Last Edited: Friday, April 18, 1997 09:19:18 PM
I've been sick in bed for a few days now. And my AOL email hasn't allowed me to recieve any of Alex's email. So when he calls me up, I'm really up for a game. I finally get my modem to recieve, so he gets to choose the game this time. He says GOW on High. I say "Not High! Go low!". We compromise and go medium.
Well, I haven't played a medium land game in a while. All that talk about the 7 man rush scared me out of it. But I can't remember the rush (was a good thing, as you'll see) and Alex hasn't looked up how to do it (the miracle of strategy pages). So I resolve to treat the game like low, and get the footmen in quick. In case you haven't guessed by now, I'm humans, and Alex is orcs.
So I use the lumber bug and set up my TH. I hate GOW. Stupid long distance from all the mines :( . Well I'm in top right. I set up my first farm perpendicular to the trees, thinking of doing a wallin plugged with troops. I get my second farm and my barracks, and keep pumping those pheasants.
I get 10 pheasants and send my first footman to explore the world. I send the next 2 also. I'm up to 15 pheasants and my 3rd, 4th, and 5th farms wall in my base except for 3 spaces of mud. I have 6 guys on lumber, and set up ye old mill.
I am rolling in money, racking in the dough, but not the lumber, so I set up a tower and upgrade it behind my pseudo-wallin. My next 3 footmen fill in the spaces. One of my explorers is met and defeated my an enemy grunt. I send my other grunts to look, but I can't remember where all the mines are, so they find nothing.
Alex's damaged grunt runs into my wallin and dies. I set up another guard tower and a second barracks, with both barracks being covered by towers. One tower is walled in by trees and buildings, the other is behind the wall so I don't figure I need to wall it in.
I have 3,000 gold at this point, so I set up a smith and start the keep (at 16 pheasants). I get my fliers up in the air and my footmen to level 3. My stable goes up, along with 4 more farms. I start training my first 2 knights when I notice grunts near my base. 9 of them, level 3. I get up to level 4, but I'm worried about my base. After all, I only have 5 grunts, and my towers don't reach the my pheasants getting gold.
Alex charges in. His grunts take a few hits from my towers, but he gets out of the range of 1 of them. 2 of my grunts suicide to buy me enought time to hit stand ground and block my entrance. I set up an 3 on 2, and my level 4 guys kill 8 of his grunts (1 tower was helping) . But his last guy only has 10 hit points. My 2 new knights get him.
I find Alex's town with 1 of 3 blimps. I upgrade to castle. Alex is still at stronghold, with 2 barracks, 2 towers, and about 8 grunts. I set up a new mine nearest to me, and get a mage tower. I set up a farm and wait for enough lumber to build mage tower number 2 and get the second shield upgrade.
I have looked over the map and can't find Alex's secondary base. So I get an assault ready. 6 knights and a mage. Alex's town's flank had 1 section of wood left, so I build a sapper. My first mage goes down and blizzards his peon stream. Alex sends 2 ogres and a grunt up to kill him. He gets away, and my 6 knights encircle and destroy the guys.
My sapper hits the thin section of wood and my knights pour in. I kill 2 peons coming from lumber to replace his now frozen mining peons (hehe). Alex sends in like 10 ogres and his 2 towers turn me to chunky bits of horse meat :( . But I bag 2 more lumber peons and 4 ogres.
Alex still isn't up to fortress, and so he is now blasted back to the stone age. While I rebuild my army and put another barracks at my second base, he is rebuilding peons. He sent 10 grunts to plug the hole where my guys had charged in, and sent his ogres to patrol paths to his city. No more mage bombs on him, haha.
My first mine ran out. I really didn't care. I sent my 20 peons over to my new base, and got 10 more knights (with 8k in the bank). I'm really proud of myself. Finally I reach my goal of 30 pheasants! Yeah!
Alex, meanwhile, has 5. I send in 3 waves of 2 mages apiece, but all are chewed up by searching ogres. Alex killed 1 wave a second before 1 of the mages would have been invisible :( . 1 mage goes alone the long way and trys to magebomb the 10 grunts. He hits them with the blizzard, but I click on him for the next blizzard. It never goes off because blizzard has a minimum range of 1. But I got 1 grunt.
Alex still has 20k left in his mine and has no new halls. If you haven't played much War2, this might sound good to you. After all, he wouldn't run out of money soon, right? Well, as Confusious says, "A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush". I had 80,000 gold harvested. He had 40,000. Doesn't seem good now, eh? I had double the troops he did.
Well, several minor magebomb attacks fizzle. Alex has 20 troops scattered all over the approach to his town, but 0 at his main gate. So I send down 10 knights and 2 sappers. The knights engage 15 troops and are slaughtered, but the sappers get caught in the trees. 1 makes it to the 2 barracks I had planned to demolish, and one is stuck blowing 3 ogres up.
Man, am I glad I hit him early. If he'd had bloodlust, my guys would have been toast. As it was, he finally mined out his first mine (I was 3/4 through my second). He tries to set up a new TH to the right of his main base. I notice it after it is up and has a tower going up. My guys had been looking all over the map for a soft target, and this was it. 6 knights go down and rush to the 10 peons.
Alex got 6 ogres there after I had killed 9 peons (the other walled himself in behind the gold mine). I sent a knight to bust him out, and therefore Alex just barely beat off my assault. He sent his guys to guard that mine now, but I threw everything I had at it (a footman and 7 knights defending my bases). I beat his defenses and killed his last 2 peons.
With that, he surrendered. He told me he had been working on
his computer the whole time. So maybe this win was kinda unfairly
won, but a win is a win. Check out the stats!
Ah yes, and the Morals of the story are: