From the Mouth of Sauron Issue: E-9 Date: 02-17-94 Note: all authors retain exclusive rights to their material. Reprinting is allowed for non-commercial game use only. Editorial Another happy Friday to you! Of course, you're all going to get this on Thursday, but that's because I'm going to be on vacation until next Tuesday. New guys: many, many new people have asked to be signed up. I can only put a few names on at a time, and my primary contact person is leaving for two weeks of vacation. Unfortunately for you, you're going to have to get the Mouth from a secondary source for a while. File availability: it's been awhile since I said this. I have files on encounters, artifacts, riddles, setups, etc. which you might find useful. For those who've been getting the Mouth for awhile, this is the same set of files I dumped to you when you first signed on, modified by all the info that's appeared in this newsletter. If you want these files, drop me a line and I'll send them to you as time permits. If you already have the files and copies of the Mouth, please! Make the modifications yourself. Mailing via our router here can be a time-consuming task. Again, to those of you who aren't yet on the mailing list, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to wait or get the files from someone who has them. Submissions: I love those submissions! Without your tireless efforts, this newsletter'd be dead in the water. I do have a couple of suggestions for authors: - I have to format the newsletter with a 1 inch left margin and a 2 inch right margin. This is to accommodate people with older systems, where the character length per line is extremely short. If you format your submissions with these margins prior to sending it to me, if would save me alot of work. Why is that? Because longer line lengths get hard-returned and look like this: As you can see, this line length is too long given the 1 and 2 inch requirements. The line 'bleeds' over for a few words and then gets slapped with a hard return, meaning that I have to go through and erase, manually, every such hard return that I find. If I didn't, each Mouth would have twice as many pages as it really needed, and would be very difficult to read. - paragraph styles. Most of you use casual letter-style paragraphs indented from the left margin. The Mouth uses the full-block business style. I use this style because it makes it easier to read the newsletter and better separates sections from each other. If you could use this style as well, I'd most appreciate it. - tabs and indents are fine for your tables and formulas, as is plain old spacing. Do me one favor though, and don't mix methods in the same table. If you do, the table will look something like this: Test .001 Test .002 Test .003 Test .004 Test .005 With complex tables, I have to go in and clean things up so that people can tell what numbers belong in what columns. Again, all the above methods are fine, just use the SAME method within the table. - I don't run spell-checks nor correct grammatical errors. I don't think this is important; so long as you convey your thoughts, who cares if it's spelled correctly? Still, if YOU care, I suggest you spell-check prior to sending the article to me. I just cut and paste the baby into the Mouth file, so all your errors will be retained in the final product. Sorry about that, but I just don't have the time to go over each article word-by-word. Leslie Foreman: Leslie left me two articles, one of which you'll see here in the Mouth. The second you'll just have to wait for. Enjoy, they'll probably be the last for quite some time! Tom Artifacts No new info. Encounters Comment by Brian Mason: On the Lake/Swamp encounter, it should be "monsters are Mewlips," or a "Mewlip." The Mewlips are a species of creature allegedly inhabiting wet areas and comes from the poem "The Mewlips" in JRRT's collection of Hobbit poetry "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil." Ghostly Army: OFFER to negotiate a truce = escape with injuries for Dark Servants. Generic Dragon: a reliable source says it's possible to steal gold from the generic dragon-in-a-lair encounter. The agent who did this was around an effective 90 or so skill rank. Thanks to Brian Mason and Keith Peterson for this information. Dragons Can it be? No new info? Other Corrections and Notes From Keith Peterson Overrun -- we had long discussions with GSI about this on the CI$ forum. The overrun has a threshhold of troops after which overrun becomes impossible. The point of overrun is to stop people from continuously throwing a few hundred troops out and stopping large armies. An army of 400-500 MA MIGHT get overrun by 5000, but an army of 1000 will never get overrun, even if the enemy has 20,000 troops. From Tom Walton I've successfully overrun a number of armies. In two instances, scouts reported the army to be around 900 troops; I ran into them with a better than 5:1 advantage in numbers. In the other cases, I never found out how strong the armies nor, alas, what characters were killed. I will say this, though. For purposes of overrun, each opposing army is compared to your own SEPARATELY. It could be that there are four armies with 500 troops in the hex, 2000 total; but if you have 5,000 troops, you'll overrun each army individually when moving through. I've done this before as well. Also, it isn't necessary to actually move THROUGH the hex, just INTO it. And as a last note, you can't overrun an enemy force that's sitting on one of it's own (not an ally's) fortified pop centers. You can, however, sabotage the fortifications that turn and THEN march into the hex, overrunning the stunned enemy (did that too). From Brian Mason In response/comment to Eric Schurr's questions. Opening strategies have been provided in "The Mouth" #8 for the Eothraim and the Dragon Lord. One on the Dwarves is "in the pipes." (Editor's Note: it's in this issue of the Mouth). I would not presume to write a strategy article on the Northmen or Sinda, for I'd just ask Jeremy Richman and Glen Mayfield for their moves in game 131. I might come up with a few variations, but it's best to let that game "cook" for a while, and then let them write the articles! Which nations, and how can they, form a "curses squad?" I believe this technique was described in "Blood & Glory." Prior to writing my article on Population Center Development, I asked GSI about production values being different for population centers versus hexes open at start. The answered point blank that they were the same. In response to Jeremy Baxter's "Kill Guard" wish list request, if you know who is guarding whom judicious use of assassinate and kidnap with two different agents will allow you to get rid of the guard before the primary target. From Darren Beyer Response to Guards and the Equation I've seen the agent assassination model and one thing strikes me as odd in it, the double the guard agent rank as a negative modifier to success. I would've believed this double guard rank modifier a few months ago when (as the Cloud Lord) I had Kadida have his assassination attempt foiled by a 40's rank guard who captured him in the process, Kadida was an 80 (+20 = 100). This was prior to GSI's annnouncement that agent actions were tougher. Now here I am being much more careful as the Cloud Lord when as the Rhudaur, I have a number of characters meet up with a lone Tormog (Dark Lts agent). Tormog scouted out as an 80's agent and I figured it was likely that he had the Cloak of the Abyss (40 pt stealth item). I also knew that my best agent in the hex (base rank 68, +15 point item, +25 point stealth item) was being tracked and that he was the likely target of Tormog. I issued challenge on Tormog, and tried to assassinate him. In case he refused and acted before my assassin, I had a 65 point agent guarding my good agent. Under a double guard rank, this should have been more than enough even IF Tormog had the 40 point stealth item. The result: Tormog refused, went prior to my agent, and CUT THROUGH MY 65 POINT GUARD!!!!!!! Needless to say I was miffed and muttering "so much for the new agent rules" for days. My friends consoled me and brought to my attention that a lucky role on an 80 agent/40 stealth could have cut through a 65 guard, I agreed and stopped cursing GSI. A few days later... The Dark Lts called me and gloated a little and said that Tormag didn't have the item, he was a base 80 agent with NO added bonuses!!!! Back to being miffed and muttering, I'd never heard of a 65 guard being cut through by an 80 agent even before the new rules, but after ...? Basically, my point is that there is a LARGE random factor in the agent equation when a 100 rank agent gets captured by a 40's guard and an 80 rank agent cuts through a 65 rank guard on his way to kill his target. From Tom Walton One thing people aren't taking into account on character actions, which can sometimes influence things beyond rational analysis: double agents. I balk at discussing this in depth, because I've used this tactic to great effect on some occasions. Taking a double agent is an emissary action and thus happens prior to assassination, kidnaps, etc. If you want to influence a guard's action before assassination/kidnap but don't have the resources available to kill the guard first, you can take him as a double- agent with an emissary. If successful, the guard will in all likelihood conveniently 'forget' to cover his target, allowing the primary assassin to waltz right through and take out his victim. This works very well in my experience, and seems to be easier than actually killing the guard in many cases. Best of all, that guard will remain doubled for all future actions and continue to provide you with interesting information as well. So if you start getting really screwy results with your guards, or your favorite assassin suddenly starts failing every mission against a particular nation, you might consider bringing him in for a little counter-intelligence. You might be surprised at what you find. I surely hope none of my enemies in the game are reading this.... From Holger Eichmann Because I want to learn the programming under Windoze (pronouncements of compassion will be accepted), I have started to write a program, by which you can calculate how many troops you will lose, if you attack an enemy army/town. But now I had to find out that I need some quantitative information, where the game description doesn't want to tell details. (If you don't want to bother to write an article, you can mail me directly: eichmann@ceres.amp.uni-hannover.de. I will collect the answers and write an article, if I get enough response.) 1. Which are the climate modifier of the different nations? I already got the terrain modifier for mild climate of all nations, but the climate modifiers are still needed. 2. The description tells how the different troop types are fighting in the different terrain, but it doesn't tell, what that 'good', 'average' and 'poor' means quantitative. 3. The same with the Troop Tactic Modifier (I think the Tactic vs. Tactic Modifier isn't so important, because normally you don't know the tactic of the enemy). 4. The game description says (p. 58): 'In cases where more than one opponent appears, then strength is split proportionally between the opposing forces and tactics adjusted accordingly.'. Strength is split proportionally to what? To the strength, constitution or number of men of the different armies? 5. Are there some traps, probably I haven't seen like that an army gets some advantage if a friendly town is present (how great is that advantage?). 6. Last, but really not least: How does the battle work? The description says (p. 58): 'What follows is then a round by round activity where, starting with the strength and constitution computed above, the strength of each Army is subtracted from the constitution of their enemy until one or both Armies reach constitutions of zero whereby combat ends.' It says that in every round the constitution of the fighting armies will be reduced, but it doesn't say that the number of troops and therefore the strength will be reduced, too (of course the number of troops will be reduced after battle ended). I can't believe that. This means, e.g. army A (strength: 50000, constitution: 50000) meets army B (s: 25000, c: 49999). After round 1 the constitution of army 1 will be reduced to 50000-25000 = 25000, that of army B to 49999 50000 = -1. Therefore army B will be destroyed and army A will lose half of his troops. But now suddenly before the fight starts, a Man at Arms appears and strengthens army B. Now army A has s: 50000, c: 50000 and army B: s: 25001, c: 50001. After round 1 army A has s: 50000, c: 50000-25001=24999 and army B: s: 25001, c: 50001-50000=1, if the strength isn't reduced, too, as the description tells. Because army B isn't destroyed, fight goes into round 2. After that army A has a constition of 24999-25001 = -2 and army B one of 1 50000 = -49999. Now both armies are destroyed after that battle. If I understand the description correctly, then only one man at arms can cause the destruction of half a huge army (really a great hero, even though a dead hero). So thats all. Of course you can correct the text, if something is written in bad English (I know my English isn't the best) or misunderstandible. Holger Reply to Holger Eichmann From Tom Walton Holger, I'll answer questions 5 and 6 and leave the rest up to those interested: 5. The defensive bonus only applies if you own the pop center in question. The bonus varies between 10% and 20% depending on the level of fortifications, i.e., 10% for a tower, 20% for a citadel, with everything else falling in-between. This bonus is a direct add to the constitution of the defending army, recalculated every round and destroyed prior to any actual damage being done to the army (think of the bonus as Star Trek 'shields'). 6. The combat strength of the armies is also reduced each round. The computer takes losses inflicted, spreads them out among your troop types, reduces these troops accordingly, and THEN recalculates offensive potential and constitution. Thus, two evenly matched armies may fight for many rounds as they whittle away at each other. A large army might destroy a smaller one in one round. In Your Ear Nothing this time around. Personals No personals. ME-PBM Wish List From Brian Lowrey Would like something more discriptive when you kill a character with curses. Currently all you get is the message: "no character with that id exists" - you know the message. From Holger Eichmann It would be of great help, if one can give a parameter to the move orders that one only wants to move, if the other command has been successful. E.g. if an army commander wants to threaten a population center, he would give the commands: 'Threaten Population Center' and then 'Move Army' (only if the threatening has been successful), so he can try it again, if he wasn't successful. Then he needn't to stand around one turn, if he didn't risk to move away and he had success, or he needn't to move back, if he decided otherwise. The same e.g., if an emissary wants to create a camp in a hex with great production or if a mage searches an artifact. And to the improvement wishes to the game description: The game description could describe more exactly, which orders a navy commander can give and which not and which orders will anchors his ships. The description says: 'Most orders that can be given to Armies can also be given to Navies as long as the Navy could anchor its ships and become an Army. If the Navy could not anchor and become an Army, then orders pertaining to the troops or baggage train may be restricted. This does NOT mean that the Navy will become an Army by issuing such orders...'. You can't write things more diffusely. The words 'most' and 'may' alone take care that you don't know whether that one command you want to give will be accepted and will anchor the ships. Additionally the description of the different orders says 'army commander only' for some commands a navy commander in a shore hex can give, too (like 'put troops on maneuvers'). From Tom Walton Okay, so I'm shooting off my mouth this issue. There's just so many interesting things to comment on.... I'd like to see the use of Conditional orders as well. These wouldn't be terribly hard to program and would give the game greater flexibility. Some orders I'd like to see: Track Character: an agent could attempt to track and follow a character who starts the turn in the same hex, essentially following him around the map. This wouldn't work if the character uses magic to move, or is attached to an army. If the agent fails, he might fail to move, move some distance and stop (lost the trail), or even move in the wrong direction! Track Army: allows a characer in your own army to track an enemy army that starts in the same hex. A device to allow one army to pursue another. If the agent fails, the army could simply not move, move a couple of hexes and then stop (lost the enemy), or move in the wrong direction. Moving in the right direction might be bad news, as the enemy could lead your forces into an ambush or an encounter with many agents.... Emissaries: give Emissaries something better to do than uncover secrets/spread rumors as their secondary orders. Or, add nation message rumors to the 'uncover secrets', allowing them to actually garner some useful information with this order. It also makes the 'spread rumors' order more useful. Mage Training: allow one mage to train another with a 'train apprentice' order. The first mage would get no skill increase, the second 1-5 points (if the second could also Prentice) or 1-10 points (if the second can't also Prentice). Limit the train order to characters whose skill rank is more than 10 points lower than that of the trainer. Example: a character will a mage rank of 50 could train another character so long as the second character doesn't have a skill rank of 40 or better. This would allow a nation to train new mages faster, but would be limited by the skill rank of the trainer. Unless you had a very good mage, your training would top out with just a few orders (but make that new mage much more useful in a much shorter period of time). This would definitely help mage-heavy nations, yet wouldn't allow these nations to create supercharacters through faster training. It would also keep the Ring safe from being found early in the game. How I Got Shafted in ME-PBM From Dan DeYoung As a new player, I made certain to read and reread the rule book from front to back (and I vouch for that being the sister-in law/typist) before making my first moves. I made several mistakes which I openly admit were pure oversights which I should have caught from my reading. For instance, I tried to move 14 days movement with the normal `Move Army` order rather than the `Force-march', and I even moved a Navy to a rough hex and tried to move directly off as an army not realizing the ships had to be anchored and this could only occur on a shore/plains hex. Also, I was bummed to find that my Sinda kingdom did not include Galadriel or Celeborn, elven lords in Lorien for ages including the T.A. 1650 when the game was set, but I understand such things as game balance and forgave MEPBM for this. (I, the typist, was also disappointed when I found out Beoraborn (a shape-changer) in the book--real cool character) was a normal man with no extraordinary characteristics--and I had no forgiveness to ME because my characters (the Woodmen) were far from balanced!!!!) One thing which made me crazy that I couldn't figure out until enlightened by a veteran player (Thanks Dave Forman!) was artifact retrieval. I had an 80 pt character on a hex with a report of a trail to be investigated. For 3 turns I issued the #900 order Find Artifact, each turn astounded at my bad luck at not picking up my artifact. Silly of me to assume that Find Artifact should find a missing artifact. Seeing a hidden path did not seem like the kind of thing that should be investigated with an Investigate Encounter, and the rule book does not clue the novice into this. Perhaps I'm just dense. (Maybe it runs in the family!!) I have been told that Find Artifact works on the sea for retrieving missing artifacts. Consistency........ My second gripe has to do with Dragons. As I came to understand the play balance of MEPBM, it has become apparent to me that the Freeps have the large economies and armies while the Dark Servants have character power and some valuable nation abilites backed by strong, though unsustainable, starting armies. This balance is excellent on its own, but Dragon-wise evil condoms tip this balance quickly to the evil side. One Dragon can kill an opposing army of nearly any size in one round of combat, thus offseting the Freep numbers advantage. The Freeps have no such balancing mechanism to offset the character power of the servants (Editor's Note: Throkmaw and Scorba will join the Freeps if you know the right response). Some might argue that the numerous Good NPC's offset this, but to my knowledge in game 88, only 1 kingdom has had characters effected by an NPC. This by no means offsets the 15000+ troops evil dragons have devoured across the Good kingdoms by turn 18. I guess I think they eat too much!!! Also, historically in Middle Earth, I cannot recall Sauron ever having the power to control a Dragon in his armies. Morgoth used them in the Silmarillion and their presence was so great as to inspire a mention in the story at every encounter, so I believe that Sauron himself couldn't use them or we'd have known about it. (He deserves a medal making it through the Silmarillion!) Certainly some fast-talking servant shouldn't be able to do what his nearly all-pwerful master couldn't do. One geographical beef; is there no mountain or hill in all of Middle Earth that a Free People emissary may move on without running a serious chance of encountering a Dragon or Balrog? It seems that Freep metal production has no hope of being developed. Spells are really quite wimpy in this game. Battles seem to occur between many - thousands-of-man armies and spell-casters have little to no effect. Nearly all of the Offensive and Defensive spells are essentially the same, killing or saving various small numbers of troops. Locating artifacts and some scrying spells are virtually the only reason to keep mages around. It also seems that most kindgdoms would need 30 turns to develop a 75 pint mage who could learn spells with any chance of casting them. That's a lot of gold for a lot of turns before a character begins to be worth the money. (I think a solutions to this is to have good people mages have awesome spells if a dragon is present in the army--else small spells keep the game balanced --especially for Woodmen who have no desire for magic (though artifacts would be nice ...I think...since I never owned one.)) My last beef has to do with troops types, and I've heard it from many other players in my game and in the hallowed pages of the Mouth. I really like the way Army movement is measured and tracked in this game, and the fact that equipment and training influence army performance (though the percentages could be shifted some to stress these factors even more), but (this is where the beef is) the fact that it is NEVER worthwhile to have anything but Heavy Infantry or Heavy Calalry is disappointing. In fact, it's a waste of a combat system designed to take various troop types and equipment into consideration. What makes a recriut hired with wooden weapons and no armor a heavy infantryman rather that a light? Such flaws in logic and execution at the value-assignment end are a real shame since the conceopt and capability of the system are magnificent. My list of complaints is long, but minor (I'm sure glad I don't have to type his brother's complaints ) I find MEPBM to be an execptional game and its consistent 2 week turnaroud is fantastic. Maybe if enough of us mention our gripes and suggestions, a good game will get that much better! (Victoria DeYoung as the typist!) Yet Another Editor's Note: Unbeknownst to you all, Bill Field at GSI will receive a list of our 'suggestions' by the end of next week. I've collected, collated, and organized all the comments made here in the Mouth and elsewhere, then taken the most common complaints and suggestions to pass on. No one's name is attached to any of these comments or complaints. The point is exactly as Dan says: to make the game better, and remove the flaws that most of us encounter at one time or another. Using the Mouth and the net as info-gathering devices, I've accumulated the responses from more than 100 players, which should have some weight. It's my hope that the most flagrant flaws will be corrected or at least examined, since it appears that nothing is being done at GSI right now concerning these topics (at least we aren't hearing about it if any rules or code are under review). Still, remember: we're in a seller's market. GSI grows by leaps and bounds regardless. Until this growth levels off, we might have difficulty getting the company to examine the game. The Dragon Lord Editor's Note: last issue, Brian Mason proposed an opening strategy for the Dragon Lord. Here are the responses: From Keith Peterson I enjoyed the work Brian Mason put into the DragL theory. Unless you can get those loyalties pumped up, it simply isn't going to work, however. He's hypothesizing a 70% tax rate, which makes it even more unlikely. Since you, Tom, didn't jump on it, I wonder how many people understand how loyalty affects the ability to improve pop ctrs. The program assumes that the pop ctr needs a base 40% for a village, a base 55 for a town, a base 75 for a MT, and 100 for cities. Anything under that is apparently a direct negative modifier to your chance to improve the pop ctr. Loyalty over that base improve your chance to increase the size of the pop ctr. In Brian's example, you've got 30 pt emissaries making camps -- which will have 15 loyalties (before the decrease for taxes!) Now he wants to make them villages -- but he'll have a -25 to his roll (40 -15). With a good emissary, you might pull this off, but not with a 30-35 emissary. To assume that you'll get to make this a town with a -40 (55-15) modifier is even more unlikely. The Compuserve players have been working under this system for about two years, and it seems to work very well. Players who try to make MTs with 25 loyalty can't, for example. Note that this means that there is a severe penalty for high taxes - you can't increase your pop ctrs very easily -- if at all! Response to Keith Peterson From Tom Walton In regards to upgrades, I've used 45-50 point emissaries to improve camps to villages on a regular basis, when the camp loyalty was only in it's low 20's. I've also used mid-50's/low-60's emissaries to improve villages to towns on a number of occasions, again with loyalty in the low or mid 20's. I've only improved one town to a major town, but did so with a mid-70's emissary on a town with a loyalty in the low 40's. I've found I'm much more likely to fail to place a camp than upgrade an existing pop center, using emissaries of the listed skill ranks. Loyalty is no doubt important, but I have some doubts about it being a direct modifier to the emissary's skill rank. Given that assumption, I should've failed my upgrades about half the time (at least), and to my recollection I've only done so three or four times across twelve games. From Brian Lowrey Unless the Dwarfs screw things up an agressive Dragon Lord and Witch King can take out both the Woodman Major Towns by turn 3. Witch King recruits 400 HI and moves to Buhr Fram. Also takes cav from capital and moves to Buhr Fram. This is a large enough force to take out the army from the Woodman capital if he moves on Buhr Fram; this will also eliminate the Witch King army. Dragon Lord combines troops and moves to 2711. Turn two: Witch King either Kills the Woodman army or Threatens and moves to Woodman Capital. Dragon Lord Captures or Destroys 2711 and Moves to Woodman Capital. Characters: Definitly Emissarys and Definitly the Misty Mtns. Between the Witch King and Dragon Lord creating camps here - well thats a lot of Dragon Names. I also feel its important to build one or two Agents. If you want help from DS Agents you equal the best scouts in the game, effectively scouting for characters you will befriend a lot of agents and the Dragon Lord & Witch King can use some friends. Starting Characters: It is tempting to stack some mage artifacts on Celedring. Pump his challenge rank to 190 and suprise Bain. Very nice +40 ring and a sword for Duran. If you show off your 190 challenge rank early they should waste a lot of orders refusing challenge this will slow them down a bit. This reduces the effectivness of your mages but a 190 challenge rank can be worth a lot early in the game. Mt Gundabad: The idea of giving this up to the Dragon Lord is interesting and worth doing if the Witch King cannot get the Blind Sorcerer or Cloudlord to exchange Gundie. If the WK can get an exchange its better for the Witch King and the presence in Mirkwood is now maintained by either the Cloud Lord or Blind Sorcerer and the Dragon Lord Economys, all of the witch King Economy can now be focused in the west. Outlook: Against good FP players the Dragon lord should be removed from Mirkwood early with one Major town a hidden town and a few camps remaining. This is definitly the economy of a character based positon, this should be planned for. The Dragon Lord has some good characters it could be fun. Help: Besides the obvious help from your teamates I think GSI needs to seriously consider strengthing this position by giving at least one more major town in Mordor. For that matter most Dark Servant positions need some Economic help! Boy this position looks grim when you write it up - its fun to run play though. Commentary by Leslie Foreman When most people think of STRATEGY, thoughts of the Battle of the Bulge, Pearl Harbor, etc. are the events which are likely to come to mind. I would like to propose that strategy is, in fact, a much more widespread idea than one only associated with military campaigns. I hear and see strategy at work every time I watch ME- PBM gamers writing up their turn. I also see strategy at work every time I go to the grocery store. I know that there is a leap of faith here, but stay with me. The first strategic decision you have to make is choosing the parking place in the parking lot. Do you choose a place under the light, near the door, next to the other store you need to go to, between the two stores, etc. Then you have to decide whether backing in is a good idea. I have seen similar situations with the gamers I watch. Basically, "Where am I going to go, and how am I going to get there?" The other parking lot adventure centers around the 'little dance' you do with the other cars who are also looking for the "right" place. This is the time when you are called upon to move evasively so that the Enemy doesn't see you and beat you to the prize spot. Force marching is also called upon occasionally, but it is at that time that the pedestrians take their lives into their own hands because your philosophy is 'I SAW THAT PLACE FIRST!!' Once inside the building, you need to decide on a character type. I recommend a multi-class character, a mage\agent. The mage will allow you to use special abilities and the spy will allow you to move quickly in and out. Of course, there are advantages to all of the character types, but this is the combination which works best for me. There are two special abilities which need to be developed to be a successful grocery shopper. The first is to be able to use coupons wisely. This is truly a gift. I have seen people receive money FROM the cashier at the check-out because they have effectively used coupons. What do you say - a mage rank of 80? The other skill is the ability to figure out the unit price of items on the shelf. Many store now have them listed for you, but not all of the stores do nor are all of the items listed. An 80 mage should be able to do this easily, but with a calculator modifier the job becomes much easier. And then, only the valiant will attempt to figure out a unit price after factoring in the deduction of the coupon. Strategy is again playing a significant role in the grocery store outing. We're not done yet. What about the encounters you do NOT want to have? In ME-PBM there are other armies, characters and dragons. In the grocery store there are neighbors, previous co-workers, friends of you parents, etc. Again. strategy plays a role. HOW DO I HANDLE THIS SITUATION?? Do I walk right up and say something quickly and then leave before they have the chance to answer? Do I skip an aisle and then go back and get the stuff on 5B after 'they' have moved on? Do I abandon the cart filled nearly to the top with yummy stuff I really wanted and flee the store? or Do I suddenly become interested in the article in the STAR about how Bill Clinton is really Elvis in disguise ( only they couldn't hide the voice.)? Again, strategy in action. Last, but not least, is the choosing of the check-out line. Wow, what a task. You have to consider the length of the line. You have to look at the scanning speed of the cashier. You have to factor in the number of items belonging to the patron ahead of you. Heck, you have to consider the age of the patrons ahead of you. Do they have children - and are they well behaved? Are they using cash or a check? Finally, there is that last scan for the "dragon" you missed on aisle 5B - the check-out line is NOT the time to talk to them. YOU CAN'T GET AWAY!!!! Once you have considered your options and examined the data, you guess like you always do and get in a line. Sometimes you do well, and other times "You choose poorly." I asked you in the opening paragraph to have faith in me and I hope that I have not disappointed you. Strategy is everywhere!! I probably have pointed out something which you had never considered before and quite possibly will never think about again. If, on the other hand, you think of this commentary and a small smile appears on your face the next time you go to the grocery store, then I have done well. I have succeeded in making an otherwise tolerated job a little bit more fun. Isn't that what it's all about? Good gaming and good shopping!! HOW MANY WOODMEN COULD A DRAGON LORD CHUCK IF A DRAGON LORD COULD CHUCK WOODMEN.....? By Dan DeYoung Contributing to the continuing discussion of opening moves for the seemingly hapless Woodman kingdom in MEPBM, I offer the following statements- The Woodman can defeat the initial Dragon Lord armies if that Dark Servant commits to a 'berserk' attack in an effort to knock the Woodman out fo the game by turn 3. and This can be accomplished without allied aid! I fully agree that with Sinda aid, the Dragon armies can be stopped handily, and with Dwarven aid, the Dragon can be destroyed utterly, but such aid is often unavailable (in an individual game) or sent elsewhere by farsighted (Editor's Note: you being just a bit facetious here, Dan?) teammates. I offer the following strategic plan for the Woodman based on the following starting force locations which occurred in game #88. This plan assumes a worst case scenario for the Woodman- An all our attack by all Dragon Lord armies determined to destroy the two Woodman major towns at 2711 (on turn 2) and 2508 (on turn3) before inevitably failing to the superior Freep forces in the area. Turn 1- Woodman Order of Battle 2508-Woodman Army 1- 1200HI, 900LI 2711-Woodman Army2- 600HI, 600LI 2711-Woodman Army3- 600LI,600AR Dragon Lord Order of Battle 2715-Dragon Army1- 600HC, 600HI, 300AR, 600MA 2715-Dragon Army2- 600LI, 600AR, 300MA 2409-Dragon Army3- 300LC, 300HI, 300LI Dragon armies 2&3 recruit 400HI each before moving. Celedhring and his 2000 point weapon join Dragon Army1. (This is 'worst case' ). Dragon Army 2 transfers all but 100MA to Dragon Army1. Duran leading Dragon Army1 puts army on Maneuvers and moves directly to 2711. Dragon Army3 also moves directly to 2711 to join in what he assumes will be an easy pummeling of the comparatively weak Woodman forces there, since the powerful Woodmn Army1 cannot reach 2711 in 1 movement. Easy victory, thinks the Dragon Lord. I THINK NOT! The following moves will allow the Witch King to take the Woodman town at 2405, but that army supported only from Mount Gundabad cannot stand against the entire Woodman nation when it finishes with the Dragon Lord turns its attention northward. Woodman Army1 recruits 400HI and moves 1 hex to the hidden town of 2609. Woodman Army 2 recruits 400HI and remains at 2711. Woodman Army3 moves SE to 2612 to intercept the main Dragon Army from 2715 (1200men will not be 'overrun' by the large Dragon force; I had 900 archers intercept the same force in game #88). For completeness ' sake, the Woodman Army3's actual movement might be SW, H