Kudos to Kim Anderson as he really did a number on us towards the end.
I like the pairings as is except to maybe pair the cloud lord back to a mordor nation just in case (like the fire king or even the ice king).
Is everyone that still remains ready for a break from Gunboat, or would we like to add three more players, reshuffle the nations and play again. I enjoy playing with some of the best players playing the game.
Tim
I am not going to play 1650 GB again until agreement is reached that singleton nations remain singleton. It bites in GB to focus on a nation-pair, take one out, and then see the remaining on-the-ropes nation be propped up. That’s just wrong and defeats the only real interesting strategy of GB (picking on nation-pairs).
In fact, the problems with 94 and 96 pretty much all stem from that. Even with the beefed up NW, I think the FP had a fighting chance in both games were it not for propped up singleton DS nations. And the FP need that to give them a chance as the DS character advantage is just too strong if nations on the ropes get propped up.
Or, put another way, I think the FP are disadvantaged more than the DS by this ruling as it helps the DS more in the long run.
All other issues have been dealt with in the new rules.
Dave
“I am not going to play 1650 GB again until agreement is reached that singleton nations remain singleton. It bites in GB to focus on a nation-pair, take one out, and then see the remaining on-the-ropes nation be propped up.”
Anyone else feel this way? I personally feel that the 3 nations is much stronger. Clearly picking up a nation in the game helps the other nation (BUT and I speak from my own personal experience in many GB games where I’ve picked up nations) the nation you pick up is invariably weakened (Note I take issue with Dave’s comment that the player dropped to strengthen the team - I’ve seen some players do that, but in this case the player got bored of playing).
However, IMO, GB is about 2 nations and how they work together - with strengths and weaknesses in places. There are some duos (WK/Rh/Drag) who invariably get knocked out of the game so you’re restricting the other nation to 1/2 the information and ability to resist attack [or attack] (1/2 will impact more than 1/2 though as the ability for 2 co-ordinated nations to resist or attack is much stronger than 1 single or even 2 singles).
I personally prefer an even game - when a nation gets knocked out then often the other nation is put under even more pressure, further aggravating the situation for that remaining naiton, and also the allegiance he is on. I think with the PPool idea though it should sort out the 3ntn bit, and with no back-dated turns for a pick-up of a single nation then only when you have 2 nations actually dead can they be combined into a new duo (without any of the turns) - ie that team is already at a massive disadvantage losing 2 very much needed nations and the remaining 2 nations very much depleted having attempted to keep the dead nation alive and viable. Further penalising them (and their team) basically means that very quickly you can have 4 dead nations and the game very quickly over I’d expect. I don’t think that game would be very good to play in as players would hunt down one nation, knowing the other was left out to dry in that situation.
I think I’ve got a decent grasp of the balance of the game, what makes a good competitive game so I’d like to try out the new rules (combination of player feedback and suggestions), see how that impacts on the game and then bring in other changes later if there’s still a need for such. As usual feel free to bring up reasons and arguments that I’ve not thought about - they’re very instructive.
Clint (GM)
Darn Dave! Not a month ago, on this very forum, you urged me to play GB and now you say you won’t play it anymore.
Ed, to clarify, I said I won’t play 1650 GB until singleton nations remain singleton.
That said, Clint does point out two good points:
maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh as to say “never”… but I still would VASTLY prefer no singleton re-combinations with other singletons… I’d be totally happy to live with that myself (i.e. if i lost a nation, I’d play the singleton, and I’d be happy with singletons living on my side. )
OK, I’m suitably chastised for being over-dramatic. Ed, I reiterate that YOU should play gunboat given all that I’ve seen you post about fog of war & such. You’d like it methinks.
But still, what do others think? Should we allow singletons to be re-combined? It does help them both. There’s all kinds of advantages.
Dave
I think this is where I finally disagree with Dave.
The idea and thought of picking on the single nation is a great one. I also see where when a single nation is combined with another single nation it can throw off your strategy.
However, I know of two people that only continued to play this game because it was no quit. Clint (correct me if I am wrong) and myself. Had it not been no quit we probably would have thought about dropping as we did not enjoy the last 20 turns give or take a few. Dropped nations affect the outcome of gunboat so much more than combining two single nations.
I would rather two single combine and keep the game going than both nations drop because they don’t want to play anymore. I think that is far more likely without allowing a combination.
tim
Dave - I agree two nations are better than one but I think it wise to take into account their status.
I’ve mentioned before that pick-ups are invariably in worse state than nations being played.
As a direct example in Game xx I picked up a nation on around turn 15. It had NO improvements to economy (actually lost a camp or two), no new characters, no spells learnt, despite access to Curse spells etc. It was awful, the player had clearly lost interest in the game and hadn’t developed anything.
Also players that lose nations (cough present company included - that’s me!) are generally played by worse players - relative to their direct opponents who have forced their nations to die, so further disadvantaging their allies.
Clint (GM)
Tim - yes due to the no-drop aspect of the game I kept at the game for longer than I would have normally by a long way so I think that have on the one hand improvement for the game, but it was frustrating “having” to play out of a sense of honour there and somewhat boring mid-game for me. Early and late games were interesting though. :eek: 
Somewhat too interesting sometimes… 
Clint (player)
Greetings,
QA/IK and IK here, and I picked up BlS in the end game.
What an excellent game, I cant wait to get my hand on all the data in this game from all the other nations. I actually thought this would run all the way to turn 50, and determined by total VP. But in the end the DS were too powerful character wise.
As the QA/IK I had a nice mixture of character gaming and war gaming. There were a lot of excellent turns and setbacks which constantly gave me a great challenge and great real value for money. I remember I was extremely pissed off when Harad burned the QA capital, because I two turns in a row failed to pick up 4 different dragons, who all moved on. But I got my revenge later on 
The SW was a constant battle on the edge on a sword when the balance would tip to one side. I think if I had not arrived at Corsairs capital early in the game with a 2*dragon army, and wiped 5.000 Harad troops with warmashines, the situation would have been much different. Also the top event in this game was the character showdown with Noldo not too many turn later on. Noldo had managed to pick up ALL the major artifacts from start and had an effective curze squad along with all his agents down in Harad from turn 10. I managed to steal Tinculin and Elronds mage artifact, which was decisive for a HUGE character showdown with Noldo the turn after. I sent in 16 of the best IK/QA mages/agents/emis and was greeted by I think 8 of the best Noldo characters except Elrond, with nearly ALL of the great artifacts in play like RoW, RoC, Tinculin, Vilya, Gurthanc, Elenya. Over two turn in managed to slay 6 of these characters in challenge and assassination and aquired all of these artifacts !!!
So not only did I wipe the Noldo curze squad, I wiped all his agents and aquired all his artifacts including those major ones he had picked up. This was the real turnover in he SW and the main reason why we won this battle afterward.
After that I wiped the S. Harad easily aided by Corsairs, and after that I ambushed NG with a navy assault which ended the life of NG when I took Minas Arnor. I then rebuild the Pelargir bridge and invaded SG with 5000 HC (in several armies), 70 warmashines, a Curze squad and all the agents emis I had
There were not much defence in the start, but from “hidden” build up centers Eot/Dwarves and SG suddenly fought back hard which delayed the final destruction of SG/Eot. When SG/Eot suddenly had manged to build up a curze squad and several good agents as well, I had to divert nearly all ressources to SG area in the end game to gain controll. Especially as he begun taking back my pops with his emis squads. This lead to the second great moment of the game, where I laid a trap for the SG/Eot curze team/agent team. I had build up a city in SG where I recruited HC, so I knew he would hit that at some time. I then put one of my curze teams next to and sent in an agent with a +2250 combat weapon. When he arrived I Curzed one of the curze members, challenged his best agent out and assassinated hes second best agent !!! That was the end of the SG/Eot offensive strengh
I also hunted the Duns heavily after I destroyed NG, and after taking his capital at 1922 I learned in the end that his final backup was at 1520, which I took turn 41, where after Duns were eliminated as well.
In the Mordor area there were also a lot of action. I used IK very aggressively with mages in his huge starting army early on, which enabled me to destroy three of the four Eot MT’s in Mirkwood, within the first 16 turns. The major setback was the excellent Arthedain/Woodmen campaign which eliminated DoL in the end game. I had to divert and spend a lot of resources over many turns, to remove the threat.
All in all an excellent game with a lot of excellent players. Once the game enters character war mode, its really hard for FP to win especially in a GB where you cannot coordinate with your allied. Three nations per player is defenitely to big an advantage, I cannot judge with the Rhd improvements as WiK and Rhd was some of the first nations to fall.
I have made a diary of the entire game turn to turn from my point of view, which covers 15 A4 pages. Does anyone want me to post it here ? Has anyone else made any diary ? I’m really interested in trading turns, does anyone want to set up a yahoogroups account and share files ?
Yours Kim Andersen
Hi I played NGo and Chris Guise played the Duns.
This was a very enjoyable game while it lasted. I had some initial success but it was as soon as turn 3 that the strength of the FK/CL combo began to tell, the CL had agents tagging along with the FK armies and everytime they met with a NGo army my commander was either kidnapped or assassinated.
I sent my cavalry around and through the back door, capturing the DrL backup then burning the FK backup before smashing against the FK’s capital walls. I had hoped that this would of finished off the FK but he just kept coming and the CL agents kept assassinating.
I lost my plains towns fairly quickly and the DrL/DoL/DkL etc were attacking my pop centres in the Gap, the FK finishing the job on the east bank. At this time i was in dire straits financially and had to disband most of my troops including the HC army that went to the Eoplex then to the Rhun Sea, so it was a relief when the QA came along and emmied away my capital.
I would play GB no drop again but i feel the FK/CL combo gives the DS too much advantage against NGo.
Cheers,
Ian
CL is teamed up with Rhudaur in the new format.
Whichever nation the CL is teamed up with opposing side impacting on that nation is going to have a rough time…
Clint (GM)
This stuff makes for an interesting read even though I did not play in this game myself. Just started another GB game and did not plan another but if you guys would play again and need another player to fill up the numbers I would make an exception, and I would be really eager if it would be another no-drop one.
I agree with Clint’s take on the single nation take up BTW, seeing it can only be taken up by another nation who has lost one of it’s pairs too makes the effect less. In a true no-drop both players would continue to play of course, but reality shows that players still drop.
No 3 nation combo’s is the biggest issue for me.
Cheers,
Alain
I see no problem with doubling friendlies. We (WM/Arth) didn’t get a lot of use out of it this game specifically, but Noldo said he did. I can’t think of a real downside to the doubled character’s owning nation.
I believe you Tim, been there, done that. My only other GB game, I had two very strong positions, then picked up a third that nearly bankrupted all three trying to keep all the balls in the air.
Doubling:
Needs to be allowed as it can be key information.
–We (NE/Harad) knew who and where Arth/WM where attacking and used that information to not double up on targets ect…
–If doubling is not allowed, that means when an agent team with emmy or two lands in hex where he knows the enemy is there but does not have a good scout for character that did not confirm the nation just the character’s name, than he could not double the “unknown” nation char to help against an assassination or kidnap. Don’t like that at all.
–In a game that has limited info, this is another strategy to consider.
John
Rob said we coudn’t put in any more orders; is that just for the losing side?
Let me be the first to voice my extreme displeasure with Frank Redmond, Mark Stuckey, and Chris Courtiour. Unless they had EXTREME Real Life situations, they show their dishonor by breaking their pledge to not drop. The whole allure of this game was that all participants were experienced and knowledgable players, who specifically took a pledge to Not Drop. I understand that Frank got his panties in a twist (again) and dropped all his MEPBM games (again), and I thought I saw somewhere that Courtiour was one of his running buddies, don’t know for sure about that. I do know that LR was a single when he dropped it, as Rhudair was the first to go, so I have to assume he either lost interest in the game or just plain ol’ gave up. Ditto for BS, as we put out DoL leaving it a single also. Do any of these three players care to defend themselves in this forum?
Sort of feel that way, but not so strongly as to keep from joining another GB. To me, the much larger issue is the “treying” up of nations, which you have addressed in the new ground rules. I don’t think I said anything at the time, but I followed that thread with interest, and all the changes make GB a better play.
EXACTLY!!! Frustrating maybe, but the hono(u)rable thing to do!! That’s what we all signed up for.
That is a very good point, one with which I agree.