Thanks Piggy! That was great advice.

wow lolowut is pissed in that game

1. Tired from full day.
2. Was not having a good day. (Personal, family, and a gaming buddy's heart gave out)
3. I picked weird.

Lolo you lost this game on picks de facto. The only reason you were able to get back into it were dreadfull mistakes on John's part. On turn 12 you were far from haveing a decisve advantage, no good player should surrender then. Im not going to get into a detailed analisys, that's Piggy's job, but this are the highlights.

best regards

PS. John had better positioning at least in the early game.

Dear Seahawkesareokay,

Do you ever use the analysis option? Your turns 4 and 5 needed some calclating.

When you have an income advantage and hold a territory in your opponents bonus it is often an easy win if you play defensive. Preventing your opponent from finishing one of his starting bonuses is normally enough to win. In this case your plan is to hold Scott and wait for him to surrender =D

Start of turn 4. You could deduce he had an income of 11 or 12 (probably 11 because he finished his bonuses with 3s which suggests he got an 3 bonus first rather than a 4 and was a little short on income.). If he deploys all of it at the south pole he will be attacking with 13-14. So you need to have 10 defenders and no more to keep your foothold in his bonus, the last 1 deploy to Malaysia.

Turn 5. Now you know his income is 11 plus a card. If he deploys all to south pole he will be attacking with 18 so you need 12-13 defenders. If he deploys all to malaysia you need 11 defenders in aus. Then you make no moves and no attacks, no matter what moves he chooses you win (excepting for outrageous luck) on income advantage.

I would recommend that if youre going to double pick aus, pick antarctica first. I call ant/indo/aus the boston special because he does it whenever he can, and even when i know its coming he still wins with it.

Dear john,

I don't think its appropriate for me to talk about drunkowuts performance without him asking. How do you think you could have played better in that game?

Thanks for your question,
Piggy

Oh! and thank you for your question SeahawkesareaprettyrubbishteambutIlikethemanyway, I forgot to sign off on your post :#

Dear Artham,

Frankdeslimste has the advantage before the game even begins as he has selected the strongest colour, and that pink really pops! You could learn something from that excellent selection Artham.

Turn 4 certainly looks like gg doesn't it? As with the last post, once you have a territory in the enemies bonus, dont let it go. Turn 5 just put 2 in N africa to get your card piece and the rest in murmansk. Either way, you got unlucky, both in defensive luck and 2nd move twice in a row.

You spent forever on N africa, bad luck certainly didnt help but turn 7 you definitely should have finished it off rather than starting in E China. Certainly you can assume he was in CA and coming for you through hawaii sooner or later, so better to take japan before E China.

blockading tomsk was unecessary and it would have gone badly wrong if he had counter attacked.

These minor inaccuracies aside, incredibe play from the former world no.1 and fellow [WM] member. =D

Thanks for your question,
Piggy

Sorry, I mean West China, not East China in arthams reply. =X

Thanks very much for your reply. All good pointers, Im kinda embarassed now that you've put me through your x-ray ;). Can't belive I didin't see those things :).

I wish I could take credit for that colour selection, but I got it randomly when I got autojoined.

Also turn 4 was annoying for me, I changed from moving to norway first move to this. I guess you should always go for first instinct.

Hello dead piggy my friend :) for the heck of it i decided to triple pick on one of my ladder games. here it is http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3667978
AND I WONNNNNN hahah but it was a rare situation when triple picking was actually a good option. take a look and tell me what you think plwase :)

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3681900 my bad wrong link in previous post

Triple picking is always a good option if you play against piggy:/

Dear Piggy,

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3658767

This 41 turn ladder game which I played recently turned into an uphill battle very quickly and I could never turn it around. I knew getting knocked out of America was the end of me but I decided to try my best regardless. I have two questions here.

First, what could I have done differently throughout the game which would have helped turn this in my favor?

Second, what would you have done differently than I did, picks or anything?

Thanks!

Your loyal reader,

NoobSchool (Ahol)

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3687604

Dear Piggy,

My counterpicking strategy worked perfectly, but i still lost. Quite disappointing. DId i lose becuase i blockaded East Africa?

Thanks

Dear thewarlightmaster,

I think a triple in W africa is the best option sometimes, though there are so many things that can go wrong, and you have absolutely no flexibility or intel. After that you played it out well. I would point to this as an example of how to do it right.

thanks for sharing,
Piggy

Dear freddie mercury,

Yeah you lost because you blockaded in africa. After that him having congo made holding South Africa impossible and he had nicer expansion to boot. If you hadn't blockaded you would have easily won.

Thanks for your question,
Piggy

Dear Noobschool,

Interesting. This game is long enough that I think I can see a pattern in your mistakes. Forgive me if I am wrong, but I think this answer will be much better than a "what I would have done" for each turn.

Deploying and not attacking: If you deploy and don't attack you are idling a large number of armies, and giving your opponent a whole turn to react to them. I understand being wary of suiciding them into a larger enemy stack, but that is a chance you just have to take. Deploying and not attacking is only for holding onto a valuable territory.

Trying to hold SEA: trying to eliminate someone before they break one of your bonuses is like trying to catch a greased piggy (=(:). If there isn't a bottle neck you're gambling on a whole ton of things, including the infamously fickle first move. They have nothing to defend so they are extremely flexible and unpredictable. This game you spend 23income over 3 turns to defend a bonus worth 3, and then lose it anyway. You didn't need it to win.

Use of cards: You do not need to use cards as soon as you get them. Use them for essential objectives, they are worth a lot more when you know your opponent doesn't have one.

Attack the enemy bonuses: Even now I am surpried game after game, at how important it is to be threatening the enemy bonuses. You can nothing else going for you, and still win.

So I suppose the "meta" theme, is be more aggressive. Start each turn focused on how you are going to get up in the other guys face.

Thanks for your question,
Piggy

I'm guessing a lot of my problems in this game ( http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=3688197 ) are similar to those outlines in the response to NoobSchool?

I did win, but I assumed that it was pretty much over on turn 12, yet despite that it dragged on for 11 more turns - a few of which he had more income than me.Or does this more boil down to my negligence is terms of not having picks in asia to stop his expansion before it could begin?