"Новичок-2012. Winter"

Group E
08.01.2012 Snooppy (blue, Rampart, Kyrre, Kyrre) def 4ерный Джедай (red, Fortress, Tazar, Tazar) 2SM4d(3) 113

Confirmation for:

08.01.2012 group E Snooppy (blue, Rampart, Ivor) def 4ерный Джедай (red, Fortress, Tazar) 113
took all the rests
the last time had a good setup — relative to the opponent it was 10++ overall
but probably got tired — didn't think. in short, blundered — attacked 111 with gogs (20-49) 47 wiped me out.
waited until 113 for the opponent to take the rest. could have just waited for 111 to surrender))
thanks for the game

The opponent chose all rests and conceded.
Drops: external dwelling of Centaurs, elves, and horses, Griffin Conservatory. Decided to play, but the road turned out to be a corridor where I fought through, so to speak, with battles; the respawn was really sad. Plus it quickly became clear that the opponent had a double, and I had no road to that secondary... In short, I got lucky.

Thanks for the throw.

Group E
08.01.2012 Snooppy (red, Castle, Valeska, Mephala) def Messiah (blue, Fortress, Tazar, Wystan) 2SM4d(3) 133

The generator was apparently in a good mood: smile04: : it drew an intricate labyrinth of mountains, GO in an open field through a two-way portal (first time in my life seeing that on a small map), the only road connecting us was through a swamp secondary. Roads were average. A dreary landscape. The only things that cheered me: a tier-3 Griffin Conservatory, a max Hive (both along the road) and a swamp secondary — so a simple plan for the game took shape.
First week building: horses in the Citadel, native secondary. Luna arrived, but there was nothing to occupy her with at first; only by the end of the week did she do some pillaging on the swamp secondary, but on day seven she wandered off in the wrong direction and ended up at the metro in the treasure zone (along the road, by the way :confused: ), instead of the expected castle.
Second week, Luna first thing runs the other way looking for a castle and finds it behind a block of 20+ monks, and the blue player is already there :smile13: . Check out the Conservatory — well, that's a task. Since there's nothing else to do on the respawn, I decide to go for it. Without much deliberation, Mephala volunteers for the feat with expert armor and defense 4, promising to leave not much there. Seeing that determined look, you understand it'll be as she says :smile41: . For the job, she took 5 Champions, 49 Archers, 70 Pikemen, 10 Swordsmen (she insisted — must have sensed something, or I overlooked it)... And indeed, I overlooked it: once in the Conservatory I found out her spell power was 1! Slow didn't help much; I had to feed the Swordsmen to the angry Griffins (still crying when I think about it), thanks to which the Pikemen stack remained battle-ready. Yeah, 3 Champions stayed there too... :smile16: Next, the Hive. Here I got a mental block: dividing 50 by 5 I somehow got less than 10 :smile22: , so I figured the Hive was small and took too little meat. Naturally, it was a max Hive and I lost a horse :smile16: , was sad... But no time to grieve, straight to the secondary. Angels, along with some Magogs that turned up from the refugee camp, broke through the monks without issue, and Mephala sits down in the secondary (that's about 126), builds an Ancient Nest, already 14 Wyverns. Notably, Tazar immediately appears but positions himself so Mephala can't reach him by one hex. Mephala returns to the secondary, Thuria is sent to scout and is immediately taken in... Wyverns are upgraded.
Third week. What's next is unclear, zero intel, but with three Angels and 16 upgraded Wyverns, Mephala fears nothing. Maximum buyout, I bring the growth, but due to slowpokes I can't relay it through the chain — lose a day... :mad: The growth is delivered and Mephala starts tanking: very luckily caught Bron with growth, and then Tazar also put himself in position. Inspired by such success, Mephala rushes to the blue capital; scouting reveals the panorama. In the castle, an impressive stack of Lizardmen, a couple of Basilisks and some small fry — I attack.
And it turns out the main hero is Wystan (3 10 1 2)! Mephala: 5 8 2 2 with a ring of health. As it turned out, there was no money for buyout there, otherwise Mephala would have had a tough time. Still, I had to work hard: with a meager shield, the Lizardmen are very carefully cornered :smile02: , and they manage to take down 2 Angels. I could only reach them by round 3, and then it took another 5 rounds to finish them off: the Wyvern stack was killing 19 Lizardmen per turn, and there were around 80 of them...

Thanks for the game!

Group E
09.01.2012 Snooppy (red, Castle, Valeska, Valeska) def 7z (blue, Tower, Solmyr, Solmyr) 2SM4d(3) 133

The opponent chose blue. We took 111 each and went. It was a brutal game!
Roads were average. The respawn barely fit a castle, but there was an external dwelling of Archers, and Val brought 3 stacks, plus the guards on the secondaries were convenient — I decided to break through, maybe it'd be more interesting there.
Started with the swamp (behind 20+ Griffins), since 10+ Pegasi were still off-putting, while the Nomads turned out to be behind 50 (as it turned out, that was a block in the passage with 2 chests, 2 piles of resources, and a refugee camp) — left that for later.
The swamp respawn wasn't much bigger than the native one, but there was gold scattered around and the pre-minimum griffin conservatory allowed me, gritting my teeth, to build horses in the Citadel...
Second week started with a severe financial crisis. The pace dropped to zero, as Val spent 2 days circling around the pre-maximum gnome silo on the swamp waiting for a supply run. After the gnomes generously provided 7.5K gold (no losses), life improved. Val broke back home, bought up, and started breaking first the Pegasi and then the Nomads. Behind the Nomads, a block of 50+ Lizardmen opened up leading to a Dungeon secondary. While I was figuring out how to break them, Solmyr showed up, wiped out the guard, after which Melody sent Val (on a speed run) to the tavern :eek: ... Figuring that against a mage her stats were fine, Fiona with a beefy stack quickly showed Melody where to go, and then Solmyr got some too :smile25: . Then the fun began: Solmyr returned with mana (who would doubt it), chased Fiona and Val out of the Dungeon (since after the encounter with Solmyr there was little meat left, and I had stupidly left the horses at the mine when I was speed-rushing Val :smile22: . Now instead of finishing off Solmyr, I had to save the horses and flee). After that, Solmyr started doing who-knows-what... Apparently the sight of galloping horse hooves stirred the mage's blood; he chased after, was sent to the tavern, came back again, and was caught in the open field with fresh meat.

Thanks for the game! It was thrilling!

P.S. Something strange with the saves: when extracting the 7z archive, it gave a checksum error for each file and claimed the file was corrupted. Nevertheless, the files were extracted and open in Heroes (checked a few randomly). If there are problems, please let me know. I'd also appreciate it if someone could tell me what the issue is and how to fix it (and whether it even needs fixing). The saves were made with the HD mod's autosave (2.96 I think, one of the last 2.xx series).