My Most Epic Game Ever, and an Interview

hello everyone my name is ira fay and i'm excited to do a special video for you today it is both an interview and a special game analysis this is going to be my last video of 2021 and it includes my most epic game ever and it was inspired by the interview questions that i received from the organizer of the 2021 league who invited me to do an interview which i'm going to do in this video shortly i won't take too long but there were some interesting questions and then i'll get into the analysis of the game so i'll jump into the questions first so these were questions generated by the organizer of the league and it's available the link to this interview in more detail is on is on discord so first my first experience with the war of the ring was with first edition i don't remember how many years ago but pretty close to i think when it came out and it was with my friend hunter or my friend gabe i can't remember who i played with first but we got hooked at that point played many many games with them in first edition and then on to second edition so the next question is how is it to organize the annual war of the ring tournament obviously i i really enjoy that it is very rewarding to get to play with so many different players i certainly want to thank michael souza who organized it for many many years and other people even before him organized it so i'm just sort of carrying the torch but it's uh it's uh not not too much trouble these days i have a lot of great support from a lot of judges and other organizers so it's it's actually a really great community okay uh thank you for the compliments about my youtube channel what else you expect i guess we're gonna do an interview on my channel uh i'll try and do some more strategy but strategy analysis but but really i i'm doing this both because it's it seems like other people appreciate it but also because i want to try and improve and so the more conversations and analysis there is it's out there the the better okay favorite side nation in card i think favorite side has got to be free people favorite nation i didn't really think about this in advance i don't know favorite nation i'm always i'm always partial towards dwarves and fantasy settings and i feel like so often things can go wrong for shadow and erebor and so i'm i'm gonna go with dwarves though though the north is great i mean they're all good they're all good um card i don't know there are so many good ones i um a card that i'm always happy to see kelliborne's galadream is really good because lorian is often a target and it draws you a new card plus it's daylight is the combat effect those are all pretty good so okay i'm not going to comment on lord's middle earth or wars in middle earth or battles of fifth age because i don't know those games i'm i'm not even sure it's not even fifth right it might be first i don't know what that f is yeah i don't um i i think i maybe played this once and uh though i played the other expansions i'm not i'm not an expert in those okay it's world championship round one you check who your opponent is which nickname do you not want to see next year name and i saw this in advance i think that this is a nice question but because i'm a pretty strong player there's nobody who i'm particularly afraid to play if i was playing a strong opponent i would be excited about that if i was playing a newer player who's unknown i'd be excited about that but when i was thinking about this more the true answer is um my son or daughter if any of them ever if they ever play in the tournament i would definitely not want to be paired against them in round one all right unluckiest moment i thought about this i don't have a great answer for this um a recent game that i played uh um round one of the 2021 league playoffs where i was free people i went for had really bad hunts at the beginning and then went for a free people military victory without success maybe that was i don't know if it's unluckiest but it was relatively unlucky my opponent played well in that game too but okay um luckiest moment i can recall i'm gonna combine with most epic moment you can recall and so this is gonna lead in to the game i'm gonna show the game now but you know what i'm going to wait on that just one second i'll answer the other interview questions one change i'd make to the board game i think it's very well balanced particularly in second edition but i do think it would be cool to just give an action token to free people in the base game all the time why not i think it would balance it would just make it that much closer to 50 so i would i would give the free people one action token that would feel i think really really good my nickname is ira on discord so not nothing to explain there um nerf what would i nerf i don't know it's pretty good i mean balance is pretty good right now i don't know that there's anything i would particularly nerf buff the thing about balance it's just it's tricky to get the balance exactly right if i was gonna talk about one i think there's something about one one card or something that i might want to change maybe i maybe i mixed it missed it um i feel like return to valinor is a card effect that literally like basically never makes any sense to play because the combat effect is deadly strife which is so strong and the conditions for playing return to valinor are that you've your shadow you've already captured an elven stronghold and you have not besieged any other elven strongholds and then you only get to hit them on sixes so it's just it's just not useful enough i think if you could if it would hit on fives and sixes which seems maybe a little too powerful or if it could hit um when the stronghold is besieged and so they can't immediately reinforce but then that's not so thematic so i i don't even know how to change that um maybe you just get to send one elf away that could be interesting one elf leaves okay um let's get to the game so i hope hopefully those were interesting interview answers but really what you're here for is literally the most epic game that i have ever played here it is all right so where are we this is round three of the 2019 uh world tournament i am and it was swiss so we're in round three i am playing the free people this game and my opponent obviously is playing shadow they are a strong strong player and no dog and we have begun the game so they uh allocate one eye and roll two more and then don't don't get a second musters they only have one muster so we know that saruman is not coming out this round and i roll this ridiculous role of three three palantirs and a muster i'm lucky that i at least have elven rope to play so this is how the game starts off um obviously i start off playing elephant rope that's my only playable card hopefully i'm going to draw into other useful character cards all right i draw atlas not so useful my opponent starts moving armies down in gondor or down in mordor and uh to near harad i have to draw a card because what else can i do i can't play athletics and i can't play help one look for so i draw a card and i draw a strategy card because i have a muster so maybe it's going to be useful and they move their army into and i'm thinking maybe they're going up to do up up north because if you don't get too many musters but you still have some army movement at least you can get that army going and then by the time you get there you will have had enough musters to to be able to catch up so you know round two or maybe even round three all right i go ahead and play guards in the citadel because i have gandalf as guides so i'm cycling i'm cycling more strategy cars that's good and i get swords and ariador not particularly useful but i can at least cycle it with my muster my opponent continues moving into dagger lad and then i go ahead and muster the elves because i can always play swords in ariata later with a palantir next round and i do want to get elves towards war because they're likely gonna be attacked so good to defend them and my opponent gets eisengard to war which makes sense the next round they can get sarman fellowship did not move at all i didn't want to give my opponent a ring on round one even though it's very nice to move once around i just didn't want to do it they would have been able to potentially get saramon and it's just there were three eyes in there so it wasn't even that appealing all right so i draw a vial of galadriel obviously that's useful and writers of theater always happy to see that certainly before i've moved my armies out of edris that could be really good so they allocate one eye roll two more again and i get a great roll so this is a super super flexible roll i can do anything i want with it and um i decide i think for a bit and then i decide to separate uh strider legolas gimli and boromir right off the bat so i think i don't i don't you know looking back on this game i'm like how did i do that that's crazy talk to do that um i guess my thinking was uh let's try it let's go for a military victory or at least put a lot of pressure on on shadow for possible military victory they've rolled four eyes already and they didn't get sarum on round one so like i have some time to catch up um it's not like i have fear fire foes or a book of missouri bowl right here which would be awesome but um i'm still going for it so i separate them and i leave in gandalf and the hobbits as a hedge against maybe i'm gonna move the fellowship at some point and maybe if my opponent completely ignores them i'll be able to who knows maybe do something there so maybe it would make sense to take gandalf too but i don't know maybe i could still do something so that's my thinking um my opponent gets going with uh attacking gondor presumably uh i'm bringing strider and probably bormir down to ministerith so they know that that's a reasonable target to attack i move i i send gimli to the west i send legolas to lorien and i send strider and boromir down to eastern if i had brought a hobbit it would allow me to drop a hobbit off in fangorn along the way and then when gandolf dies and comes back i could bring gandalf back in any of the elven strongholds so it'd give me a little more flexibility so maybe that would have been if i'm really going military maybe that would have made more sense my opponent continues to move armies in and around gondor so they gave up on the sort of i thought that this this army and daggerlad was going to end up going north to the woodland realm but i think because they see aragorn uh or strider heading towards minister if they want to get in get in on the action and and put some pressure there and they now have a bunch of armies north villian south philly and westerondor they're they're surrounding gondor okay i have to spend a ring because i don't have fear fire foes it would be so beautiful if i had fear fire foes here i wouldn't have had to spend a ring gimli would have ended up in in brie or the shire i would have brought the north to war and i would have gotten my uh the king down to minister but i didn't have it so gotta spend the ring so my opponent gets a ring we comment that i really wanted to have purifier foes they get saruman and i get airborne so turn to aragorn i gave up a ring for it but maybe it's worth it my opponent then immediately uses that ring which i think is good to muster so they muster sauron towards war so that's just going to accelerate their ability to attack ministeria which i think makes a lot of sense all right so i drew um through dana knight and and ants and i discard a file of galadriel which is kind of crazy because that is a one of the most powerful um corruption saving healing it's one of the most powerful healing cards in the game second most second best to mithril equipment sting and i discarded it because basically i'm saying i'm going for a military victory and i'm declaring from the beginning of the game by separating so many companions so maybe if i'm gonna do that then like why not also bring gandalf or some hobbits too so you know i'm really giving up on the fellowship right from the beginning of the game okay so next round my opponent allocates zero eyes which is definitely right if you see the free people player going for military victory and they move the fellowship even once allocates your eyes i think that makes sense that there's maybe some risk that i rolls the shadow rules zero eyes and i get a bunch of you know movement and then the fellowship just zips along and so that's sort of what i'm i guess that's what i'm playing for here with gandalf leaving again off the two hobbiton because if i get like four movement right here and it's turn three and there's no corruption and no tiles drawn like that's that's not bad so okay um i get some nice flexible roles and one of the things is about bringing boromir down to ministerith and bringing legolas to lorien is that now i can use these character dice as musters or palantirs as musters if i need to to get the elves to war and to get gondor to war all right so i start off by mustering gondor to war because i want to be prepared to muster and minister if shadow comes in and attacks us gileth then i want to be able to use these musters and get another elite into ministerith before the army comes in all right so there's boar mirability and then again shadow comes in and attacks attacks from the north and i think it probably makes sense to attack from the north because it sort of creates the creates a wall i don't know maybe it makes sense to detect from the south i don't i don't know exactly where so there's one hit and i um get one back and then retreat into minister and now gondor is at war which is exactly what i planned for and then i muster an elite into minister so this is a substantial army here sitting on a mustering point while i have two musters and on one hand shadow can just throw armies at it i mean they do have more armies but if you go too far as shadow then you do have minus mortal on and bardur open right now so gotta be at least a little cautious about this all right so i just sit there and muster and see what see what he's gonna do or my opponent's gonna do they bring in the witch king and i think that makes a lot of sense um so yeah good to have the witch game good to have more leadership i go ahead and muster another elite and then my opponent attacks intimidates tirith and i stay and have a field battle all right so they use dread despair which makes a lot of sense they're gonna forfeit they forfeit all four and then managed to roll a bunch of sixes anyway doing three damage i roll one and it was really great that was really great card play because i had no quarter and so they avoided a whole bunch of hits by i didn't even get a single hit there so so that was great they press and then i retreat out of ministerith giving them two victory points but retaining this army and so they move in a couple of units but now they're gonna have to worry about what's going on what's going on with this army for instance i could play through dana knight right now and end up in northophilia um i'm not sure if i do that i passed here i guess i wanted to sort of bait them a little bit i don't really know why i didn't just go for it i guess the point is it's hard to get um two strongholds i can certainly get one stronghold but am i gonna be able to get two i don't have other nations at war yet so i guess that's what i'm thinking here i do have i literally have this army die that i could use to get this army into north philian they attack once maybe and then i can get into minus morgle all right so they think they muster south rounds in easterlings towards war i move the fellowship here i'm not sure what i was thinking i'm surprised i'm not like mustering elves towards war with legless's ability i don't know i really don't know what's going on with that they i get hit oh maybe i was thinking i want to get rid of gandalf and so i'm gonna try and get hit i don't know um i lose gandalf here which certainly makes sense at this point i'd rather i'd much rather have gandalf the white on the board than gandalf leading the fellowship um and being revealed doesn't really matter i'm obviously not doing a lot with the fellowship all right my opponent gets the south runs and easterlings to war and then i muster more gondorian units in polar gear and ol amroth and then they play mustering of long planned war all right and so that i think maybe was a good reason to have moved quickly to take minus mortal i don't know i guess i just felt like only one wasn't enough but i see why now they got the i got the south get the south rounds and the easter eggs to war they also have king as revealed which is great they can get they can get five units and and minus moral so they're getting some good musterings early on all right so um let's see i discarded stories in ariador i got more uh rohan mustering and heroic death is great when you're going for a military victory i mean it's great whenever you have companions but particularly if you have you know level two or aragorn level three companions it can soak up a whole bunch of hit points my opponent discards the lure of the ring obviously that's a great choice and they have to allocate one eye so that's the one benefit of moving the fellowship last round they allocate one eye roll one more and then i get a um you know this role is not great because what i really need is will the west i want to bring gandalf in and my opponent got a whole bunch of musters this is this is a bunch of attacks so this is this is a great role for them but they don't have any character dice so maybe if they want to move nozzle around it would be difficult if they wanted to mess with the fellowship it would be difficult but they don't need to worry about the fellowship so i think this is a quite a good role for them all right okay um i use legolas i wine a little bit for not getting a wow i use legolas ability and and this is i mean this is the nice thing about separating companions early you have some flexibility about um just how you how you use them uh how sorry you have flexibility about your dice if you have a bad roll you can use any dye to use to use those abilities so i'm happy to be mustering the elves towards war here my opponent gets armies going and they block and they have now blocked um north north offilian which is good and so maybe that was an argument to have attacked from south affilia in the first place because then you would have had this structure instead of the structure they had before all right i play the eagles are coming as a card effect maybe because i see that they don't have any character dice and therefore it's going to mess with the leadership of this army and as gilead okay and i kill one nazgul and the other one has to run away the witch king is immune so hey that's a good idea maybe make the witch king have to run away that would be that'd be better um okay but not kill him i guess um maybe yeah maybe he should count as a nozzle but he can't be killed so at least you get to roll three dice to hit all right so my opponent's moving armies around trying to sort of keep keep gondor under control muster more nozzle they don't have a way to move them right now and then let's see um mustering into south rune and then i get the elves to war they muster some regulars in dol golder and moria i guess they're coming after lorien and i muster an elite into lorien and then it's my opponent says attack that came from the king so the witch king is attacking driven forest and you know that's exciting i have nameless wood which is if the defending army is in a rohan region fangorno or thanks so if i can manage to retreat and to fold or ease them net and then you attack into that then i could potentially dish out a whole bunch of damage all right so my opponent plays relentless assault which is very strong and i don't play any card so this is pretty dangerous for me and they get four hits and i get two hits which is a roughly what you'd expect i don't know maybe a little better but um ten dice times two yeah okay um yeah maybe maybe a slightly better than two but around two it's not it's not crazy um and i think that was really just a great my opponent's been playing cards really well um i think that was a great use of units because you have all these um south run units here you have this other army here in north affilia and you have this army here in gore growth so you know when you're facing a free people military victory or military attempt whittling down you know just trading one-for-one units is really good for shadow because you could just muster up and you don't really want a giant army marauding around middle earth you don't want a giant free people army marauding around middle earth you want to just roll it down keep it small so you can defend your strongholds so i think this is just a great play on their part i have to reduce quite a few elites and they don't press which is absolutely correct because you don't want to give me a free movement into a mustering point like fold even though the rohan is not currently a war i could at least move these units um from heteroscene to fold and i do have aomore i do have riders of theater and so there are lots of ways i think it's completely correct to not press also it's possible for me to inflict seven damage with something like sudden strike so you don't want to mess around with that i play eomer here and i play it into fold which i have not seen happen very often but um you know i want to be prepared and i'm still standing strong right there all right so my opponent moves from south rune to northern dorwanian which i think is a very rare move i'm not sure what's happening there i don't know why to go maybe was that a miss click no so why are they doing that um i guess they have shadows gather and so they're thinking they could gather into the golder i guess or from yeah i guess let's just keep some options open okay this army could go to north ethilian or to dole golder or to northrun or to veil of carnage so i guess it just keeps your options open kind of cool all right so we're drawing a bunch of cards i'm happy to see house of stewards which is playable in druid and forest which is fun and valor is good i mean uh randall's archers is good too not quite as relevant when the elves are at war because i can just muster in there if i want to but it does let me use a palantir as a muster so that can be good and then my opponent gets this crazy role and i get a will of the west so that's nice first thing i have to do because ever all shadow nations are at war that means day without dawn is possible so i certainly want to get gandalf so he shows up in fangorn all right and my opponent again does not have any character dice and and because there was i did play the eagles are coming they don't have a lot of leadership in osgelia so that's kind of nice for me okay um and they only get one they only have one attack right here so they're attacking into aragorn continuing to whittle down that army i think that makes a lot of sense and they play muma kill here i think that's great and i want to save house of stewards as a card to play but i'm worried about too much damage being inflicted on this army so i want to keep the um i want to i want to just reduce the number of dice that shadow is going to roll i could have played daylight but i think that i'm about to leave druid and forest and therefore house of stewards will not be playable as a com as a card effect but riders of theater will and so i think that's what i'm that's what i'm thinking here and they only get one hit which i'm very happy to see particularly with muma kill active and i get three hits so that's an okay sort of trade for me though they're probably still happy i'm gonna have to spend a die to retreat that army because it's just too dangerous i don't i can't let aragorn get killed so i retreat all right my opponent muster is more nauseal i'm a little surprised they need that many nosql but you know um new powers rising obviously great and then they're drawing strategy cards again makes sense they don't need to worry about the fellowship at all i play rogers of theater here which i can play in fold because i have a companion there which is kind of fun so rohan is not at war and now i'm sort of tempting my my opponent to attack me into rohan but then that gives me some free musters of rohan so all right voice is used voice of saramon and then i'm getting rohan in gear because i'm thinking okay my opponent's not going to give me free musters i'm going to i need rohan to be mustered up i need more units i'm going to rebuild this army and go go attack somewhere the elves are at war so you know laureen can be mustered up i can go after moria depending on what happens with this dole golder army i could go after dole golder if i really want to i could potentially go all the way up to mount gundabad so i have some options here and my opponent seeing what's going on musters into moria i think that makes a lot of sense and i play thranduil's archers i think i guess just to cycle cycle some cards try and get more strategy cards and i'm happy to muster up here i think uh i think maybe i'm looking for either book of miss arbol so that i can put the dwarves to war with gimli and eric louie or um purifier foes which gimli could use to put the north to war so either of those would be nice and i think that's why i'm cycling my strategy cards i think that's the main main thing i'm looking for i don't really need that elite in within realm but that's what i'm thinking okay my opponent gets more mustering cards because they've been drawing strategy cards so i think that's great and now i have a full six dice all right i roll before my opponent allocates eyes and we're like what's going on like sorry i got really excited and then uh they discard cards and then we're like yeah okay so we roll they didn't allocate any and then they uh they roll two and i got a great roll if they don't have a day without dawn so i certainly don't want to lose two wheels to the west if they have day without dawn but what can i do so i spend one right away i get rohan towards war again and they don't play a day without dawn so i feel pretty good about that they shift their armies around i'm not sure exactly why i guess they're worried about a counter-attack against umbar so you know if i have dead men have done harrow and this army ended up moving to druiden forest it's possible i could do something in polar gear but um i don't have it right now but so i guess that's why they sort of reinforced from there still no characters they have still not rolled any character dice for three rounds that's very unlikely to be fair they did use their ring they they had a ring but yeah no it's super super super unlikely all right um obviously this would have been way worse for them if i was making progress with the fellowship because they could just couldn't play any of the character cards that messed with the fellowship because uh no that's not true they do they have rolled some palantirs so a few valentines okay and that's a good argument that's a good point to make if you draw either the ring rates or a broad or the black captain commands it does allow you to move nozzle around using a palantir instead of a character so there are there are some benefits of drawing character dice character cards even when your opponent is going for a military victory but still in general it makes it makes sense a shadow to be drawing strategy cards in this situation and it's just unlucky they haven't gotten any character dice all right so i go ahead and reinforce dole amroth and uh polar gear more because i it seems like this army is moving into gondor and i want gondor to at least be a somewhat hardened target since i gave up minister earth right away and indeed they attack into polar gear they get one hit and i get one back and then i retreat into ramadan and then what do i do here i pass here i guess i'm thinking i'm just going to get a single elite into dual amroth i i'm not sure it seems like it might be worth it to make that army stronger i could have had like two liters and two elites instead of one liter and one elite if i had mustard slightly differently so one of the benefits of getting gondor to wear early is that i would have been able to defend that um better so i'm a little surprised that i'm not and then i muster an elite in there and i don't have cured in ships um i do have amber hill with the lamroth so that's interesting so i guess i'm just planning on playing that once they put it under siege we'll see what happens i muster rohan to war i guess i'm thinking they probably won't be able to defeat dole amroth in a single attack so that's why i'm saving immortal delamroth do i have oh also i don't have any condorian elites yeah that's a reason to not muster more elites in there so i had already mustered a lot into the army with aragorn and boromir and that's why so yeah that makes sense i do have one gondorian leader left so i guess i'm just waiting to see if if shadow doesn't get too many hits and um in dole i'm roth then maybe i'll get to play emerald julia i must get one regular one leader all right so they play ulukai and get an extra elite there i think that makes sense to try and finish this in one one attack particularly because you know the elves are at war and so kieran's ships are possible here and i go ahead and start mustering rohana so that's the benefit of having gotten rohan to war the hard way i now am rebuilding this army and it can go a lot of places all right my opponent moved some armies inward and i hide the fellowship why i guess i didn't i guess the elves are already at war i didn't really want to play great company right here because i have so many cards in my hand so what else can i do i guess maybe move army move um characters around maybe there's an army somewhere i want to move it's not it's not entirely clear if i had brought gimli over to erebor instead of leaving gimli in the west then i could potentially have mustered the dwarves to war with that character die so i don't know maybe i could have had him over there he would have this has been one two yeah he wouldn't even be in erebor yet okay um my opponent plays grand and is going to take out dull amroth i think i play a shield wall here and they managed to not not take it okay so that was i think pretty unlikely at the time i played immortal with lamroth i thought for sure they would take it so i wasn't worried about that as a combat car but as it turns out they did not manage to capture dual amroth i think with pretty unlucky combat and now i'm sort of feeling kind of dumb for having played that but as the combat effect instead of the card effect so that was pretty bad luck for them all right i get i will go alone daring defiance is actually a pretty can be a useful combat card if you have companions around particularly like one companion like a hobbit or or maybe bormir or something like that um but i end up discarding it because i don't really have any hobbits in the combat and i don't want to i'm not i don't really want to give up aragorn or um boromirs both of their leadership so and i'm happy through dana knight's great andrew looks obviously great and ant is great scouts is useful brave stand and great company's super useful because i can draw a bunch of strategy cards king brandsman cycles itself obviously very good so i think that was clearly the worst card in my hand all right i get three wills of the west oh no they they get no eyes and i get this role so you know i could move the fellowship three times here my opponent is not making a huge amount of progress on military but um i'm gonna wait and see i have through a day tonight i don't know exactly what i'm going for there aren't a lot of soft targets for shadow i think my opponent has been doing a really nice job of just sort of making slow and steady progress and this is the risk of going with a military strategy as free people from the very beginning because they can they can do stuff like this where you just muster up i mean look at all these units in gore growth and you know random places dead marshes north philian they're taking it slow they're going to eventually conquer gondor and then they can work their way um north i do have dead men have done harrow so that is a possibility they have to be careful about that but you know they have this arminius gilead they can be prepared to counter-attack so all right they're moving armies and [Music] they went to dead marshes they they sort of formed up in um formed up in dead marshes i guess i continue to pass they finally get ring rates are abroad and they're giving up i guess on dole amroth and moving into druid and forest being prepared to battle aragorn again all right i move gandalf to fold and i think i keep legolas in lorian i'm not too worried about having a companion in fangorn right now to play ends and my opponent attacks into aragorn and gandalf anyway which i think is actually a good choice even though you don't have leadership you know you're still going to inflict some casualties you have enough armies around i think i think that makes sense all right so my opponent plays words of power which is good so they're going to get some re-rolls and manages to get three hits which is great and i get three hits back i'm not sure why i don't play a combat card there particularly when i had some choices i guess i just wanted to save shield king brand's men because i wanted to cycle it and i'm waiting to play scouts until a more key moment and i want to let my opponent whittle those some whittle themselves down a bit with nameless wood before i play nameless wood i want them to overextend i guess so they don't press which i think makes a lot of sense i muster a regular in both eras and fold and they attack fords from orthic so now they're like gonna come in and take homes deep pretty easily and merge up this army so i i think they're playing this really really well um and i have been saving my scout so i get scouts into helms deep and then i get an elite into helmsd to make it at least somewhat difficult for them to take it they attack helms deep and this is a moment like if i had a companion if i had left a companion in fangborn the moment that they stepped out and attacked fords i could have at that moment then played the end um now if i move a companion into fangorn to threaten ents then my opponent can muster into orthanc so it's a little it's a little tricky i'm sort of i sort of put myself in a tough spot they are moving armies around really being cautious about keeping saruma prepared sarman safe the witch king's safe and it's looking pretty good so i moved the fellowship here i guess i am just trying to set up shadow for a bad role in the future so i can go do something crazy if they just have a really bad role and it's a free movement so why not and then they draw more strategy cards and i play king brandsman here to cycle into what hopefully something that's useful presumably a book of miserable or maybe um purifier foes and i'm noticing that i moved gimli to erdogan i'm not sure why that really mattered that was back when i moved gandalf that was the other companion that i moved i guess it makes sense all right so my opponent merges up into moria and i'm moving again with a fellowship why not i guess i'm like teasing shadow maybe i'll do something with the fellowship um they're going to have to allocate one eye anyway but they are i think they're still not worried about let's see what do they get rid of they get rid of flocks of carbane i think that makes a lot of sense and i get rid of horn of gondor i mean obviously mighty attack is pretty great but i guess i like keratin ships better and last battle better so i think all this makes sense so i'm not declaring it to moria my opponent has to allocate an eye they roll two more and then i get this nice flexible roll and i start by mustering more rohan units and my opponent attacks homes deep i play daylight here it's a very powerful defensive card and we come to kill is just the perfect combat card i think my opponent has just been playing really great combat cards and obviously that's exactly when you want to play it when you have the five elites from eisenguard and they get one hit normally and then i get one hit back obviously more would have been better because it reduces the effectiveness of we come to kill and then they get two more hits and so they have managed to make a lot of progress in homes deep very quickly they press and then they play great host get one more hit and i get two hits but that's enough for them to take homes deep and so now as as the free people military attack i can't really abandon too many of my own strongholds at this point because then if i get to four victory points the same round that shadow gets to 10 victory points shadow still wins so it's it's a tricky balance when you're playing free people military strategy to still try and defend your own strongholds at least a little bit i mean by retreating out of minister i did keep aragorn alive and have had you know a lot of threats here but i can't give up too much all right now is the right time to play the great company because i depleted my combat cards a bit and i draw into fear fire foes which i'm happy to see so the north can go to war and my opponent again now that they've lost some elites musters up more elites in northank to defend that stronghold well and i go ahead and merge this army and get a very nice army and west of net so this army now has a lot of range it can go a lot of different places it can attack or thank it could potentially recapture homes deep though that's not really my goal i'm gonna either you know head head over to moria or mordor or who knows what but shadow is gonna have trouble dealing with this army all right so my opponent starts moving armies around and they move to easton net with this army with with their witch king army and they take they capture us gillian and this is very important because there is a card path of the woeses that shadow needs to occupy it either that teleports a army from in rohan to minister but if ministereth is occupied you can t you can move instead to druid forest and so shadow absolutely needs to occupy those three locations those three regions to avoid path of the woeses and so that's it's good that my opponent is defending against that all right i go ahead and play fear fire foes here obviously i want to get the north to war immediately and i get legolas and fangorn to now threaten ants against orthanc in case i go attack or thank now at least i can play my play my end cards as the combat i mean as the event card effect if i want to and it will prevent it will sort of discourage shadow from emptying war think because gandalf does not like fighting wargs gandalf likes fighting not school all right so the benefit of sending gimli over to the west now pays off because i get i get the north to war right away all right well not right away but efficiently and now at this point by the way i'm thinking if i draw the book of misarable i have to be a little careful about that because i don't want to allow the mouth of sauron to show up if i get every free people nation to war then you know the mouth of sauron can can appear so i'm probably going to be satisfied with just getting the north to war there are plenty of good mustering points for the north to be able to go attack mount gundabad so i'm feeling feeling perfectly happy with purifier foes i have the red arrow as an additional scouts that's going to give me some options i move the fellowship again you know i'm fine with them getting hit and having the hobbits come out i'm also fine just putting basically spending a dime now to cause the shadow to cause shadow to have one fewer attack next round so i'm sort of waiting looking for openings it could be the case that this this massive army is gonna run to the east but i'm not quite yet prepared to take out another location all right so this time i get hit uh the fellowship stays hidden and i get some movement and mary and pippin get to go visit uh bree and north downs and maybe now this army is going to have this northern army over here in the west can can sort of power up all right so this is a pretty key moment because my opponent attacks near the end of the round with their sort of last attack action attacks from easton net into westamnet and i think this is generally a good idea because you want to just whittle down the giant free people army and you know i think it's a little risky because there are end cards that can be played here but i um i mean they have to do something but here here is just sort of i feel like the essence of the free people military strategy which is sort of wait and wait and wait until you get a good opportunity and then maybe something's something's going to show up so they play a strategy card and i play scouts here so this is a moment where where gandalf and aragorn's army can make a run for it i avoid the powerful effect of we come to kill and i am able to retreat to fold and then immediately attack into druden forest and now this army is free and clear to just run run to mordor and it's big enough and powerful enough it probably could hold two mortar strongholds also umbar is potentially a um location that could be attacked and as a note curtain ships can be recruited in a coastal region containing a free people's army so this this army can be reinforced in umbar or west toronto by curtin ships so i have some options with this army we'll see what happens all right so i take out the unit in jordan forest and then my opponent doesn't have an additional attack and so now this this army is sort of free and clear to run and and just cause trouble for shadow and it's not you know it's not so obvious if you're in east of net attacking to western that did you really think that this army was going to get all the way to us gilead before you got another action you know that's that's sort of hard to foresee i guess i guess we could call that a mistake but ah it's that's hard it's hard to really call that a major mistake i think it's just this is the nature of fighting against free people going all out with military okay so i draw some i draw a book of miserable i can't remember if i end up playing it or not um obviously in some ways it's nice to have the dwarves at war but in other ways better to um not facilitate the mouth of sauron i declared the fellowship past moria you know maybe i don't know maybe the ring is going to get destroyed um alternately maybe i think there's going to be a battle in tip hotel i i don't know i don't know why i do that um i guess just because oh because it turns off the shadow cards that require the fellowship to be one or higher that let you move nozzle around so it turns off nozzle search and nozzle strike which who necessarily really cares about the corruption effects of those but it does let you have flexibility with where your nozzle are so i think that's why i do it plus i guess it makes sense to just make progress past moria okay so shadow has to allocate an eye they roll two more and then i get this nice flexible roll again they're getting good you know good number of attacks this is what you this is roughly what you'd expect how many attacks we expect on eight dice we expect four attacks and they get one two three four five attacks so you know that's good i you would expect uh four how many attacks from four out of six so i get i get four out of six attacks so this is slightly more attacks than expected for shadow expected number of tracks for free people we have good options all right so we stop because it gets late and we continue to next round and then all right let's see what happens it's been long enough since i looked at this game i don't remember exactly all the details okay so i attack into us gilead right away that makes sense i want to get ahead of this army in easton net and i have through a day and a night so i can do some really cool things going toward more and on or minus more goal and i guess maybe i could have avoided as gillette entirely played through a day and a night to north athillion and then threatened to go into minus morgal obviously they would have had to defend minus morgal in some way maybe that would have been the better play but this army will be able to catch up and i'm not getting i'm not capturing both of these this turn so i think i'm just sort of wreaking havoc and then if my opponent doesn't defend minus mortal then i certainly will take it for free with through a day and a night though presumably they'll defend it all right so i attack into azealiath no hits against them they get one back against me they retreat to north ophilian and so you know maybe maybe this is the drawback of my plan and simply playing through a day and night into north of philly would have been better this is an interesting moment so let's make a note of of this i'm going to just remember that this is number 52. um would you instead of attacking him to us gilly into us gillian there would you have moved through a dana knight into north athillion instead of what i did attacking to us gileth i don't know um okay so then they reinforce minus morgul they bring this army from easton net into western i mean we'll i leave one unit behind in druiden forest exactly for this reason so that they can't um they can't get an efficient movement out of out of this army in western illinois all right i move mary into ettenmore's and gandalf gandalf's army and aragorn's army into westerondor i'm going for ambar so that's my plan it doesn't have i think that even with an elite and umbar i can take it and it leaves me some options maybe for the next for the next location i do have kieran chips so it seems like there's going to be a way for me to reinforce that i feel like that can hold for quite some time all right and i guess i'm thinking angmar and fahrad maybe um but they muster into angmar and i go ahead and besiege umbar i'm a little surprised they didn't muster an elite into umbar there because yeah i'm gonna be able to take it but at least that elite is gonna whittle me down quite a lot so and i know that they already played the sh the um they've played a couple of mustering cards they played oleg high we've seen we come to kill a couple of them and we've also seen um many kings so i don't think there's mustering that there may be one card but not many so i probably would have mustered into ombar here all right they move some armies around i guess they're going to continue going for a military victory i didn't leave a unit behind in west harandor um so okay i guess i'm i'm they're going to do like shadows gather maybe and so if i had left a unit in her west would have made it trickier for them to do shadows gather okay i attack into umbar i play andrew obviously this is just a super powerful effect into a siege it's just two sixes guaranteed awesome i've been saving this from the beginning of the game was this literally the first card that i had in my hand um i don't remember i think there was some other yeah elven rope so i played elven rope and then i drew athlete's turn one so this is turn eight and i have been saving that since turn one there's something very satisfying about that aragorn's like i have anderl i will destroy you and i do so one hit back but whatever right that's like just a super super buff army this is five elites and two regulars eight leadership canceling nazgul leadership two captains of the west it's ludicrous right and i have curated ships so this this is gonna hold for a really long time so i'm really satisfied by this i think this was a good play i got my army out in front there weren't too many counter attacks along the way and now i just need to figure out i have to go somewhere else to get two more victory points i think the most likely place is mount gundam but shadow is not leaving me a lot of options they go ahead and take eteres and i don't know exactly what to do i guess i'm thinking about playing book of miserable here but i just draw a strategy card um and then they continue shadow continues to come and try and take out umbar i think that makes sense i you know they don't know that i have carried ships and you do want to whittle this army down so that's good and i don't know what to do with this i play book of miserable here but i don't bring the dwarves to war i move legolas back into lorien i move gimli into bree but i don't bring the dwarves to war because i don't want to let my opponent get the mouth of sauron okay a little weird i don't know what was best there if you have suggestions on what you would have done with those two those two palantir dice that i had that round i'm curious to know i'm gonna make another note of that so that's that's a good thing to comment about what would you have done with those two palantir dice on tourney okay so i stay and fight and then i play scouts to retreat into the siege because i wanted to beat a powerful card effect from shadow or potentially if they didn't play any card and i stayed in the field battle then maybe maybe i would have been okay fighting and i wouldn't have worried too much about taking two hits all right in any case i retreat back in i'm happy to see day without dawn being used up as a combat effect and i'm just happy to that's just a great card relentless assault is a very powerful combat effect particularly against gandalf because you weren't getting leadership rerolls but you have such a good combat effect so a such a big benefit to your combat role so that's an excellent card to play against gandalf and this this turned out the scouts effect turned out to be good i could have potentially played it as the card effect but it only afflicts you know one one of you know one damage and i feel like it allows for so many tricky tricks tricky things that i like using it as the com as the combat effect more than the card effect for spirit of mordor but maybe that could have been played there instead of book of miserable which didn't really do much all right so we draw some cards i get wizard staff usually not a card that's useful later in the game once gandalf isn't guide but here it's actually playable as a combat effect and fair mirrors rangers obviously can be quite useful too i don't have a gondor elite unit but you know maybe i do have i do have a unit here they could potentially end up there in azgelia so that's kind of cool and all right so let's keep going i'm not sure exactly then my opponent discards candles of corpses dread with dread despair not useful against gandalf because you cancelled the nosql leadership and they also let's see what they get rid of cruel weather uh so nice to see cool weather go away so there are a lot of cards that become less useful for shadow if you're just not worrying about the making progress with the fellowship so all right um this is a moment my opponent roll allocates zero eyes and then rolls four eyes and i get a very nice mix i get my four attacks that's what we'd expect and you know this is this is what we go for this is exactly what the uh free people military victory uh how you can make it happen so let's let's see what happens let's see what i can do with it all right i start by merging my elven and northern army in old forest road with the intention of going after mount gundaban right that's that's my plan i have to be a little careful about leaving dale and william rome completely open because my opponent could get to 10 victory points potentially you know i don't know about dole amroth but you know i think you can play i wonder can you play corsairs of umbar corsairs of umbar be played this way from umbar being besieged that would be really funny i don't think i've ever seen that played but that would be a way for my opponent to get to 10 victory points right i go and take mount gandabad but then they march an army into woodland realm and then corsairs of umbar into dole amroth that could be really cool and by the way if dole amroth is already under siege then the corsairs of umbar starts an attack right then so i wouldn't even have time to respond by playing keratin ships which is pretty cool alright so my opponent plays orcs multiplying again obviously i don't like seeing that in mount gunda bad but maybe this army is still big enough maybe i should have mustered up in woodland realm first i don't know and i start by moving armies around i'm going i'm just going from mount gun to bad and we'll see i move armies why did i i brought i brought mary to at moore's where where did i oh i brought gimli to weather hills is what i did with that extra half movement and and i'm not worried about the will of the west because day without dawn has already been played which is great so my opponent musters a elite in mount gandabad which i think makes a lot of sense i continue doing army movements and maybe i should have mustered a northern elite in carrick i think i feel antsy to get to mount gandabad sooner rather than later before too much mustering happens and i feel like gimli plus two hobbits plus these two leaders is five leadership maybe this is enough to take out mount gundaman and i don't need to muster more elites and carrick i think that's what i'm thinking all right so my opponent moves a regular to mount graham and then an army into demoraldale maybe i guess to go after lorian they do have balrog and balrog is super good against lorian so you know i think that makes some sense and then i attack mount gundabad they send a regular into uh back to reinforcements which is obviously correct no reason to have a field battle there and then they move some nas ghoul to mount gunda bad which is of course correct the witch king is there and they just give up on umbar entirely they spend they put all of their nas ghoul um they put they have five leadership in mount gandabad which i think is great and then a few more nods go around and so you know because they had so few actions this round i mean they they had three attack dice and they you know we'd expect them to get four around maybe four and a half i think they rolled nine dice so i guess four and a half we'd expect they got three not so crazy number of attacks but just total number of dice they were not able to really threaten woodland realm and i was sort of able to vacate this and just make this strong attack against not gonna bad um maybe there should have been other targets i don't know i feel pretty good about this you know particularly if gimli gets in there so we'll see we'll see what happens okay um and i make a note well maybe i should have mustered more in carrick and that way i wouldn't have had to worry about gimli getting there because i could just use a sword to get gimli there and not worry about these two these units so who knows all right i play kieran's ships where why into dol amroth here i guess i guess maybe i realized my opponent could play corsairs of umbar and immediately start the battle and so i guess i play carden ships now it's a little weird because if they were going to do that they probably could have already done that but maybe i just realized it now and and i hadn't realized it before so that makes that makes um dole amroth much stronger and i feel like you know what ambar is going to be fine my opponent gave up on retaking umbar so i'm i don't need those reinforcements there and i play them in um de la rock i think i leave a regular an elite because i want to be able to muster into lorien and wooden realm and i'm thinking the regular is enough to be able to defend indole amroth i don't know it's tricky to find the right balance there and i guess i'm planning on using a ring with this last muster could be maybe i'm just going to muster into into woodland rome it seems like yeah so my opponent moves towards wooden realm that's certainly what i would do a shadow like you have five victory points you just need five more and woodland roman dale just got completely vacated so go go get them and what do i do so i use a ring here yeah and i i think it makes sense to try and win the game i have um i don't know maybe i should get more leadership in there first and try next round i play through a day and a night here and it's always a little sad to use through day and night as a combat effect when you're going for a military victory because you have so many options with it but i'm happy with my army and umbar so okay um swarm of bats i think is a great play here who knows what i was gonna use as a combat effect confusion could have dished out a bunch of damage so my opponent i roll um no hits and my opponent rolls five hits so obviously that is not how i wanted that combat to go i used a ring to do five damage to myself and none to my opponent and i kind of needed that muster in woodland realm anyway um so it's a good lesson in if you're attacking into a siege it's usually nice to have five leadership especially if you're going against five leadership in the defending stronghold too so that was i don't know i mean obviously it's not that likely they'd get five hits against me and i get zero hits but um you know and it was tempting to try and win the game if i won that combat i would i would win the whole game but i think that um it was a little too long odds and i was certainly i was certainly punished for it we ended up on on one side of the coin there on one side of the bell curve okay so obviously i stopped and um we move along so i'm happy to see dan iron foot's guard maybe airborne at some point we'll come under attack valor is a useful combat effect if i ever re you know regroup and attack not gun to bat again though i'm certainly worried about woodland realm and dale at this point all right so my opponent allocates zero eyes and only rolls one much more reasonable and i get a good roll again um for attacks is what we'd expect my opponent got one two three four five six seven attacks we'd expect only four and a half so you know that is good um it gives them a lot of options okay i start by mustering a regular into woodland realm an elite doesn't necessarily get me that much anyway um so and i guess i'm going into carrick to start trying to reinforce the mount gandabad battle my opponent moves armies and um is what what do they do move units into fords of eisen where are they where are they going with that i guess they're going to go around to dual amroth that's their plan um or maybe meet up in lorien i feel like i feel like lorian is the harder target than dole amroth um so maybe they have do they have um they have shadow lengthens so that's that's pretty nice one two movements to andrest and then you can get to dolamroff um or i don't know i don't know what else they're gonna do i guess maybe these the fords of eisen army and the western army can try and go for lorien and then with balrog of moria you have some good chances there that's also pretty reasonable um so you know i this is a moment where the free people military victory just might have petered out you know that attack on mount gundabad wasn't strong enough i vacated woodland realm and their shadow is coming to attack where free people is weak so that is good all right i could have i passed there but i could have mustered the other elite into woodland realm i don't know why i didn't i think i was just imagining um wanting to use that as a ring later so i could have five attacks but i don't really know i don't really know what i was thinking um i think that probably should have been a muster into woodland row so yeah all right so my opponent besieges it they leave a regular behind in old forest road i'm not exactly sure why um maybe to allow for some reinforcements with the with the um shadow lengthens i guess i can't i'm not sure why all right so they go ahead and move armies they take dale okay i guess they were just planning on taking dale anyway um they take dale for seven and then move these armies into that region which is tricky for me to pronounce i'm not sure how to pronounce that feel free to leave a comment with the proper pronunciation for this region right here that's spelled d-r-u-w-a-i-t-h space i-a-u-r i'm not even gonna try okay um all right so i move armies i take uh angmar and i take eagle and i move towards eagles i i move this regular towards mount gun to bad i guess um you know going up to three victory points so that makes sense my opponent moves into andrast and then i don't know is like i don't know where and then goes to eastonnet fine and then i let's see what do i do i draw a card so i don't know what i'm thinking here i guess i'm just trying to wait and see i want i want to just wait and see what my opponent does i'm like i should have mustered into the woodland realm that would have been better maybe i'm like trying to draw thranduil's archers here um yeah i don't i don't know exactly what i'm going for there don't really need ants they're not useful obviously nice to kill saruman but i don't have the dice for it at this point and um my opponent goes go go you know play shadows lengthens the shadow lengthens and merges up into dual amroth merges up into demeraldale looking pretty good all over the board and then i do the crazy thing i sally fourth out of umbar and perhaps now you can see my plan i have one victory point in angmar i have two victory points in umbar and if this army can come out of the umbar siege and get to farhad and manage to hold umbar and farharad and angmar that's four victory points and so if my opponent cannot get to ten victory points which they'll need to do by taking both dole amroth and woodland realm if they can't get to 10 this round then i win at four so that's my current plan and because they don't have a nos goal here i don't know it seems like it may be tough for them to retake on bar so let's see how this battle goes um i play a card which is the wizard's staff it's just i mean i i used anderl fighting into umbar and i'm using wizard staff fighting out of umbar is i really appreciate the the epicness of this so maybe you're starting to understand why this is the most epic game that i played um all right so plus two on my combats plus one on my combat so those are um three hits and then um so i get three my opponent doesn't have any leadership there they get two hits though that's nice for them um and i get i i press because you know this is my whole plan they retreat into near harad and now what are they gonna do they're gonna attack and stole amroth so obviously they need to take dol amroth and they need to take woodland rome and my goal is to take fargo rock all right so i play daylight here they play swarm of bats which is great and then they get three sixes which is obviously very good on nine dice you wouldn't really expect that and then i get two back which is probably not enough we'll see they press and then they play devilry of orthanc which is great and [Music] um they get only one hit which is nice and i get one hit uh two hits back so they don't press which i think is correct because they've seen immortal of dole amroth they've seen curtain ships there's nothing more that they need to do better to save this elite for an extra reroll next time and a press next time if you're going to use it but you don't need to use it right now so they have they have two dice to get this done all right so i attack near harad and i play sudden strike here because i have valor later and i have um mighty attack later but if you play sudden strike when they're in a city like farhad it only hits on a six but if you play it in a settlement like near harad this is gonna hit on a five or a six so this sudden strike hits on a five or a six possibly reducing them below five combat strength or just inflicting a bunch of damage i only get one hit but but that's why i played it in that order and then i get um three more hits so on you know 15 dice i guess 13 dice with hitting on fives it's not crazy to get a total of four hits so i get three hit one plus three is four and then they get one back they don't have any leadership so they're reducing elites and um i leave one regular and i leave one leader because why not um it's theoretically possible there could be some like black captain commands and then you know besieging west toronto into umbar but realistically i've now held umbar because they only have two dice and they don't have a um nosql here it would be very risky for them to like counter attack with this one guy into umbar and then i guess they could spend their ring and hope to roll a six before i roll a five or a six uh and i do get a re-roll and and the key thing to realize there is that if we both annihilate each other i control umbar they don't retake it so this one regular one um leader is enough to hold on bar and i have enough leadership in your herad that it doesn't it doesn't matter about leaving that one leader behind okay so my opponent attacks dole amroth will they be able to do it they have desperate battle and they managed to they managed to take out golem roth so my opponent is at nine victory points i'm at three victory points i have to attack into farhar so i use my last die this muster which should have been a muster of an elite into woodland realm um and i attack farhad i play um i play valor here first because i'm worried that i'm gonna lose too many elites and i won't even be able to play it later i'll use mighty attack on the second round if i need to but um i get three hits it looks like and then my opponent stays i press and then i play mighty attack i miss entirely making me nervous my opponent doesn't get any back uh but the mighty attack hits and then on the last whatever round that is i take farhad so i am now at four victory points with umbar farharad and angmar which and remember i started the turn besieged in umbar that was just an incredible incredible battle way to go uh gandalf and boromir and aragorn and a bunch of leaders in there way to go um but now unfortunately because i failed to put an elite into woodland realm my opponent only needs um to roll a single six on this combat so they attack and then they play desperate battle so they only need a five or a six right here and they don't roll it on their combat roll they get a leader reroll and they miss on their leader reroll my elf uh fights back and because of desperate battle inflicts a casualty not that it particularly matters and then my opponent can press so they press with the elite and now they don't have any cards to play and they need to roll a six and they have six dice to do it they miss on their combat roll and then they miss on their leader reroll so they fail to take the single regular in woodland realm i cannot believe that happened we calculated later the odds of them winning that battle inflicting a single hit was was uh i think we figured out 98 chance so obviously i should have had an elite in there there's just no reason why i didn't have an extra lead in there but either way um they had a 98 chance to win that battle and instead this game ended with a free people military victory having seen a sally forth out of umbar to take far harad and uh gimli and the two hobbits in angmar with mount gundabad besieged and the witch king hiding in mount gundabad besieged this is by far the most epic game i have ever played and it's also quite honestly it's probably the luckiest game i've ever played it answers both of those interview questions because that was ludicrous it was ludicrous that that single elf in woodland realm held out against that army in a desperate battle it was incredible so this was my uh last video of 2021 i hope you enjoyed it thank you to uh prince fox for organizing the 2021 league i look forward to more league games and the tournament coming up next year i look forward to hearing your comments thanks so much take care everyone oh let's look at statistics okay gotta look at statistics so i think that these are um true no these are probably reversed right these are these are probably reversed where um this is shadow and this is free people so they were a little bit low on on fives and sixes not not too bad but a little bit low and they were high on a little bit higher ruled the highs i had a pretty balanced pretty balanced rolls they had you know it's nice to be high on um army musters that gives you a lot of a lot of options so anyway that's the game hope you enjoyed it take care happy new year happy holidays

Channel: War of the Ring Champ

Views: 2,386

Keywords: War of the Ring, Lord of the Rings, Ares Games, JRR Tolkien

Id: ZD3eL_ZFcvg

Length: 81min 56sec (4916 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 20 2021