SFR, Inc.

[DialFforFunky]

The above post is now edited for appropriate content. In the meantime, I'll hide in a corner in shame, both because of all the errors and because of my disgusting rolls.
sorry.


F
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717

[Wietmarschen]

My counter maneuver fails:

The rest is all melee icons.

Then the save roll against your melee strike:


I guess a melee attack is not an individual targeting effect so the TSR logo counts for nothing.
Results: 10 saves (I use 3 Earthen Armors)
4 damage left: Umberhulk dies

Counter attack:


Results: 17 melee

[DialFforFunky]

the leopard rider gets another roll as it rolled rend. I move the terrain up to 6.

F
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717

[Wietmarschen]

I rolled again after rend, it was a save. Sorry I didn't bother to mention this.

[DialFforFunky]

I rolled another flurry and then logo, said 'yay', and then realized that flurry only re-rolls during a melee attack .
Result: 10 saves.

The stranglevine, oakling and two willowlings die.


Reserve Phase:
Seeing that I might have over-estimated my capacity to excel in melee my frontier army retreats to the reserves. A willow from my army at your home also moves to reserves.

End my Turn


Dutch Duel 2

	*****************	**	*****************	**	*****************	*****************
	DialFforFunky BUA		DialFforFunky DUA		DialFforFunky Reserve Army	DialFforFunky Summoning Pool
*
	DialFforFunky		DialFforFunky		DialFforFunky Home Army
	Wietmarschen's Home 2x ash storm (about to expire)		Frontier		DialFforFunky's Home
	Wietmarschen Home Army		Wietmarschen		Wietmarschen EA EA EA
*
	Wietmarschen Reserve Army		Wietmarschen Summoning Pool		Wietmarschen DUA	Wietmarschen BUA

F
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717

[Wietmarschen]

I got some luck on the melee rolls after the pityful show of the ivory dragons.

My next turn

First march at the frontier terrain
Automatic maneuver the terrain up 1 step to 7.
Action: None

Second march at your home terrain
maneuver the terrain down 1 step to 1
Action: magic


Results: 9 Gold magic (or 4 black and 7 red)
Cast 2xAshes to Ashes on the Naiad
Summon Ivory Wyrm to my home terrain

Reserve movement
None

End of turn

Dragon attack:

[DialFforFunky]

Spell and effect expiration: none
Initial Effects Phase: none

Dragon Attack Phase:




the noble willow promotes itself to stranglevine, rolling

result: 12 saves, 4 melee. The dragon lives.


First March: @ your home
Maneuver: turn the terrain unopposed to 8
replanting: I'll exchange the nymph, oakling, 3x willowling and the noble willow with 2x willow, naiad and an oak.

Action: Magic



I'll promote the 2x willowling, nymph and oakling that did nothing to 2x willow, naiad and oak, rolling:


result: 7 magic, doubling to 14 for gold.

Let's try some grasping at straws.
Path my stranglevine over to the frontier
2x Transmute Rock to Mud at your army at the frontier


Second March: @ the frontier
Maneuver:


F
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717

[Wietmarschen]

You win, I got only one rend (3 maneuvers).

Thanks again for the game and I would love some strategy tips.

H

[Wietmarschen]

Just looking over your magic roll. I don't understand why you are allowed to roll the promoted units twice, once before the promotion and once after? You have 5 magic and the Wild Growth, then you promote some units and roll these again for more magic.

H

[Matthias Maccabeus]

It's (how do you say nicely) one of the "loop holes" in the game.
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HeroScape - Tree Town Open Champion (2008, 2016), Nebraska Skirmish Champion (2008, 2010) GenCon LightWeight Champion (2009), GenCon General Wars (Aquilla Champion 2009) GenCon Unique Hero Champion (2009, 2010)
Dragon Dice - Gen Con Worlds Champion 2011, 2012, 2016, 2017 O Town 2013 Overall Winner

[DialFforFunky]

Wow, I didn't think I'd pull it off, with all the tramples, rends and fly-icons you had in your army.

The promotion is a nice little loophole indeed. Wild growth works like cantrip: it generates an effect that an effect that is resolved before the normal roll is finished. In effect, this means that you get to affect the units that have already been rolled, but have not been 'counted' yet. Wild growth gives you a reroll and a promotion all in one. This could also work the other way around though. If you need the roll, but need the promotion as well, you're stuck with a dilemma.

Quite frankly though, I felt like I was losing all the the time. In the end, all the pieces just fell in place for me.
For example, I though my moving up to 6 was a mistake. I wanted to get a minor terrain, but realized after the roll that I couldn't get any. Having already rolled the roll, I decided to go with it anyways. Then I got stomped hard and discovered that there was no way I could protect the frontier, practically giving you an 8th face a turn earlier. Getting stomped hard was another piece that fell in place at the right time, allowing regrowth to quickly move my forces and add to my magic roll.

But for most of the game, I thought you were just going to show me all corners of the room with your magic. I couldn't even move the highland to 7 because you'd just Path-TRtM me. That's why I stopped at 6, allowing the frontier to catch up so I could move them up to 7 simultaneously. That way, I could still get one terrain up to 8, instead of handing them to you piecemeal.

I think the central point where your plan fell apart though was the dragons. In part this was because they rolled quite poorly. A few breaths would have helped out a lot. But the other part was probably that my armies where not the most attractive targets to summon dragons at. My army consists mainly out of saves and melee icons, with a few resurrectional icons and a bit of maneuvering (slightly more than I wanted in hindsight). That means that, without the proper support, my army can handle a dragon reasonably well. Mages, on the other hand, usually have 3 or 4 faces that don't do a thing against dragons, effectively giving your dragon a 50% less resistance.

Those earthen armors, on the other hand, where a growing concern I had. Instead of throwing dragons at my force, an alternative approach could have been to load your melee force with burning hands and earthen armors, and just wait until I would roll to 6 or 7 to have them crash in from reserves. This way you would have to depend less on the fickle rolls of dragons, and more on stable spells that work until used.
Another thing that might have been good was burying my dead. I'm not sure whether you had enough magic to do so, but it would have significantly hampered my strategy. I could have gotten them back, given enough logo's. But without any opposition, I wouldn't have been able to roll my golden medallion for quite a while.

But I'm rambling on now. Thanks for another good game! I'm sorry I introduced you to to the Path - TRtM- combo the hard way. I hope you still enjoyed despite my sudden win, one that even I didn't really saw coming.


F
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717

[Wietmarschen]

Thanks for your comments. I really enjoyed the game very much and it shows that at any time the tables can turn. Winning or losing is maybe not so important but it is nice to see the effects of some strategy.

The funny thing is that at several moments I also considered the path & TRtM combo, but the magic rolls at these times were not good enough. On the other hand one of the things that held me back in attacking your army at my home terrain was that I didn't really know how strong you would be. That's why I thought to let the dragons do some work, but that failed miserably.

However I didn't see your path action coming at all. I thought your army would have only a little magic. But your wonderful roll of 7 ID faces of course beat me. I was actually preparing for a long battle with both of us one 8 face.

One thing I encountered during this game again was the problem of deciding when to move a terrain up. Especially when I depend on a magic terrain for my magic users, do you move that terrain up at some point? I was planning to first capture the frontier terrain and then switch the armies. But maybe this is also a dangerous tactic as you have to leave the terrains less defended at some point.

Did you have any strategy planned from the beginning? Or do you want to save it for a future game?

H

[DialFforFunky]

hmm, the question about the terrains is interesting. I think that, in general, you will want to keep a magic face with your mages for as long as possible. In this case, you did the right thing by staying on the 2-face. Magic can be so devastatingly powerful when left unchecked. I think it's most common to keep your mages on a magic face while your muscle-force does the rest. Then, when you've captured an 8-face, move your mages over and start working on a second terrain.

As for my strategy: I didn't have too much planned before the game. The composition would dictated my game.
I though long and hard the first few turns. I was very much inclined not to move, and cast some dragonkin the first turn. This force loves dragonkin, as you can promote those as well, giving lots of health at a steal. Your first move to change my home to 3 was pretty good though, as you essentially forced me to move. If I didn't, you'd reach the 8th face before me, therefore getting a perfect TRtM-Path setup.
After that, my big plan was to stick to the terrains without going to reserves, and simply move the terrains up. I thought my force could deal with the dragons well enough to keep going, even if it meant that I would do very little during my own turns.
Then you decided to go back to your magic face. That was pretty annoying, as it prohibited me from going forward with your home terrain, keeping me at that useless 6. This was also due to the fact that you had your melee forces in reserves. I couldn't just abandon a terrain. Not only would this mean you'd have taken my army out of it's element (I would have to commit to casting from an 8th-face, a race that you would win in the end) but it also meant that I would lose my ability to strike first.
This was very significant for me, as your SAI's could mean I'd get butchered before I would get a chance to retaliate. A complete wipe-out was not beyond the realm of possibilities. The earthen armors (a spell which I had not considered intially) were a pain because of this, as they enabled you to land in relative safety. The resulting 17 melee (which I though was moderately nasty, it could have been much worse) was a pretty good demonstration of this fact.

Out of curiosity: how did you plan your army? A chunk of muscle, and a chunk of magic with a bit of mobility to keep them at the 8th face? The lord to help out against dragons and generally being a bit of both worlds. What spell did you intend to cast with your mages?

One last curious note (I could go on forever, but my post has to end somewhere): I loved my strangevine. I added it for fun, thinking it would prove to be sub-optimal. Surprisingly, however, it did everything I wanted. It was dead when I didn't want my units to be buried and it was alive when I wanted to attack. The replant and the double strikes were icing on the cake. I'd need more experience with it for a final verdict, but so far I've been pleasantly surprised.


F
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717

[Wietmarschen]

My strategy was to use a combination of magic with melee. Indeed what you already mentioned my plan was to get an 8 face with the melee units with magic support. This support could be TRtM to help with the maneuver and Earthen Armor for extra saves, depending on the type of army of my opponent.

But also I like the Dragon summoning approach together with ash storms or palsy, but this didn't work out so well against your strong melee type army. In the ideal situation I would first soften up an opposing army with a few dragons and then pounce them with my melee army

The Dragon Lord I actually put in to play with a bit. I never used him before. He seems to have a fair change at magic and is quiet strong in melee. He can cast any color of magic which is convenient to supplement the color I need most at each particular situation. I recently got a gold Dragon staff in a Magestorm expansion which I am thinking of trying out in the next game. Let's see what this item can do in my Dwarf-Goblin army.

Your stranglevine really did a good job I think. This promotion during rolls is really good. I love to see and play monsters because of such interesting abilities, although sometimes the chances of getting the right roll are not big. My Harpy didn't do any wonders this time because there was hardly any melee.

I'll prepare a new army and maybe we can play another round soon.

H

[DialFforFunky]

[Wietmarschen]

Indeed I am insatiable I really like your idea of writing a story of our games! Maybe we can even do something together, or next to each other. I don't know what kind of story you are planning but it would be interesting to see the battle from the perspectives of both sides. This might give an interesting touch of drama and compassion to this business of slaughter.

My ideas start coming now. I imagine that we could in the future set up some thematic battles that are in line with the races attitudes towards each other: Death against Nature. We could start with a most Nature and Death oriented single race battle: Undead versus maybe Feral. Then depending on who wins another race joins the fray to settle the balance, etc. We could then write nice plot twists by entering Dragonlords and such or finding a magic artifact, huge possibilities.

I am really looking forward to this. But first I will post my army for the third Dutch Duel. Enjoy your travels to Iceland, I will train my patience.

H