by Xeserox
The second game sees a HUGE set of battles between Eric and Lucas. Lucas switches sides of the world, while Josh finds out starting in Australia is not as easy as he through. Mike takes a huge turn for the worse this game, and Stephen holds on as best he can.Die Mechaniker:
Leader: Eric
Starting Location: North Africa
Strategy: Turtle up, build forces, strike hard.
Enclave of the Bear:
Leader: Josh
Starting Location: Eastern Australia
Strategy: Turtle up, build forces, strike hard and fast.
Imperial Balkania:
Leader: Lucas
Starting Location: Peru
Strategy: Capture 4 territories a turn no matter the cost.
Khan Industries:
Leader: Stephen
Starting Location: Northern Europe
Strategy: Duck and Weave. Capture Europe and strike out as fast as you can.
Saharan Republic:
Leader: Mike
Starting Location: Kamchatka
Strategy: Strike fast as HQs. Split between "Asia" and North America
This game saw the rapid expansion of the 5 factions early on. Shots weren't help back either, if you were in a territory that some one else wanted.
A cease fire was in place between Lucas and Eric, between Brazil and North Africa. Lucas wasn't worrying about taking Eric's HQ because he knew he was going to pull a resource every turn for having 4+ territories (my special power, that I still think I did wrong). While the Tanks and Cannons were pointed at each other they didn't fire.
Stephen was focused on getting "Europe" unified at all costs. While Mike was split between two continents fighting on two fronts. Josh build up forces and pushed out hard.
Mike's luck when into the toilet pretty fast, as he started rolling horribly. This cut his forces down quickly, and proved his expanse into "North America" was all for nothing. Josh went so far as to use his 1 missile in a "means nothing" combat just to ensure the victory. Lucas was fast to show and remind Mike, that mistakes from the first game we NOT going to be made again this game. A decent sized buffer was made in between the "United States" territories and the "Canadian" territories.
Mike and Eric kept taking pot shots at Stephen to deny him the "European" troop bonus.
It wasn't long until Eric decides that North Africa needed to invade over into Brazil. 15 vs 12 unit battle started, with Lucas (defender) winning the battle with one troop left in Brazil. Distracted from moving North, reinforcements were placed in Brazil to fortify, and forces maneuvered from North America into Brazil just to make sure.
Eric makes another attack having a numerical advantage on Lucas. Lucas still holds out, fending off 3 attackers with just one lone soldier standing in Brazil. This ended up breaking Eric's forces, leaving him wide open for invasion by Stephen.
Josh was trying to make a run at Mike's HQ, so that he and Luke could eliminate him. Sadly this didn't happen, with Mike trading in resource cards for more reinforcements on his HQ.
Stephen places himself into a good position to win the next game, but not before Lucas handed in 4 resources for the winning victory point.
Lucas names "South America" Serenity.
Josh adds a resource to Indonesia.
Mike founds Turtle Town in Central Africa
Eric founds Siegebharst Northern Europe
Stephen founds Aquilonia in Southern Europe
Meta: Once again we really enjoyed the game and were more disappointed that we didn't open up one of the packages in the box. We know we could open that "Do not open. Ever." pouch, but we are going to wait for that. I need to clarify some rules, just to make sure we are doing things correctly, but otherwise we are really enjoying this. We are looking forward to changing the landscape even more.