Who is playing the Usurpers in this new one?
I am playing Rhovanion.
I saw some criticism before, but I liked the scenario. It has lots of information to deal with (which is good), and I think it is intented to not end too soon. It is not a game with space for newbies, though.
Hum… I guess our enemies don’t have much to say. 
Im playing as Quendi, and Im loving the game and all its possibilities.
Hiya,
Only just seen this thread.
I am playing the Hithlum.
Cheers,
Mike
Nice. Very well played last turn (turn 6), but it is only a scratch to us. Lets see if we can make a retribution in the next turns.
Who is playing my nice foe, the Witch King? Although he is having a bad time, he appears a very good player to me. He is doing much better moves than I expected, but it is a tought position.
<raises hand>; I am playing Angmar and Khazad…and unfortunately you all have laid more than a scratch on me. Well played so far, especially the early unveiling of a curses squad.
Rob
I haven’t thought you would block me in my going to Gundabad… You put me in a lot of dilemas for next turn.
And you are doing excellent.
We are waiting for your teams curses squad. Unortunetely, I couldn’t keep one of the dwarven rings to help ours.
Dwarves make bad cursers…
Things are getting worse for you. Gundabad will be mine eventually. But hitlum is advancing, although he has lost the MT on the north.
Nice play pressing Arnor with your armies. Good blockings. And well played in mirkwood, not letting us organize our recruitments.
I’ll keep grinding away until you grind me up…
I think the free people have an advantage in building a curse squad early. As Quendi, I had acess to a curse item and several mage itens at the begining of the game. The DS have to coordinate at least 3 nations to build one, and without the dwarves mage itens it would be near impossible to build a funtional curse squad (like in a game with neutrals)
I left the game about 5 turns before the end, but I enjoyed it very much. I’ll just give some feedback. I am glad to see a variant far more complex than the original, that I already like very much.
Overall, I think the game is not obviously unbalanced. In fact, I liked the balance. Although the allegiance I played has lost the game, and by the time I left it would be already hard to win, I think this happened because we were outplayed in various fields, and not because a rough disbalance of some kind. I think there might be a little advantage to some side, but I don’t think it will be easy to comprehend until after 20 games have been played (the same way the DS have a little advantage in 1650)
I liked a lot the encounters, the recruitment of characters, the new secundary power of artifacts, although chasing artifacts still seems very inefective, but a little less inefective as the 4th age (maybe increasing the initial options about knowledge of artifacts?). The third order of champions create some very interesting options for strategy.
The nations are big, and it is very hard to eliminate a nation in a well played oposition. I think that is good, since there are fewer nations, it could end the game early to lose a nation.
The major drawback I see is that the characters and the map we see are not enough for the hugeness of the original map. Maybe adding another nation, or bigger maps and more characters to each nation…
The way the market operates seems ok to me. Since there are fewer nations, with more pop centers and characters, it appears wise to have a bigger market limit. But is easier to keep the market with very high prices, although I do not know if this benefits one alliance over the other. I think there was not much market manipulation in this game.