DL Small World (Round 8: Soppy)

[Carthrat]

Huh. I'll.. retake this again, then. so bad

2 Gypsies + Catapult on 45
3 on 46
2 on 40
2 on 47
1 on 39 - (not final conquest anymore!)

Redeployment: 1+Catapult on 45, 2 on 46, 40, 47, and 39.

[AndrewRogue]

One short still >_>

Anyhow, I'm gonna just decline.

[AndrewRogue]

Tenatively placing the one extra Amazon on 47.



Race Class Combinations (Top = Top of the stack/unavailable, Bottom = First race in line)

Heroic Ghouls (Top of the Stack)
Hordes Of Ratmen (0 Bonus Coins)
Fort Wizards (0 Bonus Coins)
Underworld Priestesses (0 Bonus Coins)
Hill Pixes (0 Bonus Coins)
Imperial Leprechauns (1 Bonus Coins)

Turn Order
1. Captain K (Active: Diplomatic Kobolds, Decline: Barricading Trolls)
2. Carthrat (Active: Catapult Gypsies; Decline: Dragonmaster Amazons)
3. Andrew (Decline: Bivouaking Pygmies)
4. Soppy (Active: Were Barbarians, Decline: Cursed Elves)
5. Alex (Active: Alchemist Hobbits, Active: Mercenary Goblins)

[Hunter Sopko]

Going into decline

[Ranmilia]

Pick up the five spare Hobbitses.
Conquer 14 using 3 Chobits.
Attempt to conquer 10, using the last two halfzerglings.

[12:34] <Ranmilia>  foobar2000 The Final Countdown - Europe - n/a
[12:35] <Meeple_Gorath> er...
[12:35] <Ranmilia> It's the FINAL CONQUEST!!!!! for space 10
[12:35] <Meeple_Gorath> it slams through Time Leap
[12:35] <Ranmilia> d6
[12:35] * Hatbot --> "Ranmilia rolls d6 and gets 3." [d6=3]
[12:35] <Meeple_Gorath> not...entirely, Magic
[12:35] <Meeple_Gorath> that's clearly an AI thing
[12:35] <Ranmilia> YEAAAAHHH


Redeploy such that the net turn effect is "move one hobbit from 15 into 14 and one from 6 into 10"

[Captain K.]

*shakes fist angrily at Hatbot*

Bleah, this is going to cost me 3 coins, but I ain't letting Andrew win at his own game:

Three kobolds each to 28, 29, 35, 36, 43.

Attempting final conquest at 44 with one token.  (which may not be legal anyway for kobolds, wasn't clearly defined in rules)

<+TrancellTouko> Hello
* SageAcrin sets mode: +v Captain_K
<+Captain_K> d6 for let's screw Andrew (need a 2 or 3)
* %Hatbot --> "Captain_K rolls d6 for let's screw Andrew (need a 2 or 3) and gets 1." [d6=1]
<+Captain_K> Bleah, Andrew lives.
<+TrancellTouko> =3

Legality is moot, it fails.  Drop the extra kobold on 29.  Diplomacy with Carthrat.

Enjoy your final turn guys; I am unaffected by your petty squabbles!

[Carthrat]

Abandoning everything.

2 Gypsies + Catapult on 27.
2 on 33.
1 on 32.
2 on 41.
2 on 31.
1 on 34; final conquest!

[12:37] <+Madeline> roll 1d6 final conquest 1 on 34!!1
[12:37] * +Hatbot --> "Madeline rolls 1d6 final conquest 1 on 34!!1 and gets 6." [1d6=6]
[12:37] <+Madeline> ff

Redeploy 1 on 27, 3 on 31, 2 on 33, 32, and 41.

[Hunter Sopko]

Waiting on a map update

[AndrewRogue]

Pay 1 to take Hill Pixies.
-2 Pixies to 12, 13, 17, 18, 20 and 24 (Scoring three hills).
-3 Pixies to 9 (Scoring one hill).

Redeploy by removing all but one pixie on each location.

[AndrewRogue]

Race Class Combinations (Top = Top of the stack/unavailable, Bottom = First race in line)

Irrelevant
Heroic Ghouls (0 Bonus Coins
Hordes Of Ratmen (0 Bonus Coins)
Fort Wizards (0 Bonus Coins)
Underworld Priestesses (0 Bonus Coins)
Imperial Leprechauns (2 Bonus Coins)

Turn Order
1. Captain K (Active: Diplomatic Kobolds, Decline: Barricading Trolls)
2. Carthrat (Active: Catapult Gypsies; Decline: Dragonmaster Amazons)
3. Andrew (Active: Hill Pixies, Decline: Bivouaking Pygmies)
4. Soppy (Active: Were Barbarians, Decline: Cursed Elves)
5. Alex (Active: Alchemist Hobbits, Active: Mercenary Goblins)

[Hunter Sopko]

Taking Imperial Leprechauns.

Using 2 to take 45
Using 3 to take 44 and 38
Using 2 to take 39

Take that Andrew

[Ranmilia]

[00:51] <Ranmilia> well, last turn in small world.
[00:51] <LisaSilverman> To be fair, I bet most writers facepalm at their writing 10+ years later.
[00:51] <SageAcrin> Indeed.
[00:51] <NotMiki> I hope so.
[00:51] <Djinn> What's the reason why we're sure that WAs is dead, though?
[00:51] <Djinn> No one really answered that
[00:51] <Ranmilia> d6 to take area 9?
[00:51] * Hatbot --> "Ranmilia rolls d6 to take area 9? and gets 6." [d6=6]
[00:51] <Ranmilia> fail.

Attempt to last conquest 9 with my two spare hobbits, fail, done.  Annnd that's the game!

[Captain K.]

Good game.  I have my count at 47 coins.

Neat little game.  I think the abandoning mechanic is a bit too powerful.  Sure you lose the lands already conquered, but in return you can hit pretty much any square on the board.  Would be interested in trying a variation where this is restricted somewhat.  Maybe you can abandon all but one territory.  That would at least commit you to one side of the board.

And going first sucks in this game. 

[Hunter Sopko]

It's not too bad when you plan for it. One of the things I did this game was try to develop defensive strategies to counter stuff like that. The thin line of Barbs going across the board was utterly fantastic at achieving that, for instance. Some races, like Gypsies, depend on that mechanic as part of their basic playstyle too.

I know the mechanic seems illogical, but it's a game. You have to adapt your strategies to the game, not what logic dictates.

Also, my count is 63.

[Ranmilia]

46-ish here.  Pretty sure Soppy or Rat won.

Didn't know that you could just pick up everything and leave until Andrew did it, and didn't understand the scoring until later either, thereby wasting all my early game.  Also not really sure about the setup.  Once understood, it encourages mainly what we saw at the end: everyone grabs their own niche and more or less camps out. 

People lucky enough to get powerful race/class combos can't really be attacked without screwing over your own coin gain, so... yeah.  Cap for example could have just sat on his Barricading Trolls all game for an untouchable guaranteed 7/turn income.  (I'm really surprised he didn't, actually.  Also kind of surprised no one went for the hordes of ratmen on the last turn, though I'd have to math them out)

Though now that I think more about it, the above seem more and more like a result of the board being too big for the number of players/turns.  Nobody was ever really cramped for space, there were vast swaths of empty land all the time and not enough tokens to take them.

[Captain K.]

I considered camping with the trolls!  But since I literally had no chance of winning after turn 1 with my epic fail start, I planned on helping Soppy win instead.  So I needed something with some offense.  And then Soppy rejected my kind offer of assistance, so there.  I mean, really, who wouldn't trust this face?  *innocent look*

I'm surprised so many people skipped Diplomat Kobolds.  Sure, they're a bit self-limiting (max of 8 territories captured, which I actually could have hit on the last turn), but Diplomat is a damned good power in this game.

[AndrewRogue]

54. The problem with camping is, of course, that 7-8 point average gains just aren't that good. 5 player games do trend a little more towards randomness, but honestly, the endgame kind of felt like the result of the really rough starting set (Cursed Elves being at the bottom was... a thing, the Pillaging Homunculi were honestly kind of bad where they were sitting too). Nobody really had a strong race to decline on initially, except Cappy, who had too strong a race and thus got bombed out!

The extra cost to force people off spaces is mitigated to degrees by the fact that it can force them into some painfully bad positions (see: me being forced to decline out with nothing on board). One of the bigger tricks is to manage to stick a decline at some point in the game to turn a 6+ point gain into something far larger. Get a decent decline going inland and shield the declined race and you can likely start pulling in some extra points.

[Carthrat]

59 here. Curses, I thought I was onto something with the gypsies- that seems like a nutty power to get.

The thing is that screwing one guy over by attacking him in a large game is rarely a winning prospect for you, since you need points yourself to win and it's always costlier to attack another player. It's only certain race combinations that let it work.

[Hunter Sopko]

Woo! Winner is me.

[Ranmilia]

7-8 coins per turn isn't good?  I dunno, 8/turn income would have won this game and only two players ended above 7/turn.

[Hunter Sopko]

I think Andy is talking about the average game. I remember in our 4-player game that I ended up with 70 or 80 points or so. Less people grabbing your declined lands there. People were actually overaggressive this game in terms of wiping out declined lands, which is fine.

But Alex is right, Andy. 7-8 per turn is good, especially for this game. What it really takes is for the player, roughly midway through the game, to take stock of how the game is going and determine what the average has been and what he'll need to average to win from that point on. Keeping some sort of meta-number in mind helps to start but can cloud judgement during a game.