GB game 51 ending with FP victory turn 14

General
#1

Hi,

This forum seems rather dead. Is this because there are becoming less and less ME players or because people are too lazy to write some forum news about their games ?

Anyway you should never throw bricks when you live in a green house yourself (or what the heck this saying is called in english), so here is a little game review of GB 51 which has just ended.

I played the SG/Eot combo which is heavily focused on military power which I enjoy :slight_smile:

My initial idea with Eot was to storm 3221 and in the same time protect my MT’s from initial threats from DrL and DoL. I have seen games where Drl move his capital army to ambush 2912 and then rampage the NM backyard afterward, so this had to be prevented at all cost. So Eot recruited, patrolled the XX16 line and prepared for invasion of 3221.

DoL sent out his cav in several armies, and encountered first the NG cav before Eot overran one DoL army and encountered and defeated a second larger cav army. By turn 4 all DoL cav was defeated and there was no Drl invasion, so I could focus on Morannon. Eot sent 3000cav and 1600hi to 3120 turn 4 and empty DaL town. My calculation showed that this was not enough to take 3221 so I took the town and sent in more troops. And so did DaL who arrived with a large army. His army was defeated) and I moved all troops to Morannon. Unfortunately DaL had quite a powerful army of 4400 troops and left me with 2000 mixed cav and 2000hi, facing two DoL cav armies. Also Eot sent one of his starting cav armies to 4219, to hit back Mordor.

So my plan to wipe 3221 had failed and it was time to re-evaluate my tactic. I decided to save my remaining cav for a greater ambush against back Mordor, and then focus on hurting the DS by wiping as many soft pops as possible.

Turn 6 my cav army reached 3822 defended by Celedhring and burned it the turn after. Also three DoL camps and 3621 was burned. By turn 9 I gathered 2000 cav at 4024 with plenty of food, with the intention of causing havoc in inner Mordor. NM and dwarves also joined the invasion of back Mordor. The army was blocked at 3825 by a well placed CL Camp/tower and a CL assassin took out the prime commander, but a backup made sure that the cav army survived and moved on to 3524. I decided to go after DaL first with a surprise invasion of his capital which I doubt had seen coming. Turn 12 Eot reached DaL capital through 3523 facing only a small DaL army and wiped it the following turr. As DoL, Corsairs and WiK collapsed the same turn, the DS surrendered the turn after.

The SG story was a quite different and even more successful one.
I planned already from the start to sent everything against QA and Corsairs, to help out Harad who usually is defeated by Corsairs/QA. All cav was gathered at 2527 and sent to 3028 turn two. In the mean time the navies were being filled up by HI.

Turn 3 my plan was to land at 2734 with 6000HI, but I got blocked by Corsairs at 2529. I did however reach 3533 with 1500cav.
Turn 4 SG defeated the corsairs navy and to my great pleasure managed to land at 2734 without further blocking by Corsairs even though I could see he has several navies hunting my fleet. I moved my 6000HI to 2934 while my cav army was taking the other QA settlements one by one.
Turn 6 SG arrived at QA capital joined by 2300 harad cav with warmashines. This meant that I only suffered minor casualties and survived with 4000HI taking 3034.

My plan had been all the time to bring in reinforcement by sea, but QA/Corsairs were patrolling the sea extremely aggressively, so my navy was stuck at 2734 and could not move out without being blocked. Instead I stayed at 3034 and sent in FO/MO/LE and 20k timber for warmashines. The other cav army had finished up the last QA holdings leaving only QA with 2135 of his starting pops.

Turn 10 I had 1500cav and 4000hi with 40 warmashines unite at 2937, they ambushed Corsairs capital following turn to find it empty. Corsairs capital was taken and from here the army went south and took out 2339 and 2039 as well before Corsairs collapsed and the DS conceded.

The games ended a bit too early after my opinion, but with so much initial damage to DS all over, I guess it was pointless for DS to continue.

Final standings were :

SG - 1850
Noldo - 1542
NG - 1300

I very much like to hear from other players in this game, to get their view of the battle.

BR
Kim Andersen

#2

SG–good work, you became a monster

I played 4/1

Had a good time and tried some new attacks/recruiting-chains against the WK

Arthy kept WK pinned at 1806-I eventually burned it, but we battled here a few times and I ground him down.

Dwaves and Woodies took goblin gate early then woodies went onto 2208, captured, two turns of recruiting and pushed onto Rhu capital, I could of taken it but was careful and waited, i thought he had more than 400 HI.

I was sending 2300? north to kill 2305 when the Woodies ran into a 1500? Witch army with two Dragons. POP on both sides…another set back.

I sat on 2305/1804 for a few early turns with the woodies and could not take them so I waited and tried to bankrupt him with a coordinated attack on 1804 with suicide armies. Argeleb was almost cursed out early by a very persistant caster on the WK team…annoying and kept him in the game much longer.

The cardy player was right there with me and the Noldo showed up to finish it off(never needed?). I disbanded 3000HI at 1804 after the threat went off(1st try) since after my scrying told me the Noldo/Cardy would take 2006/2004.
Turn after threat< same turn cardy took 2006 I took 2305 with 2350HC from the Arthedain.

I had some serious agent/emmy team forming. I was moving my armies to the northeast. I was scrying and looking around for targets when it ended. I was also sending 1500HI and 1600HC south into mordor.

Shut down Arthy recruiting last turn and was going to make Woodies my recruiting base but it ended.

******I must also mention that the Dwarves where all over Rhu and when the game ended they had a huge force about to move on 2305. The Dwarf player was excellent as was the Cardy player. The Sinda was right on target along with the Dwarves at DolGoldur—I only sent in about 1500?..it was a perfect combined effort.

Good game and nice work FP.

******I must also mention that the Dwarves where all over Rhu and when the game ended they had a huge force about to move on 2305. The Dwarf player was excellent as was the Cardy player. The Sinda was right on target along with the Dwarves at DolGoldur—I only sent in about 1500?..it was a perfect combined effort.

Whit-1/4

#3

I think the forum has been quiet because there are so many GB games running right now. I’m in 4 running 7 positions and of course not a word can be said about any of them.

#4

I had Cardolan/Sinda is this one. My initial plan was to engage Rhuduar in the west and the Dragon Lord forces from DG in Mirkwood and wait for help. While Rhuduar stayed put and met me at 1910 the Dragon Lord jumped south and took the NG town at 2619 and my village in south Mirkwood. Once finished with that he turned his attention north to the Woodmen but I was able to block and destroy his army.

Rhuduar and Cardy engaged in a couple of turns of bloodletting with neither side gaining the upper hand until the Duns (thank you) showed up with a large army and we were able to rout the Rhuduar forces and begin burning our way north through Rhuduar into WK lands. Several DS agents showed up but had little impact. I was then able to join Arthedain and the Dwarves (and later a Woody army) in capturing or burning all of the WK pop centers. When the game finished I was sending a fleet around to meet up with another army at Ithil with another 1500hc and another hi army starting a move eastward to Morannon.

After defeating the Dragon Lord starting DG army I recruited a 5k hi army at my cities and watched the Dwarves move south. That hi army ended up fighting a large Ice King army with dragon at 3120 a turn or two before the end and with the aid of some Eo hc we were able to defeat him but with the losses I had decided to go camp hunting with the remaining forces when the game ended.

All in all an enjoyable game I thank my near Free neighbors for our excellent results and I personally would like to thank the Duns for coming north in response to my request. I had fun and hope to do it again soon. I am hoping to hear from some of the DS players in this thread.

Thank you all,
David House

#5

Does the DUNS being free in GB makes it to easy for the Free?

If they or the Dwaves were evil I think the Witch and Dragon Lord would have a chance

#6

I’ve seen lots of people reading posts, just nobody seems to post. The technology has something to do with it, from a smart-phone perspective, this forum is about as useful as Palantir is now that we have JOverseer… :wink:

ME is slowly drifting off…enjoy the games while you can…(and in one of them in particular, can you please leave me alone already…!:mad:)

#7

Guys

One report from the other side of the field as I played 11 & 20. Had some ideas and hoped to have my cavalry forces rampaging in the east [WK] while also trying to support the gates as DkL and using the emmy items but things never came together.:frowning:

1st problem was the set-up as had about 12 differences from the base values for items but that was biased about 5-2 downwards. Most noticeably both emmy items were -5 pts which hindered events. Despite keeping the tax rates down to 39% until about turn 7 for WK I couldn’t get any towns upgraded. Had been planning to do this for a couple of locations and possibly also a MT up to city then push taxes really high since I have fortified PCs to enable me to raise enough forced to hold for a while at least.

Similarly with the military forces, after liberating:p 2004 from the dwarves the WM pressure meant I had to safeguard 2305 rather than get my cavalry active for a couple of turns which lost momentum. [Not sure if the 2004 operation is that viable in gunboat but my 1st game with this combination so not a large statistical base to judge]. In the west I managed to block advancing forces on 1804 for a couple of turns, hoping to get an agent in place but that also fell through, see below:(. Once a couple of large Ar armies reached an undefended 1804 I evacuated but Whitmal caused me great problems by not taking it so I couldn’t do any capital orders until I got some characters back. About this time I would have raised taxes but with no one at the capital had to do it via forced increases.

Murazor was the cursor but operating on his own he couldn’t kill Argeleb in time and it might have been a mistake doing it the 1st time. Better to have got him to the capital, as he was investigating a LAT - but found nothing:confused: @1805, as a sub-commander and then tried a challenge.

With the wyrms only got two recruitable ones and due to my inexperience failed to avoid them going to the same army:( but did give the WM capital a shock. Then got another recruitable one on the last WK turn just for him to depoly to a commander who got 615ed.

The one great thing was that as well as curses Murazor started with LAT.:smiley: That helped me locate a few key items early on but couldn’t make use of them.

With the DkL I don’t know if the rules have been changed for camping but had great problems posting camps even with a +15 item. Coupled with a fairly sizeable early recruiting this greatly hampered the economy and room for manoeuvre. Urzahil managed to pick up #175, albeit by a riddle, which took up more time and linked up with Tormog and a cmp commander at the location of #15. Then things went pear shaped badly.:(:frowning: Urzahil tried both transferring #175 to Tormog, who had been trained up to ~A50 and and the +25 stealth item and to investigate the #15 encounter. Unfortunately Elrond had arrived and killed him in a challenge. #175 ended up with the cmp commander and tried responding by transferring to Tormog and the latter 615ing. Unfortunately he also had two agents present and one shielded Elrond, although possibly close as no injury reported in the failure and another stole #175. Since both had of course refused they will still in the same hex and next turn the cmp commander was unable to move as Tormog got 615ed.

With the army my initial force at 3120 moved to screen 3621 at an early attack, then tried to raid enemy PCs, seeking to tie down enemy forces. Unfortunately after threatening a camp I then ran into two dwarf armies at 3916! Gothmog made it back. Recruiting at the capital for a few turns then marching out I took 3020 with one army then combined with about 2200HI as 3120 was captured. Heading back to block the NW pass they ran into about 6-7k Eo forces.

By this time the lack of new camps and the fact a couple had evaporated as soon as they dropped below 16 loyalty meant I was desperately short of funds, even with armies stomped and taxes on 80%. Hence for about 3-4 turns I was struggling to maintain what camps I had and balance the budget, not helped by the NM burning 3621 and continued failures to create camps, including one bid at E57.:frowning: Just about getting some sort of surplus when a Eo army landed on 3423, where I had only 100 man token garrison. Coupled with the loss of the WK the same turn I was willing to concede when a member of our side asked for a vote.

If I played the same combination again I might not try for 2004 as it requires a couple of armies for 2-3 turns, at least if doing it by threatening. Its a potential pain in the side and very useful if you can capture by threatening and then upgrade to a MT but may not be worth the effort. Also possibly not concentrating the bulk of the command items on one character. Great for threatening if you can get a force rolling but makes allocation of wyrms too difficult. Possibly trying to train up WK emmy by posting a couple of camps 1st. Although this would mean going almost immediately for a high tax rate.

Anyway, interesting game and learnt some lessons, hopefully the right ones;). Busy with a heavy new game on my computer but will probably have another go at another gunboat in a few months.

Thanks for the game but does seem like we ended up badly outclassed. Congratulates on the victory.

Steve

#8

The forum isn’t really dead, but many players are too shy to post something me things.
Some others are only playing grudges, like Rob and me.
Anyway, we kept the folks informed about our games against Will.-

Well … I’m not a player of this game … but I’m living with the hope that I’ll be able to play 6 positions against you, while Rob Gaul will take the other six in a future grudge against the Praetorians.

What do you think?

Have Fun!

Gixxx

#9

I’m involved in 3 GB’s, but not this one.
Not playing any other games, but those 3 GB’s totals to playing 8 nations (1 2 nation, 1 3 nation where I’m playing 2 nations, and 1 4 nations).

So in theory I’m playing 8 standard games, but no communications kinda limits posting radically :slight_smile: