Game 55 - Gunboat ends

General
#1

Just wanted to say my compliments to my surviving allies, and my compliments to several of my enemies. The game’s ending was something of a shock, as I had completely forgotten about the 50-turn limit (it’s in the standard rules for Gunboat).

I was running the Fire King, with various friends of mine playing the Quiet Avenger off and on; first Kevan Mull, then Ken Shannon, then eventually Mike Welsh. Real life events drove Kevan and Ken out of running it, with me running the position for about 1/3 of the game overall.

Harad pounded the snot out of the QA (despite my best efforts); we arrived at the Corsair capital one turn too late to save him, and a dragon flew away just as we arrived at Harad’s capital. Which was pretty typical during the game… one turn too late! Harad eventually killed the Corsairs and drove the QA out of the region, so he rebuilt in Angmar and swept through all of the Dwarf stuff.

Fire King was eventually crushed in Mordor (and driven out of Northern Gondor, and subsequently Dunland) but had population centers all over the map; neither nation was realistically eliminatable as their economies were pretty strong (the QA had five pages of population centers and around 500,000 gold at the game’s end)

My real problem was that I kept ending up in battles with half of the free simulateously. That and I had no good way of finding Arthedain’s final Major Town to finish him off. We were aware of all three woodmen major towns and were setting up to sweep through them, but the primary target at game’s end was the Harad, simply to cut him down to size a bit.

My sincere compliments to Harad and Woodmen of the Free, and the rest of your team for a long, well-fought game. What a bloodbath! Personally I think that the game was still balanced and capable of going either way.

To my fellow Dark Servants–
My compliments to the Long Rider (for your long war alone) and Rhudaur (just to survive is impressive, much less all of the Rhudaur population centers I kept wandering across in Arthedain).

Dog Lord & Blind Sorcerer-- you were very influential and a great help; unfortunately for me we kept stumbling into each other; I think we were thinking similarly, having visited various population centers at similar times-- Mt. Gundaband, the Northmen Capital, the Woodmen capital, the sinda city, etc. I’m positive that the Blind Sorcerer was walking around incinerating Free characters with a curse squad-- my thanks, I noticed.

Bradford, ex-Fire King game 55

#2

I was shocked when the game ended on Turn 50. Another 50 turns and we might have had you. Very good game. This reminded me so much of my old 1650 games. I really like the no diplo part of it. Total Chaos.

I was the Harad player and had a rough time early on, but after knocking out the Corsairs I was finally able to concentrate my actions in one direction and breathe a little. Thanks to SG for the help there. I lost 2 of my navies on turn one to one each of the QA and Corsair navies. Losing the navies wasn’t so bad, but losing 2 commanders really hurt early on. It took me a while to finally get commanders to replace them and get my hires and harbor removals going. My brother played the Noldo and he sent his ships down right away and transferred them to SG when SG moved into my capital. This gave SG the naval advantage we needed and SG was able to help quite a bit with taking out the Corsairs and DrL.

With the Corsairs removed, we moved east and took the QA area and then pushed into Mordor and either burned all MT+ size PC’s in Mordor with my armies or flipped them with my emis company except for the BS capital. For a while I wondered where the QA and FK were replaced to until the Noldo found you in Angmar after the WK and DkL were eliminated. After moving out or Mordor, I sent my main army under Ossim Ralah to take out the CL capital which he had setup in the Misty’s (Noldo was able to interogate the hostages). Keeping that army under Ossim Ralah intact was a major part of my success. I still had it intact at game end sitting on the Rhudar capital and poised to take it out. The Morale varied from 85 to 100 over the last 30 or so turns and the 1200+HC I had in it at game end had traing in the 60’s. The CL managed to take out Ossim when I destroyed his capital in the Misties along with another backup commander, but I had a third that managed to move the army out. I was lucky in that the character he used to scout for characters with was my double agent. This army was almost destroyed early on at the Corsair capital but managed to move back with under 200 troops and get reloaded with fresh hires. Most of my game consisted of cranking out HC and sending them out to take out all of the MT’s+ that I could find. On turn 50 I was poised to take out Rhudars Capital and the Noldo were on one of his other major towns. Not sure if that was all he had left. After the fall of the CL we decided to target Rhudar and the LR since they were people down to one nation. We were figuring if we could knock out the 2 of them we could force it into a 6 vs 4 battle and might eventually win due to the character differences. Unfortunately I wasn’t even aware that the game was ending on turn 50, so this ended up being a waste of time and resources. The Noldo and I also moved into the LR capital this turn with enough to kill off everything there this turn and most likely flip it the foloowing turn. After that we were going to have to hunt down any backups if he had any.

Another part of our strategy after we saw that the QA and FK had settled into Angmar was to try to concentrate on other nations to try to knock them out. It appeared that the FK and QA were grabbing every MT+ that was out there and since allies are not allowed to steal PC’s form each other in GB we decided to leave them alone and hunt down all the others.

At one point the Noldo was running a curses squad and I was ruinning a sickness squad, but the Noldo lost one of his cursers and we had to upgrade one of mine to curses. We never got back to 2 squads. We do know the BS DL had two squads running at game end. That is why I emptied all of my MT’s in Harad. I was running at 39% taxes and had a surplus of over 10k still at game end. Looks like it was going to take you about 2 turns with emis to take a PC. I never saw much for DS armies. But the Noldo had killed off quite a few with curses and his agents, leaving unoccupied PC’s for me to destroy.

I could probably go on for another hour or so about this game, but I have better things to do now. At least my wife is happy for now. She has been asking “when is that stupid game going to end?”. I told her she now has a few more hours of me at least until I get into my next game.

Great Game!
Congrats to the survivors!
Wish I knew about the turn 50 ending. I think I lost 400 to 500 VP’s in the last 3 turns. Lousy Dragons!

Jeff

#3

Firstly well played all, it seemed a very even game throughout. I was Dog Lord and Blind Sorceror.

special mention to Northmen who managed to stay in nearly to the end while under great pressure.

Eothraim who rebuilt in Gondor and remained a pain in the arse throughout the game.

Noldo agent and curse squads whom i could never quite catch. (except when i offed one of your curse squad)

on the DS side well done all, i tried to help all with agents and the curse squad as much as i could.

QA just imagine the damage we would of done if we hadnt been bumping into each other all the time.

anyone wishing to exchange pdfs etc just email me at mufc845@hotmail.com

paul
:fork:

#4

Hello fellow GB 55 players past and present. I was the EO/SG player in this one. This is the first game I have lost in a number of years and I greatly admire and appreciate the good play of the DS. A salute to my noble DS foe.

Favorite memory: That moment in time when the EO fleet ruled the Great Sea.

#5

Yeah, it was pretty ugly at the end… hell, it was pretty ugly all the way around.

This was my first time playing Gunboat, and I must say I found it somewhat frustrating.

Dwarves took GG and Dol G. They also battled the DS who jumped on the Woodies early (not blocking either incoming enemy was, uh, “unwise”). The battle against the Dragon Lord ended up around 3105. After that, the focus was on the WK and Rhudaur. Lots of kill-capable agents helping out Rhu made that a bloody affair. The NW was a smoking wreck… but then bad guys coming out of the east/south (13, 15, 16, 18, 19) laid a beating on the poor Dwarves. The end came ignominiously on an accounting error…

Northmen got plenty of unwanted attention right off the bat, with the Dog, LR and BS armies all showing up in Rhun. With some Dwarven help, they managed to fend off the bad guys. However, the loss of 4 commanders on turn 4 (2 killed in battle, 2 to encounters) was a major problem. The C10/E30 eaten by a werewolf at 3109 killed my plan to recruit/improve pop and left me open to the Dragon troops coming out of Mirkwood. Sauron also spent a fair amount of time wandering around that area, making it very difficult to raise troops. The Northmen did get some cav into central Mordor around T20 along with a crew of emissaries, but the damage was limited by agents and the timely appearance of army icons on vulnerable pops. After that, the DS characters assault took a huge toll… I was effectively com-less for a large stretch, unable to recruit to defend my holdings in the east. Dog / BS / FK rolled up Rhun, and I was left playing guerrilla warfare with emissaries.

I will admit to being entirely unprepared for the game to last as long as it did. That’s not something I have much experience with, as indy and grudge games tend to be a done deal by that point. Despite naming a bunch of agents for the Dwarves, nothing came of it as they seemed to routinely fail simple orders like 690… or get killed off before they amounted to anything. Dudannis, on the other hand, was a one-man killing machine - the turn he bagged two high ranking emissaries (challenge + assassin) was a bright spot in an otherwise ugly time.

#6

Ah, that’s wonderful stuff Ed… I can’t wait for the game I can get Admiral Arfanhil a-sea - running into an Eothaim navy would be a fair fight, I suspect…! :slight_smile: