Face To Face, Cardiff

General
#1

Just a quick note to thank Clint, Ed and Sam for all their hard work over the weekend. It was, as usual, a great event!

The Dark Servants were:
Mike “Murazor only wants peace!” Grazebrook as WK
James “the Dragon Lord is running a surplus!!!” Knight as Dragon and Dog Lords
Tine “Ji missed… again” Wagner as Cloud Lord and Ice King
Kevin “I’m feeling quite optimistic” <Clint: “Kev, you feeling ok?!”> O’Keefe as Fire King and Long Rider
With Team Captain Clint “I know what you’re saying, I just disagree!” Oldridge as the Dark Lieutenants

With rapid offensives is Rhun and Rhovanion, the Northmen and Eothraim were quickly overwhelmed. In Ithil the Fire King and Dark Lieutenants forced the Gondors into a retreat as they cowered behind the bridgeless Anduin. In Mirkwood the Sinda were all but eliminated thanks to timely agent defenses. And the Witch King in a bold but effective step forsook Angmar only to rebuild on the move in Noldo and Cardo land :slight_smile: The lowlight was the offensive from the south of Mordor that took two consecutive Cloud Lord capitals!

A thoroughly enjoyable game with a victory for the Dark Servants. I look forward to the next FTF.

For those of you who are interested we got a detailed look at the forthcoming Kin-Strife, which admittedly I hogged for much of the weekend! The character behind the module really is as rich as 2950 or 1650 and the customability of the nations promises that the chess-like nature of some 1650 games isn’t likely to occur. What really intrigued me were the changes to the map which has been redrawn to be closer to Tolkein’s original design. I think that this alone will provide for some serious rethinking of strategies and will forever change the East-West paradigm.

In short: Good work on the module so far - I can’t wait to play!

JK

#2

First of all I just wish to thank everyone for a great and fun weekend.

As usual only half of the story is told by the “self claimed” victors. The TRUTH is somewhat different :slight_smile:

Morally the FP were the real winners as they managed several huge achievements which ought to be impossible in the “completely” unbalanced setup. Taking CL capital twice two turns in a row with a well planed surprise attack with SG/Eot and thereafter storming into Mordor, wiping most of the CL towns as well ought to be a game winner. And slaying two NAZGULS (Hoarmurath and Khamul) and preventing any lose of FP nations of course also count for something :smiley:

As a few people didn’t show up only 16 nations were played and 8 nations were eliminated from play distributing most of their MT’s to other nations. Corsairs, Dwarves, Woodmen, Duns, QA, Harad, Rhudaur, and BlS were removed from play. So DrL, IK, WiK, LR each received new MT’s in Mirkwood and Mordor while Eot received two MT’s in Vamag and 3034 and there were no fort at 4217….hmmmm not completely fair :rolleyes: And then we all voted to give each nations +20 (or +10, +10) to any character/skill not raising skill above 40. We certainly regret that later on in the game, when Carrog took out an Eot armycommander at 2912 turn two :frowning:

When you then also take into account that DS pursued the banker strategy sending all gold to WiK turn one, where all prices went berserk the FP were actually doomed from the start and bound to lose this setup.
When we saw WiK running around with a few 100 troops in Noldo/Arthedain land with Murazor/Angulion attached were thought he had been drinking too much last night. But when we then saw he in the same turn threathned Towns, improving them to MT’s and hired an army there ASAP, we were pretty much pissed off :stab: WiK spend at least 20k gold a turn on upgrades and hiring new armies plus running a huge deficit, which is the only reason why he was not wiped out ASAP by Arthedain/Cardolan. This is not in the spirit of the game and only possible when WiK has 300.000 gold each turn in his bank.

Besides this CL did a great job and when he only had 8 nations of character to target he could just target one nation at a time crippling that and go on to next nation. The final turn all nations in the game sent all gold to WiK giving him more than one million gold just to see the effect. Well the banker strategy CERTAINLY works, the prices were 10 doubled from the effect of one nation having one million instead of having those gold spread out on all nations.

In future grudge games I personally think that the teams will have to agree that the banker strategy is not pursued, because the effect is HUGE. FP will not be successful with early military achievements because DS can just upgrade every town they have with the two emis artifacts they start with and an economic collapse is nearly impossible when prices are that high. Stealing from the banker nation does not work, because DS can quickly create a new banker with all the high prices. So I really don’t see how FP can win such a game unless DS are playing really poorly.

Anyway, all in all a great weekend and a great game and many new things learned, but the DS victory (claimed by Sam after we two days in a row had tried to bribe him with all kinds of stuff) was unavoidable in this setup in my humble opinion.

#3

To be fair, it’s hardly “self-claimed” - Sam was the judge and he explained his reasoning. :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t think the set-up was completely unbalanced. The Free didn’t support the Eo or the NM at all, which meant that we could take them out relatively easily with armies, which allowed us to concentrate our agents elsewhere.

The loss of the BS was huge for the DS in terms of getting artifacts - we worked really hard and had a few lucky steals, but we didn’t have the mage superiority the DS normally enjoy.

In contrast we also lost Rhudaur (which is not at all compensated by an extra T and MT for the WK and an extra MT for the DrgLd) and the fight in the NW, had it been a traditional slog-fest, would have ended quickly and in favour of the Free.

I have to be honest, I agree that this more favours the DS than the Free, but I don’t think hugely so. Yes, Carrog benefited, but there are plenty of occasions, like Gildor, Elladan, Elrohir, Tharudan, Taurnil, Ohtar, etc, where the Free could have created effective and stealthy agents. In fact, I think it was probably the NM who could have most benefited by making Beawyn and Jirfelien into commanders (I have no idea whether or not that was done).

I think there’s still some debate about the banker strategy, but I also think it’s more than a little one-sided to say that the Free were “doomed from the start”.

The economic benefit the DS enjoyed was definitely an advantage, especially to the WK as you outlined. On the otherhand, there was no reason why the Noldo couldn’t have pursued a more military strategy earlier in the game - only possible with serious financial backing - not to mention getting the Eo recruiting masses of HC. In fact, it’s worth noting that at no point did the Free try and buy mounts, which meant that whilst our armies (apart from the FK) were generally HC, the Free’s were HI, by which point we had military superiority.

I agree that the banker strategy needs to be looked at, but I also think that if half the energy put into decrying the banker strategy were instead focused on how the Free can make use of a super market then it would be a tactic less frequently used…

But as you say, a good weekend, hopefully enjoyed by all in spite of any critiques of the set-ups :slight_smile:

JK