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Game #937 Tournament game#11 | Round 2 : 2018 PBEM 2vs2 Tournament #11

xlnt vs  Henrysix vs  Fluksen vs  Thorgal


Match Details

Played:2019-03-31
Rating 2 - Nice Game
Amount of Humans:4
Kind of Report:2018 PBEM 2vs2 Tournament
Kind of game:   PBEM
Game-value: 61
Result Player Classes Races Team Points Extra Points Missed Points Quitter Rate
1 xlntNecromancerTigrans21500here
1 HenrysixDreadnoughtFrostlings222110here
2 FluksenRogueDraconians100-34here
2 ThorgalSorcererFrostlings100-31here
Posts to the game:
user
Published on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 18:27:43 +0200

Great report Fluksen, thank you for that. And sorry but i can't offer the same quality.

This is what the game looked like from my point of view:

So my game-givven 2nd town was discovered, killed and ghouled asap and it grew bigger because i did a lot of battles to grow it's population and that was phase one - getting 2 spots to produce 1 pikemen per turn.

Defences were set to have towns liberated a day after captured by a scout and i moved south where there were easier sites to clear and not towards the giants dwelling arounf turn 5-6 because my starting army felt weak to kill 2 giants and 5 ogres - at that point i had loses as i don't play much the last year ):

The south showed a sphynx temple and we had 3 in sight - one near each dwelling and one close to me - we also had advancing scouts and knew where your towns are. So i planned a research jump to t3 (taking a sphynx temple around t12?), some economy fortresses and settling one more town and i hoped to get my 1st boneCollector by turn 14-15. We had a disconnection with Henry around that time and i used chat here in the BF to try and get us both on the same page and after that we had some great communication every turn - we both discussed each play and each prediction and that helped a lot. - phase two was getting some economy power and scouting and not my usual rush.

So i was peasefully making pikemen, walking around the map and getting levels, got some bone collectors (4-5 with rush, so each took 2 turns) and i just followed the road to Thorgal. The idea was to use Henry as a dancing show to get your attention so you won't be quick to help Thorgal - our scouting showed he was open for attack and i believed i was having the best military with 4 full stacks of gold medaled units or t3 units. - so this was phase 3 and i had planned some more but it was not needed.

Our tactics were to be more economic, less rush, more scouting and some dancing, showing and not advancing (:
I also wanted a game where i do less than what was accessible but still enough - so no risks were taken and the slow push was prefered.

Also i believe one of the biggest reasons we won was Henry's Raven killing and overall control of scouting - as at one point i wanted an army of banshee as i feared a Sorc mobility stack, so i was not able to scout too much with shades.

Thanks for the game and good luck with the rest of the tourney (;

user
Published on Sun, 07 Apr 2019 17:42:58 +0200

Confirmed by Henrysix
Great summary, Fluks!

Overall, I had intended to build a force of Royal Guard/Mammoth/Golem, but I got an early Temple from some production resources. Between the fuel cells and excellent morale in my capital, I was able to start building White Witches every turn starting pretty early, and with Fluks' ravens all over the place, I thought control of the waterways was the way to go. I ended up being very happy with my Witches. <smiletext0>

My starting area was not great... I was pretty annoyed that I didn't start in Arctic territory, but I did have a lot of fertile plains in the area, so my capital had excellent morale. There was a lot of water around, so I felt like my main army didn't have much of a choice about which direction to move. After clearing the immediate area, I moved northeast to the nearby frostling outpost for the quest and then just moved east as it seemed to have the best sites for clearing and leveling. My first two witches were able to catch up and join my army a few days before I reached the Fey dwelling. I also picked up the Naga by charming it (with my Rogue hero) at the Heart of the Tropics. I was definitely lucky to get the Naga, although overall I think it was the only unit I managed to charm, out of 3 or 4 attempts.

When I got near the Fey dwelling, I got a quest from the Giants' dwelling in the middle of the map, and I was moving south to that quest, but then the Fey offered me a quest, too.  I couldn't do both, and since the Fey quest was closer and offered a better reward, I fatefully chose that one! As it turned out, vassalizing the Fey dwelling the day before Fluksen was able to do so may have been the key event of the game.

By this time I had started dealing with Fluks' ravens pretty well. The Spy Drones are inferior scouts, but they are cheap, and I was able to use 2 at a time, or team up with a Witch against a lone raven, so I was pretty confident none of them were getting through after that damn raven took my capital. I was NOT happy to see that Drac Flyer, but I was pretty sure they weren't being produced yet, so I wasn't too panicked.

Once I got the Fey dwelling, we felt pretty confident. Given that xlnt's necro army was snowballing pretty well, and that Thorgal had been sent to the void earlier, we figured that xlnt had the advantage in the south and that a standoff in the north would be just fine. I was a bit worried that Fluks might conquer a Dungeon and quickly boost his strength, but it seems the strong defenders made that too risky.

As for the invisible stack, I had seen ahead of time that Fluksen's rogue had both Stealth Commander and Urban Stealth Commander, so once the leader stack moved out of the area, we were on guard for a stealth attack. Even so, the attack on xlnt's watchtower was surprising. But I think it was premature. To be honest, if not for that attack, the leader stack probably could have taken one of our major cities. After the attack on the watchtower, though, we had plenty of scouts in the area, we knew what we were looking for, and we were able to buy up all the units at the inn before the stack got there.

And then we gathered the witches and went rogue-hunting... 

user
Published on Sat, 06 Apr 2019 12:17:26 +0200

Match report
Alright here is the long story of our loss:

Match report of Game #11 in the 2v2 PBEM 2018-2019 tournament:



Inspired by the annoyance Gilafron and Olop had given us in the first game by quickly buying a dwelling close to us I decided to take Draconian Rogue with Keeper of the Light Master and Partisan specialisation (for the quicker and cheaper buying of independents). I wanted to try the same, quickly buying a dwelling as close as possible to our opponents and use that as a steady source of harrassment. Thorgal took Frostling Sorceror. We thought it would match well because if I could manage to vassalise a dwelling close to our opponents then he could use this as vantage point for summons that could harrass without having to travel over the whole map desperately trying to evade independent roamers. It didn’t quite work out as planned. Here is the report of our failure:


Our starting positions were in the east I was pretty much in the middle east and Thorgal started in the south-east. My starting city had stunning three mananodes and nothing else around it:


Clesk - the mighty capital of Mana


Soon I was swimming in Mana, crows make good scouts and accordingly I made good use of them scouting large portions of the map quickly. Unfortunately though the crows revealed a fairy dwelling rather close to me and a giant dwelling close to our opponents that immediately declared war on me - Not the best scenario. North of my starting position was Mol-Biloth, the obligatory draconian independent city, but, just like my capital, it didn’t have any production resources (unless it would extend it’s borders 3 times).


Mol Biloth - Finally reaching the size to become useful (thanks observatory!) but much too late.


 Soon we discovered that we were up against a tigran necromancer and a frostling technocrat and to me that sounded a lot like I would like to have shadow stalkers sooner rather than later. With that in mind I was hungering for Gold and Production sites, after all Gold was also needed to buy vassals and utilize my partisan boni for buying independents and neither my capital nor my natural vassal provided either.
After doing the initial quest for Mol-Biloth to my north I arced around towards my capitals southwest because there was a nice spot with two goldmines and a quarry that was to become the spot to settle and I planned to try divesting as much resources as possible into that settlement to make it my stalker production center in late game if possible. But this was a mistake. My army was now in the southwest, but in the meantime I had spotted another independent settlement of high elves hidden in a forest on the very northeast of the map and they had given me a quest - the reward was daunting, a high elf initiate and a new vassal for free, but I had to hurry up north into the forest if I was to make their deadline, very shortly afterwards the fairy dwelling in the north also offered me a quest. But because my stacks were far away there was no way for me to make the fairy-dwelling quest first if I wanted to meet both deadlines (the elves and the fairies). The fairy dwelling was a bit closer to me than to henrysix, but still the danger of him getting it was there and I was aware of it. Hubris prevailed I wanted to do both quests! The spoils would be great: Pacifying the northeastern forest, an extra vassal and my main army would end up neatly in the mid north on a perfect position to start putting pressure onto Henrysix.
The game so far had proceeded rather good, the first small clashes of scouts had not gone too bad for us and even though we spotted that Xlnt had been very lucky with his vassal (it was city(?) size) we had been able to snag it from him for one turn with one of Thorgals whisps and a bit later I even took Henrysix’s capital for a turn (loosing a crow in return), also both Thorgal and me had found another city so we were getting ready to go on the offensive, but then Thorgals leader died a sad death at the hands of a sprinting fire elemental at a magma forge. Meanwhile I was just 1 turn away from fulfilling the elven quest (only two turns before it would expire) when I spotted Henrysix not far from the fairy dwelling.


Damn it Henry might just get my dwelling!



 I made the elven Quest and rushed towards the fairies, alas exactly the turn before I killed the ogre for the fairies Henrysix must have bought them or made a quest for them as when it was my turn they had become Henrys vassal. And so with me missing the quest and Thorgal loosing his leader the game slipped away from us. Now it didn’t look as good anymore, Henrysix had also built a city, he had the dwelling and I could see that he was also starting to build forts on the map. Furthermore in his army was also a naga so maybe he even had some underground dwelling that we hadn’t discovered yet?
However the game was not over and there were some things going not too bad for me, my hatchling had evolved into a flyer, I could charm a vampire spider queen to my side and I had 2 lesser shadow stalkers developed already so I though that I could beat Henry if he should dare to push forward from the dwelling towards my realm. To lure him a bit I choose forest concealment on my leader stack, but I couldn’t always keep them concealed and believe he scouted that. In any case he was extra careful. In fact to my frustration he just kept standing at the Dwelling where I could not dare to attack. When I recognized that he didn’t come forward I sent a stack back to the Inn buying a shocktrooper and clearing a spring of life in the elven forest (I didn’t take the time before because I was hurrying to make the quest for the fairies, to no avail) here another grave mistake happened I completely forgot that orc shamans have banefire instead of poison bolts, I nearly lost a lesser shadow stalker there, I could rescue him but the price was the recently bought shocktrooper which hurt especially since we were on the backfoot anyway.
And while Henry and me had our little mexican standoff around the fairy dwelling things were going miserable for Thorgal, he lost a big part of his army including two heroes at the attempt to clear a hall of the forefathers. To make matters worse a few turns later Xlnt was at his doorsteps. Just havign lost most of his (ex-)strongest stack Thorgal did not have the means to put up a defense anymore loosing his leader for a second time in the process of Xlnts attacks.
In fact Xlnt could have kicked him out of the game by just going for his capital, while he was in the void then, but instead he opted to go north and eventually taking the city I had found. With Thorgal crumbling, my southern border immediately became a big mess, I was tied in the north by Henrysix, for if I would leave he’d be on Mol Biloth in no time which was becoming my most valuable city. So I couldn’t possibly muster defenses to beat Xlnt back at my southern border.

 
I had been offered peace by the giant dwelling in the south and in a desperate attempt to maybe refocus Xlnts attention away from the havoc he was causing in Thorgals empire and on my south I bought the Giants as vassal hoping that Xlnt would go for them giving Thorgal and me a few turns of breathing space to rebuild, but that was futile hope Xlnt didn’t bother with the giants.
As last resort I decided to try dashing for their capitals with my leader stack, I gave my leader urban stealth commander and ran straight over the map with the leader, the flyer and the 2 lesser shadow stalkers always keeping the stack concealed, helping with hide-out (turn your stack invisible for 1 turn) in places where I couldn’t easily find cover. I hoped they wouldn’t notice and think my leader stack was still lurking somewhere with the rest of the army trying to lure Henry forward but also this desperate last attempt failed. From the start there were spy drones trailing my leader stack and when I reached enemy territory it had to evade the watchful eyes of a 9 unit group of frostwitches and mammoth riders, I turned south towards Xlnt hoping to evade Henrys frostwitch watch that way but the Inn close to Xlnts big city had been bought empty upon my arrival and the units were helping to guard the city. At the time the game ended Henry had taken the elven city, Xlnt my self founded city, my throne still belonged to me but was defended only by an assassin and a hatchling and would certainly be taken rather soon by Xlnt. My main army was still guarding Mol-biloth, the city close to the fairy dwelling, and my leader had just landed disembarked on a forest tile close to Xlnts capital. This is when Thorgal surrendered and send the scores to the judges. When I checked the game the next turn my leaderstack had been killed by the frostwitches, Thorgals capital was finally taken and thereby any possible danger for Xlnt and Henrysix was eliminated.



The last hope is found and dies



 So the victory very deservedly goes to Henrysix and Xlnt! I think in this game we basically killed ourself by my greed and miscalculation regarding the movement of my troops (they were utterly misplaced when I got the fairy and elven quests) and in the south Thorgal was decapitating himself twice first loosing his leader and then most of his army in his failed attack on the hall of the forefathers so when Xlnt arrived he could just roll over the leftovers of Thorgals forces without much resistance while I was locked in my somewhat self inflicted mess with the fairy dwelling unable to help.
Below is a the northern part of the map with the movement path of my main forces and a map of the southern part of the map, but I don’t really remember Thorgals movement path so I only annotated the main events I remember


The mid and north of the overland map as seen from fluksen



The mid and south of the map, as seen by fluksen


It has to be said though that while Thorgal and my game was riddled with mistakes, this match was also a demonstration of Henrysix and Xlnt ability to exploit our mistakes, playing very calm and steadily increasing their advantage over us while making sure that no desperate action of us would succeed. In the meantime they could watch how we in more and more risky attempts to come back were just accelerating our downfall.
I wish Thorgal and me had made less mistakes the game would surely have been more close. But Henry and Xlnt played very good shutting us down and boxing us in once they were in the lead.
All the best for your future matches!


Finally the end score, I only post the overall score the other scores look just as bad for us.



If our opponents read this, would you mind writing a bit how the game went for you, also how did Henry get the naga?


user
Published on Thu, 04 Apr 2019 22:49:03 +0200

Written by xlnt
Not sure i am writting this in the proper place - did i ever complain how abysmal the UI of the BF site is?!

Anyway - i played my turn and thanks for the effort to writte a report!

user
Published on Thu, 04 Apr 2019 21:29:18 +0200

Geschrieben von Fluksen
Hei Xlnt, can you end your turn in the game? I'd like to see the score too and also I'm writing a match report and would like to include a picture of the map in the end <smiletext0>

user
Published on Mon, 01 Apr 2019 16:03:02 +0200

Bestätigt durch Fluksen
Yes thanks Henrysix and Xlnt, a well deserved victory. My invisible stack in your territory was a last ditch effort effort trying to claw us towards some kind of comeback, but you trailed and boxed it in quite well even with the dark sun cosmic event! You took the fairy dwelling at precisely the right time and it was well played by you patiently securing your victory when we were crumbling apart.
Good luck against Jean_de_metz and Hellraiser I believe they'll pose a bigger challenge to you then we were able to this time around.

user
Published on Mon, 01 Apr 2019 05:34:23 +0200

Confirmed by Henrysix
Confirmed by Henrysix

user
Published on Sun, 31 Mar 2019 23:41:20 +0200

Confirmed by xlnt
Confirmed by xlnt

user
Published on Sun, 31 Mar 2019 22:42:25 +0200

Admin report to start round 3 since the players didn't report. <smiletext1>


user
Published on Sun, 31 Mar 2019 18:14:46 +0200

Thank you Hiliadan for the judge effort (:

And thank you guys for the nice game - it was fun trying to figure out where the next stop of that invisible stack deep in our territory would be (:

Good luck in the rest of the tournament!

user
Published on Sun, 31 Mar 2019 16:23:41 +0200

Hi! Thorgal interpreted my last message on the game blog to mean he should surrender at his turn, so he did surrender before the deadline and sent the score to judges. That's an issue, but since the scores of the two teams are very very different, it's not a big deal, one more turn would not have changed the situation.

Team of Bears wins that game with a score victory, with a wide margin. Please report the game and get ready for round 3. Please send your class/race to judges as soon as possible.

If you want to continue this game for fun, I recommend the host revert the turn from Thorgal and Thorgal plays it again the same as he did the first time.

user
Published on Sat, 30 Mar 2019 13:28:26 +0100

31 hours left until the end of round. The deadline is 2019-03-31 9:31 PM GMT+0.

So Thorgal, please follow the 5 steps listed when it's time. In particular, remember to save & exit before you surrender, back up the save, then surrender, then save & exit again WITHOUT sending the turn to the next player.

user
Published on Tue, 26 Mar 2019 18:29:37 +0100

back

too bad we don't have enough time - the game just got interesting ):

i would love to finish it regardless of the tournament resul, if this is an option - so guys please share your view on this.

user
Published on Tue, 26 Mar 2019 18:09:07 +0100

"...Can this player please confirm he read this message and understood? "
=>> YES !

user
Published on Tue, 26 Mar 2019 08:43:40 +0100

Thanks, Hili! We'll see how far we get...

user
Published on Mon, 25 Mar 2019 09:03:46 +0100

Yes, he procedure applies after the deadline, not now. So it's not your last turn now.

user
Published on Mon, 25 Mar 2019 04:51:25 +0100

Last player in the turn order is Thorgal.

Just to clarify, when you say "the current strategic turn," that means current as of 3/31, right? xlnt is away for a couple days at the moment, but we have been doing a turn per day most days, so we probably would play 3-5 turns before the deadline.

I have the turn right now, and I would most likely play differently if this were to be the last turn I play.

user
Published on Sun, 24 Mar 2019 22:54:20 +0100

Hi! Round 2 ends in a bit less than 7 days (see the time count here: https://www.the-battlefield.c... />It seems very unlikely that your match will be won before the deadline. It will therefore be decided by score. The procedure is as follow:

1/ the current strategic turn is played until the last player in the turn order
2/ that player plays his turn, saves & quits, copy the save game to a backup folder
3/ that player re-enters the game and surrenders, then takes screenshots of all the scores. He does NOT end the turn. Instead he quits the game without ending the turn.
4/ he sends the screenshots to judges (Marcus, Jonny and me)
5/ judges check the scores and take a decision

Could you please confirm who is the last player in the turn order? Can this player please confirm he read this message and understood?

user
Published on Sat, 23 Mar 2019 13:16:30 +0100

hi all,
i'll be away for 2 days so my turn might be somewhat slow - sorry for that
i expect to be back Tiw's day

user
Published on Wed, 13 Mar 2019 22:47:36 +0100

Turn 22. The turn seems to be moving pretty quickly right now.

user
Published on Wed, 13 Mar 2019 20:17:55 +0100

A bit more than 2 weeks before the end of the round. What turn did you reach?

user
Published on Sat, 09 Mar 2019 13:32:49 +0100

I'm travelling
Hei all I'm travelling and it might take a bit longer to play my turns until tuesday.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

user
Published on Fri, 01 Mar 2019 12:12:30 +0100

I'll let Henrysix explain if he wants to but once again - thank you (maybe Henry delayed his turn for me - i can't say)

user
Published on Thu, 28 Feb 2019 19:43:27 +0100

Welcome back
Nice to hear, even though the occasion was sad.
However we might have another problem: Henrysix hasn't done his turn for several days now. So i decided to turn the turn timer on (2 days) if you are in contact with him please let him know that he should play his turn! I much prefer playing without turn timer and it worked very well so far. But we are already lagging behind due to our late start and if people stop playing their turns without even notifying us here I think this is the only solution <smiletext6>

user
Published on Wed, 27 Feb 2019 20:05:11 +0100

Thank you and i am back

user
Published on Tue, 19 Feb 2019 19:53:40 +0100

My condolences
Hei Xlnt,
sorry to hear that!
Rest assured that your turns will not expire! All the best.
- Fluksen

user
Published on Tue, 19 Feb 2019 18:30:38 +0100

Death in the family - i might not be able to do my next 1-2 turns on time. 1k km travel expected

please turn the clock down till monday
thank you

user
Published on Tue, 12 Feb 2019 18:42:56 +0100

T14 now (:

user
Published on Sun, 10 Feb 2019 16:13:17 +0100

T13 - some scouting fights

user
Published on Sun, 10 Feb 2019 15:11:46 +0100

Hi there! What turn did you reach?

user
Published on Sun, 27 Jan 2019 23:53:06 +0100

Ok, since xlnt and Henry are fine, let's proceed.
Thorgal, please keep debug mode enabled for all your tournament turns from now on. Thanks!

user
Published on Sat, 26 Jan 2019 09:55:37 +0100

It worked! I could play my turn with activated Debug-Mode 
@Marcus: Thank you for your support !!! <smiletext21>

user
Published on Sat, 26 Jan 2019 08:34:53 +0100

Yes, its a known issue when you have a crash you need to enable/disable debug mode.

user
Published on Sat, 26 Jan 2019 04:50:04 +0100

Continuing is fine with me!

user
Published on Fri, 25 Jan 2019 16:25:44 +0100

Map size
I'll leave the decision regarding mapsize to our opponents, xlnt already said that he doesn't mind to continue. So what do you say henrysix?
And @marcus Thorgal had the problem of "wrong mods" do you think this will change when he has debug mode enabled?

user
Published on Fri, 25 Jan 2019 07:51:41 +0100

Hi,

We have an update:
Thorgal gets a warning without proof for the reload.
To play your turn you need to enable the "debug" mode.

Additionally, since you play on the wrong map you have the option to either restart or to continue on the smaller map.
The map is not that much smaller, 73x73 hexes compared with 83x83 on the medium map. Please confirm what you prefer.

user
Published on Thu, 24 Jan 2019 15:43:20 +0100

Hi, sorry that you have been waiting!

I sent a PM to both other judges for this match but none of them have had a chance to reply yet. However, you will get those extra days back when the deadline for the round is over, so you have the same chance as the other matches to finish.

/Marcus

user
Published on Tue, 22 Jan 2019 19:57:09 +0100

Thanks for the help Marcus!
I'm only speaking for myself but i wanted to let you guys know that i have absolutely no complains about the map or an eventual restart - i don't care about winning too much and i trust the judges 100%

user
Published on Tue, 22 Jan 2019 18:59:19 +0100

Yes, I took the liberty to already start a discussion among the judges regarding the wrong map type.
Its easy mistake, and I was the one that "approved" the settings, and I also missed it.

Just wait for now, there is a solution to Thorgals problem without reverting, but one thing at the time please!