Sulla's Ruins, Knalgans versus MysteryExclamation's Northerners

And so it arrived. Another match of me trying to beat her Northerners with my Knalgans. Same as when I lost...

I started this match with a footpad and a gryphon over in my starting keep, then immediately moved east to recruit a bunch of dwarves on the eastern top keep. I then sent them hurdling down the side, and eventually moved my leader to the midway keep on the east side.

Meanwhile, my gryphon and my footpad wandered around grabbing villages and hitting targets of opportunity.

In the east, I holed up on hills and mountains, and ME led a relatively ineffectual assault against my position. My retaliation slaughtered her attack force as it became day, and I moved down a bit, and took up positions a bit further. Dwarf-creep. It was my new tactic against Northies.

On the other side, my gryphon and footpad did will until they ran into an archer and an assassin, who proceeded to kill the footpad. My gryphon ran south, hoping to draw them away from my villages, but they went north. By then, I sent a Ulfserker across, and he arrived just time time to stall their advance. They could out-see him (Or at least the assassin could), so they didn't get mauled, but they weren't willing to go where he could attack. They waited until she sent up a naga, and I sent another unit or two to support. I eventually got her naga in a land-battle, when she took a village with it, and then I was able to drive her away on that side.

On the other side, we fought hard and... bloodily. For the northerners. They couldn't take my hills and mountains, and I would attack at the end of night/start of day. I took a few more losses (three by the end of the game, I recall), and made her pay dearly for every little corpse.

As the battle wore on, I gathered experience and troops, and my stray gryphon grabbed villages.

Soon... victory was mine.

Howling Ghost Badlands, Knalgans versus MysteryExclamation's Rebels

Howling Ghost Badlands is an odd map in that it's basically diamond-shaped from the directions you can start in and, what's more, it actually matters. There's stuff (villages) in those corners, so you ought to fight over them. Also fake villages and villages that are hard to see. What's with that, anyway?

In any even, I started with a good deal of outlaws and other things that move fast, and took over my side of the map quickly. I advanced my leader at the same time, and then grabbed a bunch of dwaves when I got to a forward keep.

I then pressed the attack via dwarves on the west, and used dual footpads on the eastern front to trap and attack an elf. I later followed up with a dwarf. Early on I took a village, and I managed to hold onto the 1 village advantage the whole game (thus I had about 133.33% more villages than my foe my 8 villages to her 6 villages).

I got some good ulf-usage in the cramped quarters of the western battlefield (or against elves in general, really...), but overall the steadfast power of the dwarves triumphed over the pansy elves and their frail human allies. Meanwhile, the eastern front went alright, and I generally distracted people there until her leader got involved. 70% dodge doesn't work against marksmanship. Oh well. Instead, I fled and grabbed villages instead, which worked out pretty well for me.

I eventually crushed her forces on the east, and then attacked forward, took her semi-forward keep, and recruited three ulfserkers with all the money I was getting.

Urfserker > Elvish Marksman

I won.

Sablestone Delta, Loyalists versus MysteryExclamation's Drakes

I was second-player this time around, and I was happy to be able to jump forward and get to the forward keep on the first turn. Distributed my recruits between there and village-grabbers in the original keep.

ME was playing drakes, and with more drakes than Saurians. I went as fast as possible, and during the last part of the day, I lunged deep into enemy territory to take out a Saurian Augur on the first turn. Indeed, I played very, very aggressively this whole game.

A few thoughts on the match-up:

With standard recruiting patterns, the loyalists have the advantage in damage and health because of the abundance of piercing damage, etc. Drakes can use saurians against piercing folks, but they fall easily to normal guys in the loyalist army (note that they are basically slightly-better/more-expensive fencers with no HP). The other tactics they can use involves being careful about when and where to place attacks, hitting the piercing units with Burners' ranged attacks, and outright killing them before the can retaliate. There are many tactics, but the limiting factor is that they all involve the drake player choosing his or her battles.

I didn't want to let MysteryExclamation choose her battles. Instead I pushed forward hard and made the biggest bloodbath I could. Bowmen shot Clashers, Spearmen stabbed everything, and calvary ran around finishing things off. When the dust settled, I held the position, and had gotten a Spearman to become a Pikeman, which is golden against drakes. Of course, by then I had killed about twice as many drakes as I had lost units, so the game was pretty much up by then.

Back to winning!

Freelands, Rebels versus Tonepoet's Northerners

This battle was against Tonepoet, who is overall better than me. He also plays quite differently than Christy - Christy prefers to fight in solid battles, while Tonepoet tends to move around a whole lot, grabbing villages.

I grabbed all my villages pretty quickly, then advanced south two fighters and an archer in the middle, and a shaman and a scout on the west. As I found, he had recruited fairly heavily into wolf-riders and assassins and trolls, with a conspicious lack of grunts. Oh well.

He killed my scout and my shaman, who, following standard defensive doctrine, clung to the defenses near the mountains. They were pinned down, and eventually died to terrain-ignoring assassins, etc. He also swept by with his wolf riders, and seized a bunch of my villages, taking about four of them. I recruited units to attack his wolf riders, and moved my other forces over to deal with the threat. Eventually I got them all, but by then he had gotten a good deal of money, and swept up the other side with wolf-riders and assassins. I tried to go home, but he sat on my keep with wolf-riders, and 70+ gold burned a hole in my pocket.

Eventually I was able to drive off his wolf-riders and recruit, and soon things were going much better. Over the course of the game, I had killed many more units of his than he had killed of mine, which almost made up for his economic advantage. I fanned out from my keep with my units, killing a few of his, and managing to outnumber him in that part of the field. Things were looking up - I might pull even! However, I was a bit careless with my leader, and he got killed by archers and wolf-riders and a few other things. So I lost.

Very annoying, but quite deserved. If you don't keep your leader safe, then that's a big risk you are taking. Still very annoying.

Really need to learn to deal with mobility better. More units spread out to block, etc. Less of my tight formations, etc.

Many more games to go.

Weldyn Channel, Knalgans versus MysteryExclamation's Northerners

So... this went badly. Or well, but in the wrong spots.

I recruited dwarves and outlaws. Sent the outlaws down one side, and the dwarves down the other. Turns out that I'm fighting Northerners.

The dwarves do well, but the outlaws get overwhelmed and retreat, then die. Note that I played a bit of mindgames here to convince ME that assassins were a bad idea - they are, in fact, a vital tool to get dwarves out of mountains. My leader is off dicking around somewhere.

ME gets all the villages on the western side, starts to make lots of money. Recruits lots of units. I get holed up in my castle. I get my leader back, and he recruits lots of units... all of whom are stuck at the same bottleneck that ME's troops are suck in. I can't fight my way out, and as time goes on, her controlling most of the villages lets her buy tremendous amounts of units, while I can buy very few.

This tells, and I die horribly to Nagas assassinating my leader slightly before I would have died horrible to northerners overwhelming my forces.

SIGH.

Very embarrassing. I resolved to get better at the Knalgan vs Northerner matchup. Also on Weldyn channel - if there were one front, not two, I would have done a bit better - as it was, she played on my dwarves slow foot-speed, and I couldn't use them to support my outlaws. Don't worry, faithful readers - I won this matchup the next time we clashed.

Hamlets, Northerners versus MysteryExclamation's Loyalists

Northerners!

I had been hearing about how to play Northerners for a while, and a lot of buzz on the forum seems to indicate that having more grunts and other cheap units was the way to go. Specialty units were for specialty circumstances. I resolved to use more grunts.

I also started recruiting with a keen eye as to how to get the most villages the quickest. As was described to me on the forum, if buying one unit over another allows you to get to a village a turn earlier, you make +2 (or more, if upkeep is an issue), which can be thought of like 2 gold discount on the unit. Extra kudos if you place your units right so that they can get extra villages without buying units that need more move points to do so (I am, as always, bad at scouting, as can be seen in this map).

Anyway, in Hamlets I prefer to get the two villages behind and to the side of my keep with my leader. They are pretty out of my way, and it gives my leader something to do between buying units and getting sufficient villages. Actually, in this case, I went back and bought more units first, because Northerners are so damn cheap.

When we clashed, night was starting, so I pressed the attack with grunts and trolls (and an assassin) on the west, and... well, I hadn't been expecting to fight on the eastern side, but I managed to knife the fencer pretty well. If they were going to fight during the night, I was going to make the most of their nerfed damage, etc. Unfortunately, against 60% defense my naga only hit twice, which is above average, but not enough to kill the fencer I was attacking.

In response, Christy killed my Assassin, and my attack on that side crumpled. On the other side, I failed to kill a mage, but was able to finish off a merman fighter. Unfortunately, most of her units were on pretty darn good terrain, so there wasn't a whole lot I could do right away. Her counterattack put up some fresh targets.

In the meantime, I grabbed her middle swampy village. I've come to realize that with the bucket-load of HP and decent dodge, northerners on a village are pretty hard to dislodge - I was hoping to hang onto that position and get more gold that way.

I tried some mroe to finish off the mage, but missed all four times. Very disappointing. Meanwhile, I used my assassin against the archer on the mountain and moved my troll (fearless, all that) onto the hills next to my grunt on the village. Trolls aren't bad during the day, as the regeneration stays the same, and they are often fearless anyway. Which is odd, but I guess it just goes to show you can't have any expectations of what trolls are like.

So my right side was collapsing, and my left side had sort of collapsed. Christy hadn't pressed the attack during the night there, though I only had one unit, instead retreating to protect her wounded. I reinforced the position.

Holding the village didn't work out for me with the grunt, though he did good damage to his foes before dying. I had an assassin in range, and used that to reinforce, and put my troll on the... village? I led the reinforced western front to help the troll and assassin. Meanwhile, I fell back on the other side completely - daytime Loyalists are very powerful.

As I moved my units forward (and killed a loyalist with rebel tactics), I noticed ME attacking my my right with a bowman and a mage - no melee units to defend them. This made me happy, and I stationed two grunts, a troll, and my leader to intercept and ambush them. She attacked the grunt on the mountain with her magic, but then had to put her archer on bad terrain to try to finish the grunt off. I killed the mage with two grunts (as should be the case), and cornered her archer with a troll. Also sent up a grunt there, and retreated my assassin that way.

In hindsight I realize that by this point, everyone who had participated in my daytime assault against the loyalists had died, save for the archers. Turns out that attacking a lawful faction with a chaotic one during the day is just as bad as it sounds. Losses/kills by this point were 7/4, or 92/65 gold.

On the other hand, her response to her troubled bowman was... another bowman? More blood for the bloodgod, I guess. Meanwhile, I leveled up an intelligent Orcish Archer. The other orcish archer died, and I resolved to make the most of my level 2, who was too cornered for me to bother running (basically, I couldn't get him back to my own lines, and if he ran away, he would simply help the Loyalist nighttime retreat).

The crossbowman did wonderfully, counterattacking with his 4-3 (5-3, nighttime) attack all over the place, and managing to somehow give as good as he got. He also set up all my other units to attack the units he weakened.

When the smoke cleared, ME had gotten a fish leveled up, I had lost my crossbowman, and I had swooped in and killed 4 of her guys. It was a pretty good deal, really. I then trapped her fish, and took it down, while I distracted the rest of her guys with a troll and a grunt.

Note that one of Mystery Exclamation's bigger flaws is bad management of level 2s. A level 2 is not an army by itself. They need support to survive. My Orcish Crossbowman died because he was alone, but while didn't kill a single unit himself, I was able to send in reinforcements to reap all four of the wounded. ME's fish didn't even do that, attacking a unit who was out of the way, and then getting surrounded and dying. I leveled up a grunt by killing it.

I then swept across the map. ME rallied for a brief while, but while she killed my second nearly-leveled-up grunt, I leveled up a troll anyway, with a lucky hit against a fleeing fencer. In a few turns I had most of the villages, and a massive army killing each unit sent at it. I won in short order, having recruited nearly twenty grunts in the game.

(ME's worse flaw: she often sends insufficient reinforcements to a losing front, and then they still aren't enough for the losing front, so the front is still losing while she sends more insufficient reinforcements. The proper response is to run away from the front, and get back to the reinforcements - not fight unless you have a decent number of units, all that. I think this is because she was raised on the neutral elves, who don't always run away during opponent's ToD. I was raised on DA/Skel Undead, who are immensely fragile on the defensive, and absolutely must run away during bad ToD.)