2022 Championship

[Lord Garth]

Victory By Lion's Share Is The Sorcerer Kingdom!

Game End Status Points

Place Kingdom Player Results-40 Grand Total

1 SO Brek 82,632 113,060
2 UN Lord Garth 51,040 83,943
3 SA Lt Gisgo 47,799 81,167
4 AN Wookie Panz 43,437 68,598
5 AM HabeusCorpus 31,791 56,770
6 RA Eregnon the Black 22,034 49,049
7 NE DuPont 20,420 33,053
8 IL Rellgar 4,779 10,205




Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Sigh.


Congrats to Brek, our 2022 Champion! That's a big win.

[RELLGAR]

Congratulations Brek. How did you do it?

[RELLGAR]

Good showing to Garth and Gisgo. Nice job Gisgo at 3rd with the SA.

[Lt Gisgo]

Good showing to Garth and Gisgo. Nice job Gisgo at 3rd with the SA.

Thanks, it was an interesting game.  Brekk really ran away with it towards the end.  I nearly had a coronary when I popped into Lord Garths capital uninvited and saw how many agents and emmisaries he had.

[Wookie Panz]

Well done Break.  I salute the 2021 champion.

[Pine Needle]

Great job Brekk! Great job Rellgar fighting me to a standstill before Brekk stomped on my quivering ashes (do ashes quiver?)!

[DuPont]

Well, let me share my thoughts on how I was able to triumph and come in second to last! I was in Mythgar and noticed I had the RD next to me in The Untamed Lands. As a wizard kingdom, of course, it's best not to let one grow strong next to you and I expected the RD would come after me fast and strong. Of course, he did, He started with a town in my region and apparently found the city on his way sending the 2RD to consolidate with the 1RD. I had moved my prince into the city on turn 3, but on turn 4, the RD took the city and captured my prince. I managed to take the region anyway on that turn, but then by the time I took the city with my second prince, (turn 7) the 1RD had shown up in force. At least my prince got away that time, but by turn 10, I was knocked out of control of the region, which prevented me from getting my ESO (and I never got it - I wasn't able to get the region back in time.) Fortunately, I had put early efforts into securing my capital, having chosen the Glymph of Protection at the start, then building a Fortress followed by a Castle. I could see there was little chance I'd get the food to go up to a Great Castle anytime soon, so when possible, I threw Defense Builds at it and also put in a Sanctuary in case the worst happened. I did what I could with my emissaries and I had one medium sized group that I was using to take things back and trying to keep it away from the much stronger RD groups, but they caught up to it on turn 13 and destroyed it (of course, I teleported my wizards out of there to save them). And, of course, he was also using his emissaries to take things back from me.
On turn 15, he showed up on my capital with an 18 brigade Army Group lead by 2 Warlords and a Marshal. I had raised my walls to 80k (having thrown on 4 Strengthen Walls spells the turn before) but figured I was likely toast. However, I got the only real lucky break right then - I'm convinced that the roll he got on the attack was bad. He came oh, so close to taking the capital, but ultimately, he was repulsed from the walls with losses of 45%. With that, I felt my capital was safe from him for a while and slowly was able to switch more to offense and building up. I had to be careful, though. I didn't want to throw a whole bunch of Hidden Ore spells on my capital because I felt that might attract attention from one of my other neighbors, who would be tempted to swoop in and take it as there didn't seem to be a lot of other war action in the south and they were undoubtably building up strong. Even so, the RD was able to gain control of Mythgar on turn 17, making it harder for my emissaries to operate. We see-sawed for a bit - I took the region back on turn 19, lost it on turn 20, he took it on turn 21 and lost it again on 22 and I got it again on 24. I was helped a lot buy getting a number of influence boosts through the HC - not only did this enable me to max out my orders, but I could promote governors to Baron and not worry about the loss. I suspect most of the other HC kingdoms were getting their influence boosts from building castles, but I couldn't afford that - I would hardly afford to raise my wizards.
By turn 26, I was on full offense, having gotten tight control over Mythgar and going after his villages in The Untamed Lands to starve his groups. I also started using the HC to hit his reactions in the Untamed - he wasn't on the HC and I didn't expect him to have any allies there. I had three small groups, just large enough to take villages but not big enough that if they got eaten by Dragons would be a huge loss. On turn 28, I was able to knock him out of control of his region and gained it for myself the next turn. He was pretty much a spent force at this point; I'd been using my agents on his groups and they were also starving. I gathered all my troops at his capital of Blackfire on turn 31 and took it the next turn, leading him to drop shortly afterwards.
But the long war meant I was in no real position to win or even challenge for the top three. My wizards were very underdeveloped and other than my capital, I'd put almost nothing into building castles. I was quite worried that somebody else would look at my two regions as easy pickings and I'm honestly surprised nobody came after me. As for targets, I considered the SO or AM - the UN would have destroyed me with their agents and the AN and SO were sure to have better wizards. I was leaning toward the AM, but the SO jumped the UN and seemed to be doing quite well, so instead I went after him. It was a limited action - half of his towns had great or legendary castles and were beyond my ability to take and at the same turn I moved in, so did the AM. I was just having fun at that point, so I also hopped some of my groups further north to see what I could take from the AM regions but I never had any real chance to take control up there.
It was a fun game and the RD was a really worthy opponent. Had they rolled better when they attacked my capital, I expect I would have spent the last half of the game fighting a guerilla war from my sanctuary but I did get that one big break.
Congrats to Brekk on the win and to everybody else!

[Lord Garth]

This game started quite well for me.  I developed nicely.  Kept an eye on my neighbors, especially DuPont's NE and Dakaria's RD going at it in Mythagar and Untamed.  I really wanted to jump into that but it would have been a 2 on 1 one way or another and nobody wants that.   Lt Gisgo's SA was building big in Nyvaria, presumably for an attack on the Habeus's AM in the Diamond Coast or the winner of the NE/RD war.  (Nerd.  That's funny)   And Brekk's SO, Eregnon's RA and Wookie's AN were filling in voids left by drops in the Crown Islands and Zanthia.   I knew one of them would pull away but I had options and flexibility as far as who I would pounce on and by T30 I was in the status point lead with nobody on my back.  Barring any Unfortunate Developments I was on my way to a win.

Cue the Unfortunate Developments!   Lt Gisgo and his SA teleported to my cap from Nyvaria with 54 brigades and a P8, P7 and P6.  Most of them Elites and Vets and all double forged.  And worse than that, the entire pantheon of Alamaze Gods pointed their fingers at our poor hapless little kingdom in Pellinor and cursed us! 

It's True!  We would never have a favorable roll again.  Regional Effect spells?  Failed.  Repeatedly.  Agent actions?  Failed.  Spectacularly.  My wizard managed to kill that P8 with the help of a Great Mage Tower but pretty much anything with a percent chance of success .. failed.   On one turn I sent 2 Agent 21's and an Agent 23 on missions.  I did kill a warlord with one, the other two failed, and all three got captured .. and killed!  No " lose a couple of levels" stuff here.  The Gods were angry!  It got to the point where I couldn't even do a decent kidnapping on unslept unguarded emmies anymore.

And then I ran into trouble with the mystical world of rules.  Apparently I ran afoul of a rule that is not in the rule book and will be changed to no longer be a rule. Yes, It was around this time that I realized I was cursed.  Or maybe Gisgo is actually .. a Leprechaun!  

I managed to blunt the attack against all odds ( get it? ) and held my region.  And I take some small satisfaction in how the AM and NE swarmed into Nyvaria in Gisgo's absence.   But my first place standing fell to 2nd and Gisgo's T30 2nd place standing fell to 3rd.   It was Brekk and his SO that leap frogged the both of us to come up the winner and champion of Alamaze 2022.  Congrats to Brekk!

But, I want everyone to know ... I'm Ready.   If some horrible and unsavory scandal should arise over the next year regarding Brekk that would keep him from the performance of his duties as Alamaze Champion, I'm ready as 1st runner up to take up the mantle and the tiara.  If some salacious video of him emerges or some credible charges of PBM performance enhancing drugs were used.. Well .. all of you should feel secure knowing I'm here, as your 1st Runner up, ready and waiting.

Lord Garth
1st Runner up Champion of Alamaze

[Wookie Panz]

It took my AN in Zamora forever to develop.  They sure play a bit differently without the plow they used to have.

I did look to Mythgar and the long battle between NE and Big Red and drooled a bit.  Jumping into an ongoing fight and making it 2-1 was not my first choice.  I had recently defeated the NE player in another game and thought he deserved better after holding on from the Rd attacks.

 My other Neighbor was Brek and he had begun to fight CI in Krynn after CI got his second region.  Again I would be joining an ongoing fight and making it 2-1.

In the meantime RA from Triumvia had rolled over Zanthia and was busy taking out chunks of Crown Coast, the CI homeland, which would be his 3rd region.  I jumped into Zanthia and caught RA by surprise.  I started in on Triumvia but RA regrouped and got back most of Zanthia.  My groups were never quite a match for the RA military so the few times we met I used divine intervention to avoid a fight and block him from retaking my major pc's.  I finally managed to get control of Triumvia on the last turn but Brek had come in the back door and taken Zanthia, which I had lost control of to RA.  I missed third by a bit so no podium for Wookie this time around.

Good game guys and congratulations to Brek, the newest champion of Alamaze.

[Brekk]

I will write something up tomorrow