In this thread I will post my losses in interesting games, and you will analyse them for me, to help me improve.

http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=4107964

I thought that my picks were better, and after I took his bonus on turn 5 I was sure I should win, what did I do wrong?

russia is too exposed, so maybe your picks werent the best after all? having a foot in phillipines might have been wiser. overall you lost because his income was innacessible to you, the only way to have countered that would have been to break through southeast asia or antarctica faster and threaten his income.

cleaning him out near your income was the most obvious thing, you tried that on turn 6 and 7, but you didnt get the first turn twice in a row to accomplish it. maybe predicting his moves on caucasus and attacking the neutral borders with heavy armies on turn 7 would have been smarter instead of betting on getting first action. you could have moved your other stack back down to southeast asia to steam roll it instead of pursuing through caucasus.

curious on other opinions.

I am not really convinced you were better after picks, the fact is from southeast asia there are multiple attacl routes to russia and he did correctly sacrifice his bonus to make one. You were just unlucky on turn 6 (with 1st order you'd have excellent chances), but postponing OP card for 1 turn might have been a mistake. Problem was you had to defend in 2 places, but caucasus was not an immediate threat, only next turn you were forced to commit that many troops to defending russia. Turn 11 I'd transfer full minus 2-3 armies from Pakistan 1st order and transfer into Pakistan 2nd order, because if you hold Xinjiang you can grind the win in income.

I wrote a load about it and it just disappeared :( I will try to summairse:

Your picks were much less safe, Australia was completely safe, hit intel of west africa was important because he was on offensive to break your bonus, not the other way around.
His decision to let you break SE Asia on turn 5 and instead take Indo and threaten Russia turned it in his favour. Indonesia is much safer than SE Asia, more income as well, you are only 9 armies ahead, and he is going towards west africa.

His first orders in turns 5 and 6 helped him (on 5 you didnt try to smash him so not really), and on turn 6 you decided not to use your OP, bad decision.

On turn 7 you decide to finally use OP, he is bordering west africa, you predict he will try the first order attack into one of the russia with 2 or 3 troops and deploy everything to africa front to break you, you predict wrong. First oreder only means you kill his stack, which helps, but still borders 3 important territories.

Turn 9 goes very well for you, he decides to stop deploying in both russia and africa, isntead blockades and tries the first turn break on central russia, and you finally get first order.

You then chose to take caucasus instead of moving your stack to hit him. That lost you the match. The number of troops he had after taking xinjiang on turn 12 meant you stood no chance.

Also you should help other people who don´t understand why they lost, not just everyone else helping yourself :)

you played the wrong guy in the wrong mood at the wrong time

turn 10 you could've blockaded Xinjiang to protect your main bonus area

Chaos suggestion seems quite good, i like the idea

The answer should seem obvious in general terms, without even talking about the specifics. How were you going to break his income? In the entire game you played defensively, because you had very few to no chances to go on the offense. Your best bet was to attack Ant, but he had your income threatened across the north during the brief period where you could have attacked south.

I'm not a big fan of double-picking anything in Asia, and you ran into exactly why. A pick in Greenland would likely have allowed you to win this, and you could have used your pick in Cental Russia or West Russia to gain the other. There's no need for a second pick there. If you were worried about him taking both Russias instead, then you could have did what he did, with a pick in SE Asia. Had he picked Russia/Russia/SE Asia, he would have ceded 75% of the board to you, which doesn't seem too dangerous.

Yeah, picks, pretty much. I thought about blockading xinjiang, but that's with the benefit of hindsight - if you used armies to do that, he could have simply slammed pakistan, and then he would have the se asia bonus with access to caucasus and iran, so it would be pretty much game over. maybe you should have taken the risk.

as a general rule whenever i'm losing i always take big risks, which can sometimes be interpreted as playing badly but sometimes leads to great (or at least hilarious) results

look at this game for example, i had already lost at that point but my "comeback" was pretty fun anyway XD
http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=4098233

sorry, i know this is a little (very) irrelevant, but i'm answering pussy cat because i saw the word risk and... well, y'know, i had a chance to show off a very fun game =)

I love the idea here.

I'm soo good look at me, look at me. Even my losses are interesting so I'll post them here and make people discuss them! Yeah thats a good idea!

:shudders at the thought this thread may survive:

[hides under a car]

Outplayed by luxis in an oddly symmetrical game: http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=4110130

I thought getting a third bonus would give me an easy win, especially after yellow suicided into my face turn 6. But I had 2 very bad turns 8 and 9, did I just get unlucky in my guesses? What did I do wrong? =(

You went wrong by losing. It would have been better if you won. Legitimate advice right there.

similar to first game, defend your main bonuses better. Why take W Siberia on turn 6? Xinjiang was better imho. And turn 7, no need to add 15 in Venezuela, instead, use those to take Mongolia, another key territory in keeping yours safe. (and there's a big chance he has East China and/or Indo so you want to head that way)

in both games you gave up while you still stood a reasonable chance(okay, maybe not the second)
spreading your picks is also much better (imagine if you had gotten your first three picks in game 2, you would be annoyed, while getting your 1 or 2 + 3 or 4 + 5 or 6 would ve been perfect

You screwed up twice against Luxis, in ways I think you should not have. One was throwing a substandard number of troops at Mongolia. It was his only opportunity to break your income, and it was a good chance, so he wasn't going to throw it away by letting you defend easily or just take Mongolia with a 13 measely troops. Defending Siberia verses Tomsk was a coin flip or psychological question, but attacking Mongolia with so few troops was a straight up mistake.

Secondly was a similar mistake in Chad. You attacked into an easily defended bonus with a substandard number of troops. You didn't have a troop advantage, and he didn't have a lot of reason to not defend. He still controlled the area around Central Russia, so even you getting it back would be a temporary setback, verses losing Sudan and his own income.

Both of these problems could have been averted by giving up on Central Russia and putting a lot of troops down to break East Africa. You already had a huge advantage in Central America, which allowed you to kick him out and give you some more income. Central Russia is very hard to defend, and not worth the effort with how many coin flips you would have to win. Break his income instead, and defend your South America. In two turns you would have been threatening Indonesia and China, with either a broken or threatened East Africa. Blockade Dudinka and let him fight to break one of your bonuses while you threaten three.

Completely stuck for starts here:
http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=4109782

Possibly the worst I have ever played in the ladder, lost on picks.

3 FTB possibilities, Scandinavia, CA and SEA,
Not a single wasteland in the whole of asia,

I didn't know how to cover all areas, so I went for the Scandinavia FTB, leaving the CA as my second option.

Can I have some advice on the starts you guys would pick and your reasoning?
Would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Major Risk

your starts werent even bad, your play was bad. Small inaccuracies, like attacking finland turn 1 and then attacking it instead of transfering only turn 3. The 2nd best first turn bonus was south east asia, not central america. I think best picks would be something like E china, wrussia, scand, sea, central america, west US? You had no need of covering the whole map, this game was never going to go on longer than turn 6.

Thanks Piggy,
Turn 1, I anticipated that he would know I was going to go for the FTB in CA , and for him to deploy all in Norway and get me out of that region. I didn't think he would counter pick in South America...