers. Not pretty given that we could muster what I would guess as an 80% chance of success at threatening MA away without worrying about our emmy assets. Incidentally N.Harad had a castle at 2730 and was about to raise one at 2632 (the shore hex)
S.Harad was now fully recruiting its whole pop base as well and with the agents and the support of QA they were ready to roll.
SG was about to come under it’s own pressure as well which it would have struggled to deal with - but as there may be another game on day - I’ll keep that one up my sleeve
So between our agents and cursers we could have prevented the bridge being knocked out, and belted two Freep nations out of the game per turn targets willing.
Financially we bought the markets EVERY turn and by games end were shocked that we could sell $40k per nation when our experience is of limits in the low $20’s. The team treasury was on $980k - one more turn would have cracked the magic million
Despite fortifying all over the shop we had 26k timber, 198k food (we never got to sell it because of metals sales) 100k bronze and 56k steel. We also had 57k leather and 13k mounts whilst Gixxx was pumping cav, and we hadn’t really concentrated on cav production to that point (but were about to step it up :-). So pop base - extremely strong, character base very strong, economically as I’ve never seen it before, arties (we got all the majors bar collowhesta so very good there), and resources to build the strongest armies in small mountains.
Oh and we managed a couple hits on Freep characters and netted all their fun stuff like Vilya
We all agree that if Will had pursued a different course at the start, not concentrated so much, and hit vital targets like Harad it would be a very different feeling game. Hitting Ithil so hard held the FK up until now, but failed to do enough damage. That and my CL had a knack of hitting him where it hurt most taking out critical armies with critical assassin hits at regular junctures breaking attacks down.
A good try to Will. Deciding to play it differently after we had a restart on the game counted against him. He should have just done the same thing or gone for a more rounded cross the board attack IMO, but not to be.
The DS - Gixxx and I thank Will for a great game. That’s the first time I’ve every run team economics and it was phenomenal!!! We just couldn’t spend our gold
Not sure what our near future looks like - will leave that to Gixxx as always, but wish Will well in his other ventures
Winsten Wun Toof signing off and boring old Rob back on deck…