Thursday, January 29, 2009

Stratego ( again )

This lunchtime I got into a rematch at Stratego, this follows on from the previous session report where I totally won!

I placed my pieces with some planning. A couple of bombs near the flag along with my top man and the spy. The rest of the bombs were scattered around fairly randomly. I tried to get a mix of the middle men in the front rank.

Things were starting well. My opponent came in on the attack across a broad front. Once again I tried down the right flank. I used a scout or two to identify some targets on the right before following up with the middle men to kill off those I could.

The mix of middle men meant I was able to fend off or at least deal with the intruders as they advanced.

A good few turns later I had cleared a section on the right flank and there was in fact a couple of his base line spaces clear. I sent a scout down there into that gap and attacked right and lost. One of middle men went down the same gap to deal with the enemy that had been revealed and took it out with a mutual death attack.

Now it got interesting. The right flank was fairly clear so I shot a Scout down to his base line right next to a block that hadn't moved and I deliberately watched my opponents face looking for a tell-tale. There was nothing, so I assumed that I wasn't threatening his flag.

Then I got mixed up in a dance around the middle of my base line. The enemy had noticed that I wasn't moving my back row in the middle of the board and started down. I won an attack but this revealed my top guy. He started moving a piece quickly towards it, so I dodged it around and brought him into a position from where my spy could attack and it did, taking out his top guy. Around the same time A scout of his shot over to my base line threatening my flag, but I had a bomb on that side so didn't worry, until his scout took it out leaving it open.

The attacks around here kept coming and he wore me down and took the flag from the undefended flank. Then the real kicker. He revealed his flag HAD been adjacent to the scout I'd sent across the board turns ago! I had been sitting next to it for minutes!

I'm not quite sure if using your "Poker Face" in Stratego is cheating :) I'm warming to this game.

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