Today, I got into a game with Acheron, Shaf, and Asphalt. We got everyone lined up in war2 chat. The infamous TvB, with me (Nostradomus) and Acheron going up against Asphalt and Shaf. Very impressive company, and this was going to be quite a game, we thought. We picked FOC/low, and got started. I was red (for once RED and not purple!!!), Acheron was aqua, Shaf yellow, and Asphalt was purple (poor guy :) Ach and i decide to go sea. So I build on. Our plan was to double-team Shaf on the sea. But scouting with my tanker, I spot Asphalt first, since he was below me at purple. I was training my first pair of juggs just a little after his rig was done. Needless to say, I decided to hit Asp first. I get his rig with 2 juggs; and then sent 3 down to Shaf. Acheron was there too, and we got Shaf's yard and foundry. We were pretty worried that shaf had a transport, but breathed a sigh of relief as Acheron's juggs sunk it. Asphalt tried to rebuild his rig, but I put an end to that. Then, we decided it was time to lay down our expansions. With FOC, and winning the sea, you'd think that the game would be over, but alas it wasn't. Every expansion was taken by the enemies except orange. It turns out Shaf and Asp both decided to mine hog. Now this scared me. Asp had his exp. at blue. He had rebuilt his keep (i destroyed his keep on purple). But if you know blue, the hall can also be hit from the sea. I took a pair of juggs (lvl 3 by now, of course) went around to the top left of blue and got his keep. I then invaded with 3 footmen, and took the island for myself. Meanwhile, Acheron was hurting for money. He had almost lost orange's island to Shaf. I'm not sure what happened after that, but I think either I helped Acheron take back orange, or Shaf took it, or it was left alone. Anyway, Asphalt left after an Hour into the game. He was dead, my juggs killed all of his stuff on the sea. Acheron took Asphalt's mine at purple, which still had about 20k in it. Shaf popped for a few gryphons, we responded with destroyers, and eventually got the gryphons. Shaf also tried to put up his foundry and rig. We had the sea so we took those out a bunch of times (he would build them on a different island each time; he had yellow, black, and white). We were all at castle now. Shaf's main base was at white, where he had a castle, around 4 guard towers, some knights, and what seemed like a BILLION mages. Shaf attacked my expansion at blue with a pair of gryphons, i had mages standing around, and almost had blizzard. I blizzard the gryphons and rebuild my peasants. Shaf comes in with his damned mages and blizzards my peons again. That really pissed me off. I started doing polymorph runs on shaf's mages. I loaded up 3 mages at a time, invised, and then polyed 3 mages at a time. Any way, to make a long battle shorter, we got him down to about 10 mages, and a knight with 4 guard towers and a castle on white. We had destroyed just about everything on the other islands. We also had a nice little fight for orange's island. Shaf eventually won orange, but there was little gold left in it. Anyway, I had lost alot of troops. I had like 3 mages, 2 knights, an archer, and a bunch of peasants left and I was out of money (less than 400 gold). Acheron and I started to scheme...he trained 2 ballistas, and then put them in a sport. I made the sports invisible and he went in doing hit & run's. We killed around 3 mages, maybe more using the ballistas. Shaf had killed all of my flyers, and since i was out of money, i couldn't build anymore. So i had to rely on Acheron for recon and attack where I could see with my tankers :) Shaf had a transport, we tried to get it with juggs, but he keeps blizzarding our ships. Acheron tried to do a sea block with oil tankers to trap the transport, but again, mr. mage man blizzard's them. Anyway, I sent a load of peasants to take out those bastard Shaf mages. I managed to take out 1 mage. I had 1 transport left. Acheron had like 15 knights, in transports, and I made one invisible. He invaded and took out some more mages. After a longer battle, I had 1 mage left (lost the other 2 to poly), some peasants, and 1 knight. Shaf had like 3 or so mages along with his towers. Any way, Acheron lands his knights. We thought we would win. But something went horribly wrong and due to blizzard, and Ach lost all his knights. I did some more battling. Just when we all thought it was a stalemate, Shaf fought me off of his island. And there left standing was a mage. That mage got into a transport and destroyed our towns. That ONE mage!!! One Mage!!!!! I had just loaded like 3 peasants onto shaf's island a little bit before that, and the peasants got mowed by the towers. Now i was think only IF If only i didn't load those peasants, maybe we would have taken out that mage. Shaf had a footmen too, but that's a minor detail :) Well, this game lasted like 3 hours and it comes down to the wire. I think I lost the game for us because I lost my mages and also I built 2 aviaries for no reason whatsoever. Oh well, that was a GREAT game. Shaf is the mage master, and I surrendered because I've had enough. That was one of the longest 2on2's I've ever played, and it was pretty close. Well, great game guys! ---- Nostradomus