How would you play this?

[Badorties]

Ok lets get some strategic discussion going. How would you play this turn if you were Badorties.

You just called up reserves and have 19 to deploy.
In the previous turn, you eliminated two players and took over most of the West.
The remaining two players sent a series of diplomatic communications to each other.

What's your play here?

 

[Asulf]

i'd reinforce south, by texas and those states and take power of the north (red region) cuz its weak and the only frontier is in green zone by the river with the rest of the states.

 

[Shepherd]

hard to call without knowing the history of the game... if your opponents have been wailing on each other then I'd say let them - take a region for the card and let them do the damage, since they're both stronger than you. If yellow has been crashing your party and leaving the bigger threat alone, you might want to hit him in Misouri and try to take away his midwest bonus - encourage him to mass his troops as far east (and away from you) as possible.

But at this point it might just be smartest to conserve troops and make yourself big enough to avoid a take-out on the next cash-in. Take Kansas and reinforce in as few locations as possible.

 

[lh34]

I would probably assault the Upper Midwest as if you are getting 19 troops yellow is very vulnerable to a large attack, or as a more conservative option you can reinforce your borders and go after the south. Or you can do both.

 

[codanostra]

if i were in this situation i would use 8 of those troops to break both their commands (Arkansas -> Missouri -> Illinois -> Kentucky). I would use the rest of the units to fort your commands in the west. At this point in the game Mark and bigM should be much more worried about each other than you. Additionally the next round they will focus on regaining those commands, limiting the force they can use to attack you (and obviously mark is no position to attack you either way).

Continuining to look at the map i would advise not breaking bigM's Upper Midwest command. While this would be the smartest path to take, practically it is suicide. From my short experience playing these strategy games, i could easily envision him getting angry at you for breaking all his commands and deciding on trying to take you out. Since you have so many 1's every where, he could easily become a nuisance, eventually leading to the death of both of you.

 

[ORBOTRON]

I always say as goes dixie, so goes the game on that map. It seems Marc has been smart enough to trick his real threat into helping him, so there's not much you can do. Is it a merc or standard game? If it's merc, hopefully the timing works and you can take bigm out. If it's standard, it's kinda hopeless, someone has to break dixie or it will be a run-away pretty quickly. I'd say get on the diplo horn and use that boyish charm of yours.

 

[Badorties]

Very good ideas all. Here is how I played it out.

Orbo was right, it seems as if mark had tricked bigMC into some agreement, perhaps doing his dirty work. I knew that breaking bigMC's bonuses was a bad ideas as coda suggested, it would just waste my troops and piss him off, which you don't do when there are 3 players left. I also didn't reinforce my borders as it would be pointless, since people are dropping huge bonuses at this point, and could have broken me if there wanted.

So I postured. Dropping a huge stack on bigMc's border and letting a friendly threat fly in that chat. My hope was that bigMC would see that angering me, and my big stack was a bad idea. He may feel overly threatened, but I am down on reserves and need to stick around a few more turns. It's not a good position to be stuck in the middle USA in a 3 person game, and both Mark and I are trying to get bigMC47 to do each others dirty work. So we will see what happens.

 

[Badorties]

Here is the game

http://www.majorcommand.com/Games/Game.php?gameid=1679

It looks like bgiM47 has left me alone but stacked troops on my border. He also agreed to a treaty with mark across ohio and penn, but still leaves WV wide open.

I suspect mark will drive a stake in my commands on his turn.

 

[ORBOTRON]

there's not much you can do, unfortunately Bigm's bad play is dooming you both. He could have at least poked dixie, I guess it's counter intuitive for new players to attack the strongest player, when that's obviously exactly what he has to do.