FTF VIII Over

General
#1

Whew… just about to go off to bed. Quick thanks to all that played, from chatting with the guys in the US a good time was had by all and everyone is now truly exhausted. :smiley:

I think it was a shock for those that didn’t play before the speed with which turns are run, the planning that is needed to get everything within 1hr 15-30min before a quick breather and another turn is run.

It was a very tight game throughout but Sam adjudicated a win for the FP after 15 turns (2 DS dead, and despite an advantage in position towards the end for the DS with a long term game; FTF is a w/end game). Technologically it worked well with Sam being in AIM/Skype contact with the US team and except for a minor fubar at the start it all went without a hitch.

So after 26 or so hour gaming, recovery from food-poisoning on Thursday by yours truly, and added to that a glass of champagne to celebrate an excellent game; thanks to all.

Any thoughts and game discussion most welcome. I suggest the forum for ease, but I’ll post this to the Yahoolist just in case.

Clint :D:hug:

#2

The speed of the game was incredible, especially for the players running two positions. And truly exhausting.

I guess we still played for the long haul even though we knew it would be over in 15 turns. Dark servants were only missing collohwesta and helm of shadow otherwise we owned all the agent artifacts.

Witch King was eliminated by only 1% as taxes went to 101 on the wrong dollar amount transferred to him, but overall the freep strategy in the first 6-7 turns was better than the dark servants. Once we caught on to the speed of the game it got much better for us.

Dragon Lord would not have been eliminated if we had got the move initiative, but that is part of the game.

Freeps might have blown the game wide open but we managed to wipe the entire Eothraim cav with a couple of well placed assassinations and a curse I do believe.

I have not seen the freep turns yet, but from the synopsis we had the Gondors down to less than 7 characters total between the two nations. We were going to eventually take all your pop centers emissarily.

Well played game by the freeps. I think the dark servants needed three more players to be able to run all the turns as five people trying to run two nations each is just a little to much.

As well as the free did with the market, we still had enough money and major towns to keep everyone in the game. We just did not have enough time to make sure the finances were sound with the two nations eliminated. Each nation only needed 10k more and they would have been fine, and we had the money.

Not trying to make excuses, we made the mistakes and really got outplayed early.

My current teammates will laugh when they here I pretty much made one typo or omission of names on my transfers and curses once every other turn. About seven total. Order errors did go down when I dropped down to playing just one nation instead of two.

Clint, I think those Northmen armies that were camp busting would have been extremely damaging to our long term economy. Nice job.

tim huiatt
Blind Sorceror in FTF VIII

#3

Yes, very enjoyable game. Part of FTF play is that errors will occur. I made a few (eg Natselling 100% food on turn 1 meaning a hire army and move didn’t get to where I wanted it, one move army wrong).

NM was cute to play - I even had some Emissaries (one died to an encounter for E Mere Vardo). NM was upto 800 HC per turn by the end and characters to support it.

Dragon Lord would not have been eliminated if we had got the move initiative, but that is part of the game.

First time I turned up with enough troops I forgot to put a back-up in he main army so I suspect that we’d have taken 3822 earlier… :rolleyes:

Arthedain had a nice 500 HC per turn coming into Mordor (1st wave of 1500) but with the game keeping a balance of characters is less important.

Nice moves on the Sindar early - that definitely paniced Mark…

Clint (player)

#4

I think Sam changed the “rules” a little - before it wasn’t important at all, in this game he made it an element of the game so that’s something the UK based players have to look at changing.

Glad that you all enjoyed it. It’s definitely a different experience of the game overall. Ideally around 2-3 nations doubled up is about right I find. That leaves scope for dead-nations and still an enjoyable game. Next time I think I’ll implement the deposit scheme again as it’s difficult to get the balance right on nations and yet make sure that the commitment to turn up is there (one player on each team cancelled last minute).

In the UK the atmosphere was somewhat different as it’s our team playing against a team elsewhere - rather than two teams in the same building so less ribald comments about other players play… ;):smiley: Well it’s all Kim’s fault… (tongue firmly in cheek).

Other feedback and comments welcome btw! Sounds like Bob was a good team co-ordinator? How did the team gel, how did it all work out in the US? Next time maybe we can sort some sort of conferencing so that the teams can chat/trade in-game insults and so on… :bash:

Clint (GM)

#5

We screwed up the orders on the Sinda.

Thranduil should have died on turn one, we typed in the wrong spell with a 100+ casting rank or we would have had him.

Then armies etc etc meant we missed the opportunity to take the capital.

In the previous one week game I lost Thranduil on turn one and it totally devestated the Sinda nation so we thought we would try it on you as well. A lot of resources to blow and then we messed up the orders.

Bye the way, only a 26% chance to reveal the capital which we did not think would work so we did not try and take the capital. Amazing.

Had you taken 3822 earlier you would not have eliminated the Dragon Lord, but it would have hurt. We were planned better to lose it earlier than later, unless of course we had messed up the transfers earlier as well. Heck, losing his character costs probably helped us more in the short run but the lack of double scout would have cost us in the long run.

I don’t see getting a game against the US in the future. To cost prohibitive to fly all over the country to play a game.

Maybe in a couple of years after Tony and I decompress we will be able to think about another FTF.

Thanks for the great game from overseas, it was a blast.

Sam was incredible by the way.

Thanks Sam

tim huiatt

#6

Is FTF really necessary?

Just use Ventrillo for voice comms and perhaps some sort of live meeting software so people can view the same instances of Palantir or whatever else needs to be viewed in common.

#7

This was my first FTF and it was a completely different experience than the traditional 2-wk game. The speed of communication and information throughput is simply amazing, especially for 2-nation players. As Bob Turkot said…it is kinda like Stock Trading…intense!

I played Rhudaur and managed to survive until turn 10 when the last MT fell. Tough position to play… given the FTF format. You simply do not have time to coordinate with the WK where to block, especially when each is playing another nation. Tim Huiatt/BS ran the Dark Louies for the first ten turns simply because there was no way for me to handle it and aid the WK who was playing the Dragon Lord too.

In this game, the FPs took the initiative with an invasion of S. Harad by excellent naval movement. This disrupted the DS strategy of militarily winning the south, holding Mordor, and delaying in WK/RH. We eventually did overcome in the south, pushing the CS to the sea on T15 (he had taxes at 1% with 2MTs (one with a HA army on it), 4 characters left (with assassins on 2).

The DS team was definitely playing for the long game to gain points towards the victory decision, building up agent and curse characters including offensive emmisaries. On turn 15, we had:

20 >A60 agents with 5 more A50s either CL or with >20 stealth.
18 >E60s
1 curse squad and 1 sickness squad

The CL alone had 39 kidnaps/assassinations! NG was down to 2 characters and SG down to 3 characters, moving their capitals to avoid a nation elimination. On T14 we InfOther’d 3024 and crossed over onto 2924 on T15. We were winning the character war!

The impressive bit was that we had over 50 camps in S. Mordor/Khand and the camp limit still not reached. So market manipulations really netted the DS a fair amount of cash with production. The winter was especially hard, hitting right during crunch time on turn 5 through turn 12. A fair number of villages were upgraded by T15 and economies were starting to flourish. Rhudar even named a few new characters.

However, the FPs did get on top of Morannon with Scorba and raze it to the ground! And they successfully suicided the Dragon Lord backup at 3822 enough to weaken his economy that one turn he was suddenly -13K and bankrupt. We swear that we checked and he was okay the turn before…and then whammo…out!

To add insult to injury, a gold transfer to the WK was errored, Mt. Gram fell to Arthedain/Dwarves/Cardolan and 1-2 marginal camps faded before the NatSell… taxes up to 101%! Still with 1804 and 2305! That said, the Free Peoples played that masterfully. Continual pressure. Constant hammering. Sooner or later someone is going to make a mistake. Both were eliminated on T11.

Even though the DS were rallying in Mordor and had the CS, NG and SG on the character ropes… the FP still held the economic might and it would only be a matter of time until the Arthedain/Cardolan HC started crashing into the recamped Morannon. It would have been a fun game to play out 5-10 more turns to see what would have happened :slight_smile:

#8

The game was a lot more manageable once I got down to one nation.

Doug,

Not being face to face could be done, but it is hectic enough even when you are together that I am not sure how well one can coordinate without direct contact. Their were multiple times I actually had to tap my brother on the nogin to get his attention as he was so focused on running the Dog Lord and Fire King with the impressive pressure the Freeps kept on us for the first ten turns.

Obviously only playing one nation would make it a lot easier. I would think it would require a pretty well coordinated 12 man team and not a bunch of guys just meeting for the first time. It was fun to meet fellow MEPBM players and the hospitality that Dave Ruzic provided was outstanding.

A FTF weekend is a blast.

tim

#9

Other feedback and comments welcome btw! Sounds like Bob was a good team co-ordinator? How did the team gel, how did it all work out in the US? Next time maybe we can sort some sort of conferencing so that the teams can chat/trade in-game insults and so on… :bash:

Clint (GM)[/QUOTE]

Bob was great! The w/e was great! Our team had a calm temperment , especially when things were looking bleak.:eek: Overall, our objectives were executed the way we had planned them. I don’t think we all agreed on everything, but we were respectful and we worked through the adversities the Freeps threw at us.

And the Freepies executed their plan accordingly as well. The agreement was to declare a winner and the bragging rights were awarded the Freeps. Yet each on the DS side felt we accomplished many good things and we were happy to still be participating on T15, something that didn’t look possible in the early going.

Perhaps in the future we can compete in a more measurable version like UW. This way a definitive winner may be declared. And that version will probably allow for smackdown time with the opposition.

I’m still decompressing from the weekend and my first day back was so hectic I was SS in one of my games. (how bout a late turn in?;)) Once I get several hours of needed sleep I’ll be good as new. (methinks)

Overall, I would do it again as it’s much more gratifying in person than through emails. David Ruzic and his wife were gracious hosts and we all appreciated the time and energy they put in to make the w/e enjoyable.

I look forward to playing in a future FTF stateside and it would really be cool to meet more of the gaming community.

Dan Cosby

#10

Is FTF really necessary? Just use Ventrillo for voice comms and perhaps some sort of live meeting software so people can view the same instances of Palantir or whatever else needs to be viewed in common.

Yes if you want the 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 hr turnaround. Without it there’s no quick way to get all the information transferred that you want. Also I suspect that without it players might simply drop if it got too much/too quick. Also you miss out on the fun experience. It is INTENSE.

WK/Rh - I would suggest play it as a duo and ask for handouts ! :stuck_out_tongue:

Strategic victory (like in UW)
I suggest

Cities/MTs - destroyed/taken
Capitals - destroyed/taken
Characters alive at end of game (not including kidnapped).
Economies - some factor.
Armies - some factor.
Nations deceased.
Artefacts picked up

Some strategic elements.

Clearly this would have to be balanced (and I probably missed something). Ideas welcome although normally it’s clear who won/lost and if it’s close then we call it a draw. In this one situation I think it’s now been clarified the differnce between the normal “death or glory” (ie who cares what your nation is like at the end) and the “long term playability” (normal style game).

#11

You guys did great and had me really worried once my commanders started dropping like flies. We felt that it was looking very good up until 5 but you had a good turn before end of play on Saturday and then again Sunday evening the pendulum began swinging your way again.

SG and I (NG) both relocated capitals on turn 15 to demonstrate that we could could rebuild our character base. I’m not sure how long you would have found the new NG capital (you were there on t14) but after another 3 turns the NG roster could have increased by 9 characters - albeit of poor quality.

But then we didnt play a character game at all.

It would have been nice to have held Oz. I managed to put an army on it every turn bar t14 when you fortuitously landed on it with emmies.

I was even more miffed with the result at 3123. I had 42 warmachines when Nimanaur did his stuff. Well played IK.

You were clearly going for Oz big time - I was very glad to have intercepted the DogL cav and Ik at 3023 on turn1. That could have been nasty.

BTW I noticed that the CL multi mage won a challenge turn 2 vs Uklurg of FK. What did you do with afterwards?

So I guess you guys don’t fancy a rematch?

Bryn
NG

#12

Ar-Gular won his challenge. I am pretty sure we then retired him.

Did we mention the Cloud Lord got absolutely zero stealth the whole game.

Absolutely you could have renamed to a full compliment of characters with both the Gondors, Eothraim and Corsairs. So I think we were ten plus turns from even being in the realm of possibility of eliminating any free nation. But we would have enjoyed the gold donations with our thefts as you were trying to rename characters.

I thought we had lost the game on turn six, so I am just happy we got some lucky rolls and made the game fun all the way until the end.

It was a blast.

Clint,

I am not a super big fan of basing the win loss on how many capitals were taken or Major towns lost. The Dark servants against good free opponents basically try to hold on until turn 15 or so then let the characters take over. Doing something dumb long term to gain a capital short term doesn’t make sense.

However, it could be that the game is simply redifined as to what is a win/loss based on some predifined formula.

I don’t really mind that we lost, we had fun playing.

Tim

#13

Might be worth considering the “win” declaration somewhat moot for the FTF? Sounds like huiatt’s last words are the entire point, yes/no?

#14

It is a game. And while intense satisfaction can be obtained from the journey, the goal is to reach the destination.

The interesting question is how to define a “win” in 15 turns that gives the DS a fair chance at “winning”. I suspect that most people would agree that with 2 competent teams, both making the same amount of unforced errors, that the FP are going to have a huge advantage using traditional “war game” type criteria.

For 15 turns, the FP can completely abandon (as was stated above) any character game and just go balls to the wall military. The DS are going to have a really tough time looking good against that onslaught unless the criteria for a “win” somehow is adjusted to the realities of the 1650 game and that if NW Mordor has held, the DS are mostly alive by turn 15 and have built 2 curse teams and X number of 60+ CL agents, or 80+ DS agents, Y number of 60+ emmies, etc, then the DS are the winners.

The key is figuring out fair values for X, Y, and “mostly alive”…

#15

“mostly alive”…like…my marriage…? my chances at promotion…? my binge drinking habit…? :smiley:

#16

Hi Bryn,

We moved emmies on the NG capital after we found out it was still @ Minas Anor. We thought you probably had moved it, but our T14 intel showed otherwise. Our intel showed no life at your other MT’s w/earlier pings, so to assume that we were not considering or looking for your cap earlier would be presumptious. We had the character power to eliminate newly named characters in quick fashion, but we really did not comprehend what was going on during the final turns. We did know the Corsairs predicament and as everyone saw, we were there to greet the newcomers.:smiley: We were just at a loss as to where the Gondor armies/characters went. Your overall strategy was effective and has been mentioned, we just got some timely dragons. :smiley:

Our character setup was fabulous and we sorta had to run with it. When you have 6 or 7 mages with some type of spirit spell and Hoarmy coming in with 40stealth, we figured let’s weather the storm and work within our strengths. And we were very efficient during this process. It would have been nice to see my stealthy agents be a bit more effective w/the 690’s; but that is a credit to the Free strategy.

Both sides played well with the Free awarded victor, yet I feel we competed well and I learned much from my teammates as well as our opposition.

Lastly,
My favorite order as the QA was Divine Char/wForces
My favorite order as IK was Assass :smiley:
My favorite move by our opponents was SG opening (3 char?)
My biggest surprise: SG taking Vamag T12
My favorite move: IK assass SG comm Telmecar T14

On Gamers High,
Dan

#17

Brad - I can’t comment about your marriage, your chances for promotion or your drinking habits. :slight_smile:

The “mostly alive” comment was referring to number of nations…

#18

characters? Or just a VP delta algorithm of some sort…? I can read the subtle morality between the lines…I drink for medicinal reasons, shame the boss and wife don’t understand that…

#19

Feel free to suggest a suitable scoring system for a 12v12 game 1650. Might be good idea just to chuck out some ideas.

They need to simple to calculate if possible. See my above post for an idea of the sort of thing.

Clint (GM)

#20

Hi all,

I understand the US view about their character strength moving forward. However, please consider the impact of actually loosing the WK when it went bankrupt rather than the nation being put back in the game for the last 5 turns.

Having the WK in the game allowed its characters to play several impotant roles over those last 5 turns. If you factor out those orders the number of dead DS nations would more than likely have increased.

The US viewpoint of their position at game end needs this retropective review.

Anyway a great game which I enjoyed much more after my capital was safe.

Mark
Sinda