https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony

Arrow, I think you missed Quicksilver's joke lol.

That being said, his analysis was good here imo.

Game 1 [...]
Intel is a wash: Nauz has 1/4, sanmu 2/3 but sanmu only needs to for Nauz being in Europe. If Nauz isn't in Europe, sanmu has ample time to react to a North America or Asia gamble.

About picks:
If you have the same first pick as your opponent and some similar other picks, you are probably going to get either 1st and 4th or 2nd and 3rd picks. It happens even if your opponent gets the first pick and has picked 2nd where you picked 3rd. If the 1st pick has gone to him he never gets both 1st and 2nd picks: I was quite surprised when I discovered that in that case your 3rd pick has priority on his 2nd.

If you pick both Oceania and South America on that board as first picks, you're most probably not going to get 1st and 2nd pick so you must have 1 between the 1st and the 3rd pick if not both in some cases.
When you want to pick both the 2 armies per turn bonuses, a good strategy imo can be to pick as second pick a counter of the bonus you're not picking as 1st pick and as 3rd pick the countered bonus. (This game would have been harder for sanmu even if Nauz picked 1st Oceania and 2nd Africa as they both picked Africa as 3rd.)

Noone has picked it but I'm not that sure about North America being a so terrible 4th pick, if you get both South and North America and your opponent gets Australia and Africa, you aren't in a very bad situation probably. You should be careful because your opponent can try an attack with 9 on North Africa and if you have completed South America on turn 1 and he has the first move on turn 2 you have already lost. To play safe you should complete your bonus on turn 2 If he has not attacked North Africa with 9 on turn 1 or on turn 3 If he has, saving 3 armies in the spawn in north America to get a reinforcement card piece on turn 4 if you have to play defensively.

My picks would probably have been: 1st Brazil, 2nd Africa, 3rd Oceania, 4th North America.

Returning to the played game: sanmu can't be 100% sure about his opponent being in Europe if Nauz doesn't move as he can also be in North America, which was quite tricky as 4th pick (even with Oceania as 1st) since it was risky to complete Africa very soon with a probable danger coming from Europe. This is one of the reasons why that move on turn 1 is a mistake in my opinion. The other is that it may already give to your opponent an intel about the move order, but in the game the fact that sanmu has not attacked North Africa as first move avoided it (Nauz should instead know from turn 1 that he moves first on even turns and as second in odd turns since the 4th attack by sanmu arrived after his 4th attack). If I was in that situation I would have attacked South Europe (to take Western Europe is a mistake imo since you do not have a double border with Africa and you are wasting armies that your opponent should use for that neutral) taking it with 11 armies on turn 2: samnu is probably going to enter Europe to block it or he is going to try to complete Africa, in both cases an attack there on first move is quite dangerous for him.

Verdict: Decided on picks. After picks, it was sanmu's game to lose.

I do not completely agree with that. Returning again to the actually played, I think that another main mistake from Nauz has been the fact that he has tried to attack North America from Asia while Europe was probably far better for that purpose. In his position I would try to take Greenland very soon and use the 6 australian armies to get Middle East trying to put further pressure on Africa if sanmu tries to get it. If he manages to block North America and Africa it is still a 7v7 game, hard to play but not impossible to win. In the moment North America was completed and safe, the game was over of course.

Game 2 [...]Verdict: 90% decided on picks.

Here I completely disagree. The game is decided by the misplay on turn 3, not by the picks. Once again Nauz has not understood the importance of blocking early North America and in that turn he has tried to defend everything, which resulted in a full disaster. With that position you just can't hold Europe without a huge amount of luck, and all becomes about playing safe and understandig that if you lose Iceland you're probably going to lose the game, thing that does not happen if you lose one of the other 2 borders. The attack with 3 by samnu was very risky, anyway the misplay by Nauz was quite huge so that risk did not matter that much.

Good luck for the other games.

Edited 6/1/2021 14:03:38

Excited for game 3 ... these games and more importantly the resultant discussions on them are educational. We should keep this going! Always have a spotlight best of 11 series with post analysis going on.

Appreciate all the analysis! I think it's great for so many people to discuss Small Earth strategy :) and I hope it continues.

I just got back from my vacation and am ready for game 3 whenever Nauz is! (but it appears he's also on vacation?)

Ercole, you have insulted me by questioning my analysis. We must now play a best-of-11 Small Earth 1 Wasteland series to settle this question of honor.

(Just kidding, I agree with your points. I just threw out a sloppy analysis just to have something. I'm glad it's inspired others to offer their own better analyses.)

Speaking from experience, I fully endorse doing a best of 11 series. Ercole v. knyte 2021 (jk lol, but maybe not ;) )

I challenge you (shanmu) to a bo11. to boring to just watch nauz get destroyed.

i would love to see y'all play nomercy, he is probably the best SE player on the site (or one of)

not sure if no mercy is so good, i won all my SE1W games against him

How about a best-of-11 king-of-the-hill league on SE1W? sanmu or Nauz could be the inaugural winner depending on how this match goes.

+1 for l4v's idea.

@Joi

Damn, didn't expect to get challenged by one of my ME/MME trainers xD. But I'm down potentially. My question for everyone tho is, what makes a exciting best of 11?? Do the 2 people need to have public beef? Or is it all about the games? Because I consider Joi a friend lol.

@lrv.r0v

I'm 100% game to do that. I think it would be cool if there was a best of 11 SE title. I don't know how the mechanics of it will work. But if I win this series, I will accept a challenge from anyone (only 1 at a time tho), provided that they are either top 100 on the Small Earth Auto Dist or Small Earth Wasteland leaderboards (I want to incentivize more people to play Small earth quickmatches, and see more of the community I love). That's still like 100-200 people tho, so possibly the requirement could be that a challenger has to beat another top 100 member in a qualifying best of 11 to challenge the title holder.

No beef required. In fact no beef is preferred. This should spawn just quality games & analysis. Drama optional.

A title would be cool, and there should a committee which decides who to accept as legit challengers and rank the contenders. Not dissimilar to boxing/wrestling. Not just anyone can issue a challenge for the title. You have to have shown somewhere else (ladders, tournaments, wherever) that you are a contender for the title. Committee should be a few top players that can distinguish who the candidates are (ie: they need to be good enough to be able to trust to identify who the other good players are).

Edited 6/4/2021 05:25:02

We don't really need a committee for it. We can just have one person (me?) run it and pick the most qualified challenger each time, because ideally we want to unseat champions frequently or they will spend forever at the top. To expedite the process, we can also have people who are waiting play one another (pair off) in the undercards for the opportunity to play the champion.

Sure, you running it works. Keeps it simple. I was thinking >1 person so no single person could be deemed as biased and rigging the rankings, and also so the leaders could potentially be in the rankings and have no conflict of interest, but it's more important to get the thing actually established and started.

Would you be doing the analysis as well?

Great idea with having the undercards play each other to vie for the chance to challenge the champ.

Tbh, I wanna see a best of 11 between Tj and Beep Beep Jeep. I think it would be pretty exciting (just an idea on the first challenger match lol)

I’m not sure anyone could manage a best of 11 vs tj. Getting through one ass whipping is hard enough!

Sure, I can afford 6 extra games. If that's really necessary