[spoilers] Old Harry learns new tricks in Wargroove Game 4

[Old Harry]

No players!

[Old Harry]

Turn 1

So I played a bit of Advance Wars and I've gone through about ten single player levels of wargroove so far, but as yet I've no idea how humans are going to play and how to beat them. My strategy is, I think, to expand reasonably fast then make myself look unpleasant to attack (hence I chose the defensive-diamond leader) while (hopefully) Scooter takes all the heat from my neighbours. Then once they've traded a few units I'll have an overwhelming force the can crush everyone. Right?


I've no idea what an opening strategy should be so I just copied what everyone else did and built a wagon and a soldier. Should be able to capture two buildings and a tower next turn, but I can't afford aerial units yet, so perhaps I'll push for the top middle?

[Old Harry]

Turn 6

Everyone expanded pretty quick, Superdeath has been being a dick about "my" central town, seems to think he should have it or something, so I've set a trap for his harpy as I've got two mages ready to kill it if he hits my soldier. He's going to use the trebuchet he just built to cause me some grief soon though, so I wonder if I should get a knight or dragon to kill it with or just get a ballista with it's longer range.


I've taken my annoyance with SD out on Hesmyr (grey) (sorry Hesmyr!) and captured "his" central town this turn. Scooter nearly killed his CO this turn, so hopefully he's preoccupied elsewhere and won't pay too much attention to me.

Emeric is ready to deploy his defence gem next turn - I'm not totally sure where to put it yet though... Meanwhile Ragna (SD) can do a shield jump in a couple of turns - any advice for how to avoid suffering too much from that? Or actually how it works - I haven't seen it in a game yet.

[Bobchillingworth]

No advice, but how it works is that Ragna selects an unoccupied land tile up to X tiles away from her (IIRC the range is around 6), and then she'll teleport there and do 65% of the default full-health CO damage to any enemy unit within a fairly large radius (same radius your power's gem has). The damage from her power will hit absolutely anything, including buildings and units she can't normally attack, such aerial troops. It can also kill.

[Old Harry]

Turn 15

No advice, but how it works is that Ragna selects an unoccupied land tile up to X tiles away from her (IIRC the range is around 6), and then she'll teleport there and do 65% of the default full-health CO damage to any enemy unit within a fairly large radius (same radius your power's gem has). The damage from her power will hit absolutely anything, including buildings and units she can't normally attack, such aerial troops. It can also kill.

Thanks Bob, Superdeath used it pretty effectively - I'm not sure if he killed one or two units with it, but it worked well. I used a defensive gem to stabilize and claim the northern-central town, then we stared each other down for a few turns without drawing any blood.

Then all of a sudden Scooter seemed to collapse with Hesmyr getting the kill along with most of Scooters towns a couple of turns later. Both SD and I decided to stop skirmishing in the north and pile into Hesmyr before he runs away with things which leaves the map something like this:


I hit two of Hesmyr's cities this turn, turning one of them grey. We'll see how dumb a move that was. The tactics in this game have something of a Zugzwang feel to them - whoever moves first is going to get hurt. We'll see how that goes. I'm hoping in hitting back he'll leave his Treb exposed, but that seems unlikely.

[Old Harry]

Turn 17

Hesmyr (NilchEi) defended the eastern town neatly, but I took the southern-central town and we're level on income of 1000 per turn each. But now I have a funny shaped territory, a somewhat stretched army and I'm relying on Superdeath to pin down lots of units in the SW. Hopefully the ballista and trebuchet that I'm bringing up will let me do something in the east. Also hopefully I can hold the centre. I wonder at what point Superdeath is likely to try for a back-stab?

[Old Harry]

Turn 18

Wow. Superdeath killed Hesmyr's CO! Nice work man. I kinda feel like I've been a spectator this game, but this is a great opportunity for me, since I get a full turn to capture cities before he does and I've got more of the centre of the map, but he's pushed further into the south already so maybe not... I do need to figure out how to fight his particularly powerful units - the witches and giant especially, but Ragna's Shield Jump is nearly online again too.


So I've sent a few units south to try to capture new towns. Used a dragon to kill one of SD's towns and will be in position to attack SD's tower in two turns with two dragons, but I probably won't because it takes three hits to kill. Otherwise I'm going to try to play defence for a while to see if my theoretical economic lead will prove decisive...

[Old Harry]

Turn 22

I was surprised this turn when Superdeath conceded. This is the map after he launched a big attack. Unfortunately for him he only managed to kill a grunt and a couple of towns, so I guess I can see why he'd give it up at this point.

It looks like I'm overwhelmed in the south, but I've got barracks to pump new units to prop up my lines there, while up north I *should* be able to crush him over the next few turns (although it's not a simple process) and in the middle my two dragons can pick and choose targets.


I think the flexibility the dragons give with where they can attack was really helpful - I swung them down from threatening his tower last turn to reinforce where I thought he was most likely to attack - but the most important factor was that I had more and better units due to being boring in the early game...