Congrats all on game completion. Looks like ME forgot to send the game end materials after turn 50 ran. So rare to run a game that long any more.
“After 50 turns (or 52 turns in a Fourth Age game) the game ends, and the allegiance with the most combined
victory points wins.If, however, the victory points of both allegiances are within 10% of each other, the game is considered a draw.”
FP beat us with a remaining count of 7 nations to 4 (my whole quad survived) - and I’m pretty sure the FP’s VPs are more than our 4 combined. I guess we’ll have to wait for end count on that one.
Interesting format with the 4 nations. I think 3 nations is the max that I’ll stick to. (Speaking of - Game 92 is just about filled) But, I had a great team of guys I was sharing the quad. It was a blast playing with Martin and Mike W (Jason had to pull out at turn 20 something and I took over QA for him).
This was by far the most enjoyable game of Middle Earth I’ve ever played. Kevin Risner and I shared the WM, Noldo, Arthedain, Cardolan quad. Kevin was primary on the WM and Noldo while I had Arthedain and Cardolan. This game really turned on a few climactic events from my perspective. But more than anything else, I think the FP victory is most attributable to the tenacious play of the 2/3/6/23 player. Many players would have thrown in the towel rather than take the beating he did and I don’t think I can say enough to express my respect for his/their play in this game. Conversely, I really wish there had been communication from the Dwarf quad. It felt like we were playing with 8 nations on our side from the start (and it does appear the positions were dropped and picked up at least once, maybe twice?), but in the fog of war I’m sure it looked very different from his perspective.
Mike, you and your team did a great job with your quad and really had us nervous around mid-game when you launched your northern invasion. It could have gone the other way if not for some luck and long preparation against that eventuality. We had a great time squaring off with the WK quad player(s) as well - it was a hell of good contest in the NW and he kept us tied up a long time. It was never clear to me if the Dark Lt’s dropped while still viable or not - I hope not because if that nation had remained active it very well may have tilted the balance. We had a great scrap with the Dog Quad also that went very heavily in our favor at the decisive moment (showdown at the EO Corral) which was the first time in the game we thought we had a chance to win (though we were still definitely behind). For about the first 30 turns we thought we were losing and didn’t feel at all confident of a victory until around turn 40, but not understanding the rules (oops) were thinking we had to eliminate two more nations and that we had until turn 52 to accomplish it…I wish the game had continued two more turns to see if we could pull it off. I think we probably would have except for Ji Indur’s destruction of the army destined for 2908 last turn which left us with an extra city to cover with emissaries that were really needed elsewhere.
These are the MT/Cities we knew about:
2004 - army from 2103
2413 - destroy with army that is there
2514 - armies from 2613 and 2413 moving there to destroy on fictitious turn 52
2315 - if only one commander in that army, cursed this turn and 525’s this turn would flip it.
2316 - emissaries moving in
2416 - armies from 2518 and 2520 would destroy it
2417 - emissaries on it, flip this turn or next.
2908 - would have to be addressed with emissaries or ignored.
Did you have more potential capitals squirreled away somewhere? (No problem if you’d rather not answer.)
Kevin and I are going to try our first Grudge Match for our next game. We are looking for a start sometime in July, but will post again later when we are sure of a good start time.
Great to have you in a game again. It’s been awhile. (I think Kevin joined us as a replacement in that invitational game awhile ago too). I wished you were on my side though. It looks like you’ve pegged the pc’s, but we had a few about to raise from T to MT and we had some potent armies in the mix. Your taking in 2 turns may still have been tight. But, at this rate, 5 more turns, and you would have crushed us into nothing. We might have taken one more of your nations down in that interim too. (We had a lot of force concentrated on the Duns).
As you saw, with only 4 to 5 of us remaining for the last 10-15 turns, we took 4 more of the FP down. Even though you had us outnumbered, this game was far from a bug hunt. We had a potent offensive counter-strike. It looks like we knocked Sinda out in the last turn? We were having fun picking on the DWA’s quad.
My recruiting Ji Indur to the BS 10-15 turns ago was helpful too. (We found a bunch of Cl character at the WM hidden pc). BS was running a 1% tax rate for a while, and recruiting fallen nation’s characters before you guys could steal his gold. Our 1 curse squad to the 3 FP curse squads was rough going.
DkLts clearly went dormant and was SSing while still alive. I doubled his Nazgul who sat at his own pc and entered in standard SS orders.
I just saw the CL had 64 kills before he was knocked out!
This game was fun. I hope to see you in another game soon.
