Game 18 ends on turn 19 with a DS victory. A salute to our noble FP foes. Perhaps we will meet on the battlefield again.
Top three positions were: Cloud Lord (Bettina Wagner), Witch King (Darrel Senior) and Dk LTS (Mike Grazebrook).
Good game all.
My orders were submitted prior to concession so they ran as planned…not trying to get in any gratuitous challenges after the game ended etc.
Curiosity satisfied that Leucaruth does NOT like being offered an artifact. 
What do VP’s have to do with it Ed? In regards to, say, the MVP of the DS Team (votes?), does this VP based “top 3” reflect accurately on relative worth to the DS cause in this war? Note, the FP have a “top 3” VP rated nations also, all of whom had more VP’s than the DS top 3. I suppose these are interesting items to fight amongst allies for (like VC’s…), but really, the DS won, the FP lost. Might as well report who was Left or Right handed on your particular side, just as meaningful as “top 3”, no?
Brad, methinks your resentment is showing.
Not from Game 18 Ed, just the choice to publish the “top 3”. Now, if you were to choose 3 MVP’s from your team, would the ones listed as the VP “top 3” be them…? Don’t answer here if you don’t want to. I highly doubt it. Which is why I ask “Why choose to write about that when there’s so much to write about…?”
As for Game 18, the DS seem to have had a plan and stuck with it throughout and credit their original plan for their dominant position which is mostly the cause of the FP’s concession. As far as I can tell, Good Job DS!
Brad
Of course the VP’s are meaningless…but Ed’s being gracious so give it a rest.
Besides, most of our nations were special serviced and everyone knows that some nations just score higher so I’m surprised you missed Ed’s point.
Thanks Ed.
sigh… No, you missed mine. Happy New Year folks - until we meet again!
It’s easy to miss your points. 
:hug:
I know, I never re-read them after I sober up…
Brad,
Those were the top three as listed by ME Games. Indeed all did play significant roles in the game. Darrel the Witch King did coordinate the battle in the west pretty effectively I would say. It is true he had significant input from the others on the team but he was the conductor of the piece. Tine the Cloud Lord developed a good corps of killers as evidenced by the last turn of results. She contributed her killing power wherever needed. Finally Mike was moving through Southern Gondor threatening pops and causing you to react to him which did present Tine’s agents with plenty of targets.
There were contributions from everyone involved. Ed’s agents operated in the west the entire game and enabled Rhudaur and the Witch King to hold off the Free early and in conjunction with other characters provided by virtually every DS nation to go on the offensive in the west. The Blind Sorcerer ate huge maintainance expenses to keep his army in strategic reserve until you showed up at the western approaches. The Ice King’s agents got strategically important kills throughout the game. Ed’s dragon ranching plan enabled us to have a steady stream of wyrms to employ against your numerically superior armies. John’s decision to go with Sickness Squads instead of Curse Squads had two in operation and getting kills earlier in the game. I believe over half the Free characters killed in the west were due to that squad. The entire team had emissaries working the countries of Cardolan and Arthedain over so it was indeed a team effort.
We admit we did not play our best game. We did however play well enough to win and that for those who follow the PRS is what is important. This game had some odd things to it. We knew your VP totals were higher than ours. Normally that signals a team with the upper hand. We however left many of your nations virtually untouched in order to concentrate our efforts in specific areas. We didn’t think the areas we were going after were doing all that great. We would think that the Woodmen, Sinda, Noldo, Eothraim, Duns, Dwarves and Corsairs were all doing quite well at game end. However we were certain that Cardolan was just about useless as a military nation that has virtually no commanders cannot be seen as an asset. Arthedain and Southern Gondor were in our estimates not much better off. We saw an end game in which the character imbalance would hasten the decline of other nations on your side. We weren’t there yet but felt we were moving there.
You guys taught us some lessons. In particular when one of you pointed out to me that my giving attack orders simply saved you guys an order was taken to heart. That is what resulted in I believe Waulfa’s death. I issued challenge and recruited at Sarn Goriwing. Waulfa’s army was destroyed and he was killed the replacements recruited maintained my army strength and I then destroyed Ditski’s army as well. Your Threat at Mt Gundabad was a catalyst and resulted in us seeing the Threat as more of a weapon. Thanks for the game. Good luck in the future to you and your new team.
Brad J