Yes , I played this with my son who found the diplomacy all too much! Had a whale of a time, Cardolan and Noldo - Cardolan I’m reasonably happy with my play, Noldo was atrocious … ah well more of a Military guy! Had fun burning Dragon camps, and using Noldo as a recruitment nation, got a couple of nice 525s in as well. Got very unlucky with challenges that set the team back a lot (learnt something there with trying to help a team-mate out TOO much!).
Not 100% sure why the DS conceded. Looking at the 525s we pulled off they were very much on the back foot with the economy and loyalties from the camp burning a lesson very much in military me-thinks. Their character game was clearly in the ascendancy but I finally got Noldo into a couple of killers so that was nice.
Ivan under the Dunlendings put a spirited defence and I’m hoping he pulled in a lot of resources from the team to push them over the top. Excellent game all round and respect to Brad and Simon on the team for learning (and re-learning) the ropes very well. Rhudaur caved way too quick - justice for the diplomacy there I thought!
As always Anders and Ulirk were stars on the team and basically won the game for us. Esko and Asko did a spirited attack and defence with the Gondors, Jose did a lovely game down south against the agents and forces there.
We were dropping nations and after the odd key fail here and there, players tuned out and got turned off the game. Communication and coordination fell right off the table. A number of us saw opportunity after opportunity that got missed…
Ivan the Dun was stellar.
We pushed it past t20, the last 3 of which we had conceded to a One Ring affair, but the fails to locate started to add up at $7.90 USD a shot and we just tossed it in as another nation bit the dust via Taxes > 100, etc, repeat.
Good game. No real turning point, lots of action across the map throughout.
Cheers,
Brad of Umbar
Wow. Got games confused - same losing result, damn you Ulrik~!!
Communication and coordination fell right off the table. A number of us saw opportunity after opportunity that got missed…
Brad of Umbar
The above comment by Brad was the undoing of our team over the last 6-8 turns. Way WAY too many missed ops that were right there if we could have just executed common orders. We weathered the initial learning and re-learning of each personality and playing style and were moving along smoothly until real life took over. Then we just could not finish off NG and we knew we had him, just could not get it done.
I thought Ivan played a masterful strategic game, but it did come at a price. We let Harad suffer done south and the commitment of toys in Dunland was inefficient. Nonetheless, I applaud the Free strategy. We had great intel of all the mega armies coming our way and it was very hard to pick and choose. Ultimately, it was Free emmys and the unbearable market that did us in. So many could not afford to run a naked nation, let alone hire a military. Kudos to the Card, Noldo, Dwarf and SG as those were nations that continued to show up with creative manuevers!
I’m sure there were others, but those 4 stand out for me, especially SG!!
This was my first game back after many years away and as disappointing as it was to be on the losing side, I am happy to have played with and against some solid strategist!
Funny game, congrats to everyone who played until the last turn. Im very pleased about how we played, taking into account the poor situation when the WK and DogLord were eliminated due to a very poor managment, that marked the victory since the beginning. Nice emmy game from the freeps.
“and the commitment of toys in Dunland.” Yeah I was hoping that we managed to take enough agents/squads away for this to become a drain on other fronts. However it did keep Dunland in the game who without these toys would’ve been effectively out of the game many turns before I think. (Cf Rhudaur - didn’t have an appreciable impact after leaving the NW). (One enormous Arthedain army died with no back-up as I recall which saved all of the towns for a few turns). Noldo creative - I think you mean I hired some armies, kept an eye on the Ring of Wind and destroyed some dragon camps (the rest if more secret sort of). Tried 525ing the Easterlings at one point hoping he’d not have time to downgrade but I suspect he did it that turn! WK was elminated, imo, due to the aggression on our part, or at least he was removed from the NW arena that way.
Good to hear that the economic warfare programme worked. The game was tipping in favor of DS and your characters, but we kept the hammer down and focused on the economy.
Our 11/13 starting player was a proxy FP who eliminated his nations faster than I thought possible… He’s been put on a number of the DS “do not play” lists, or should be… This one wasn’t 14-11, it was 12-11 with a number of trip-hazards in DSVille that the FP, no matter how weak you might consider some teammates to be, simply didn’t have to deal with. We play through the differences in experience/skill/awareness all the time, with the understanding that “things aren’t any better on the other side”.
This game was a special case…
We had another too, call it 11-11 with a 2.5 turn advantage FP due to momentum loss caused by selfish/stupid/idiocy. With some of the body-blows the DS had to take due to these particular players, I’m calling this a Victory for the DS, frankly…
Call it what you want 14:11 and both sides had issues… We were up against it even with “idiocy”. It was fun though… Rhudaur’s attack on Card/Arth early in the game with diplos saying yeah he was interested in joining us and showing willing, vs a new player to the game to show a counterpoint. Some 50/50 challenges going the DS way with toys thrown in that had a big impact, my inability to pilot a navy didn’t help.
Clint (very much a player here! so don’t shoot the GM!)
I’m sure you can understand the catastrophic crash in morale when 3 nations destroyed themselves, not just stupidly, but spitefully. Statistics lie and liars use statistics - 14-11 is not the game that you played.
Brad (very much a player here, who, after decades can’t recall a comparable debacle)
