GB 63 (Vereran) - over in 11 turns

I’ve never played a GB game with diplos, so I just want to be clear. The 30 “word” limit…are we talking “real” words (and if so are hex numbers considered one word etc), are we talking every segment of 5 characters and spaces counting as a “word” (that’s how my high school typing teacher counted a word, yes “typing” as in IBM Selectric before the PC was a gleam in Bill Gates’ eye not “keyboarding” class like my kids have now), or what? I hope the front sheet will make that all clear to me…?

Death to my enemies, yada-yada, and so forth, etc.

Check out the rules for the game - it gives clear instructions there… :wink:

I’ll send you a copy.

Clint

I concur with finding replacements, the game needs to have a replacement player in case real life interupts.

And please please please remember to use the diplos. The diplos in my opinion favour the free which makes it all the more important for the dark servants to use them.

Game should start soon, so everyone enjoy. And if you can figure out who my brother is playing, make sure you spank his nation extra hard.

Tim

Just waiting on two tardy players with their list of duos… :smiley:

Clint (GM)

What you just sent me did not address diplos at all (I had that document) – it says no communication between players period. Nothing in the variant sections of the forum here or middleearthgames dot com that I ran across. As I say, I assume the front sheet of the specific game will make it all crystal clear.

It does… In the main body of the email we discuss the rules that are in play (version 7) and the special rules (eg diplo etc).

Clint (GM)

Drew,
here are all the DS example Diplos sent last game that conformed to the “30 word limit”:


Northmen
-huge army 3925
-lost 4017,4415
-camp 4022
Eothraim
-2 captive
-4025, assassinating Leofigild
3825
-Uvatha challenging
-Agents killing
-Commander standing
-CL arrive turn 12?
Gold
-sending 30000, 3423

Angmar overwhelmed by FP forces. WK Capital now at 3622. Regrouping in Mordor. Picked up #7. Recruiting Maben. Curse sqaud ready in 2 turns. WK needs gold.

Will steal 154 need for curse squad Recruiting cav at 3624 send leather will send gold and mounts back have 21 36 41 135 getting 185 recruiting Duran

SG, HA attacking CO; Taurnil captured 3533; QA destroying 2225, arriving 2634, 2835 T6; DkL,FK,IK defeated starting NG 3224; counterattack underway; Arties: FK: 170 3304, 180 3710/3811?

Artifacts 188 at 2239 18 at 2429 getting 36 21 185 7 187 9 39 135 Dog has 100k in bank trying to build reserves will send money from blind

Witch King NEEDS gold, send to 2004. Still hold 1804, 2305. Attacking Woodmen capital, moving towards Imladris (uncovered). Transferred 2006 DkLt. Captured Bain 3120. Moving 3120 army west.

Dave

Is today the day? Time will Tell. Tony and I went over general strategies again last night. He is pretty good at the military aspect still.

By the way, Tony is a LOSER for not keeping a general log of the past game.

I mean how hard could it be. Recruited, beat up on the Witch King. Recruited, beat up on the Dragon Lord. Recruited, beat up on the Witch King. Recruited, oops game over.

For all you Witch King and Arthedain/Woodmen players. He did say he used his palantir on turn one to scry 2005. When the Witch King did Buhr Flambe and went for 2004 on turn one, he said he immediately took advantage of it.

tim

Guys

If you don’t mind an intrusion why is an attack on 2004 called a Buhr Flambe :confused: Pretty obviously people think its a very bad move although not clear as to exactly why. [Guessing that the WK tends to have a lot of his places burnt if he tries it?]

Steve

The Buhr Flambe move is when the WK blocks at 2406 out of Gundabad, and sends his capital cav to 2405, the WM town named Buhr Fram. I’m not aware of a snazzy name for a move on 2004. Maybe, Zarak-doom? <g>

So I should have said when the Witch King tried Buhr Flambe and ZARAK-DOOM on turn one, Tony took advantage of it.

Nice call Drew,

tim

Ok, ok guys I got it wrong!!! :wink:

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)! :slight_smile: 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!

Alan,

Unfortunately for you, you ran into my brother playing the Arthedain. I am biased I will admit, but Tony has played the Northwest theater on both the Free Side and Dark Servant side so may times and I think he is pretty darn good at it. Like you said, your hope was he would be one turn slow in attacking, but he was hoping the Witch King would do exactly what you did. More bad luck for you than bad playing in my opinion. I personally like what you tried, but it comes with risk. Since Tony is a slacker and won’t post his game summary, I just wanted to point out the unfortunate break that you got in the game. And you are correct, against good opponents you will never be able to stay alive in Angmar. Had I been playing the Arthedain with my slow methodical approach, your move probably would have been brilliant.

Again, the Free people played much better than the dark servants overall. However, I still think we as the dark servants were just a couple of missed opportunities from making the game real competitive.

Ah well, on to game 70 and hopefully better results.

tim

So basically for the sake of one letter the kingdom was lost…

Should be a proverb… :wink:

I’ve had exactly the same happen to me, as a player, cursed a character and mis-spelled by one letter. 2 turns later that army turned up and killed my nation dead… :mad:

Ah well…

Clint (player)

Guys

Thanks for the explanation, especially Alan for the details. See it was a case of two operations which was causing my confusion as I was thinking only one was being discussed. Interesting insight. Does sound like either might have worked but both together, coupled with a early Arthedain attack and the command error combined together to really foul things up for you.:frowning:

Steve

Hi,

Here are final standings for game 63. When Woodmen has most kills in entire game, you know you have lost as DS :slight_smile:

Final status:
Highest Challenge Rank: 193 Gothmog/Dark Lieutenants
Highest Net Commander Rank: 166 Gothmog/Dark Lieutenants
Highest Commander Rank: 71 Gothmog/Dark Lieutenants
Highest Net Mage Rank: 153 Erestor/Noldo Elves
Highest Mage Rank: 71 Elrond/Noldo Elves órzahil/Dark Lieutenants
Highest Net Emissary Rank: 79 Elrond/Noldo Elves
Highest Emissary Rank: 79 Elrond/Noldo Elves
Highest Net Agent Rank: 102 Light of Elendil/Noldo Elves
Highest Agent Rank: 65 Gasus/Ice King
Most Mithril: 270 Dunlendings
Most Artifacts: 14 Noldo Elves Dark Lieutenants
Most Kills: 1 Woodmen

yikes!
1 is the “most kills” after 11 turns???

Man, I thought my luck as QA in taking out harbors was bad.
Mike’s luck as CL must have been much worse!

Ice King did have a few kidnaps however.

tim

I thought… and I could be wrong…

That most kills only applies to and gets recorded against nations that have a victory condition relating to that?

The Woodmen kill was a dumb and desperate personal challenge by me against a character in charge of an army at his capital when I needed to lose troops to keep my WK economy intact.

I certainly hope that the CL didn’t get to turn 11 without killing even one character anyway!

Yes that’s true, but CL seems to always have that “victory condition.”