Top 3 players:
Martin Cinke (North Gondor), CJ Ganier (WK), Ian Etchells (LR). Congrats
guys. Commiserations to the others - feed back on this format would be
excellent.
All Neutral (All v ALL ) game has just ended. Close run game at the end for
2nd, 3rd and 4th (Easterlings, Bernd Luerhsen) but a big win for Martin…
Clint
Congrats to all the winners!
and kudos to the plucky Noldo for continually whacking my commanders keeping Cardolan’s victory points totals low…
Congrats to all those who took part and especially to those who stayed on to the end.
Special congrats to Martin for seeing off 2 nations all on his own.
A very good game with good and bad positions to play, luckily I had a good position but some others were initally swamped.
Cheers,
Ian - LR
I had a blast. I would like to apologize to those whom I offended on the way through. Congrats to North Gondor for pulling it out at the very end! Martin may I ask how many victory conditions you got?
cj
The leaders were well deserving. The rankings were in order or worth. Whatever many may say, the game worked through to the end as it was meant to.
Ren the Last Place
order of worth? Human worth? worth in weight as agricultural product? 
Tell me if you guys are interested in another game. I’ve got a list of players that might be interested.
What I’d suggest is any changes or clarifications to the rules to be discussed here first though.
What worked.
What didn’t work.
What wasn’t clear.
Modifications etc.
Clint (GM)
I would like to play again if one comes up. I played The Dragon lord in the last one but sadly had to drop as i had to work away. never dropped one before.Enjoyed the format and tretchery though.
Clint, instead of asking what wasn’t clear you should ask what was clear (and fix that). The whole business should put tidy minds at a disadvantage. It is a jungle out there, so don’t chop down the rainforest.
For reference these are the rules. I’ve got two people interested (please sign your names to postings if you want me to add you to the list).
Final rules:
Istari rating for the 10th position as the mean for that nation. You get your Victory points (with VCs included) divided by that 10th position for a rating value.
For reference: Nation: VPs (without VCs) 1: 1117, 2: 900, 3: 925, 4: 1275, 5: 1175, 6: 1225, 7: 1350, 8: 1167, 9: 1450, 10: 1500, 11, 1283, 12: 1017, 13: 1184, 14: 1150, 15: 1125, 16: 1042, 17: 1450, 18: 1117, 19: 1233, 20: 1342, 21: 1550, 22: 1583, 23: 1300, 24: 925, 25: 1400. So if as the Woodmen you scored 1500 VPs then you’re overall rating for this game would be 1500/1117 = 1.34. but we will use the most modern data for this when the game ends.
Other Rules: This is new and untested. I’m reasonably sure (to very sure) that it will work, but not 100%. We’d possibly need to fix things mid game. Anyone joining would have to play with that understanding. When I get the results back I’ll send out the complete rules with the set-up. Each nation will start off Neutral, with disliked relations to everyone in the game.
20 points to characters: You can allocate 2x10 or 20 or 10 points on one character and 10 on another. These points can be added to a characteristic of any character but can’t be added to Stealth, nor can they bring that stat above 40, nor if you increase Mage rank do you get an extra spell.
The 2 nations not played cannot be affected in ANYWAY – no steal gold, assassinates, capture pcs, or anything at all. They might well stop your armies moving through if you are of the wrong relations. With the set-up I’ll send out everyone’s contact details – after that I’ll remove them (for admin reasons at our end). No more than 2 players can join together (if you are joining with someone else you must tell me). 3 Winners at the end of the game. Set-up cost: standard variant rate.
Game ends: If a vote for a game end comes through on turn 20 (ie the turn you send in is turn 20) then we will SS the final turn 21 to end the game. (It’s a program requirement that we do so).
Thanks
Clint
Congrats to the winners,
geez Ian you beat me by 3 points 
- I am very satisfied with the results and how my nation evolved after a real bad start (which was to be expected, though). Was lucky to have CL and LR as allies, so nothing could really harm my homelands after EO was done.
Would play this scenario again, but not ATM as I have my personal maximum of 3 games running.
Thanks to all players who sticked to it!
Have uploaded my last pdf for anybody interested.
I have been mulling over my feelings about the Free for All Scenario. I liked it alot, but I feel as if stagnation combined with the turn limit to make it less fun than it could have been. I would be interested in signing up again when the number of games I am in has declined.
Suggestions/commentary:
I would say that the turn limit contributed negatively to the game. Others may disagree, but I felt like pace of mepbm means that you only really had time to handle two foes in 20 turns and then the game ended without a real sense of how the long term positioning had fleshed out. Unlike when similar criticisms might be leveled at more traditional scenarios, I would say that here there really wasn’t any clear or impending winner. North Gondor and I were both doing quite well but I wouldn’t say either of us were invincible by a long shot. Particularly as the last 3 or so turns came I wasn’t really going to try to do anything but tie up lose ends for fear of crashing my score.
I got the impression that this scenario was grueling to some- certainly there were many drops for unclear reasons. I am not sure whether this was due to unmet expectations or what (it was in game feel exactly what I expected though I didn’t predict the raucously out of control economy).
As for balance of power, I did not and do not feel any balancing is necessary among powers. While I did not suffer from a weak nation myself I would say that the diplomatic game trumps the imbalance among powers. I would also say that lack of replacements and the absence/reduced influence of a team/faction to be let down makes driving individual players out of the game much easier than actually beating them. I really admire the Dwarves for sticking the game out - I would say fighting them was the high point of my game.
Thus to sum up changes:
from the perspective of a successful WK few were needed.
remove the turn limit In this way, there isn’t a clear line when the game would end that leads to changes in play towards the end. To avoid grueling bug hunts, perhaps starting turn ten and every turn thereafter each player has the option to send a vote in to stop the game (no vote = continue). Tilt the vote needed to quit more toward a balance instead of 2/3 needed to continue. This way the mechanics dont reward hoarding up as much.
Perhaps change up which nations are out of the game - did any of the players really feel crippled? I don’t know if the Woodmen might volunteer that he would rather have been the North Men or if some oppressed Mordor Nazgul would say that he would rather have been the QA? I would say that the crazy high prices will be ever-present in this variant and that that allows Northmen and QA to be more competitive than they would be otherwise.
I would suggest out of curiousity and the belief that it would strengthen weak positions that Faction declaration be allowed. I would note that it actually BENEFITS character based nations to take on the same allegiance as one’s enemy - its only combat orders that can’t be executed on allies. Assassinations, challenges, emmissary actions, curses etc are all fair game on allies. This would keep many of the big military nations neutral because it would be a nightmare for, say, North Gondor to go Dark then be followed by the Cloud Lord who can then assassinate him without fear of military reprisal. There are a great number of maneuvering options that would be open to exploration that should give pause to those who might over-eagerly stampede for the Dark Servants.
cj
Personally, I think the game ended, er, just in time…
CJ,
I find your points 1) and 2) hold some truth and are maybe worth testing. 3) is a problem, though, because it would tie many original DS to the dark side. a LR not declaring DS would be a fool, wasting his aligned agent arties. same goes for DrgL and DarkL. So this would kill the idea of open choices and thus the original idea of the scenario.
I agree point 3) would be a problem, unless of course you can then swap from alligence to alligence at will, now that would be fun <g>
Ian
I agree that it would dispose them toward going dark in those cases and free in the case of the noldo - but being onthe same allegiance doesn’t make them allies. In fact- I claim it might be just the answer Mordor needs to its trench-warfare woes.
There would have been no sitzkrieg in Mordor had the BS not dropped literally the turn after he committed that he would attack the DoL/IK/FK coalition with me (the CL in g68). If he would have followed through, he would have taken 3624 and 3622, and I believe I could have held 3426. Otoh, if I knew he was going to flake out, then I probably would have aligned myself with the NW Mordor boys, and it would have been a completely different game for me. Now I don’t regret staying on the path I chose for the CL, as I enjoyed working with Ian and particularly Bernd, and Brad’s posts on this forum continually reminded me that I did the right thing. <g>
On a broader level though, I just can’t see how the possibility of allegiance declaration would have made g68 any better. We already have FA games for that type arrangement.
Drew
What I found interesting was that in a game that is by definition a free for all that we all immediately sought out alliances and then in the main stuck loyally to them. Most of the treachery happened in the first two or three turns and the rest of the game was spent seeking retribution.
The real kudos must go to the Eothraim who to my knowledge survived on his own the whole 20 turns.
If treachery is what you are after then maybe you play it gunboat style (or with limited communication) for the first 10 turns and then let everyone talk. By then it would be difficult to kiss and make up and hamper any regional alliances. I anticipate the action would certainly be a lot more adventourous and difficult to predict.
Also you may consider dropping 2 other nations, I’d suggest one of the NW Mordor DS and one either Arth/Card or Woodman. It’s difficult to call because whoever you drop you will ease the pressure in that geography.
Ian Dog in 68
Wow go Eothraim.
For my part I was also surprised that the alliances were so stable - though for my part I felt that my alliance/I was making such progress that I wasn’t going to give up on it. When Woodmen, Sinda, Dragon Lord dropped I saw such wide vistas open up that I knew the rest of my game could leisurely be spent cleaning them up. I only continued chasing dwarves out of interest and fear that some dour legion would show up (and indeed there was a hungry mass of them prowling around that I never could quite deal with). I regret that my inexperience made taking Moria an impossibility.
cj
Can’t remember ever committing to hep the Cloud Lord vs the rest.
I simply dropped the BS position because I found it very boring.
It’s a character Nation that’s best played a spart of a team, perhaps the limiting factor in this game.
I would be inclined to take a military Nation if I were to give it a go again.