KS691 ending after T32 with a Usurper Victory. I played the Castamir/Elendin duo. Was wondering who played the other positions. On turn 9 I took the rebel capital, and looked down to see if he was eliminated, only to be surprised that Morlaen was eliminated. Not sure how Morlaen ended up bankrupt on T9. By my map, it didn’t appear that any of his PC’s had been taken, and he still had his hidden MT with an army on it. Witch Realm fell a few turns later. Horselords fell on T16, and then Rebels and Eldacar finally fell on T27. Would be interested to hear from others that were in the game now that it is over.
Rebels/Eldacar played a great game of holding on for as long as they did. I had most of their agents doubled at one point or another. Elendin emissaries had all of my Castamir agents doubled.
Arnor and Rhovanion Did a great job of taking out the Witch Realm and then moved emissaries in to take all of my pop centers that they could find.
No idea what happened with the Horselords, but Quendi did a good job of taking all of the PCs in Umbar and then moved north into Gondor, aiding to the demise of Pelargir, but not until after I transferred my capital to Cirith Duath.
Quendi had at least one curse company, possibly a second by games end. They managed to take out Ren with Curses, which was one of my sickness mages. I think the following turn, the Rhovanion agents managed to land on my sickness squad and took out Iriel that I was just prepping to go reveal the Elf pc’s. She was a 83/193 Mage with a 243 CR with a reveal PC artifact. Bad preparation on my part, as I had split out my agents to go hit another target. For most of the game, my agents and my sickness squad were in the same fellowship.
This is the game that I had a terrible time trying to recruit NPCs. Elendin managed to get Ren around T10. Castamir emissaries failed time and time again until T32 when Khamul finally agreed to join. I had all allies upgraded to friendly by T10 and most of the enemy downgraded by T15. Elendin only manage d to get Ren. Both nations failed on the Blue Wizard a few times prior to around T15 when Hithlum/Southron finally got him. Failed on Lhachglin, Barrow Wight, and Khamul multiple times as well. All of this with emissaries between 70 and 90. I call this my standard luck in a kinstrife game. I think me doing all my upgrades and downgrades must be helping my allies out, and not me.
I would like to hear from others that were also in the game.
Good game.
Jeff
Repeating my post from discord, in almost the same wording:
I shared the duo 3/5 with my pal Marty. We put some pressure on WRA right away and somehow that resulted in Morlaen eliminated. Normally he should be prepared for the supprt of WRA and have no problems relocating him, but in any case WRA/Mor were out by turn 9. Under those circumstances with the most dangerous DS nation gone, this game should have been a safe win for the FP. But I cannot spare our allies the comment that their subpar gameplay prevented that. First of all, there was little or no communication via diplos. We could have easily helped Rebs/Eld to stay in the game, had they only asked for help! How did Que lose the Horselords? Que should be in position to keep them in the game! And how did Que miss WRA/Mor being out of the game? Instead of doing something useful, Que seems to have continued to go after Morlaen long after it was eliminated. We pressed on and made some progress against LoC/Ele, captured 2924 and 2927. But after Horselords were out, Hith/SK just steamrolled Rhovanion mostly with HC troops. Kudos to that duo for a good military game and also decent agent action. Very disappointed when Rebs/Eld folded up, the game was pretty much lost from that point. For some turns we thought we had a chance to take out either LoC or Eld, but we placed a palantir on both of their capitals and noticed they had too many backups to take out for us before SK/Hith would have rolled over us. Kudos to LoC/Ele for clinging to it despite the punishment you received in the last turns. We always wondered why nobody recruited the Mor agents, like Ji was sitting at the Rho MT 2508 for ever.
I can add that we also had terrible luck with NPCs. At game end we just had recruited Tom Bombadil, Michael Bandy and on the very last turn, Radagast. We had some failed attempts on Gwaihir and Radagast before, one with a em 87! Rho was always short on commanders and thus didn’t improve many relations, which seems crucial for NPC recruiting.
relations matter so much with NPCs. I’ve had E100s fail recruiting mediocre NPCs, if your allied relations to you are tolerant instead of friendly. I imagine this makes recruiting NPCs in gunboat games really hit or miss
I recruited Caramir and tried to recruit Ji, but by the time I found him, he was no longer eligible for recruitment. Bad luck on artifacts researched. I identified 193 of the artifacts. I ended up assassinating Ji for his artifacts.
So far I have been reluctant to spend setup points to improve relations, but then I never had so much trouble recruiting NPCs before (apart from the well know fact that they always move away the turn you want to meet them). Might be worth a try in the next game.
Interesting, No longer eligible for recruitment?
Ji had already been recruited by Morlaen. Morlaen was eliminated on Turn 9. I finally researched an artifact belonging to him on Turn 24, located him on T25, moved to him on T26, failed to recruit on T27, assassinated him on T29.
Like I said bad luck in my research artifacts and no RCT or Scry Character. This also feeds back into the bad luck recruiting NPCs. If you can manage to get some NPC mage types early on, it helps out a bunch with the lore spells.
I see… Yeah a couple of Mage NPCS early does seem to help. Its unfortunate that when you recruit a character from another nation there is no way to get an SNA they have.
I don’t really understand the need to bash other players. I hope you’ve learned a lesson and won’t be rude to people in the future as we don’t like it.
The Quenya were poised to take all of the SK original pop centres along the Harnen and had thousands of heavy cavalry and approx 20,000 timber to make war machines in two hidden pop centres in Gondor.
Losing a few hundred troops taking out the Morlaen pop centre was a trifle. The Quenya were a real power and had some serious mage power in the shape of Elrond, Galadriel, Gandalf and Saruman.
As it was my first game I got off to a slow start and placing my capital in the south meant I was slower to support the Horselords than I may have been.
Had a nasty shock when they had elite level agents supporting the Hithlum and they took out two of my sickness mages.
I was told by a more experienced player that Rhovanion would likely support me but no help came.
As well as taking out Ren I killed Shelob, Belphegor and Murazor. Lost Legolas when attempting to assassinate Zimrakhil.
Had mages shadowing the huge SK army on the road to Eriador and had firepower to kill two army commanders a turn.
I was lucky with encounters and had Amroth as a champion at the end of the game along with an emissary I had named. Had multiple agents and emissaries taking pop centres and killing usurpers.
I think we could have won that game despite my “inferior “ play or whatever nonsense was said above.
It was my first Kinstrife game and I really enjoyed it, other than having some very unfortunate team mates.
