If a majority of the newer players want Perkins, he’s in. Perkins is intermediate. There’s a long learning curve in the game and Perkins has progressed fairly well. I’ll give players countries based on their choices unless people want the same and then it’s random.
Pax Ermor writeup:
I was Bandar Log, eliminated by Ermor (ron Derby). Horrible set up as Ermor, Bandar Log and Pythium (Great Atlantic), were situated next to each other. We all had the exact same strategy (pretender who could cast master enslave). I was sandwiched between them and pretty helpless (and screwed by the fact I got no nature sites despite taking several forests). Pythium and I established an early pact since our capitals were 3 hexes apart. We were also bounded by countries that were pretty tough: Ermor and Hinnom for Pythium.
So with no where to go, I turtled, researched and tried to figure a way to counter Ermor or Pythium. Ermor’s strategy was really scary to me and in the end effective. His master enslave vs poor MR monkeys wasn’t pretty. I should have attacked him earlier before he hit master enslave (if Ron remembers, I wonder how early he hit it).
Basically, I fought a huge long war against Ermor that was doomed early on when I made some several critical mistakes. A) Master enslave doesn’t work vs undead (doesn’t say that in the rule book but now you know) B) misunderstand another key spell, the astral echantment that kills some undead each turn, solar something I think c) Killed off a key rudra with the stone sword (Warning, don’t use this with MR under 30). although this was secondary to D). Basically, I had a key ermor fort under siege. I got too tricky and pulled some troops off to hit another province. I wanted to keep the fort pinned. When I did that, Ermor attacked and I lost my second main army! Ermor was super nasty b/c with his Astral 9 or so monolith, his shadow vestals had huge MR. Which meant that priests were helpless against them so my indy priest spam was useless against his ethereal, twist of fate, high morale undead warriors. Very tricky/nasty combo for future reference.
I was pretty happy with how I fight a long, futile death struggle. I had some teleporting SCs, pretender etc so I could still inflict some serious damage. One of my highlights was getting his teleport Monolith to fly out to enslave my army. I had returning scripting so his monolith and mages teleported in…I teleported out and voila…A stranded monolith out of his domain. He was quickly killed by a slew of seeking arrows from a vareity of nations I had encouraged to contribute to the cause.
But I needed help to beat Ermor and I never got it. This game was always faced with a tough challenge b/c I was afraid if I turned on either Ermor/Pythium the other would be too strong. I wasn’t as concerned with Pythium b/c he was boxed in after he took out the Giants. Otoh, I was more concerned with Ermor b/c I knew if I turned full speed on Pythium, Ermor would honor his agreement with me. He’d march in the other direction…And he would have almost instantly devoured Shin and then Ulm and marched all the way up that side of the map, which was quite weaker compared my side. So despite Ron’s good faith attempts, I could never give Ermor free reign to conquer half the board while being able to cast master enslave, have huge undead armies, ghost riders etc. Bad times. I also knew that I could whip Pythium. Everyone is afraid of Pythium’s flying SC’s. But Rudra’s whip them. B/c Rudras can fly through storms I believe, have better battle magic and options. So if it came down to my Rudra vs Great Atlantic’s seraphs, points to me. Have Rudras attack with a staff of storms and then get the first key strikes against Pythiums SCs.
Anyway, this is an explanation of what I was trying to do in the game and what happened to me. I really enjoyed my fight vs Ermor/Ron even though I was doomed fairly early especially after he outmanuevered me in the castle fight. I thought Dave had a good chance to win. I was encouraging him to use his air queens, teleports to go after a whole bunch of VPs at once.
