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Almost every single one left something to be desired. Thanks for playing!

I didn't really ever have recourse this game. I expected for the 2 of us to be strong on troops but weak on positions this game rather than my game railroaded by the table. For what it's worth, you never touched my game this round, where everybody else did something. Those bad rolls in round 3 didn't help matters. Heh.

Pleasure playing with you! Best of luck in your future endeavors!

Always a pleasure mate.

I kept that card for sooooo long.

@@spreadeaglegoalie434 Til we meet again mate!

@@GeneralPhung Particularly that 1st time after I killed xykron when you both had sets on 3. The game would’ve been over right there. Further up and further in!

@@GeneralPhung The same to you mate! Wish you’d also been blind to my kill as well, but I had nowhere to go. I don’t think I had anything here. Next game was a better run.

After I lost the 8, I didn’t have much hope in the game anymore. Nowhere to go, and that position mattered a lot. Still was a good evening.

@ well said! Triple elimination and at the very least some really good zombie tourney practice -(^-^)’

It had waited long enough!

GG!

@@EllisHCN Got away with that game by the skin of my teeth. What a fun one!

@@theAPESflynPOO Hey Apes! How goes it?

@@EllisHCN I’m really looking forwards to it! Honestly, I’m feeling far more confident on the VIP tourney than I was with the GM one. Here’s to a good 2 vs 2 set tomorrow.

It's a possible move, and I did attempt to explore into spain, but I didn't want to risk alienating red needlessly by going through their territory when I could easily find an 80 cap I'm unwilling to roll. I'm never in danger of missing out on cards due to black, so there's little reason for me to act on forcing a cap upgrade until later. Even if it becomes more expensive, I'll be able to get my pick later on easily enough. As a side note, the entire board other than black has been building up massive amounts of troops more than I have access to, so if I cause troubles it's likely going to bite me as I don't really have a way to keep them off bonuses enough to keep my cap. Once Red bots there's a greater desire for one of these caps, but my Paris cap is unlikely to stay closed long-term. Upgrading a little earlier was probably prudent, but it really depends on how much earlier we're talking. Starting off with a Paris cap is generally pretty iffy, and player locations made it so I could've easily just gotten devoured by a couple people earlier on.

@@geode_V I thought your timing to upgrade was perfect. I was just commenting that I thought you could have used your set to do it rather than get it by a 7 v 1. However, I hadn’t thought about your perspective that in the given situation there wasn’t really a hurry, since you could easily do it later. That makes sense to me. I liked your choice of cap, although, in retrospect, an Eastern European cap in this particular instance looks like it would have been easier for you. I appreciate your comments!

@@ewallt I didn't know it was empty unfortunately. Otherwise the set would've certainly gone there. As for the cap in the +8, I would've auto-taken it if I went before white, but I think I had 2-3 neighbor cap games go poorly in recent memory at the time, and didn't care to start off on the back foot. What are the odds that you don't get to pull off taking noob corner, Spain, or Germany off of the Paris cap? I'd say it's less than getting slammed for neighbor capping. Best case with the Paris open is that Blue is elsewhere and I get France into Spain into West Africa and I trade with black in France. Kill whoever is on the right side of the bottom pocket and win off of that. Best case for the +8 is a turn 3 bonus, and it's unlikely to be allowed to hold, and even if I do hold, my cap has no board access. Hard to say if it would've worked out better in the long-run seeing how it actually went. Both aren't great opens, but I think that with a do-over I still take Paris hoping for nobody in Spain. I probably take a cap in the +8 if the territory to the left of my 2 was a 3 and my Paris was a 1.

@@geode_V I liked the Paris choice. There were lots of possible successes for bonuses. You got a perfect storm against you. Still prevailed though, which also points to it being a good choice. In the actual game, didn’t you have a cap that wasn’t a direct neighbor? I was thinking in this actual game you could have gone after Russia, but it’s a risky choice as you have no clear bonus and you probably wouldn’t be allowed to keep Eastern Europe.

@@geode_V Regarding the empty cap and the set, I, watching, of course didn’t know it was empty, and that came as a surprise, but I thought it reasonably likely it was weak enough to take, which is why I expected you to set and check it out. However, I hadn’t thought of the possibility that you were in no hurry. The misapplication of the troupes was humorous, and fortunately worked out, as it gave you enough to fortify.

My understanding is that it’s triple elimination.

Chris had the 70 at the end of his turn, so the fact I even got a run was crazy.

@@geode_V so close! It’s especially hard to run in the fog, I feel that. And awesome! Good luck in round 2 -(^-^)’

@@EllisHCN We shall see what will be required. Need not despair. Here's to your next GM tourney set!

It was definitely a technical round, but I think with just a little better setup I get the win. Could've pathed my right stack through the top portal and the stack to the right of that, taken japan and the left territories, and gotten the 70 off of that. I definitely had it there, One of 2 games where the pressure has really caused any mistakes, generally a bit more of a steady hand, but this one I misplayed, straight up. On to the next.

@@EllisHCN Credit where credit is due. Nub is an amazing player, and most of the rest are very capable figures. If I’d gotten a better trade that last round and actually had the troops I lost from missing generation for 2 turns of that +5 I probably would’ve ran it. Do I get the 70, I don’t know. It’d have been incredibly tight. I think these settings were hurt by the portals being fixed though. Anyone who picks up Greenland pretty much knocks down the possibility of most of the table ever running the 70.

@@EllisHCN I think I had winning chances if pink had shown up on their last turn. That’s how it goes in fixed though.

Would've been heartbreaking to give Purple 3rd, but without those dice...I don't know if I could've afforded to do it.

A little bit of Chaos it appears! I hope you enjoyed mate!

@@geode_V my jaw dropped I never watched a professional play this game I always just played it myself 😭

@@jacksonmartin7864 Well, there’s plenty more there for you to run through if you’d like. If you have any questions on the videos, or anything you’d like me to go over, feel free to ping me.

I would've probably turned my generation into deleting players after taking Russia. They had their pick of who to delete, and they chose to do nothing with the generation. Then they didn't kill pink, which I frankly think they should've done for both the position and also to keep the cards out of my hands. They played an aggressive start and then didn't get aggressive enough to using that amazing generation to get some of these guys out. White had a win there, but didn't capitalize upon it.

Surprisingly a fairly high rank lot. Frankly I think most of the lobby's mistakes were caused by their cap locations and spiraled out from there.

Pineapple is great!

Bavaria isn't bad, but it is slow. Germany is a 2-3 turn take for me if I do it 1st, and I'm expecting a trieste cap. With Romania I'm hoping to turn +4 into the +8, then that into russia. I could see taking the Bavaria cap, Romania, or the 3 in the +8 depending on what I'm feeling like at the time here. As for taking Orient, it's possible, but I need to be allowed to take Russia and the +8 1st. Doesn't make sense until that's done. I'm not sure where I could've reasonably taken it to be held though.

My thought on Bavaria would be to hit the Red 1 in Denaric Alps (is that Triestte?) and take that if it worked for the first bonus. If not, then try for a 2 turn Germany as a back up. What made me think about the Orient is you already have troupes there, and it’s unlikely to be contested, theoretically, but what I don’t like about it is not a few players are so clueless they will contest it because they don’t realize it’s dumb to do so, so that adds to the riskiness of the play.

Being fenced in here really stunted any options I had. There’s only turtling available to me, and a lot of it. There’s not much impact I could have had on the game for pretty much the whole time. I was able to hold on, but other than that I didn’t have any moves that I could reasonably make. I had the pocket pink got if turn order got swapped, but really there’s not much I could’ve done to move the game in my favor.

@@geode_V Not you! You’re a joy to watch. I was commenting on the incompetence of your opponents, especially at the end.

@@ewallt I just like to be driving the action when I can. This game I really never had a moment to do that, but waiting it out is sometimes worth it. The utter noobery on the part of purple and the lack of ability to drive the action with pink is kinda crazy though. I really appreciate that you’re enjoying the videos mate. I’ll try and throw a couple more together this evening if I get the chance.

@@geode_V Yes, enjoying them very much. I especially like the European caps with fog, as it seems be a very skillful version. If you suggest some other version you think is particularly skillful, I’ll take a look. I’ve watched some Kylted Alcatraz videos that are interesting.

@@ewallt Europe Advanced is great, but there's nuances to other things as well. The setting in which the game is played also kinda matters as well. Prog 70% can be a quite skillful gamemode, but if you're playing open lobbies in ranked it's not likely to go well. Prog world domination has some skillful differences, and opens up some maps that ordinarily you wouldn't play caps on to make really good settings(Britannia Advanced and Turkey both come to mind as good World domination maps that don't make sense for caps). Also Fixed with Alliances on some maps also can be quite challenging to play out. It's hard to say that one or another is more skillful than the rest, but more that they have a different set of skills endemic to them. Obviously some maps have more nuance to them than others. I realize I'm tired and rambling so I'll stop here and clarify whatever makes sense/doesn't make sense tomorrow(A lot of this is written out of order, so forgive me if this is a mess). If you have any interest in tourney games, I think rounds 1 and 3 of the FFA tourney were great videos(3 felt like the best video I'd made at the point it happened), and if you want to see/play different maps/settings in a ranked lobby setting I'd suggest taking a peek at the [REDACTED] map videos(Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but see what you think. I've been running through the maps gradually, so I could point out some more gems if you'd like as well). Frankly I've had so much enjoyment out of it lately that I think it's going to be near the top of my list in terms of maps for a very long time. There's others I could point to, but that was a fun map to be tinkering with last week so it's close to my mind(If you have something that crosses your mind in terms of settings that I haven't covered yet that might be intriguing feel free to put it forward). Alcatrash I don't particularly have a high opinion of, but I'll admit it goes against my playstyle. It really encourages risky earlygame behavior and noob slamming in a way that many other maps don't. It's fairly popular amongst the streaming/youtube crowd, and seems to be a bit of a fan favorite with a lot of people's viewers, but I'm not really into it. There's worse, but most of the maps that belong to that category are going to be quite rare on a lot of the circuit's videos(Supermax Prison, New York, and Rivertown[Not the Advanced one] all come to mind).

That’s not likely to work well for me. If I do that, I don’t really get cards without breaking someone, and I lose my +8. Purple might also smack my stack, and I need to keep stacking on cap to keep from getting eaten by orange.

It probably shouldn’t have been their main focus. It’s tempting since it’s a good place to hide a stack in a portion of the board you won’t have access to easily, but I’d typically prefer having the troops on cap and get ready to nuke someone. I probably take it, but it’s probably a wash in the long run. I’ve seen it work out well, and I’ve also seen it get wiped the round after it’s done.

@@geode_V I notice you’re very partial to center caps, which I also like, one reason being exactly what you’re saying, that you’re in good position for kills as no one should be too far away from you.

@@ewallt Do you have discord mate? I put together a cap map that might be interesting to send your way. If not, no worries. As for the cap preference, I do tend to get a lot of enjoyment out of midboard caps. They’re harder to lock, they’re easier to claim large masses of territory with, and they often take up residence in some of the really good early bonuses.

I’d probably stick a ton of troops into purple early on and rid myself of them. Otherwise I’m hoping to establish a rapport with orange and trade in the top of Italy forever. Taking cards in West Africa, Orient, and Russia are viable as well, but West Africa is likely to be cleared out. I have the most to lose from pink going into me those 1st 3 rounds, but after that point I’m pretty safe. Splitaly is awful here. Breaking orange is bad. Going into me works if, and only if Purple stays nice, but knowing their cap is not a good noob corner one, that puts it in question.

@@geode_V Last sentence, you mean because Purple has a bad cap, if Pink went after you, Purple would likely go after Pink because his capital is bad? I’d have been tempted to go after you in Pink’s shoes :).

@@ewallt Purple has the feel of a classic noob. They go for a Pocket Iceland, Cap in Scotland, take UK, and then take Scandi. They almost certainly are sitting with stacks on London, Oslo, and Stockholm(territory to the right of Oslo, I might have my names crossed, don’t mind me). At this point if I’m pink I’m thinking, ok. Purple is breaking me next turn 7/10 times. I’m either going to stack on cap and brace for impact, take splitaly, or preempt purple’s soon coming hit. If purple breaks you like they will 7/10 times , and you decided to go into your neighbor to the right instead of either waiting or preempting purple, you are now in a war with 2 of your opponents with no generation, and orange is an onlooker to this, and will likely pick up the pieces. Also, let’s say purple goes right, and you win the war against me. You’re going to be down on troops and purple is forced into you. You can’t take Russia, you can’t reasonably go much of anywhere with it other than to spike purple, who is now probably bigger than you. Orange definitely ought to be larger. You mine out Purple, and the two of us can trade in Scandi forever instead, or take an even better generation and wheel it into me or orange. You can also force me into orange which is an interesting option. Going for me or orange aren’t particularly compelling. Also purple has a greater likelihood of wasting troops to blunders.

Make sense?

What Pink actually did must have been ok, since they lasted until the end. When I said I’d have gone after you, I didn’t mean necessarily trying to kill you (although that would be nice, since you had such a great cap), but not let you keep your bonus, as that didn’t seem to me to in their best interest. Regarding Purple, I’d think of trying to force them to Russia. I tend to be too passive, so am looking for opportunities to be more aggressive, and when Pink is generating 16 and you 5, and it coats nothing to keep you there, that’s a strong temptation, particularly because Pink doesn’t have a bonus to take. If he did, I’d very likely just do that and stay good neighbor to you. Otoh I see alternatives, such as trying to take over Purple’s position. If he did that, he’d have plenty of troupe generation, and that could keep him going until the endgame. I missed the Alps trading spot, which would be a logical spot. With that much troupe generation, he’d be hard to card block. What I liked about splitaly is he could try to develop an exterior position. He needs some plan for the future.

Yeah. Just wasn’t the most pressing thing on my mind to keep breaking Romania when I was dealing with blue.

Possibly. Once I opened the cap though, knocking blue’s stack down was more important to me in the moment. It’s possible I could’ve locked them more profitably until I got another set. It risked pink being fed the win, and probably was the wrong play on my end.

Checking for purple.

@@EllisHCN Always a pleasure my friend.

I could’ve taken Bavaria, but I wasn’t wanting to roll out the stack that turn. Would’ve been the turn after sort of thing. I’m glad you’re enjoying the content. Uploads this week are going to be a little sketchy, but we’ll see what I can do.

Our most dominant performance of the day! On to round 2 eh!

It's a shame, but they made their bed, and so it must go.

Thanks for the ping! Made me notice my thumbnail didn’t get uploaded with the video. 😂 Yeah, this was a rough one, and I’m not sure what I’d do differently at this moment.

That’s not entirely how that works. Sometimes they roll stacks equal in size to themselves, and sometimes they roll stacks smaller than themselves, but unless the bot gets bigger than the caps they’re unlikely to slam them. Because they spread their troops out, they’ll never surpass the cap, and I have to be hitting stacks that aren’t worth the cards it gives for a while. Blue and black could trade with each other for a while and be perfectly healthy while I have to keep hitting the bot. Meanwhile black is getting heaps of extra income and blue is the one with the most advantage to them from this.

@@geode_V 1:27:41. You won the game because the bot hit your opponent instead of you. He hit your opponent because you had 1863 troupes vs. his 14xx troupes. That’s what I was saying. If the troupe numbers had been reversed, he would have hit you instead. Do you disagree?

@@ewallt The guy did a slam and then quit. Bots wouldn’t do that roll as far as I know and the dice/placement/attack behavior isn’t that of a bot’s. If it was a bot, they would’ve rolled the 1 to the right between us like pink bot did.

@@geode_V ok, that makes sense. I was confused because bots normally don’t do those rolls unless they win. I guess you pissed off Black less than the other guy then.

I think you meant caps, but reality is that blue would’ve cleared me out away from the cheap cards which don’t exist anyways because pink had been attacking left a bit. More or less I gave up my lead over blue to trim the game length down by 2-3 hours. Sometimes I don’t make that move, but in this case I can afford it, and with better dice I probably go flat on the troop difference.

@@ewallt What minute mark would you suggest that happen? Pink and black were both breaking me for a while no matter how much I tried punting black back to the left side, so it was futile, and when it got down to the 3 of us, black’s stack was bigger than either of us could manage to kill to prevent them from breaking out. In post it feels bad killing blue before black, but it’s so much easier than making sure to get the splits right, and not knowing how much was on each of black’s caps kept me from doing it.

@@geode_V After the White kill, from 20 minutes on. My read was you, pink and blue were all competent, and black wasn’t. The three of you would have been difficult to card block because of the positions of your capitals. I thought the three of you would work to card block and kill black. I’m just speaking as a spectator watching the game develop, and what I expected would happen. I thought you handled the combined breaking of your territory excellently. I thought it was interesting black got away with having so many troupes off cap. I thought someone would blow through that, but I guess no one wanted to take the hit. Reminds me of how bots can take over games.

@@ewallt I think it would’ve happened if white was in pink’s place. I hold enough board to keep up the block and blue isn’t about to do anything rash. Pink pretty much told me they weren’t interested by the harassment they inflicted in conjunction with black. Frankly I think pink was the 5th most competent player in the group. Blue and White were 2nd and 3rd, Purple 4th and Black 6th.

@@ewallt As a side note, I think that both me and blue were perfectly happy with black having that much board. It wasn’t going to be used on us most likely.

@@geode_V Blue impressed me by being patient and waiting for just the right moment to expand.

It’s better for them to have Romania for me than for blue to have it, but ultimately only blue or black were ever going to latch on to it. Black proved they were willing to roll that cap already, so pink needed to pick a road. One or the other, but they can’t keep both long-term.

I was going for orient initially, but when I found purple’s cap I decided to wait and see with the remainder of my troops for cap security. I got rid of purple because they had nowhere to go except into me, and I wasn’t thinking that their diplomatic skill was going to allow me to hold the board I had if I let them be. White I probably leave a little longer. The cap is nice, but assuming I get to hold the board I’m sitting quite nicely anyhow. I have no reason to believe white is going to betray me, so we’re probably fine. At the point I have the troops to consider it, white has established a position in the upper left as well which is difficult to deal with. I sink purple and maybe I can put a dent in white afterwards. I sink white and then I get in a protracted war with purple. It’s slightly messier. On the other hand, white seems to be the better player, so perhaps taking them out early would be the better move.

Other than round 2, they couldn’t have taken that risk without death being quickly on the horizon. Round 2 they could’ve gotten away with it, but long-term becoming enemies with a second player is a bad idea. They already have blue on their tail making their position tentative, having a second would make their position fatal.

@@geode_V He capped in the same bonus as Blue, and pink capped one side of him and you on the other. He threw away turn one going after WA. He might have been able to go after Russia, which would have made things difficult for you since if you broke his Russia, he could break your Eastern Europe. That would have been interesting. Once he lost that turn and you got the jump on him, he was probably toast no wonder what he did.

@@ewallt The capping in the same bonus was an issue. No way to know if they knew about it being locked or not though. Assuming they did know that, going for a non-contiguous continent is ok, but they never held any of it for long enough to get more than even on the investment. Their road out was me choosing to kill blue instead of them. I don’t really like the Russia play, but it probably would have worked with me. Forces me into investing in orient earlier. Hmm. Interesting to think about how I’d respond to that orient take.