[spoilers] Commodore in the slightly less than sudden death playoffs.

[Commodore]

GREAT trap, admire this a ton.
   

[Cornflakes]

Nice solid opening, despite the barb infestation. I'm a little surprised that you never settled the northwest jungle area aggressively. I suppose Yuri's attack gave you a better opportunity if it was successful. But after I managed to hold the 3rd city in the initial invasion I was surprised that you continued to push so aggressively after I had been pulled back into the pack. I figured by that time your land advantage with Pyramids would counterbalance Scooter's FIN enough that you would be content to play the longer game.

I think our double team of Scooter went about as smoothly as possible, even if we had been communicating on a team. And to be honest much better than I even hoped. My greatest fear was that it would take too long and I wouldn't have time to get my stack home (or would have to cut the invasion short to rush home). Seems like we both thought we'd end up in a better position with Scooter gone ASAP. I had one critical turn of full EP vision on Yuri before Scooter went for the kill, which let me see Scooter's knight stack invading and get positioned in advance immediately when you cut my 4-turn countdown short and re-offered immediate war.

GREAT trap, admire this a ton.

Your first sneak attack with the 5 Camel Archers almost caught me on my back foot. If I hadn't pillaged my iron to re-enable the cheaper-but-almost-as-effective Phalanxes I would likely have been dead. I saw that you were aiming for Greece in the pick, and I think that the Phalanx made a real difference in holding vs. folding, both in that instance as well as the earlier double team with Yuri. By the time of your 2nd poke I had a dozen turns of pillaged iron to build 30 Phalanxes to cover my flanks, and was more worried about you trying to break down the front door at Frequency.

One other thing that surprised me is that you didn't aggressively pillage Yuri's or Scooter's villages. I was unable to contest any pillaging in the aftermath of the Scooter elimination due to the necessity to keep my stack intact at my extremely vulnerable Frequency. But the 5 Camel Archers that you sent on the first poke could have decimated those villages, and covered a few additional units that you could have thrown at pillaging (not to mention the 10 that I later trapped). In addition to getting the gold for yourself, I was funding my final invasion of you at a 50 gpt deficit off of plundering those villages myself.