Welcome to Turn 12 of The Impaller versus The World, a game that everyone gets to participate in! For more information about the game, view this blog post.

Here's how the game started, for reference:

The winning item from last time was number 1. Deploy 16 to Colombia and 1 to Qaanaaq. Attack Venezuela with 44 from Colombia. Transfer 3 from Kangerlusuaq to Nuuk. Attack Nunavut with 4 from Qaanaaq.

Here's what we did:

Here's the outcome:

• The World: Deploy 16 to Colombia

• The World: Deploy 1 to Qaanaaq

• The Impaller: Deploy 1 to Argentina

• The Impaller: Deploy 1 to Panama

• The Impaller: Deploy 2 to Venezuela

• The World: 44 armies captured Venezuela from Colombia. 16 attacking armies killed, 23 defending armies killed.

• The Impaller: 0 armies transferred to Brazil from Venezuela

• The Impaller: 18 armies captured Scott from South Pole. 1 attacking armies killed, 1 defending armies killed.

• The World: 3 armies transferred to Nuuk from Kangerlussuaq

• The World: 4 armies captured Nunavut from Qaanaaq. 1 attacking armies killed, 2 defending armies killed.

• The World received a reinforcement card and an order priority card and still has an order delay card. 2/5 order delay, 12/19 blockade.

Here are our options:

**Each option is going under the assumption of using our +5 Reinforcement Card. Order Priority and Delay Cards are optional.**

1. Take advantage of our income & army lead and do a little bit of everything: Advance in Canada, poke into Central America, attempt to take South America.

   Deploy 5 to Nunavut, 1 to Nuuk, 5 to Colombia, 11 to Brazil. Attack/transfer Brazil with 22 from Venezuela. Attack Quebec with 4 from Nuuk. Attack Northwest Territories with 7 from Nunavut. Attack Bolivia with 5 from Brazil. Attack Cuba with 5 from Venezuela. Attack Argentina with 6 from Brazil. Attack Panama with 5 from Colombia.

2. Move into Africa, advance in Canada, hold in South America.

   Deploy 5 to Nunavut, 1 to Nuuk, 16 to Brazil. Attack/transfer Brazil with 27 from Venezuela. Attack Quebec with 4 from Nuuk. Attack Northwest Territories with 7 from Nunavut. Attack Nigeria with 16 from Brazil.

3. Defend South America, advance in Canada, start moving towards Impaller's known/likely sets.

   Deploy 5 to Nunavut, 1 to Nuuk, 4 to Ufa, 12 to Brazil. Attack/transfer Brazil with 23 from Venezuela. Transfer only to Colombia with 2 from Venezuela. Attack Quebec with 4 from Nuuk. Attack Northwest Territories with 7 from Nunavut. Attack Eastern Kazakhstan with 4 from Ufa. Attack Nigeria with 12 from Brazil.

4. Advance in Canada, defend South America, poke into Central America & Africa.

   Deploy 5 to Nunavut, 1 to Nuuk, 5 to Colombia, 11 to Brazil. Attack/transfer Brazil with 22 from Venezuela. Attack Quebec with 4 from Nuuk. Attack Northwest Territories with 7 from Nunavut. Attack Cuba with 5 from Venezuela. Attack Panama with 5 from Colombia. Attack Nigeria with 11 from Brazil.

**Obviously we have a plethora of options available to us with the way everything is setup at the moment. I've laid out the most basic/obvious options on the board from what I can see and (as always) would be interested in adding other suggestions to the vote only if you're confident in your idea and can detail out move orders similar to the examples above in a "Final Answer" format please.**

Click here to vote

You should interpret the stars as follows:

• 0 Stars means "I don't care" or "I'm indifferent to this item."

• 1 Star means "I'm positive we should not do this."

• 2 Stars means "I don't think we should do this."

• 3 Stars means "Maybe we should do this."

• 4 Stars means "I think we should do this."

• 5 Stars means "I'm positive this is what we should do."

Use this thread to discuss strategy. Feel free to suggest new options and if there's enough demand, I'll add them for voting. Have votes in before the end of the day Saturday (July 23rd) and check back Monday (July 25th) for the next turn!

Ok so as soon as I got the email from Randy, I couldn't wait to put up the turn for discussion because this thing has finally started to get interesting!

Imp only deployed 4 last turn which means he deployed 8 somewhere else. By attacking Scott with everything he had in Antarctica, it's highly likely that he's gonna use them to take Australia (and soon!) so it's my guess that the 8 went towards getting a foothold in Malaysia to expedite that process and take Indo while he's at it. They could've gone towards taking South Africa but I still think he would've needed more than 8 to take that set and it's only a +3.

Really interested to hear the public opinions on this one!

Not splitting our forces was the right move, we got a net gain of 7 armies last turn and once again hold the biggest stack in SA. It is slightly out of position though, given that only Cuba can be reached directly. Since that is not where we want to go, I vote we move it back to Brazil.
I wouldn't spread our forces and try completing SA, there are too many entry points to that continent, so it can be too easily broken. Especially, should he really break through that blockade in Antarctica soon. Denying Imp SA is enough for me, and that is what we are doing.

a) Completing Canada in 2 turns is just common sense.
b) We can move into Africa now, that is where the juicy bonuses are. Taking Nigeria gives us the opportunity to take Western Africa in 3 turns and Eastern Africa in 4.
c) We should also explore Eastern Khazakstan, now that we have the armies to spare. If Imp concentrates on bonuses elswhere on the map, we should do the same. Eastern Khazakstan gives us a chance to complete Caucasus in 3 turns if we want to (2 if we hold back on the reinforcement card now and use it next turn). Or we can just continue and explore India/China.
d) I am not sure if we should play the reinforcement card just yet. We don't really need it now, do we? And deploying 5 extra armies later on can disguise our true income and throw Imp off balance when he doesn't expect it. Or we can just use it to complete Caucasus a turn earlier if we want to.

I suggest a modified version of Number 3:
Defend South America, advance in Canada, start moving towards Impaller's known/likely sets (no reinforcement card).

Deploy 5 to Nunavut, 1 to Nuuk, 4 to Ufa, 7 to Brazil.
Attack/transfer Brazil with 27 from Venezuela.
Attack Quebec with 4 from Nuuk.
Attack Northwest Territories with 7 from Nunavut.
Attack Eastern Kazakhstan with 4 from Ufa.
Attack Nigeria with 7 from Brazil.

Ah, I forgot about the 4 left in Caucasus, so we definitely need 3 turns there, unless we deploy 7 to Ufa and 4 to Brazil now. Which of course we could, but it is rather unlikely we succeed, we might end up getting neither Canada nor Caucasus if we try for both next turn. We better play it safe and get Canada in 2 and Caucasus + West Africa in 3.

given imp has east afr i dont think well be taking west or east africa as quickly as you say....just a thought

Giving up on SA which is defended by 1 Imp army and right now seems like a premature decision. Do you honestly believe Imp will not focus on holding SA this turn? It will likely be his number one priority (I think he's 9 turns away from a blockade card so that's not a concern there). CA is also a strong possibility for expansion --it's only an 11 blockade there plus Imp's 1s and 2s. Keeping our firepower on Imp also forces him to keep using his smaller income to defend.

Going into EA and pressing forward on Canada also make a lot of sense.

Assuming Imp was still on 12 last turn, he diverted 8 elswhere, where'd it go? Presumably it's another bonus. Probably South Africa. 17 is just enough to take Australia without needing to add more there, so he'll pursue that on autopilot and we have 3 more turns until he gets it. So that means Imp would be stuck on max 15 income for 3 more turns. Imp can't stop us from getting to 22 in 2 turns if we focus on Canada. If we can get SA and/or CA thats 26 or 29 in 2-3 turns. An 11/turn income advantage (26/15) is crushing.

Actually, I may be wrong about it being likely South Africa. If Imp took out the four in Indo then he can get Australia in 2 and Indo in 3. That would've taken 6-7 of the 8 income he used last turn (assuming he had an extra 1 leftover from taking India). He might've done that and set-up South Africa for this turn. We'll be able to guess more accurately if he puts more than 12 in SA this turn. If it's over 12 than he probably went for South Africa, if it's 12 or less than it's probably Indo. Assuming he went Indo, he can boost his income by a max of 3 this turn (south africa), 5 the following turn (Aussie) and 4 the turn after (Indo). It would cost him mroe than half his income each turn though. This assumes he ignores EA, Causacus and WC (which I think is right). I don't think Imp can afford to use his income to take 2 spots in Aussie and 3 spots in Indo out of income, especially when he's got a stack only one turn behind. We'll see.

We also have an OP card -- which greatly improves our odds of taking SA this turn or next. We have a huge Army advantage in SA, why woudn't we use it to take it? I hesitate to use the OP this turn, because he'll likely put nearly all his income into Argentina and 17 won't be enough to get it. But next turn it should be farily easy if we play this turn right.

I like the way things are going. I totally agree on setting up Canada this turn and I think with our armies we can do some damage in SA. I also want to start heading towards his other bonuses by going to East Kazak, and Nigeria.

Set up Canada and move towards Imp's homeland:

Deploy 5 to Nunavut, 1 to Nuuk, 4 to Ufa, 7 to Brazil. Attack/Transfer from Venezuela 12 armies to Colombia, Attack/transfer 10 armies from Venezuela to Brazil, Attack Northwest Territories with 7, Attack Quebec with 4, Attack East Kazak with 4 from Ufa, Attack Nigeria with 4, Attack Cuba with 5 from Venezuela, Attack Argentina with 2.

Next turn, we can utilize our Order Priority/Delay cards.

Disagree on East Kaz, otherwise that's close to what I'd do. Same deployment and attacks in Canada and 4 into Nigeria.

But I think the goal should be to end up with one target in SA to hit next turn from Brazil (Brazil touches all the other spots, so that should work out). Then we can use the OP and take out that one spot to get the bonus. But for that to work we need to sure to have only one target next turn.

alright, i can compromise. how about this:

Deploy 5 to Nunavut, 1 to Nuuk, 11 to Brazil. Attack/Transfer from Venezuela 12 armies to Colombia, Attack/transfer 10 armies from Venezuela to Brazil, Attack Northwest Territories with 7, Attack Quebec with 4, Attack Nigeria with 4, Attack Argentina with 6, Attack Cuba with 5 from Venezuela.

I like the idea of having only 1 spot to hit with an OP. If that's the case, then we need to make sure we take cuba...and that we have colombia to block for next turn. We don't want him to be able to make an attack to have two spots in SA.

I swapped the Argentina and Cuba attack...so we have defense from a medium scout in cuba.

Diabolicus & Ruthless: I've added your ideas to the vote.

Ruthless: You realize you deployed 7 on Brazil and only moved 6 right? If I were going to say anything about your plan it might be to send either 5 into Nigeria to more protect against Imp coming out that way or send 3 to Argentina in case he plays it tricky and adds 1 to block the 2 attack.

Personally, I think we should use the +5 Card now to build on our current income advantage and really push Imp around this turn. My 2 personal favorites right now are #1 for the obvious benefit of domination in South America if the next turn or 2 can go our way (which should be a lot more certain given our OP and OD Cards) and #4 which should keep us in a decent spot in South America and force the issue in Africa. Really tho, I definitely like anything that has to do with getting back into Central America and either forcing Imp to make a mistake by defending up there or conceding a pretty easy +3 for us to grab and then re-turn our attention back to South America or even West US from there.

Hahaha damnit Ruth this is why I asked for a "Final Answer" version of ideas!
I'll take your vote option off until you give me the final green light =P

This is my Final:

Use Reinforcement Card.

Deploy 5 to Nunavut, 1 to Nuuk, 11 to Brazil. Attack/Transfer from Venezuela 12 armies to Colombia, Attack/transfer 10 armies from Venezuela to Brazil, Attack Northwest Territories with 7, Attack Quebec with 4, Attack Nigeria with 4, Attack Argentina with 6, Attack Cuba with 5 from Venezuela.

Ruth: We make 17 right now without the Card and 22 with so you're gonna need to clarify your above post further please.

11 + 1 + 5 = 17

Right but he put "Use Reinforcement Card" in his post as well so I'm trying to understand where the other 5 is supposed to go or if he meant "DO NOT USE Reinforcement Card".

He's going to have Australia in three turns and he probably just took South Africa. We have an income advantage right now, but it's only two armies. We can only keep up if we can get Canada. So that's a no-brainer.

We need to do something with South America to justify our game-long investment there. We put a blockade between us and South Africa and conceded both of our spots on the other side of that blockade without a fight. I think we've put ourselves in a tough spot by overcommitting to South America if we don't have serious plans of keeping it, so we need to come up with a serious plan to keep it. He can play keepaway by sneaking into that neutral or attacking Colombia, since we seem likely to move to Brazil.

We also need to prevent him from getting West Africa. If he can get a big army into Nigeria, then we're in trouble. It's entirely possible that those 8 armies last turn included a first step from East Africa towards Nigeria, and not an attempt at South Africa - in which case we might need to beat him there this turn or lose out on our chance. But we've cleverly indicated to him that we have no intention of doing so, or even protecting our only entry into Africa, so he may not consider that a priority.

Finally, we may see him pop up in Caucusus. Another possible explanation for him using some of his armies out of our view is that he broke down that four point neutral and is coming to break our bonus. We can't afford to see monsters in the closet, but it would be nice if we had some intel. Sliding a small army towards that neutral would let us know if/when he decides to start his slide towards us.

I think we all agree on using six armies in Canada. So that leaves us 11 to play with, or sixteen with a reinforcement card.

Here are some more tactical options for discussion:

• Place all 16 armies in South America. 14 in Colombia, 2 in Venezuela. We poke at Central America, slide the large army from Venezuela to Brazil, do our other business, and with our last move, we attack Argentina from Venezuela. The goal here is to leave him alone in either Argentina (if he stacks up and doesn't move) or the neutral in the center (if he slides his armies there). It's hard for him to make a move that beats this - if he attacks Columbia, it will fail. He can still stack up in Mexico next turn to create problems for us (or come at us through Nigeria) but we should be able to hold South America for a turn or two if we go all out to get it.

• Place all 11 (or 16) armies in Brazil, then use a first move attack or order priority to head in to Nigeria with our first move. He probably isn't there yet, but if he is, this could be our last chance to get Nigeria. This seems unnecessary, since we have a large army in Venezuela.

• Place all 11/16 armies in Ufa, and use a first move attack or order priority to head southeast towards Caucusus. This basicallly concedes South America, but it defends against a possible attack from India, and even if it doesn't work, we have a big stack on the way to his other bonus.

• Place 4 in Ufa, 7/12 in Brazil, slide them all to Nigeria. Let's get in to Africa ASAP - it may be too late to beat him to Congo, but we can at least threaten his bonus.

• Place 8 in Columbia, 4 in Ufa, use the card, and place 4 in Brazil. Slide all but 2 armies from Venezuela to Brazil on first move, then poke Central America with the 2 there and the 4 in Columbia. Do our business elsewhere, then poke our last couple armies into Argentina at the end of the turn. If he slides north into that neutral, we can scoop up Argentina behind him and we'll have him isolated next turn with the threat of a lights-out attack in South America for the bonus putting the pressure on him to defend more vigorously than he'd like.

Fred: Your last 2 ideas are almost identical to #3 & #1 respectively (altho the last idea definitely has some notable differences to option #1). Would you like me to put any of the above as options for voting or is this more discussionary at this point in time?

I definitely like what you're saying about South America but I just don't know what Imp's gonna do over there. If he loads to deny us the bonus, it'll be next to impossible to push him out of there entirely. If we can get a favorable turn coming up here tho, I like how you're thinking about where we'll be left off at the end of it and we should keep that in mind when formulating our plans for juggling armies around down there. Again, this is kind of why I like option #1 for it's almost "too good to be true" outcome if we can make a couple stars align.

As I stated already, I don't think he took South Africa last turn, but it definitely could be a possibility that he sent 4 to Malaysia and 4 towards Nigeria, so I also tend to agree with going in to W Africa pretty quick. Unfortunately, if we try to do all of that, we're gonna be spreading ourselves pretty thin. I think the best course of action right now is to choose what we want to do and run with it hard. If we try to do everything that ideally needs to be done right now, we won't achieve anything.

That being said, I still like the option of attempting to take South America but I also understand the import of getting closer to Imp's known sets. For the record, I'd be shocked if he went into Caucasus tho as there's virtually zero for him to gain by venturing up there.

Hmm just realized Malaysia was a Warlord so he would've needed at least 7 to take it unless he already had some troops there from taking India...

Right - we know he spent 8 somewhere*, and the most likely places he could have spent it are on Indo, beating us to Nigeria, South Africa, or Caucusus. South Africa seems most likely, as turn one of a two turn attempt to take it. If he's coming towards Nigeria, he needs to come with a large army because we still have a stack in South America. If we can finally put that in Brazil this turn, we'll be able to respond to him taking Nigeria, although it's not ideal. If he was coming towards Caucusus, he could devastate us with a big move towards Russia.

If we're going to try to take South America this turn or next, we really should try to take Nigeria and the Central Americas. It's absurd to spend all this effort getting a bonus, only to finally get it and realize that he borders us in three spots. I've never wanted South America in this game, though, for exactly that reason, so I am not the right person to talk to about our strategy there.

If you want to create one of those as a poll option, go ahead, but I was just posting them for discussion. The Caucusus thing, while possible and very dangerous, also seems like a bit of a gamble for him right now, so I'm not sure I'd worry about that. Nigeria is still very important if we want to get to his bonuses.

So I guess my first and last options stay in keeping with "our" strategy of taking South America, and are tweaks to what you suggested that give us a chance to isolate him. Do what you like with those. I think I like my fourth option best, and it's probably the one I'd lean towards if this were my game.

• It's still possible, but decreasingly likely, that he has been hiding income from us this whole time and secretly already has Indo and South Africa. I really doubt it, but you have to admit it would be pretty sweet if he'd been able to pull it off.