If It's Stupid And It Works, It's Not Stupid! - A Player's Guide To Practicality...by Jim TorkelsonGeneral NotesMiddle Earth-PBM is a team game. This game screams out "communication!". If you are not willing to communicate, you are wasting your own and your teammates' time, money, and imagination. You must be willing and able to put in the time and phone bill to make it all worth while. If you are not willing to call at least three teammates a turn, then don't bother. If you are working 60+ hours a week, and have not given up on sleep entirely, don't bother. Play solitaire or Minesweeper instead. If you do not have a phone number (with answering machine!) or email address where you can be RELIABLY reached, don't bother. When a team works well together, the game is fantastic.Don't play more than one position in the same game. The "friend who can only be reached through me" line is very obvious -- your teammates know, even if GSI does not, and they do NOT like it. They especially don't like it when you play three positions, and drop because one position gets hit hard. Thanks for nothing... Don't play more than four games at a time. The individual games just do NOT get the attention they deserve. And don't join a lot of games with the intent of dropping out of the ones where the start is not great. Play two or three games max, and put some heart into each! My two games are a significant part of my PBM gaming life, and I do not take them lightly. Email is a great way to pass information, but not good for determining strategy. That involves complex interchange of ideas, and that can only be done by phone. And arguments by email are not communication, they are a series of demands and ultimatums. It does not lead to a resolution. One last thing: THINK before pressing send. Do NOT let your temper write your messages to your TEAMmates. Basic Rule: If there is more than one four letter word per page of message, you are making a mistake. Don't send it. Delete it instead. Dropping is a personal decision. Sometimes life puts items on our table that have priority, and this is "just a game". But beyond that, you can always still play just one more turn to transfer pop centers and artifacts to your allies. Don't count on a standby player coming in to save your conscience. Dropping because "I'm not doing well" is BS and cowardice. Do us all a favor and don't sign up for another game. The players you abandon do not think of it as a great loss... Accept one of the team as "Leader". This person tries to coordinate your assets, especially character assets. Accept a strategy, and follow it. Leadership by committee is worthless. Get a focus, and stick with it. It might not work, but at least after you have lost you can say that you tried. Plan ahead at least two turns, for your characters, your armies, and your economy. A lot of that is guesswork, but an idea is still better than nothing. This game involves lots of planning to put together a coordinated attack. Remember to call for help when the enemy is ganging up on you. A relief mission takes time to undertake. Don't wait until you only have four characters left to ask for aid. And don't wait until that huge army is adjacent to your capital either... Characters:Agents and emissaries are the most important and difficult characters to use well. A few basic rules for skill rank needed help with task allocation. An agent needs a skill rank of at least 40 to steal gold from a town, and 45+ to steal gold from a major town. I would build up my agent skill rank to at least 60 before trying to assassinate. With the slower rate of skill improvement at higher ranks (how many times has your 50 agent improved one point for a GrdChar order?), the most efficient way of building up an agent is to guard characters up to 40, then go out and steal gold! It is good for the character, good for your nation, and irritates the enemy.For emissaries it works out about the same. It is a great temptation to send out the 30 emissary to put in camps. However, the order often does not work, and when it does the camp has a loyalty of 15 and promptly degrades. Waste of effort and money. Have the emissary stay in the capital and InfYour until the skill rank is 38 or more. Then go out and put in camps that will stick around and help your economy. I would wait until the emissary is 45+ before trying to InfOther, unless working on a pop center with the friendly/tolerant relations (dropped ally). By the way, just because a nation has dropped does NOT mean that your lone emissary can walk in and take a Major Town away in one turn. I have had emissaries successfully InfOther on a pop center the same turn it degraded from town to village, and NOT gain control! Emissary action requires mass, groups of at least six to take control of Major Towns in one turn. [Ask the population of Pelargir in ME- 242... So far control has been changed by influence twice!] The other function of an emissary is to upgrade your pop centers. My rule of thumb is that if your loyalty plus the skill rank of the emissary added together is not over 100, it is not going to work except on rare occasions. Works for me. In my humble opinion, buying double classed characters is a waste of time and money. The usual choice is a commander-agent, with 10 commander and 20 agent skill. It takes four or five turns of guarding before that 20 works up to 30. A single class agent would have been up to a 40 by that point, and he can then go out and steal gold to further improve his skill rank and your gold reserve in the process. What is lost here is the TIME element, which is gone forever. A multi-classed character with mage skill is a waste, because mages need both orders each turn (one to prentice magery, and the other to cast spells or learn new ones). Emissary actions require at least a 40 skill rank to InfOther, and camps created by a low emissary degrade due to low loyalty. Very little is gained. Do one thing well, and leave it at that. Dark Servants:Economics are the key to Dark Servant survival and eventual victory. The first rule for a DS is to NOT raise your taxes. With such a limited tax base, the immediate benefits are small. Then your camps in the mountains which produce gold degrade. As well, it makes it harder to put in new ones. Is gaining 3000 gold income a turn from taxes worth losing 10000 gold production plus bronze and steel? I think not. Arthedain, North Gondor, and South Gondor can raise taxes. Not the Ice King, Fire King or Dog Lord. If anything, lower your tax rate to help the placement of camps.Speaking of camps, there are 35 mountain hexes in Mordor that do not start out with a pop center. There are eight Dark Servants who are interested in the area (excluding Witch-King and Quiet Avenger). That works out to about four camps per nation. There is no reason why all of these camps should not be in place by turn 15. One emissary per nation, only succeeding one time in two, can do that in eight turns. When this does NOT happen, the Freeps have a decisive economic edge. There is a very powerful Freep tactic of manipulating the market so that all the sell prices are only one. The DS are very dependent on Nation sells, especially metals. To counter that, the DS need to have either food production or gold production. The camps in the mountains can supply the gold. Dark Servant Strategy:The Dark Servants should blow both the Pelargir and Minas Anor bridges over the Anduin. Limiting South Gondor to a naval power is good, and trapping the city recruiting base of North Gondor is even better. Once Osgiliath is taken, Fire King and Dog Lord and Ice King can move north to help out the Dragon Lord (as noted in a previous WOTW article).The Dark Servants must guard the eastern gate to Mordor. Letting FP armies in the back door into those unfortified towns and major towns is an unforgivable loss of tax revenue. Park an army at the one hex wide choke point, with a powerful agent there as well. Create a camp, and fortify the place. It IS worth it. Concentrate your agents and emissaries on one FP nation, and knock them out of the game. Agents and personal challenge threats can cause a nation to bug out of his capital, and then the emissaries can take it over. If the Freeps want to stop that by moving an army in to the hex, the army commander is vulnerable. Note that this requires Recon and ScoChar and ScoHex orders EACH turn, to identify the target characters. Using a nation's or character's special abilities is vital. Stealth is a good thing, but difficult to quantify. The Cloud Lord assassinate and kidnap bonus is legendary. Certain nations with the double skill level scout/recon ability are invaluable. The Quiet Avenger does need some compensation for having his agents constantly ScoChar instead of stealing... A character with a powerful starting spell needs to use it. "Divine Characters with Forces" is very useful when determining if there are guards along with that army commander. However, when a Nazgul is forced to "Conjure Mounts" because his nation is nearly bankrupt, something is wrong... One very powerful personal challenge threat is better than three good ones. The Ice King can concentrate his mage artifacts onto one character, and put some fear into Elrond. The Dark Servants must communicate well and often, because they start out so close to one another. In my opinion, the Freeps can get away with more individualistic actions than the Darks. But when the teamwork is there, the rewards are great. Intelligent play can create a tradition of more intelligent play.
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