Bet you were all waiting on the edge of your seat for this one!
 
I'm happy w how the game played out, purely from a playtest
standpoint.  Tho the game was far from over - at 6 players, the game had
just begun!  There is so much action with 6 players, just look at
standard.  So much could have happened yet.


 


Taking
it from the start...


 


Things
went pretty well in opening negotiations.  The original 4-way was
TRUA.  Trolls, Rogues, Undead (Jacob), Archers (Rachael).  This
lasted a long time.  As a team, we took out the Magicians and were
getting set to face off against the North Pole alliance of the CKG. 
(Centaurs, Knights, Gnomes).  This was going to be a long hard road, since
the Barbarians died out quickly, leaving CKG quite strong.  Then Rachael
got busy in RL and started missing turns, and dropped out, leaving us w a
broken team.  This is when the Faeries - originally marked for death,
became much more valueable.  I got pretty close to Mark, and together w
the Trolls, we faced off against the CKG, and eventually got some key
breakthrus and won out, defeating the Centaurs, leaving the Knights and Gnomes
stranded up in the corner, for the slow death.  (many thanks to Nick for
stepping in and putting up such a killer fight)  Thru all this, Mark and I
built up significant trust, since we had to operate in close quarters for a lot
of turns, always in prime position to stab the other.  We never did, we
stuck to our plan, and in time, eventually took out the Northern Triple.


 


In
the middle of the board, it was pretty chaotic (and lots of fun). Jacob our
original Undead player was nearly eliminated from the get-go, but Warren and I
managed to save him with a killer stab of the Magicians.  This was
risky.  I was essentially helping a bear to eat a tiger, for helping the
Trolls to take out the Magicians would jeopardize my own ability to exist on my
home continent, but since I held on to the choke points at Dargaard keep and
the upper peninsula, I took the risk.  This basically carried the 3 of us
(RFT) into the mid-game.


 


Along
the way, the Nomads went down after only a couple turns into the game, and they
were put on "random order mode" by our original GM Trout.  I
disliked this ruling cuz it didn't give the Nomads a chance to be played and
test the variant... Anyways, it worked out ok, since the random orders
didn't end up randomly against me, tho they very well could have.  This
was lucky on my part.  We finished off the Nomads.  This put me up
against the Dwarves / Matt.  Tough game here, a lot of jockeying for
position, etc.  I wanted to go past Matt and head south, but also wanted
to get into the Central Island.  When the Ogres stabbed him, it made the
decision easy.


 


Then
Jacob left, right after we saved him.  Never heard back from him, so I
wonder what happened.  Enter Suzanne and Hoffman (replacing Babak)
and the game went downhill.  What was previously a staunch ally, the new
Undead took the early stance that I should give them centers to equalize our
empires or we couldn't be allies.  That didn't really work, particularly
after I just risked my entire game to save the Undead.  All that
history lost in the change of leadership, the Undead set off on a long
campaign against me.


 


By
now, the Ogres were getting huge, having devoured most of the players on the
southern continent, methodically promising them salvation, then stabbing them
one at a time.  After a while, it got to be puzzling why players were
agreeing to work w the Ogres, just to be eaten up one after another. 
Leprechauns, Hobbits, Magicians, Samurai, etc.  They fell like dominoes to
his magical "I won't stab YOU, really".  This put him on a surge
to over 1/3 of the centers on the map, till we could finally rally everyone
against him.  In a grand plan, the Elves, Wiz's, Dwarves, etc, were all
supposed to push back on the Ogres at once, but some players balked at it, and
the disjointed leftovers were quickly eaten up.  No, of course the Elves
should not have been a pawn for survival, they should have tried to stand up
and become an empire again.  It's too bad the small guys didn't stick
together, they could have done some major damage here.  I always love when
small players give it their best in an effort to jumpstart their empire. 
Even if it doesn’t always work.


 


Then,
Warren stabbed me.  This put an end to the stop-the-leader game, as I went
suddenly from 2nd place to nearly eliminated.  This is the closest Hoffman
came to soloing, cuz I was completely giving ground on the OU front, after all
the work that went into the setup to capture the Rainbow Lake.  I fell
back in a controlled fashion, pushing hard to get the Knights out so that Mark
and I could stand back to back.  During this time, I had to trust Mark
clear into the Tilva Strait, where he could have pillaged what was left of my
empire, and he didn't.  I really owed him for that, and so I wouldn't stab
him when the Ogres wanted me to, even tho I could have gutted him many times.


 


So
there I was about to be reduced to a small power surviving on 10 dots in the
north, and Suzanne came thru for me, and turned on the Trolls.  This was
ultimately the move that I think cost Hoffman his win, cuz I wasn't down far
enough yet.  I don't know quite why, but she had the ability to take the
Julianthes and force me some big disbands, and she passed it up.  (Perhaps
the Undead hearts grew three sizes that day    I think it was cuz
the Trolls were getting big too, and would have gotten most of my dots, while
the Undead, Faeries, and myself were starting to look small as what was left of
the resistance to the big 2.  So Suzanne really saved my game, turning on
the Trolls.  I think this annoyed Warren sufficiently that she flip
flopped, that he agreed to pull off the attack in its prime - right when he was
about to reach Telmar, my last holdout / build center.


 


Then, I
was saved.


<key
glorious music>


 


Hoffman
let Warren's pullback go one more turn to see if it was a trick, and when
realizing it was real and that Warren was not going to hand him a solo, Hoffman
then had no choice but to lay into him.  So he did, w a failed stab due to
a random Pirate cut of the attack on Never Never Land.  This made
it a dud, for he needed to get the critical naval build port and failed to
do so.


 


Then
we had a long game of slowly pushing the Ogres/Undead back, RFT vs OU, with
Pirates going back and forth.  Very successful, we pushed them clear back
to the southern continent, at which point I think everyone just got
bored.  I did the math, and nothing could have stopped us from taking out
the Pirates, getting into The Maw, Thunderhead, Terabithia, overrunning the
central island, and eventually then w those losses and removals, landing on the
southern continent.  I think Hoffman saw this coming, and so he
decided it was better to take the 6-way than risk losing to an RFT, and so finally
even H voted for the draw.  Mark wanted out a few turns ago, but as long
as Warren was anxious to play on then so was I, so when Warren eventually said
he could take it or leave it, so did I too.


 


Penner
and Suzanne, no doubt, were right to go for the DIAS, cuz that's the best they
could get.  No surprise here that they were totally pro-Draw.  Any
lesser draw would surely not include them.  But RFTO could have done
better -- to get at worst, an RFTO.  Don't see why this wasn't
enacted.  A 4-way is quite good, a 6-way draw in Dip games is pretty blah. 
Still out of 19 players, and nearly eliminated, I'm happy to be alive and part
of it.


 


For
those interested, I voted yes sometimes, no other times.  It was
about 50/50.  I voted yes the times I copied Mark. 
Therefore somoene else was voted down some of the draws, or they would have
passed long ago.  I figure it was Hoffman, as he said, he was trying
anything to get me and Mark to split up, and he was indeed trying this quite
regularly, asking me to stab the Faeries even after he’d complain about
the draw results.


 


As
for the test of the variant, it was quite fun to play on my own map.  It
was a blast.  Even better that I got to ride the wave of highs and lows,
and get a good feel for it.  It did affirm one of the design goals, that
no power be able to be indestructible like they can in Standard - i.e. no
stalemate lines.  Even tho the Ogres looked tough to invade, there are
only 32 centers between the southern continent and the underworld, which is not
enough to hold a perfect line.  Thus I would like to have played it out a
bit further, to possibly an RFT or RFO 3-way, or even an RFTO 4-way.
 
Many
thanks to Trout for offering to run it so I could try it out myself, and to
Garry for picking up the second half!  If anyone else wants to run such a challenging
game, I’ll be the first to join. 


 


Good
game all,


Guildmaster Mike



 


Leader of the Immensely Secret Rogue Clans of the Tri-Continental
Haven world and its subsidiaries.


Now, on the web, at www.supportequalityforrogues.com


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