After both players made their first turn orders, the outcome of this game was decided by the cycle order. Given those orders, each player effectively had a 50% chance of winning given the incredibly high stakes of this first turn.
https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=10742112Neither player knew the cycle order going into turn 1, and there were no pick conflicts in distribution. Red aggressively picked a triple combo on a 4-bonus, and grey picked conservatively. The template is Turkey LD, and in this particular game if red completes the 4-bonus on first turn it's over for grey.
However, getting his first 3 picks grey suspected red went for the big combo and tried for a blind ambush last order. Red probably knew this was a possibility and so wanted to take the potential ambush territory last order. Both players made 4 orders, and so the cycle order determined the game.
The coin toss had already come up red: the cycle order made grey move first, which caused red's last order to counter the ambush.
For some players, the depth of this single turn is a highlight of awesomeness in Warlight's ladder games (and "strategic" template games). For others, this scenario may seem tedious.
Grey's choice lead to a coin-toss outcome, but there was a better choice available that gives grey the game. If grey had delayed his first turn bonus and assigned even a single extra army to the ambush, the counter-ambush would have failed. Using the game history and observing this, grey can learn and make the better move next time
Actually, both red and grey "won" because Turkey LD games can easily last more than an hour if each player secures a region of the map.
Edited 3/15/2016 19:18:51
