Greetings,
The Copenhagen F2F game 97 has ended and I have made a quite detailed
gamereport
for anyone interested. Its a bit long, so I hope I dont bore anyone to
death...
Game 97 has just ended with a DS victory, after 27 turns of play where the
FP conceded. Top three on the DS side were:
1) CL 1825 (Kim Andersen)
2) DoL 1250 (Brian Thorsbro)
3) DrL 967 (Niels Olsen)
Following is a detailed report on how things went in this exciting game.
The
game began as the Copenhagen Face-2-face in January, and was continued
afterward as a normal 1650 two week game, as neither side had taken any
decisive advantage and both sides wanted to continue. The DS side were a
mixed danish/english/Norwegian/Polish team including Clint and Sam (to
make sure
our assassinations succeeded and we always knew what the enemy were doing
:-), Andy Stewart and Chris Courtiour as the English part. The FP team
were
all Danes nearly identical with the Danish world cup team, with Ulrik
Bisgaard as their team captain.
All players had received the initial turn and sent in orders on
beforehand,
so we all eagerly awaited turn one print out at the pub meet. All except
the
Englishmen apparently, because they seemed to have taken the liberty to
visit several tourist attractions while in Denmark, as they were 3 hours
late
The most interesting in the DS set-up, was the fact that we were blessed
with Urzahil and Akhorahil starting with curze and Murazor with sickness.
As
Murazor stats with a curze artifact, we would be able to make the first
curze kill on turn 3 !!!
Turn 1-5 - DS glory:
The game began with the DS gaining the initiative. DrL (Sam) made some
fancy
tactic army movements, so he reached Woodman MT 2711 undefended with his
main capital army, while Woodman was blocked just outside. In the same
time
the huge Dwarven capital army were blocked at 2410 along with our Sickness
squad. Much to our surprise, we managed to wipe the entire Dwarven capital
army with the curze squad as the Dwarven player had not put any backup
commanders in the army. And Woodman helped us further by moving in more
armies for our curzesquad to slaughter. So the situation were quite good
in
Mirkwood.
Eot were held of by blocking manoeuvres and when they finally reached 3120
with their huge Cav army, a CL agent wiped the backup, while our
curzesquad
took care of the prime commander on turn 5 thereby eliminating the entire
Eot Cav force.
WK and Rhudaur (Chris) were able to fend off most Card, Arthe, Duns
invaders, but quickly lost some important centers like the Rhd MT at 1910.
LR catched the Sinda navy alone and wiped that along with NM MT 4217,
which
he sneaked his HC army into.
SG was faced with the dilemma of whether he should help NG or Corsairs
with
his huge capital navy. He chose Corsairs, and hit Harad hard landing at
2634, moving on to Harad MT 2534 which he also took.
This meant that NG were alone in the Ithril battle, and knowing this
changed
some plans regarding the Mordor forces. Even though NG recruited like a
mad
and initially sent 4 NG armies to 3124 thereby temporary saving it, NG
soon
found himself outmatched. Even as he sent in more armies to 3124 he were
suddenly faced by the entire IK starting army, the entire starting DoL Cav
army and DaL starting troops + recruits from capital and 3120. NG got all
his armies wiped with minimal DS loses, Gothmog threatened 3124 and NG
blew
the Ithril bridge himself in desperation and we removed the Pelargir
bridge
ourselves on turn two.
Adding to all this, we also managed to locate and secure all important
artifacts, like RoW, RoC, Tinculin and both FP curze artifacts.
So all in all a very good start for the DS, and we were very optimistic
regarding our chances.
Turn 5-14 - The wind is changing:
Shocked by the great DS military start, FP soon recovered and started an
impressive and incredible army recruitment. Furthermore as the game
complexity increased the DS coordination got worse, due to the low time
limits in the F2F event. As the CL player I felt a curze being cast on me
as
my bad luck was devastating. Not a single of my new agents / characters
got
stealth and nearly all of them failed me desperately. Even with RoW and
Roc
on my new agents, they continued to "fumble" their knife cut even against
non-army characters. I can't count the times I said "If Ji Indur fucks up
again, I'm heading home...".
But the LR player (David Clemmesen) actually had a more unsuccessful
history, due to incredible unluck / fouls Din Ohtars first kill first
happened on turn 10.
Luckily IK (Clint) played very agressively on agent war, and named nearly
only new agents with his first many slots. They rose very quickly in skill
and hampered the FP severely by stealing 25.000+ gold a turn by turn 8. Of
course with almost zero emis, the downside were the IK economy (apparently
a
general F2F syndrome for Clint, see Cardiff), where he often were
absolutely
dependent on stealing at least 25.000 gold to survive the next turn.
WK and Rhudaur were slowly but securely getting beaten up, by well playing
Arthedain / Cardolan nations. With max pressure on Rhd, he finally
collapsed
on turn 10, when his allied were unable to send enough gold. And even
though
Chris played well, the odds were to overwhelming, also as he received no
agent / curze support due to larger problems in other areas. WK lost one
center after the other, and due the large amount of armies sent in, even
the
dragons didn't help much. By turn 14 FP had 10 armies whereof most unknown
moving in on 1804 and 2006, where most other WK centers in between had
been
burned off.
Mirkwood survived the initial DrL invasion, and FP quickly gained
initiative
again by wiping Goblin-Gate and putting pressure on DrL. A final
coordinated
FP assault on Dol Guldur involving Tarondor of NG as well, nearly removed
the
DrL presence from Mirkwood on turn 12. DrL got relocated to Mordor and as
a
little comfort Tarondor were Sicknesses out in the assault.
NM lost a lot of centers in the Rhun area, but quickly gained initiative,
as
LR on turn 6 chose to attack the NM back land area with his navy,
resulting
in his navy getting stocked at 3110 as the LR army quickly ran into
trouble.
So for the remaining game LR were operating purely as a character nation,
naming a lot of new agents.
After NG had blown the bridge, all DS Mordor armies stormed against Eot,
and
we actually thought Eot would be wiped quickly, especially as dragons were
frequently recruited now and as he had lost his entire cav army. But by
great FP play (especially NG) they managed to send one big army after the
other to the rescue, resulting in only one Eot center being wiped before
turn 14, his MT at 3113 
Down South the initial SG invasion on Harad together with a madly
recruiting
corsairs who sent one army wave after the other towards Harad, quickly
turned
the picture into a hopeless situation for Harad. Losing Harad would be
devastating for DS, so we decided to send most agents and the curze squad
operating in the north down south to save as much of Harad as possible.
Our
agent strategy were quickly turned into only kidnapping enemy characters
unless with agent skill, which turned out to very effective. We arrived in
enough time to save only the Harad capital at 2734, all other southern
Harad centers had been captured/wiped by FP. And knowing that it was only
a
matter of time before huge FP fleets would land in the northern Harad to
finish him off, a lot of resources were spend on defending and preventing
this to happened. CL agents were laying in ambush at 2632, and when
Corsairs
finally showed up with a huge navy Ji indur knifed the Corsairs armycom,
and
his navy either disbanded or he sailed away with a backup. Other
threatening
FP navy landings were made around Pelargir, but we managed to deal with
these armies before they dealt any real damage due to the large number of
agents and the curzesquad operating down south. So we managed to maintain
a
status quos situation down south, at the expense of large number of agents
and the curzesquad.
Another danger were the increasing number of FP emis squads operating in
the
south and Mordor taking one gold producing center after the other from DS.
This along with a very few number of DS emis having been produced or
currently operating, made the economic situation more and more dire for
each
turn. The FP quickly learned to run a zerro economy with all/most nations,
resulting in a that income resource more or less being removed from DS as
well. Furthermore FP had apparently made a huge number of starting agents,
because we quickly saw the effect of massive thefts from DS centres each
turn. And the best FP agents were by turn 12-14 assembling in a large
power
squad, turning into a dreaded killermashine.
The last disappointment at this stage of the game, was the situation
regarding all the important artifacts we had put that many resources on
picking up early on. From turn 6 we controlled all FP curze artifacts, but
we handled them very poorly. One FP curze artifact were given to a dragon,
as some of our team members thought this would prevent FP from gaining
them.
But we were quickly proven wrong, as FP 4-5 turns later had stolen it back
from the dragon. Another neutral curze artifact were used by BlS mages to
learn the curze sequence. But due to the large number of FP agents
operating, they started covering BlS centers, until they catched the BlS
mage and stole the artifact from us around turn 10, leaving us "only" with
Tinculin. Furthermore even though RoW and RoC were guarded each turn, FP
managed to catch Ji indir with RoC and stole it cutting through a 60 guard
We had decided on beforehand with the FP to continue the game as normal
two
game, if the F2F event had not convincingly pointed out a winner. As the
F2F
game were quite hectic and none really had a clear picture or overview on
how the overall situation was looking, we agreed to continue afterward.
But after a few days, when we had analysed the situation, it became clear
that our situation was looking extremely shitty. Some of the DS team
members were actually ready to concede at that point. The economic
situation
were infact our worse problem, and drastic means had to be taken to
prevent
DS's from collapsing within the next few turns, especially the IK position
running at a 25.000 deficit, which no DS nation could aid.
We were also affected by a load of dropouts, as all our four Englishmen
decided to drop out as neither had the time to continue or maybe no hope
of
winning. So on top of all other problems, we also had to find replacement
players.
Turn 15-27 - DS character power play saves the day:
With new replacement players found and now having the time (two week
deadline), we pursued a very tight and comprehensive coordination. Within
five turns we had organized 3 curzeteams and a agent/sickness squad at 60
% successrate operating. The CL agents were finally beginning to show
their
full effect, so the DS were ready to battle FP on character war.
The first couple of turns after the pub meet however seemed to flush us
further down the toilet. The FP agent squad had catched Hoarmurath
(armycom)
and 3 high level IK agents at 2520. We first thought we might be able to
surprise the FP, as they might not have scouted the 3 IK agents. But we
were
shocked by the result as FP apparently intended to make a trap here,
knowing
what IK had. First they took out Hoarmurath and moved in more agents/emis
whereafer they knifed the 3 remaining IK agents So first outcome of
the
character war, was clearly to FP advantage.
In the same time, WK in the North were fighting a lost battle, and with
nearly nonexistent DS economies, we were forced to give up WK who
collapsed on turn 18. But as we thought this was the end, a new hope rose
from the DrL turn...On turn 18 DrL managed to catch the FP (Noldo) mage
squad (learning curzes) at 2908, with his own sickness / agent squad. We
decided to gamble, as we thought we probably would lose anyway. So even
though Elrond and Erestor were present, Khamul, Celedhring and Lhachlin
were
both casting sickness on Elrond and attempting to steal curze artifacts,
thereby not refusing. The much-awaited turn 19 arrived, and the joy would
not end as we managed to pull out an almost complete success. Elrond and
Erestor challenged the only two mages who had refused, and even though the
effective chance of curze was around 60% all mages succeeded and Elrond
perished and besides this we managed to steal one of the curze artifacts
along with Mantle of Doriath as well !!! From now on the balance began to
turn, the FP had been stroke in the last minute before they could assemble
their first curze squad. CL and IK agents together with our three curze
squads were effectively dealing with all FP attempt's to invade Mordor.
And
all FP were rapidly losing characters to kidnaps/assassination which was
hard to replace as many FP capitals had been sieged or their gold being
stolen before they could name more characters. On the military front, we
also began to show our teeth when a well planned DoL surprise invasion,
together with agent support wiped the NM capital on turn 19. We were
stunned
to found out that this had collapsed NM, and he were out. Next goal were
Eot, who were attacked severely by armies and agents the next couple of
turns. Together with some fancy DrL army movements with dragon support
hired
from 2809, Eot lost all remaining MT's before turn 23. This time the FP
armies arrived too late to prevent the slaughter, and again the FP had
failed to give Eot backups as he was destroyed as well.
Down south a major invasion on Corsairs had begun as well, with QA/Harad
troops backed up by multiple emis and agent support. Cors capital 2438
were
taken on turn 24, and 3-4 more MT's were taken the following turns as
well.
Cors looked like the next victim for the DS hordes...
The FP agent squads were giving us a lot of trouble, they had one major
with
3-4 agent artifacts and 7-8 agents, which emptied one DS capital after the
other. And they had 2-3 more smaller companies causing trouble elsewhere
as
well. We had been tracking the major company and knew most of the names
along with the name of the company commander. So we started to "ambush"
different locations with curze and out best agents, and on turn 23 the
strategy paid off. The FP had been bold enough to "invade" the CL capital
with their main squad together with another of their agent squads,
combining
around 10 of their best agents. What they apparently didn't know, was that
Ji indur was present along with a few minor CL agents as well. So first
round Ji indur slew the company commander of their main squad, and we
moved
everything with a knife to CL capital including all three curze squads,
unfortunately they moved out the second squad. Second round their 3 best
agents were curzed while the remaining FP agents were slain by a large
number of mixed DS agents. Net result: The entire FP main agent squad
containing 8 top FP agents, eliminated and 4 agent artifacts gained with
zerro loses !!! This must have been the final blow for the FP removing
their
last hope. Two turns later Duns and NG mysteriously collapsed and after
turn
26 the FP resigned. Another victory for the DS and a well coordinating
team.
Kim Andersen
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