I was invited by RAKLIDEUR to write a review of game #1. It's an honor to be such a guest and it's a shame some people like Xenophon don't understand it. Let's get down to this.

Background

Phobos got the 1v1 ladder trophy and apparently Nauz got angry. This is understandable since he was always cheated by the ladder. Make a long story short, the god of warzone known nowadays as Johnny Silverhand said he would rekt Phobos any day of the week. And then an epic battle with lots of spicy forum dramas would begin.

The game: Picks

In a melancholic board with the dreaded Pakistan+EastChina FTB, which is known for making [#ELITE!] players look like babies, Nauzhror expected the golden trophy holder to pussy away from it and used a 2072 IQ move by going for the highly rated double-pick in west china instead. I'm sure he learned it from quickmatch legends. This is just brilliant since if you lose your first pick, you move first in turn 1, in case you noobs didn't know. It does raise my eyebrow however that the follow-ups in Scandinavia and Venezuela respectively don't quite back this up much, and playing in the dark against a potential FTB pickset could be dangerous enough against a GTH - Golden Trophy Holder in turn 1. Since this is Nauzhror we're talking about, the obvious choice later has to be the absolutely necessary Australia for 5th pick, and the 6th is just a fart-like counter we all agree sucks.

For the trophy holder, the CHAMPION, the verified [#ELITE!] by warzone standards Phobos, he went for first pick in Venezuela which was probably just a polictics meme, leading me to think he's not taking this very seriously despite South America's decent potential. It would be very understandable (and disputed) if the warlord was in Brazil but i'm pretty sure Phobos wanted to meme-pick and humiliate the god Nauz. Following this desaster, he goes for a very unsafe West Russia combo/counterThatIsNotACounter, and 4-5-6 in the FTB area. The god Nauz had achieved his machiavelic goal.

Reviewer's Take: Nauz had better picks.

The Game

Everyone is happy to attack neutrals in the first few turns. Nauz had a ridiculously strong (if undisputed) growth potential but Phobos proved us all wrong by becoming just as rich even though he was in Venezuela, which is quite the paradoxal outcome. Go figure. The WC-EC combo however proved to be more of a stampeding force as the god Nauzhror could complete Southeast Asia by turn 4 (Known by [#ELITE!] players as SEA, pronnounced "ess-ee-ay"). Phobos can tell for sure Nauz is in that area and starts stacking like crazy in the dreaded Georgia bottleneck, while also pretending to be moving towards a West China double border to look cool, but we all know what he really wanted was to complete Caucasus - Champions love big bonuses. When he realizes Nauz hadn't moved to Iran, he quickly notices just how fucked he is, and tries to make up for it by growing a lot and moving into the bottleneck, but it was too late. He got CyberPunk'd.

From that point onwards, it was the classical scenario of "you can attack as many neutrals as you can, as long as you're my neutrals to attack". The champion has fallen in the first game by very intriguing and exquisite strategies by [#NAUZHROR!]. Not much to be said about the rampaging stacks moving towards the poor Champion's defense.

Reviewer's Take: Good game. Perhaps if i were Phobos, i'd have played differently - Don't like the idea of moving into Georgia with a lot of armies like that at all. It's not like we can break a god's bonus from an "unbreakable-like" position (Another [#ELITE!] cliché term). I expect him to come back and pose a bigger threat to the god Nauzhror in the next few games, as I'm sure the fine player was fired up by this outcome and the international repercussion.

Final Considerations

God is good. Can Phobos be better? We shall find out next. As a bystander, I only want to be entertained.
Thanks to RAKLIDEUR for giving me the honor of being this game's reviewer. And if you're interested in joining a good clan, consider Blitz!. We're the most loved and hated clan in Warzone.

Edited 5/19/2021 16:58:32

And on the heels of this analysis (thank you Tito!), the first results from the Pick Rating Panel are out:

---

Game 1
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=26949008

---

Phobos's picks:

DrApe: 3/10

You just straight up lose if you get your first 3, so that certainly can’t be good. If you end up with WC against the FTB you’re in an awful spot where the wrong prediction loses you the game, but your opponent has a completely safe play. If you end up with Pakistan that’s pretty much a dead pick. I’m not sure what picks Phobos thinks this set wins against.

Jeff: 6/10

These are all about safety. If he gets SA he can take Africa after as it is unlikely to be picked. I am betting he did not expect to get 1,2,3 and wanted a spot in Asia. Unfortunately, that did not happen and it cost him the game. I would have made sure to have a spot in Asia and it was a big mistake not going there. I understand wanting safe income but you need to cover Asia which is the greatest source of income with this distribution.

krunx: 3/10

Underestimating Nauz with a pick set (classic counter 4-5-6) mainly against an ftb, which on top of that does only works, if the opponent gets SA or by random steals another pick. East China is a good pick and has to be picked earlier imo

Average rating: 4/10

---

Nauz's picks:

DrApe: 6/10

Same problem against the FTB as Phobos, but here it’s only 50% chance they get it. That alone makes these picks better. I don’t like picking WC at all though, as I explained above. Sometimes you just have to pray for the coin flip and call it a day.

Jeff: 8/10

I actually like the bold pick here in China. The one issue is there is a FTB in SEA and Phobos could have picked the other spot. If he does then Nauz can be screwed. Luckily it works out and Phobos does not have a counter. Personally I would have gone for more spread out picks in an attempt to turn this into more of a brawl.

krunx: 7/10

Good general approach (1/2) dealing with SEA ftb by Picking the China-Combo. Pick-set however could be more fine tuned against an opponent who picks East China as #1; SA is an interesting pick for sure and could be picked higher. Australia and Indonesia worked fine here, but may cause problems against an opponent who picks different than Phobos did.

Average rating: 7/10

---

All three experts agreed: Nauz had way better picks on this first board.
If Phobos wants to win this challenge, he'll have to pay more attention to his picks in the next games!

Edited 5/19/2021 18:47:20

Much to the community's disappointment I will be taking a break from this challenge. I played very badly in game 2, and think that if I continue playing in my current form I will likely lose every game. I will resume the challenge in a few weeks when life factors are better for me.

I'll be here, so go ahead and make fun of me. I don't care if people think it's weak to take a break, I got more important things than an online risk game going on.

I'm very busy in real life. This results in me being tired and playing poorly. I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to start the challenge, and I don't think Nauz will duck me when I'm ready to resume in a few weeks now that he's up 2-0.

There's a bit of a gamble here if I resume after the break and still lose most of the games it looks really bad on me. I'm fairly confident that won't happen.

who called someone disappearing early on?

Edit: I do understand having to take a break though, life can be tough and sometimes you got to find time to cool off

Edited 5/19/2021 18:38:56

Much to the community's disappointment I will be taking a break from this challenge. I played very badly in game 2, and think that if I continue playing in my current form I will likely lose every game. I will resume the challenge in a few weeks when life factors are better for me.

What an unexpected development! :O
I have to say, I wouldn't have picked Phobos as the more likely player to run from this challenge.
It looks like Nauz was a stronger opponent than Phobos expected!

I'll allow that break, but it cannot last too long. Many eyes are on this challenge and we wouldn't want to kill the momentum.
The 3rd game will have to start in less than a month, before June 19th. (Though the sooner, the better.)

oh shoot, I will have to edit my review. congrats to nauz for proving sceptics wrong. well played

@rak I appreciate all the work you've done promoting this event, but I only need Nauz to agree.

Game 3 will be created on June 26th. I have confidence Nauz will accept that game.

> I'll be here, so go ahead and make fun of me. I don't care if people think it's weak to take a break, I got more important things than an online risk game going on.

I don't actually mind the break, but that screenshot is just too ironic for me to not get amusement from it. Wouldn't have honestly given you any shit about wanting a break if you hadn't said that yourself on discord yesterday.

Edited 5/19/2021 18:51:03

Yeah it's fine. By accepting the challenge and winning the first two games you've earned a few potshots.

Give Phobos a break. He just wants to play the remaining games to the best of his ability and he said yesterday that this challenge happened at the wrong time in his life. He's clearly got other stuff going on that needs to prioritize.

We've all been there, I think. Sure he said something that's a little funny in retrospect but just let the man take care of his life stuff.

Of course it's fine, it's just as Nauz said, a bit ironic given his own comment.

That said ... if we're pausing on this challenge, can we get back to the Nauz v Shamu challenge while we wait for Phobos?

lol ... we wantz to seez it!

If you can't decide on a format (we already know you can't, 1 says SE RT, the other ME MD), then do a series of 11 where each of you choose different templates in alternation with no repeats.

                                                                                                            Just
                                                                                                                              do
                                                                                                                                               it!

I had offered SE MD even, just not SE RT. That said, I really don't think it'd be very entertaining.

I'd predict 6-2 or 6-3 win at SE at worst, and 6-0 if it was ME or MME. Those #'s are vs Sanmu, I am not claiming I will sweep Phobos.

Ok, well I clearly disagree with that, on SE anways. Your assertion is that you have enough general knowledge/experience in the game to win on the map, and my assertion is that SE has some specific knowledge that you wouldn't know without playing it at a high frequency.

But why don't we save the shit talk for later? The shit talk does seem to be largely superfluous after the results of the matches start trickling in. Not sure why you keep trying to bring ME or MME in it; I literally played my first games on MME yesterday, and I have still never played ME. I thought I've made that pretty clear. I'm not sure what asserting you'd beat me in ME or MME gets you.

I'm game to do best of 11, multi-day, Small Earth Wasteland. As long as the donors still agree, I can do 1000 coins per game. The reason I wasn't on keen on multi-day before, is because I'll be leaving on a trip in a few days, and I'll be having to do bar studying when I return. A best of 11 series of real time games would be easier for me, because I can fit in some short slot breaks here and there for the games. But multi day, I don't like the idea of committing to 11 back to back multi games with no breaks when I have things to do in real life.

But, if there is understanding that breaks are permissible at times, then I'm game.

Here's the forum thread for Nauz vs. sanmu on SE MD: https://www.warzone.com/Forum/551071-small-earth-series-nauzhror-vs-sanmu-shamu

Good luck to both of you!

@Sanmu
I don't think there's any need to play all 11 at a fast pace ... and tbh not even any need to play with auto-boot. Once a game starts, you should both stay with the boot timer, but I'd hate to see a game actually get decided by a boot. That defeats the entire point of the game. I honestly can't see either of you after all this discussion permanently leaving the game or series unfinished - and if real life gets in the way and there's a long gap in a single game, sure, manual boot is always there.

Even a 1-sided consecutive slaughter in the series would be illuminating, regardless of which direction it is. And besides, even if someone goes down 5-0, there's nothing to say we can't have a 5-6 reversal. It happens in sporting events, so why not WZ? We see baseball/hockey/basketball teams come back to win series from 3 games down, and in individual sports we see tennis players come back from 2 sets down and 5-0 in the 3rd set to win 5-7, then 4-6, 4-6 ... it ain't over til it's over. Even the Phobos series isn't over yet, and a break makes sense. The idea isn't to identify who is the best at a single specific brief period in time, so adding some breaks in can actually enhance the series. So maybe even plan to add a week break in here and there.

https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=26962979

I believe both players had generally speaking a good idea with their picks.

--> 50% chance of messing up the good FTB.

--> 2 turn 12 income strategy with picks 1,2 and 3. This is an easy strategy that just works.

--> In case of losing first pick and a potential opponent FTB both players go for some big income in the +5. Perhaps they thought their opponent would go 1+2 in the first FTB and 3+4 in the second FTB and sometimes you can find a strategy to play against a first turn bonus picker by going for bigger bonuses yourself but this only works if you can prevent a fight while the opponent still has his initial momentum from his FTB.

Anyhow my very own pick ratings:
- Phobos: 8/10: All good but I would have switched South Africa number 6 with Australia number 6. With Nauzhror having East China + East US + Antartica, he probably takes Antartica first.
- Nauzhror: 10/10: Again all good with his picks 1-5 and with the pick 6 being the interesting part. In case of getting number 6, Nauzhror can take Indonesia, accept defeat in Central America and can hit East US whenever his opponent showed enough missing income that he can potentially take the bonus.

Edited 5/20/2021 05:01:10

Maybe, would it be better to give up your clan league games to better concentrate on this challenge?
I believe in you !!

How thankful us mere mortals should be to watch the greatest esport event ever