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

 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.

 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.

 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

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?