iversonjm has won the 2nd KO tournament!

[stockwellpete]

They are on turn 4 - no damage as yet.

[stockwellpete]

No more news I'm afraid. I have sent two PM's now but no reply as yet.

[Aristides]

GT 9; 50-9/22-0.

[stockwellpete]

Thanks for the update, Aristides. On the face of it it looks like you are struggling, but maybe you are starting to wear his forces down a bit? The attrition of missile fire normally starts to take its toll in the second half of the battle.

[iversonjm]

GT 9; 50-9/22-0.

Actually, we just finished GT 6. I'm up at the top of GT 7...

[stockwellpete]

The deadline for completion of the final will be 9pm (UK time) Sunday 23rd December. If the game is not finished by then I will have to adjudicate the result - a month should easily be long enough to complete a game, especially as it is a final.

[stockwellpete]

Score updated.

[stockwellpete]

Score updated.

[stockwellpete]

This is the last day allowed for the completion of the final. I will announce the winner by the end of the day.

[hidde]

What a bummer...

[Aristides]

My sincere apologies.

This has been the busiest winter for myself and my company ever - often working 16-hr days etc., and i have had to severely cut down on gaming, drinking, studying etc. So not only have i been unable to make moves very often but also have had to make very fast, unconsidered moves.

I will concede this game, though the score would anyway result in adjudication in favour of my worthy opponent, i have no doubt. My apologies to him too for not putting up much of a fight, and i thank him for the game. I thank too SP for organising this tourn and only wish i could have done it more justice innthe final game.

[stockwellpete]

Thanks very much for your post, Aristides - and very well played to reach the final in what was a very, very strong field when we started the competition back in September. And congratulations to iversonjm for becoming our new knock-out champion using the Dailami Buyid army.

I will compile a few statistics this afternoon and post them up and there were a couple of issues about the rules that were raised during the course of the competition that we can discuss if people want to.

[ianiow]

Nice one Matt! A worthy champion.

[stockwellpete]

Just one statistic really - there were 22 matches in the competition where one player had 300pts and the other player had either 350pts or 400pts. 18 of those matches were won by the players with the smaller army and only 4 were won by the player benefitting from the handicap. Despite this, if you look at the quarter-final draw, you can see that a number of players who do not normally feature near the top of the "A" divisions in LOEG were represented there. This was the purpose of introducing the handicap - to broaden out the range of players who would be able to compete at the later stages of a tournament. So the handicap will be retained for the next KO tournament, which is scheduled for Spring 2013 (once the new version of FOG has been released). It will also remain as a knock-out tournament - there will not be any sort of league format for the early stages, LOEG already fulfills that function.

There were a couple of comments about the tie-breaker procedure - only one match in the tournament was decided by the toss of the coin. Morbio wrote, " . . . may I suggest a change to the decision process for future competitions? If the damage over break points is the same then rather than toss a coin I'd give it to the one with the smallest percentage over break. So, in the example here the 2/27ths of Petran would be greater than the 2/35ths of Morton, so Morton would go through. If these percentages are the same then I'd toss the coin." I remember that Eric also had an idea but I cannot find it now - perhaps it was sent to me as a PM and I have deleted it. So, Eric, can you remember what your idea was please?

[iversonjm]

Pete,

I just wanted to say thanks to you for putting in the effort to organize and run a fun tournament. Its a job that doesn't provide any intrinsic enjoyment, but creates enjoyment for all of us. I also want to thank all of my opponents for a series of fun games, and of course the dice, without whose help I could not have succeeded. er,

Aristides, I'm sorry things didn't work out better, but I certainly understand when life priorities intrude.

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays to all!

Matt

[stockwellpete]

Thanks very much, Matt. Do you want to reveal the OOB for your Dailami Buyids? It looks like you were picking a very consistent army.

Matt's results in the competition were as follows . . .

Rd1 - iversonjm 10/21 beat ScipioAsinus 28/28
Rd2- iversonjm 7/23 beat solly 39/34
Rd3 - iversonjm 4/22 beat Triarius 34/29
QF- iversonjm 8/22 beat mortonj 34/33
SF- iversonjm 21/22 beat ericdoman1 46/46
F - iversonjm 4/22 beat Aristides 50/50

[iversonjm]

OOB isn't really a mystery for the Buyids. Dailami and more Dailami. While I had some variations, I always got the 3 MF sup bows, 3 superior armored lancers, the elephant, a ghilman general, and the rest Dailami, heavily weighted to the superior armored types with a few average armored thrown in for levening. In the early rounds I bought the indian swordsmen for bulk, but I abandoned them in the last round for protected average dailami. A much better unit for a few additional points. The only real disadvantage of the army is a lack of LF and its small size. As a result, it depends on fighting and winning as a clump.

[Morbio]

Congratulations Matt, I was surprised by the size of your win, a great result.

I don't know what the Buyid army looks like, I suspect it is from IF, but I guess lots of armoured units help against the missiles. Is it mainly a MF army? I know that most of my units couldn't enter terrain to chase the Jewish MF and the hordes of LF archers were a real problem for my protected and unarmoured units.

Thanks also to Stockwell Pete for arranging a fun, yet challenging competition.

Best wishes of the season to all

[iversonjm]

The Daylami Buyids can get virtually unlimited amounts of superior, armored, MF impact foot swordsmen with the free rear rank LF archers. You can also get them as protected and average if you prefer. This is probably the single best all-round troop type in the game, which is what makes them such a powerful army. Which is why the results in Dark Ages LOEG season 9 seem to be directly proportional to the amount of Daylami one can include in one's army.

[ianiow]

The Daylami Buyids can get virtually unlimited amounts of superior, armored, MF impact foot swordsmen with the free rear rank LF archers. You can also get them as protected and average if you prefer. This is probably the single best all-round troop type in the game, which is what makes them such a powerful army. Which is why the results in Dark Ages LOEG season 9 seem to be directly proportional to the amount of Daylami one can include in one's army.

I think any troop type that has BOTH 'superior' and 'armoured' should come at an extra cost of at least 1ap. The combination of the two bonuses is a killer on the battlefield.

Also, having a free LF shooting ability is unfair. I would put a price tag of +1 ap on a unit with this ability.