Madness - 24 players, MA+LA, CBM 1.4 (running)

[chrispedersen]

Hey guys,

First: I had no intention of staling I had set it to AI and looked for a sub. But I have staled intermittently on several games recently.

However, said efforts were a bit sabotaged by KissBlade. And I have since heard about this in other games.

Usually I don't comment about games, but I've gotten so much grief about it, I thought I would comment.

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Everyone approaches a game with different strategies. There are bless strategies, rainblow pretender strategies. Hordes of undead strategies.

I personally consider Jotun one of the weakest of the giants. However, like other races, their pretenders are reasonable. And unusually we had fixed starts in this game. So I wanted to go for quick dominion kill strategy.

The vehicle for this was a Carrion dragon with Dom 10. To accomplish this, scales are mostly in the -2 to -3 range. I carefully maxed out the dragons combat ability by adding earth and death, having more than 203 hp and prot 20+.

In more than 10 test games, I was able to accomplish dominion death prior to turn 6. The quick accomplishment of a second castle balancing the lack of scales.

In this particular case, I got unlucky in at a couple of areas. First, despite the prot 20, the first couple of hits on the dragon yielded crippled and never healing wound. And secondly, dominion death didn't occur even though my opponent did not have an awake pretender.

The manual, page 93: gives a good reason why this strategy usally works.

My pretender, generates one dominion, and with my opponent having one candle (all he ever had) - I have two additional checks at 95% to generate two additional candles.

So, the math is (more or less)
Me: 1+2x95%
Oppeonent: three temple checks. Usually dominion is around 7. Usually, he will score 2 dominion checks. And, if a player did not prophetize its usually game over.

I don't want to get into math too much, but I'll note a few other considerations. If the player took an awake pretender there was about a 50/50 shot of intercepting it and killing the pretender.

Additionally, the rules on dominion spread favored me - because my opponents temple spreads could have spread to adjacent territories, which would have boosted the hp and strength of my god. (Strength is important as it affects the range of a dragons breath weapon.)

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So, none of this happened, my pretender died.

So what would you have me do? I think most people would agree the position is irretreviably broken.

I personally did not say anything, to avoid disturbing the game, but as other people obviously were, I thought perhaps to clear the air, or at least express my side of it.

The strategy I chose was an unusual strategy - but it was a legitimate strategy, with reasonable chances of success. And I didn't just choose it to spoil a game.

Is there anything significantly different from what I did, and a standard turn 6 bless rush? Other than losing, of course = ).

So, I think it is obvious that the position is broken; we have all dropped positions that we recognized as broken. In what way does me playing the position a few more turns make the game any better than setting it to ai? In what way is the game damaged by me dropping?

Or is the idea that I should have to play, and live with the strategy, ie., ' punish me' for trying a different strategy (and failing)? I don't think it makes the game better - but if its really necessary.. ok. Although my opponent has expressed a preference that I just resign.

As a note, I offered the position to my opponent - and even he didn't want it = ).

Anyway, I hope that removes a little bit of the mystery, and shows that I'm not just quitting in a fit of pique.

Best wishes..