Ok, ok guys I got it wrong!!!
Just to explain in a bit more detail what I was attempting to do… I’m at work at the momemt so I can’t check exactly what I’d got and where.
Buhr Flambe is where you move the cavalry from 1804 to 2405 and move the Gundabad army towards the Woodmen capital to intercept any force moving to 2405. This guarantees that you can destroy 2405 and remove a major thorn in your side without the Woodmen being able to do a thing about it. (There is a blocking move - for the Dwarves to hire at 2004 and move north onto the road to block the cavalry from 1804). In Game 63 I met the Woodmen army in the hex (se??) from 2405 with the Gundabad army. I predictably lost the battle but what made things even worse is that Ashdurbuk Zalg got killed in it, thus losing my best commander on Turn 2.
Zarak Doom - nice name btw. In my case, I moved the remainder of the 1804 army to 2005 on Turn 1 (I think I used Dancu along with Murazor’s command artifact). On Turn 2 you move that army along with the 600HC from the starting army at 2006 to 2004 (force march into the mountains). This means if the Dwarves have hired an army at 2004 you can kill them off with the cavalry which allows you to threaten the PC.
I basically decided as Rhudaur was pre-declared and that I wouldn’t have to leave a significant force at 2006 that it was worth doing. The downside to doing both of those moves is that it meant that I had to completely leave all of my PCs on the plains undefended. I took the risk in the hope that Arthedain would hold back a couple of turns to recruit. Unfortunately as you’ve seen from above, he scryed 2005 on the first turn and worked out exactly what I was doing - well played I might add as it’s not the obvious place to scry.
After that as I think I’ve already explained above, myself and Rhudaur got completely trounced by waves of FP troops including Arthedain, Cardolan, Woodmen, Dunlendings, Dwarves and Northern Gondor. Losing the PCs on the plains meant that I was struggling from about turn 2/3 with my economy and my failure to make any decent military impact with the Dk Lts meant that I spent a stupid amount of Dk Lt orders doing NatSells to give me the gold to keep the WK afloat. At one point (turn 6 or 7 I think), due to a miscalculation on my part, the WK taxes got forcibly raised to 97%!
Hope that gives a decent explaination of the “Buhr Flambe” and the newly coined “Zarak Doom” tactics. In Game 63 they proved disastrous, although in Game 59 where I’m also playing the WK I’m still sitting in Angmar on Turn 13 despite Rhudaur having turned FP on Turn 5 having used very similar tactics and being up against very experienced opposition.
Granted if I were to play the WK/DkLt combo again in a GB game then I would probably do things differently but both are good tactics if you get the breaks. Given that keeping the WK in Angmar is a nigh on impossible task in any game I don’t reckon that the outcome would have been a lot different even if I had done things differently - especially given the array of different nations attacking.
Alan Gowler
Edit ----> Just remembered another aspect of all this as well. I’d planned since the start of the game to transfer 2006 to the DkLts and wanted to recruit with the WK there until I got emissaries in the right places. The 2006 army was then supposed to be defending the plains. On turn 3 I cocked a TrComm order up with the army commander at 2006 by getting one letter wrong on my orders. This meant that the first commander failed to move and join the army at 2004 (which would have allowed me to split that army off to defend the plains and still enable me to recruit there as well) and that the 850 order given to the new commander didn’t happen either as he wasn’t in charge of the army… The repercussions of this meant that I’d got 2 armies sitting in the mountains that were supposed to be defending the plains and in the meantime, Arthedain was happily trashing my towns and villages unopposed which was the start of my economic downfall. I remember vainly pleading with Clint to do something about it at the time but understanderbly he declined to get involved (company policy I think)! The other part of my plan was to use the DkLt emissary artifact to good effect and build another MT in the mountains to give them another recruiting base but as I’ve already said, I never had the gold with the DkLts to do anything other than support the WK. So basically for the sake of one letter the kingdom was lost…
Edit 2 ------> I ought to give credit for both the Buhr Flambe and newly named Zarak Doom to Marty Cinke by the way who gave me both ideas in Game 59. Because of the disaster that I had in Game 63 I was kind of wondering throughout the game if he was playing the Woodmen/Arthedain combo but it turns out that he was playing SG/EO!