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.

Caves of the Basilisk, Drakes versus MysteryExclamation's Northerners

http://www.4shared.com/file/2Tx2BoJG/2p_-_Basilisk_ME_Fixed.html

So a few nights back, I was playing truth or dare with the folks on vent. Since Truths are easy, I went for Dares. Kallaster dared me to... well, let's just look at the chat.

What can you draw from this? Well, I had a series of objectives. Lose the game, and make it look like it was fair. At the same time, show in the game that I could have won, but threw it.

11/16 22:48:22 Kallaster: I dare you to play a game of Wesnoth with someone and purposefully lose.

11/16 22:48:31 Kallaster: *evil*

11/16 22:48:35 Yineth: screenshots or it didn't happen

11/16 22:48:40 Nil Athelion: Screenshots?

11/16 22:48:44 Kallaster: mmhmm

11/16 22:48:44 Nil Athelion: I can give you a bloody replay.

11/16 22:48:45 Kanhef: (This is why legalese is so convoluted, to avoid ambiguous interpretation)

11/16 22:48:47 Kallaster: :D

11/16 22:48:54 Nil Athelion: Or computer-cam a replay.

11/16 22:48:54 Kallaster: yes, replay

11/16 22:49:03 Nil Athelion: With commentary.

11/16 22:49:09 Yineth: < 3

11/16 22:49:29 Nil Athelion: Do you want me to make the other person think that I am playing hard, or do you want it to be obvious that I am throwing the game?

11/16 22:49:40 Yineth: playing hard :3

11/16 22:49:44 'Nil Athelion' has left the chat.

11/16 22:49:48 Yineth: >.>

11/16 22:50:05 Nil Athelion: Kall, what is your opinion.

11/16 22:50:07 Nil Athelion: ?

11/16 22:50:09 'Yineth' has left the chat.

11/16 22:50:21 Yineth: Bye bye Dopples

11/16 22:50:54 Nil Athelion: (Also do you want me to lose by leaving my leader open to assassination, or by over-all defeat?)

11/16 22:51:12 Nil Athelion: (Actually, it would have to be over-all.)

11/16 22:51:25 Nil Athelion: (None of the players I play against are really good at leader-ganking.)

11/16 22:51:30 Nil Athelion: (It's sort of my specialty.)

11/16 22:51:35 Nil Athelion: Okay.

I decided that I shouldn't make tactical mistakes, but rather sweeping strategic mistakes.

Mistake 1: Recruiting all pierce-vulnerable drakes, and only Fighters and a Burner.

Mistake 2: Doing a very ill-advised attack through the middle, where the great mobility of Fighters is negated.

Un-mistake 1: MysteryExclamation is playing Northerners, who have very little pierce.

Un-mistake 2: I send a fighter around the side - she doesn't notice, and he grabs all the villages.

Un-mistake 3: I slaughter her attack on the side.

Mistake 4: After slaughtering her attack on one side, I ignore the other side, save for the village-grabber (who I send to an early death).

By the time all the drakes are dead, I'm making 24 gold a turn... so I'm really winning. Her level 2 turns what should have been me scaring her off into... well, she loses her water-mobile level 2. I fight back a bit, and wind up with three level 2s, all saurians.

Mistake 3: So I decide not to recruit units until my current attacking force is done. Should put a damper on things - plus I have oodles of gold by this point.

Un-mistake 4: I seem to be winning. I crush the center, and dominate one of the sides.

Mistake 4: I don't take villages. It would have been seriously easy just to claim all the villages and let her run out of units, even against my guys.

Mistake 5: I don't kill her leader, despite the many opprotunities to do so from my level-2 magic-users. And everyone else, really.

Un-mistake 5: I still seem to be winning - even with her recruiting a few people, I still have most of the villages, and she's too busy to take them back.

...time to get tactical - I pit my magic-users on bad terrain against a high-HP unit in a village. Looks like he's going to die anyway, but I hold back my nearly-level-2 Clasher on the side, and give her enough time to kill them, leveling up some of her units. Also do things light attacking with low-health level 2 guy, using pierce-vunerable drakes against pierce-happy Goblin spearmen, etc. I even manage to bother up the battle in the west.

Un-mistake 6: She sees my Clasher. Now I have to attack with it, or everything looks silly. He has a chance to kill her leader outright. Awkward. Fortunately he fails, and "merely" levels up. I attack her leader again (she has more health now), and let her forces surround and kill my level 2 (rather than running off to a village and getting support.

And now it's just a matter of making it look real.

Mistake 6: I have 190 or so gold. I buy only six saurians with it. That's going to be my excuse for having no waves of re-enforcements - I was building up Saurians with all my money. Or something.

Mistake 7: I split my unnecessarily meager forces between two fronts, rather than using their skirmishing and range to concentrate power and kill things.

Mistake 8: I get my leader trapped out on the front-line (in the cave) so he doesn't look stupid not recruiting anything.

...and then I lose! Simple as pie! Kinda!

Are you happy now, Kallaster?

Den of Onis, Loyalists versus MysteryExclamation's Drakes

http://www.4shared.com/file/Ba5v6PPy/2p_-_Den_of_Onis_replay.html

Okay, this battle went less than well for me, and I'm not exactly sure where I went wrong. No huge strategic flaws, though I probably should have recruited more Bowmen. I don't know, though. I'm never comfortable with having the same alignment as my enemy, even though that happens a third of the time. (Or a sixth, actually, since I prefer not to play mirrors, as I don't get to enjoy the differences between the races when that happens.)

I've been trying to get into the habit of using more fencers, so I recruited one instead of cavalry this game. Figured it was better in closer quarters. However, I still don't understand how to use them. I did fine that the skirmish was really amusing in that I could walk past people to corner them, as I did with the glider. I should keep note of being able to use them for mobile ZOC. The main thing I hear is for them to slip behind lines and finish off wounded units, then be able to slip back. This seems dubious to me. Also wouldn't work against drakes (wounded saurians, maybe). Other things I have been told include using it for harassing villages. I was going to do that, but then I ran into the glider, and hunted it instead.

Spearmen do, of course, work wonders against drakes, particularly fighters. However, I felt I had to keep them on the offensive, to avoid Burners coming in, and attacking them despite their little spear attack. I probably should have figured out ways to keep them on good terrain, though.

I am a fan of gathering experience on my units. However, this is hard against Drakes, as each Drake is built like a tank, and resists things that are not Pierce or Arcane. Except for Clashers, which resist things that are not Arcane. At least they don't dodge well?

I recruited a mage to burn out skirmishers. Magic works around their high defense, and they are a little bit weak to it to boot. However, I lost my mage (20 gold!) to some funky business. If I had more troops, I could have protected it.

In the end, I lost to economy problems. I did manage to finish off ME's wave, but there were Clashers coming up the Den, and all I had was a Red Mage (who deals fire damage, which is wholly ineffective against drakes) and a heavily wounded Spearman, who was three experience away from leveling up, due to all his failed attacks against that level 2. Seriously, he should not have missed 6 attacks in a row. That's just sad.

In other news, Cavalry is not that great against Drakes. I tend to use cavalry against Northerners, both in Horseman and Cavalry variants because they are resistant to blade, and weak to pierce, something that the Northies only can deal from two fragile units. In the Drake's case, the Drakes themselves are resistant to blade, and the expensive horseman is too much at risk from getting skewered. The Drake Clasher has the third most powerful melee attack in the game (After the Horseman's charge, and Wose) and during the day can deal a full 36 damage to a Horseman. Worse (in my opinion) are the Saurian Skirmishers, who can use their titular skirmisher to simply wander behind lines and use their pierce attack to skewer the hapless Horseman. Horsemen get wounded. They charge, their opponent deals double damage... even an Bowman's 4-2 attack turns into a 8-2 attack, the same as, say, a fencer (Well, actually a little different, but ignore that). Horsemen get wounded a lot. While doubling both your attack and your enemy's attack pays dividends whenever you have more attack power than them, it's still going to hurt you, and then there's always going to be a Skirmisher driving a spear up your horse.

At the end, I felt my only option was to gamble on level up my units. I had lost so many villages that I couldn't recruit much at all, and if I just played normally ME would grind me into dust, slowly but surely. However, a streak of bad luck kept me from getting the Pikeman I was dreaming of...

And so I wound up all losing and stuff. Sad cookies. (And the internet died and killed the game, but I don't think there was much chance of me winning then.)