Dawnstrike - JURRI WINS

[PashaDawg]

Turn 40 is out.

Deadline is Thursday.

[Ygorl]

O ye besotted druids! How much must I weaken you before you leave the Celestial lands?

[Teraswaerto]

Wait, what? Who changed Ghost Riders to need Death 6, and why didn't anyone tell me?

I feel almost as stupid as that one time I didn't start building a (1400 gold, 6 turns to build) castle on my (1300 population) VP province until it was too late.

Cumulative VPs, oh how I hate thee.

[Jurri]

Haha, not to worry, my dear friend the lizard. As it turns out, the alliance of the Giants and their pink-flagged masters have failed in breaching the walls of even a single one of my VPs. So, the result would have been the same even if I had not claimed one of your VPs mine... As it stands, I'll even have a surplus of points.

The next and final scoring is this following turn, unless I'm mistaken, so these will be the last sets of orders... It's kind of anticlimactic that we know the result with certainty a turn beforehand (or 36 turns, like Meglobob ), but that is an artifact of the fort-system.

[Baalz]

Boy, that was a lot of thunderstrikes! GG, I'll crush you next time!

[Meglobob]

Ah! Won my bet, knew Jurri would win (once I finally figured out culmative VP's that is), congratulations to Jurri on a masterful game and thanks to Pasha for his professional hosting.

I liked playing Atlantis, once I had got used to it, my first ever water nation. Things do seem to move slower when your a water nation than a land nation.

I blame my total failure mainly on Oceania, who was ruthless in his use of those knights of the deep early in the game. If I had started where R'lyeh was I would have been destroyed in exactly the same way Pasha was, probably earlier. Took me 23 massed mages with untold gems plus nearly 200 troops and alot of research to eventually defeat Oceania's army.

Also having Teraswaerto and Solo as neighbours (both good players) blunted my expansion on land to anything beyond 2 measly provinces.

Anyway enough excuses, good game everybody!

[solo]

I agree, well done Jurri!

This is the first time for me playing for cumulative VP, too, and was a learning experience as well. It was lot of fun getting to meet several players I have never played against before.

Many thanks to Pasha for an excellent job hosting the game. With so many players to keep happy, this is an unenviable chore, but should he be willing to organize another VP game similar to this one, please count me in.

[Teraswaerto]

Congratulations and thanks from me also, to Jurri and Pasha.

I had my glorious plan of overtaking the VP race with superior research after who ever tried to grab too many VPs too early was taken down by, well, everyone. Somehow it didn't quite pan out. After seeing Jurri's skill firsthand it's easy to see why.

[Baalz]

Yeah, I think everybody underestimated how soon we had to act against the leader for cumulative VPs, heck by the time I stepped in to sub it was almost too late already. Jurri employed some very effective stalling tactics, but I like to think I'd have been able to take possibly two of the VPs in one or two more turns. Well, at least I'd breach the walls and run in with half a dozen lighting resistant decked out thugs...can't really guess if that'd take out the wiley Jurri though. Also in the "if I only had a few more turns" category was my failed attempt to grab Yomi's VP...that battle would have gone quite differently if I could have got my 100% fire resistant pretender (cyclops) out there in time who was scripted to cast curse of stones. For those of you who didn't see that, I had about 20 falling fires per turn dropped on my neifel giants (a huge amount of those half-snake mages), as they got jammed in the castle gate by summer lions. Ah well, in the end I snatched no VPs. Well played game all around.

[Mind Elemental]

Baalz said:
Yeah, I think everybody underestimated how soon we had to act against the leader for cumulative VPs, heck by the time I stepped in to sub it was almost too late already. Jurri employed some very effective stalling tactics, but I like to think I'd have been able to take possibly two of the VPs in one or two more turns. Well, at least I'd breach the walls and run in with half a dozen lighting resistant decked out thugs...can't really guess if that'd take out the wiley Jurri though. Also in the "if I only had a few more turns" category was my failed attempt to grab Yomi's VP...that battle would have gone quite differently if I could have got my 100% fire resistant pretender (cyclops) out there in time who was scripted to cast curse of stones. For those of you who didn't see that, I had about 20 falling fires per turn dropped on my neifel giants (a huge amount of those half-snake mages), as they got jammed in the castle gate by summer lions. Ah well, in the end I snatched no VPs. Well played game all around.

The other problem with cumulative VPs - or VPs of any kind - on a large map is that a lot of people will just be too far away to do anything about the leader. I was in that boat.

I'm sure Jurri thanks you for the attempt! Seriously, though, why the diversion of effort at this moment? Were you that sure that you'd be able to take down Jurri, making the question of who owned my VP non-moot?

And don't forget, even if you neutralised my hannya with fatigue, you'd have had to deal with five fully equipped, buffed, soul vortexing dai-oni.

I'd like to thank all of you for the game, and Pasha for hosting! Baalz, you were a great customer and opponent, and I salute you. YC, if you're still around, ditto - and thanks for being a gracious loser!

ETA - Baalz, if you read this before you send in your turn, could you send your pretender to Province 78? I wanna see who'd win in this battle of the titans!