"Новичок-2012. Winter"

Group E
08.01.12. 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, a Griffon Conservatory in an open field accessible via a two-way monolith (first time I've seen that on SM), and the only road connecting me to my opponent went through a swamp secondary. Medium roads. A bleak landscape. The only things that cheered me up: a tier-3 Griffon Conservatory, a max Hive (both along the road), and the swamp secondary – so a simple plan for the game emerged.
First week build: cavalry in the Citadel, native secondary. Luna arrived, but I had nothing to occupy her with at first; she only fested on the swamp secondary towards the end of the week, but on day seven she went the wrong way and ended up at the underground entrance to the treasure zone (along the road, by the way :confused: ), instead of the expected town.
On the second week, Luna immediately runs the other way looking for a town and finds it behind a stack of 20+ Monks, and Blue is already there :smile13: . I check the Griffon Conservatory – hmm, tricky. Since there's nothing else to do at the respawn, I decide to take it anyway. Without much thought, Mephala volunteers for the deed, with expert armor and defense 4, promising not to leave much there. Seeing that determined look, you understand it will be as she says:smile41: . She took along 5 Champions, 49 Archers, 70 Pikemen, 10 Swordsmen (she insisted, must have had a premonition, or I overlooked something)… And indeed, I did overlook: once inside the Griffon Conservatory, it turned out her spell power is only 1! Slow didn't help much; I had to feed the Swordsmen to the angry Griffins (still crying when I think about it), which kept the Pikemen stack battle-ready. Yes, 3 Champions also stayed there… :smile16: Next, the Hive. Here I had a brain freeze: dividing 50 by 5 I somehow got less than 10 :smile22: , decided accordingly that the Hive was small, and took too little fodder. The Hive, naturally, was max, I lost the cavalry:smile16: , was in grief… But there was no time to mourn, straight to the secondary. Angels, along with some Magi from a refugee camp that happened to turn up, broke through the Monks without any trouble, and Mephala sits down in the secondary (it's like 126 I think), builds a Nest, already 14 Ducks. Notably, Tazar immediately appears, but positions himself so Mephala is one cell short. Mephala returns to the secondary, Turis is sent to scout and is immediately captured… The Ducks are upgraded.
Third week. What's next, unclear, zero intel, but Mephala with three Angels and 16 upgraded Ducks fears nothing now. Maximum buying, I bring the growth, but due to my stupidity I don't manage to chain it in time – I lose a day… :mad: The growth is delivered and Mephala starts tanking: she very luckily caught Bron with the growth, and then Tazar also lined himself up. Buoyed by this success, Mephala charges toward Blue's capital, scouting reveals the panorama. In the town there's an impressive stack of Lizardmen, a couple of Basilisks, and a few small things; I attack.
And it turns out Wystan is in charge (3 10 1 2)! Mephala: 5 8 2 2 with a Ring of Health. As it turned out, there was no money for buying; otherwise Mephala would have had a tough time. Nevertheless, I still had to work up a sweat: with a small shield, the Lizardmen are very thoughtfully cornered :smile02: , and they manage to take down 2 Angels. I could only reach them on round 3, and then it took another 5 rounds to finish them off: the Wyvern stack was killing 19 Lizardmen per attack, and there were something around 80 of them…

Thanks for the game!