Man, what a game. This game was essentially perfect in every way. A 6 player free-for-all against 5 of the best players on Kali on a sweet map that still no one knew, where no one dropped and the speed was actually pretty good. Playing in this game was easily worth the cost of Warcraft 2, my 28.8 modem, and the Kali registration fee combined. Man, oh man.

The players were myself (Shaf), Shlonglor, Jff~~, ChrisM, Tou, and Warpmaster. Me, Chrism and Tou were human, I think, while Jff~~, Shlonglor and warpmaster were orcs. We played on the Rivers map (really a great map, we discovered. Play this one!) on medium resources. Just look at my company man, I was intimidated. All 5 of these guys are as good as they come. Even being part of this game, let alone doing all right in it, was incredible.

The fact that I got off to one of my worst starts of all time was not helping things. You would think that I would realize that a level names Rivers would be a sea level. Well, ha ha, I fooled you! In my defense, it the level looks so much like "Bridge to Bridge Combat" at first glance that it fooled me in the beginning. But I had a blacksmith and was just about to upgrade to a keep before I even thought about getting a lumber mill.

Then, I started looking around with a couple of footman, and realized I was surrounded by water. I'm really going to have to see someone about my clinical acts of sheer idiocy. Shlonglor typed in, as a joke, I gather, pretty late in the beginning, "Should I have a lumber mill by now?" The funny part was I DIDN'T. Man, if It was a land level, I would have been kicking some major butt. Unfortunately............

The only thing that saved me was that everyone left me alone. Chrism parked a flying machine over my base and I thought I was a goner, but he did the same thing to Shlonglor as well. I did have a lot of land units, so I guess Chrism decided not to try and invade. I was just getting my shipyard, bonehead me, and began to get on my feet. I expanded to a free island that was right next to me, and began rolling in the cash and getting on my free. Man I was so lucky.

I could see nothing, but heard from random comments typed to everyone that Shlonglor had been invaded by Chrism and Chrism was kicking his butt. I don't think Shlonglor ever recovered from that attack, and he didn't do too much before leaving the game and watching from Warpmaster's computer.

Warpmaster, in the meantime, I believe was attacking Tou and doing a good job of it. Tou didn't last too long as a power either. Warp was attacking someone when I got my first transport and landed on his island, wrecking a little bit of havoc. Both Tou and Warp had flying machines and spent the rest of the game flying around as spectators. When it became Me vs. Chrism vs. Jff was where the real fun began.

If I survived early on because I was lucky, I survived later because I was crafty. I was never extremely powerful, but was able to scrap along well enough to make it unprofitable for anyone to attack me. It took me longer than anyone to upgrade to castle/fortress, but when I did, I stared building Mages. I saw from recon that Chrism was building gryphons and that Jff was building a whole crapload of Ogre-Mages. As someone (Tou, I think) pointed out, It was quickly turning into a contest; which was better? Mages, Gryphons, or bloodlust?

Chrism attacked me not long after with a few gryphons but I managed to polymorph enough of them to get him to back off for a while. Jff left me alone for a while and I did likewise to him, to a certain extent. I built up my navy (Chrism had definite control over the seas, but I built enough to rival him), and built about 6 transports. My first mine had run out long ago but I had the second mine rolling and a lot in the bank. Then I decided to start pulling off Random Acts of Violence with my mages.

Man, I love the blizzard spell. Such a force of mass destruction! For my first trick, I landed four mages on Chrism's main island and took out a row of farms. What was so cool is that I escaped, unscathed. I had long since run out of regular, barrack-made units but I was having far too much fun with my mages to go back to making Knights. I pulled so much cool stuff off and had so much fun.

I'm not sure how many of my Blizzards went between town halls and gold mines, but I know that Chrism was really hating me by the end of that game. I must have wiped out at least 4 of his peasant lines with blizzard spells. I think the adjective used to describe me more than anything was "Evil."

I was pissing Jff off, too, I think. Once I landed a mage in a place where there was a row of forest between a mine of his and where I was. But Blizzard was still in range and I killed all of his gold-mining peasants. He could not have seen it coming, nor do I think he even knew where it came from. Man am I going to Hell.

Still, I was pulling off cool stuff left and right. Just for the hell of it, I pulled off the invisible-Transport-Full-Of-Mages trick and wrecked some havoc on Chrism's base. I also got into casting blizzards between Islands, later in the game. Just take a look at the rivers map, you can do that. Man that must have caught them by surprise. I did that to Jff's ogres more than once.

Eventually, I think Jff got pissed off with me and decided to invade. Chrism had tried it with more gryphons, but I held him off ( to some extent) again with polymorph. However, I had no defense against 9 bloodlusted ogres..mages suck for defense of an open space, and Jff wiped out my original island with ease. I was able to rebuild on my second island, and the third one which I had expanded to way too late in the game, and I built 3 mage towers. I had maybe 10k of gold in the bank, but was economizing.

All this time, Jff and Chrism were squabbling back and forth...every so often I would catch a glimpse of a couple of ogres busting up a building of Chrism's, or ogres running away from a few gryphons.

From here on and out I wasn't much of a force. I built a few more mages but I was running out of gold. Gold became the key to this level, I feel; at least for me. I was mining from a third mine (my second was gone), but it was undefended and Jff wiped out that base at least three times. I was on such a small island it was too hard to defend. I just kept rebuilding it, and doing what I could to stay alive.

Around this point, everyone thought Jff was going to win. I saw that he was mining a full mine, in force, and building up a lot of forces in the southwest, but I could do nothing about it. I was too weak at that point. Chrism could have done something about it, but didn't know what was going on. So for Chrism, recon was the key. Jff was kicking Chrism's butt, as well, at that point, but that didn't last too long.

Jff wiped out my second base, where I had 3 mage towers up, and at this point, I accidently knocked out Tou's flying machine with a Blizzard. Sorry Tou! I didn't mean to~ Man, having spectators was weird, though. I would have a transport full of mages that was sent in secret to some base, and there would be a flying machine and a zeppelin following it around, just sort of tagging along. Still, Tou and Warp's comments made the game three times more enjoyable.

Anyway, I never really recovered from losing my second base, and I spent the rest of the game just sort of watching. I drained the third mine, eventually, but had to spend all of the gold trying to get a shipyard and other necessities. I had lost all of my transports, one by one, and don't think I had any mages left at that point either.

However, this was about the point where the tide of battle between Chrism and Jff changed hands. I had wiped out a lot of Jff's Ogres with blizzards as he attacked me with them, and I think that this cost him. I also used that navy I had left (2 battleships, 1 destroyer, and 1 sub) to take out Jff's shipyard, foundry, and a few of his transports. Chrism was also mining the only free mine left ( it was right in the middle of the map, and no one dared touch it previously). Chrism built up a sizable force of knights and was able to take Jff out, as I saw it. I'm not sure exactly how that went, but the result was that Jff was eliminated.

And then Chrism was able to turn the brunt of his forces to me, and I stood no chance. As I said, I was weak, but I managed to build a few battleships, hoping that I could take out the transports as they came. I didn't count on gryphons. It took me about 5 minutes to surrender. I had no air defense. And I had simply run out of gold.

And so Chrism won the best game of Warcraft 2 history, after about 3+ hours of playing. I have never played a game that had any one aspect better to it than this one. Congrats to Chrism and everyone. Ma, what a game.

--
Shaf

( Thanks so much to Shaf for this great story. It is well written and throughly entertaining. )--Shlonglor.