MP: Rand-dom Dawn (pbem)

[DonCorazon]

The Sad Saga of Sauro

I had never played Sauro before this game and had only played a couple times in the EA so I’d certainly do things differently knowing what I know now.

My original goal was to rush Atlantis with my Gorgon and some UW gear, thinking they would be easy targets. I got diverted though when my Gorgon, the only E mage in my nation, could not find a single E income site or any E mages, and started sweating what a game might look like w/o Dwarven Hammers. So I kept looking for E sites instead of plunging into the water with her and when my rapid expansion landed close to the gates of Agartha, I figured their Earth income made for a worthy diversion rather than muddle in the murky depths of Atlantis.

Agartha was a soft juicy target for my pointy venom coated arrows, but unfortunately, Atlantis, who would be my doom this game, had arrived their first. I hadn’t spent much time looking at Atlantis – mentally I had them bucketed with their MA brethren which I had heard were worthless. So it was to my chagrin when I saw they had these killer recruitable SCs. Regenerating, revinvigorating, not undead, with ultra high protection, high MR, etc – they sliced through my guys like butter.

None of my units had the HP to go head to head with these beasts and they dominated and demoralized me. Only once was I able to beat a few of them with some Duskdagger wielding Banes, but my foe quickly switched gear to anti-undead Scourges and the Bane forces were neutralized.

I went back and forth with Atlantis raiding my lands - his guys had winged boots and he had some Astral mages shrouding them out. I tried to keep the mercenary Air mage out of his hands but he still seemed to have them well kitted. My resources were sapped away, along with my morale as I watched the border with Ermor grow fortified.

I had moved many of my main forces to a fort west of my capital, where I had the chalice to keep my tart factory away from foreign eye. When Atlantis landed on my shores I did not expect him to bee-line for my capital (for some reason I don’t recall now why, I thought QM was playing Atlantis, and in my experience he normally probes first before he swings the axe). Little did I know it was Micah, and he storms in swinging the axe like a stone cold killer. I thought about abandoning my capital but decided to conjure up a storm of chaffe with the Ancestor spell but that just got nuked in an Acid Storm bath. Sigh….

Meanwhile, Ermorian forces were mobilizing on my borders, Atlantis raids were draining my coffers, and then DonCorazoncita was born and it was all I could do to hang on. A scout took the Chalice north to keep it out of enemy hands as long as possible and the mighty Sauro fell into irreparable decline….

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Part of my build was taking Luck scales and hoping to get some magic diversity through Sauro’s heroes. In my test games, always seemed to get them early on but remarkably in this game, I never got a single hero, even with ultra pumped Luck dominion. In fact, I actually had my labs burn down twice, once in a really critical moment.

I still am not sure how I could have stopped those BKs other than just rushing Atlantis early on with the Gorgon as I had originally intended. Stellar cascades might have worked but I did not invest in enough of the expensive, non-sacred S mages plus its tough moving communions around…

Anyway, it was a fun game (at first). Frustrating though, with a lot of mistakes.

GG all.

Pasha – thanks for hosting – I’d like to see the turn files whenever you have a chance.

cheers!