Game #1301 | Narwhal v. Keika

“Always aim for the legs. Then they can’t run!” - Dargal the Infamous

Elf hero offered to join the first turn. LURTZ HATE ELF. ELF WEIRD AND SMELL FUNNY. The following turn Dargal, a rugged and vulgar dreadnought offered to join. Dargal convinced Lurtz that his crippling skills would be very useful and they hit it off very well - the orcs loved listening to Dargal’s elf jokes.

What do you call an elf with no arms and no legs in the ocean?
Bob.
What do you call an elf with no arms and no legs in front of the door?
Matt.
What do you call an elf with no arms and no legs in a big pot of boiling water?
Stew.
What do you call an elf with no arms or legs in the bathroom?
John.
What does a manticore call an elf with legs and no arms?
Fast food.

Turn 5: Big decision. Send army to take orc city, or up towards naga dwelling (and hopefully get a quest from them). Went for the nagas, potentially ziggurat or two, and rushing towards Keika. Cleared sphinx temple, item was meh but almost 300 research. Ziggurats both have phoenixes. Yikes.
Turn 10: Recruited another theocrat orc. Attack a bunch of scoundrels with the newly recruited hero. Unfortunately for our new hero, some of the scoundrels were hobbits. Now hobbit scoundrels can be quite deadly to orcs… They have a luck that can only be described as plot armor. RIP
Still turn 10: Lurtz helped a den of nagas deal with their rivals; one of them joined the cause in gratitude. Discovered an outpost of mermen close to the nagas, perhaps the nagas will help us acquire some fish as well?
Turn 12: After Keika's restart, I saw his main stack on lich castle in question, very close to my main stack. His leader & hero were lvl 9 at this point, with mine lvl 6 & 4. If he moved towards me I could attack with 6+2 cherubs vs. 5.
Turn 13: Evangalist produced, home stack reactivated. Keika had spotted my main stack and had 8-11 units in range to attack if I went continued north. Distraction successful, down to the merfolk.
Turn 14(ish): Keika takes naga dwelling, a turn before I expect him to be able to. I agree this was the most significant mistake of the game for me (apart from the aforementioned encounter with Bilbo), not having a cherub by the dwelling to force autocombat. He already has guerrilla tactics & retreats, converting a naga on the second try. Keika, I'm curious - do you think you'd still have gone for the ziggurats without the converted naga? Would you still have attacked the naga dwelling?

Turn 14-20: Main stack completes merfolk quest, gets siren + lost mariner. Clear sunken city, get kraken.
Evangelist stack converts phantasm warrior & 2x apprentices, will prioritize lvling them to clear the sunken city before keika arrives at my throne, and get some xp for the T3s. It works but...another damned kraken pops out - with a lord of the deep I could have taken back my first cities (sold wall in throne city before abandoning it). Also completed the orc city quest & got a shock trooper. Keika's leader & hero were both high lvled and scary with mythical items - I had needed more time before my forces would be ready to face them. I'd also sent a settler out after my evangelist stack and had a couple other minor vassals. Keika's leader stacks ran away after seeing my forces holding a party on the bridge to my orc vassal. Oh well, plenty of nice sites for my troops to clear and nothing for Keika if he goes back the way he came.

Turn 21-28
After Lurtz lost his first cities, his income dropped drastically. The troops were able to make some money clearing dungeons but the situation started to look grim. The kraken & siren from the merfolk area were disbanded; after some scouting it was determined there were no other appealing sites for them to clear (considered a sunken city in Keika's backyard, but that was a bit too far away). Lurtz and his men grew desperate, many sold the clothes from their backs and resigned themselves to hard labor. The only hope then was to strike a blow at the enemy draconians from either Lurtz or the evangelist. With Keika's leader stacks running away, they were in a position to intercept Lurtz before he could strike a blow at the enemy home. Things looked more promising for the evangelist on the other side of the map, where I believed I'd find Keika’s sorcerer stack (potentially invisible and/or floating). The evangelist was able to convert some goblins to the cause, several of which quickly became volunteers in understanding our financial situation. I hoped that I’d be able to crush his sorcerer stack, but on turn 28 my scouts saw that he had plenty of monster hunter reinforcements en route. By this point it seems Keika’s monster hunters had seen my evangelist forces, so his sorcerer was also being cautious. There was no way for me to strike an effective blow - Keika won an economic victory.

Report this game as “lose” because I lost my main stack in LK early, but we agreed to restart the turn and continue the game.

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Played on medium map, normal research, PBEM 1.30

First turns were not really good for me. A lot of back and forth movements to clean spawn points, not so much gold despite many fights. At least my neighbour was not in war with me, but gave only flamer as a reward.
Leveled up my warlord leader and rogue hero to key 9 and 7 level quite early, but was able to convert only one T1 unit in several conversion attempts.
One of the hatchlings has evolved to an elder and I started to think about taking the nearby castle of the lich king.
I tried to weaken it on turn 11 with an incomplete stack, but failed horribly and lost everything.
Second attempt (after restart) was successful and I killed the rest guards on turn 12.

My scouting was not successful also - three of my scouts were killed by roaming independents all over the map and I was not able to scout anything useful including two dwellings in the middle of the map.

I wanted to split my army very early, but hesitated because I was waiting for another quest. Unfortunately there was bad terrain with swamps and mountains and the quest guard was blocked by the vassal, so I wasted two or three turns to be able to complete the quest.
But in the end this fact probably saved the game, because my secondary stacks were close to my cities and prevented my opponent's possible rush.

It was only turn 13 when I discovered the opponent's main stack very close to my cities. It was a big surprise for me, I didn’t expect him so early on the medium map at all. If he didn’t take a couple of sites I discovered by the scout before he was killed, he probably would be able to take my throne undefended.

Nevertheless in the game I stopped his stack with my secondary stacks and at the same time tried to cut off his way to retreat by my own main stack, but anyway he ran away from me by sea.

Then he made a big mistake and left his naga vassal without defenders, so I was able to fight manually, killed them without losses and most importantly I was able to convert naga slither on the second try.

After that I decided to counter attack his cities with my main stack. With newly converted naga I was able to take two phoenix ziggurats, a couple of more sites on the way and also bought a stack of units from the inn.

At the same time some of my secondary army were defending naga’s dwelling and monitoring borders trying to not miss his leader’s stack next attack attempt.

His early threat completely messed up my plans and only at this point I started exploring my part of the map more or less successfully - one path with trash units and the other with monster hunters and the second hero.

My leader’s stack was quite strong and in total there were 2.5 stacks approaching the opponent’s cities. For some reason I was quite confident thinking that my army is bigger than his secondary army. I took his empty first city and throne without any resistance and thought that game was already over, but then I scouted his stacks with converted T3 and T2 units. Many of them were elites and he had at least one swimming/floating stack.
I believe that his combined army was much stronger than mine and if I continued to play relaxed, I could lose my army and advantage.
I think he tried to set up a trap twice to capture my stacks, but luckily I scouted and avoided them.

Later on I scouted even more army with leader’s stack and in secondary stacks.
At this moment he already had no cities for 5 turns or so and I had no idea how he managed to maintain his army.
In the end I decided to pull back without battles, thinking that he can’t maintain his army forever and will disband it because of huge upkeep and without cities.

Time was on my side and finally he surrendered on turn 28.

It was very good game from angrynarwhal side and who knows how it would go if he keeps one weak cherub near naga’s dwelling, which I believe was the turning point. But of course actually I lost on turn 11 because of my mistake :p.

Knowledge score:



Military score:

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Match has been reported, please confirm!

goatassin was replaced with keika !

goatassin joined !!