I just want to share a victory I just got, as it was very sneaky.
First in context:
I am not being really active during this year, because I’ve been doing exciting things in life, mostly traveling, which didn’t let me to commit to CC, as it requires a daily check.
But now, I just spent all my vacations days, so for the rest of the year I will be mostly at the office, so I decided to play again!
Now, I like 1v1 mostly because are fast. As a freemium, the availability of spots is crucial, and as a casual player I go for quality than for quality of games, preferring playing several at the same time rather than one or two well thought games with difficult maps and multiple players.
So I set up a 1v1 game. As the Paris thing just happened, it looked appropriate to choose a France map. I chose then France 2.1, because is rather new to me. In my long career in CC, I’ve got a special attention to be a versatile player, trying already most of the maps, so even if is an unknown map, it is definitely in my comfort zone.
So, all set up, game created, some emails here and there, then bam! Player maxwell Evans joined, then Lietenant, and from now on commander in chief of the Green Army in France.
The setting I set was also rather impulsive. This 1v1 are usually strongly dictated by a lucky first turn or a couple of strong dice in a side, so I decided to play it with manual deployment of troops and fog, to makes things more interesting. I added to this the trench welfare. Later this impulse would give me the victory.
The battle starts: I saw I got a stronger presence mostly in the north-west of France, especially in BAS and BZH regions, and I foresaw that the battle will be for the East regions, CHA and LOR in the north and BOU and RHO, with key regions as Cóte-d’Or (which is ironically landlocked) and Ain heavily deployed.
This first battles went really bad for my side. I didn’t foresee the trench effect, so instead of using the initial deployment to promote early expansion, I put 7 in Alier that didn’t make any sense. Naturally, the Green Army was gaining more and more territories, outnumbering my bonus and dominating easily the fight in the East, even though I played early to secure the Britain regional claim and I obtain a costly domination of the BZN region.
So, at this point, this game will be an inevitable defeat.
But then I saw it: there was a victory condition, encrypted in the legend of the Map!
If I managed to secure all the riots around Paris, secure Paris and from there secure one of the Foreign Claims, I could win. At that moment seems like a utopian dream, as my deployed troops were more and more outnumbered by the Green Army ones, and I could not resist much longer the direct battles. But I had an strategical advantage: I was relatively close to the Île-de-France, and with the battles concentrated in the East, plus the fog, and the assumption that Maxwell (commander of the Green Army) was not aware of the victory condition, I had a Chance!
So I went for it. Round 6,, I secure my first Parisian suburb, from Essonne, and also got Seine-et-Marne who will grant me access to the other two suburbs, as there is an impassable to suburb No. 4. . Round 7, I secure the remaining two district from Seine-et-Marne. At this point the Green Army is receiving 55 troops via bonuses, when I barely reach 14, good enough to take Paris in round 8., but tricky to hold.
Then the decisive moment came. The Green Army was at the gates of Île-de-France: 28 troops there, as an impossible obstacle to reach my victory. But luck shines to the prepared. I got a rainbow set, that combined with my other bonus let me 23 troops, to try to defeat the enemy.
It was epic.
I managed to lag, for this only turn the huge invasion of the Green Army. By securing Seine-et-Marne, I got an extra turn as absolute power of Paris and its suburbs. A friendly attack to the Monegasque pretention completed the conditions to secure the victory. A totally unexpected victory, pulled out by attention to detail, decision and a bit of luck.
It's time to celebrate.
