This is the sort of thing that you can get dragged into late at night in NH by being around at the wrong time. Somebody asked for an FFA and this is what we ended up with.

There are quite a few images in this report, but they're "informative", not "pretty". I hate trying to make my pictures look "pretty", so all you get is an ugly red border.

Let's see, a bit of background on the players.

ebb is a high level (22 as of this writing) Night Elf player who pops into Nohunters fairly often, so I think we can consider him a semi-regular.

HurtnTime is somebody we all know and love, both because he hangs out in Nohunters a lot plus he's been in several BRs on this site. He's... "mid-level" (level 12 as of this writing) and prefers to play human.

Love84, according to his profile, is Orion's undead name. Past that I really don't know anything else about him. If you want something said about you, Love84, speak up, I'll edit the html file.

UraniumOrc likes to think he's a decent player but makes some pretty big fuckups with a frequency just a tad too high to keep his self-image from inflating too much. Right now his highest name is his Undead name (UraniumVampire) which is teetering at level 9.

Anyway, getting back to the report, the FFA was held on "The Glaive", a 5 player map that in my opinion is rather short on creeps. Every single mine on the map has 12500 gold, with creeps on about the same level as PI's corner exps for the exps, creeps on the level of Scorched Basin's center goblin merchants for empty start spots, and the center goblin shop is guarded by 1 level 10 bronze dragon and 3 level 3 bronze dragon whelps. HurtnTime starts in the upper left, ebb starts in the top left, Love84 starts in the top right, and UraniumOrc starts in the lower right, leaving the lower left empty.

On to the game, yes?

Early Builds Covering the First Five Minutes:

Standings after Five Minutes:

5:47 UraniumOrc does the most retarded thing ever and loses his hero to the creeps at his natural...

HurtnTime also chooses this time to expand, powerbuilding the exp town hall with a total of three peasants.

7:19 First contact... ebb's and Love84's creeping forces run into each other between their bases... Love84 wisely retreats as he's outnumbered.

After Love84 runs all the way back to his base with the Night Elf army in tow, he grabs 4 more ghouls that were on lumber and begins to lay into the Demon hunter, coiling him and surrounding him with ghouls. And then... HurtnTime comes in from the rear, pincering ebb quite nicely. And look at that, HurtnTime has his 2nd hero out already, that wonder of wonders, the Paladin. Wheehee!

ebb loses his Demon Hunter and retreats with his archers as he realizes if he sticks around he's going to have not archers but lovely blue smears in the ground. HurtnTime gives chase and manages to pick off a couple of stragglers before stopping. Love84 chases HurtnTime chasing ebb (eh?) and gives his force a few swipes before retreating to the safety of his blight. HurtnTime follows Love84 and a skirmish ensues with 10 ghouls, 2 necros, and a lvl 3 DK vs a lvl 2 AM, a lvl 1 paladin, and four footies. Using a combination of Holy Light and good old fashioned woopass HurtnTime manages to assassinate the DK, but loses three footies in the process and almost loses the paladin as well.

During this time UraniumOrc has an expansion fortified with two watch towers under construction. This leaves Love84 as the only player without an exp at least underway.

UraniumOrc is the only player who has not been involving in the skirmishing so far, but managed to creep the only empty start spot, keeping him almost even in the hero game.

Ten Minutes:

As a note ebb's Ancient of War doesn't do anything for the remainder of the game, so I won't mention it the updates any more.

10:30 ebb marches his small army towards HurtnTime and runs into his two heroes and two footmen just outside his main "choke". After a quick mana burn on the Arch Mage, knocking him into the red, HurtnTime TPs to his exp. Why not his main I'm not sure. ebb continues into HurtnTime's main and tears down a guard tower that was upgrading before being chased off by militia and a couple of token footmen. Love84 begins haunting his natural's mine. Right after ebb leaves HurtnTime shows he's not going to change his strat too much from his norm and brings out his final hero, a Mountain King. ebb's Altar also gives birth to a PoTM around this time.

11:44 HurtnTime takes his triple hero force out to see if he can stir up some trouble at ebb's main, but runs afoul of Love84's ghoul + necro contingent (apparently Love84 had a similar idea) just south of ebb's base and wisely retreats. It is at this point ebb's devious strat it revealed. Mass dryads!

Believe it or not Love84 manages to make ebb retreat, but only after losing all his ghouls. As ebb retreats Love84's DK eats a mana stone and assassinates the DH with a well placed Death Coil.

13:30 HurtnTime's tri-hero + footman creeping force is pincered between UraniumOrc's grunts + shaman + far seer and some creeps and TPs back home before he loses anything, and UraniumOrc finish off the creeps for him. UraniumOrc snags the booty, a Tome of Knowledge.

14:30 Love84 and ebb square off in the center, about 6 ghouls, 6 necros, and a DK vs a DH, PoTM, and an assload of dryads. At first Love84 starts to get the upper hand as he's paying more attention to his hero micro than abolish spamming on skeletons, but eventually manages to chase Love84 back into his base, left with a mere 2 necros and his DK. Also during this time a solitary grunt, heading for his brethren in the west (UraniumOrc had just creeped the final gold mine) is surrounded by HurtnTime's heroes and footmen and mercilessly cut down. Ouch. UraniumOrc doesn't feel like risking running into that on the way back home, so he TPs to his exp before HurtnTime even knows he's there.

It is now the 16 minute mark.

17:14 Love84 creates a Dreadlord. HurtnTime takes his small force and goes to prod UraniumOrc's expo, but leaves right as the shamen begin opening fire. ebb has also chosen this time to go prod UraniumOrc's expo and HurtnTime is briefly caught in the middle before he uses his final TP to run his ass away. Unfortunately for UraniumOrc, while he had a good counter for HurtnTime's gryphs, the same cannot be said of ebb's dryads.

UraniumOrc does get "lucky" and manages to kill the DH (bad micro on ebb's part? who knows), his Far Seer, but not before getting mana burned for 300, leaving him with one option. "Run away!"

Then UraniumOrc pulls another dumb move and uses his Book of the Dead. Vs mass dryads. Yes. After spamming abolish ebb says "thanks for the free exp". Yes, thank you, we gave at the office.

ebb runs away, probably for fear of any towers UraniumOrc has (he only has one at his main, but ebb doesn't know that).

UraniumOrc grumbles and licks his wounds, trying to rebuild and get back in the game. All he's left with at the moment is a mana-drained Far Seer and a fresh Master Witch Doctor. So far all he's managed to kill is one DH, maybe 4 dryads, and plenty of his own stuff.

At this time HurtnTime has drawn out the final creeps on the map with his gryphons, a level 10 bronze dragon and a few bronze whelps. Probably one of the funnier things you can get level 10 dragons to do as a human is have them eat one of your water elementals.

As ebb is retreating and HurtnTime is farking around with the dragons, Love84 has snuck his heroes, ghouls and necros into ebb's natural and is beginning to tear down the tree. Several things happen here. 1) The necros and a few ghouls square off with the dryads. 2) Love84 is chasing ebb's Priestess with his Death Knight, causing ebb's attention to be devoted to keeping his Priestess alive as opposed to spamming abolish on the skeletons the necros are creating. Even with the Priestess using healing from the moon wells the DK proves that Death Coil > All and slices her down. 3) While all this is happening Love84 has managed to tear down the expansion tree with his Dreadlord and his other ghouls, leaving ebb very unhappy.

Two seconds after the priestess dies the Demon Hunter revives and tears the DK a new asshole, and Love84 uses his Dread Lord to TP his remaining forces back home. Losses on ebb's side: One Lvl 5 Priestess, one expansion, and several dryads. Losses on Love84's side: One Lvl 5 Death Knight, several ghouls, and a couple necros. Hard to say who came out on top here.

While all this has been happening HurtnTime has been towering up the choke to the remaining expansions and has already been mining from one of them for a short time. He also has a medium-sized force of gryphons ready to strike at the rather crippled UraniumOrc, who has finally build a 2nd hero, a Blademaster...

It is now the 21 minute mark.

21:05 - HurtnTime decides now is as good a time as any to attack UraniumOrc with his gryphons. Considering that UraniumOrc's air defense consists of one witch doctor, a Far Seer, and two watch towers, he's probably got it about right. UraniumOrc manages to finish off HurtnTime's remaining footmen, but thanks to Holy Light, Divine Shield, and a healing potion or two, HurtnTime keeps all his heroes alive, and UraniumOrc falls back to the cover of his watch towers, making HurtnTime think twice about messing with him just yet and retreat back to the center.

UraniumOrc builds a few raiders for ensnare, and HurtnTime busts into the center with some mortar teams. HurtnTime is the only one who still has a mine in his main, everybody else having exhausted theirs by now.

23:10 - Love84's ghouls and necros and ebb's dryads and bears square off in the center, and somehow Love84 manages to kill all ebb's bears with mere ghouls (thanks in part to Vamp Aura) and kill the Demon Hunter yet again! (thanks again, Death Coil) But then Love84 loses his Death Knight to bad micro and then he remembers to click auto-cast Raise Dead back on... flooding the battlefield with skeletons. ebb's abolish spamming can't keep up with the sheer number of necros and town portals his now Level 7 Priestess and his remaining dryads back home, leaving Love84 all alone in the center with a Level 3 dreadlord, 7 necros, and about 16 skeletons.

While all this has been happening UraniumOrc has been valiantly fighting against HurtnTime's gryphons and losing badly, because 2 raiders isn't enough to bring 8 gryphons to the ground. He's already lost his Blade Master and soon loses his Far Seer, only killing one gryphon and HurtnTime's Arch Mage before it is demonstrated just how badly a pack of gryphons owns a pack of grunts. HurtnTime takes his gryphons and heroes into UraniumOrc's main and quickly destroys both of his guarding watch towers with a combo of storm bolts and good old fashioned elbow grease, lays waste to a couple of burrows, and then falls back... and then heads right for UraniumOrc's only remaining income and completely bowls it the hell over.

Meanwhile ebb and Love84 are at it again, ghouls and necros vs dryads and bears. Unfortunately ebb's Priestess throws out a Starfall... and it takes Love84 too long to hit her with sleep, and the tide of the battle is turned, causing Love84 to retreat with a town portal after only killing one bear and a couple of dryads but losing all his ghouls and about 6 necros.

After bowling over UraniumOrc's exp, HurtnTime takes his gryphons and slaughters the Far Seer and all but 4 grunts and two raiders, leaving UraniumOrc pretty screwed, as he only has 370 gold left... can he find somebody's buildings to go pillage?

HurtnTime is dominating the game economy wise, as he has the entire left side of the map now.

It is now 28 minutes into the game.

The human and night elf forces are more or less the same as they were at the 21 minute mark, except ebb has added a Keeper to his hero cluster, already level 3.2. Love84 is rebuilding his ghoul force and has about 3.2k left in his mine, where ebb has 2.2k left in his mine, and HurtnTime has... a total of about 30k left in all his mines. UraniumOrc is sitting on his thumbs with 370 gold left, no income, and only four grunts and two raiders to cause trouble with.

So what does he do?

Sends his forces at ebb. Right. The guy with dryads out the yin-yang. He loses both raiders in record time, and tries to retreat his grunts going around the left side of the center... and then runs into HurtnTime's gryphons! Gah! However ebb was still following the grunts and runs smack into the gryphons... making a nice little orc sandwich.

Well as HurtnTime knows that dryads > gryphons, he retreats just as ebb throws down a starfall. With several amusing effects: It kills a retreating gryphon... it kills a shade that Love84 had following ebb's forces... and splatters several extra peasants that HurtnTime had moving towards his exp, freeing up a bit of supply for HurtnTime. (I said they were extra.)

At this point UraniumOrc realizes he's quite fscked and spends the next few minutes suiciding all his buildings, relegating himself to observer status. Love84 almost looks like he's going to go tear up some of ebb's base but then turns around and heads back to the blight, although he does send a few skeletons in to go smack up an ancient protector a little bit.

ebb and HurtnTime are staring at each other just outside of the bastion of towers. Who will make the first move? ebb. He runs his DH forward and burns every last drop of mana from the MK. Why? His starfall is about to cool down and he wants to make sure that it doesn't get interrupted. HurtnTime retreats back behind the towers and waits... and sure enough ebb moves his Priestess forward and calls down the dreaded meteor shower known as starfall... however, ebb apparently forgot about brilliance aura, because the MK has had enough time to recharge enough mana to throw that wonderful bolt right into the priestess face after only 4 of the 45 waves have come down.

But then ebb throws down his other trump card in the form of a big, black, winged, epitome of imbalance. Yes, you know what I mean.

But then... who's that? Love84 and his ghoul troupe sandwich ebb's dryads between him and HurtnTime's gryphon force...

So much crap is flying around right now it's hard to keep track of it all, but the end result is that ebb retreats after losing a bear and 4 dryads, HurtnTime loses *ALL HIS HEROES* (death coil/sleep & surround) and two gryphons after the necros cripple four of them and shoot two of them down, and Love84 loses all of his ghouls and necros, but retreats with his two heroes.

37 minutes into the game.

At this point HurtnTime is the only person with any income left, as both ebb and Love84 have exhausted the mines at their naturals. HurtnTime is reviving his heroes at three seperate altars (yes, you heard me right), has 6 gryphons and 5 steam tanks (heading for Love84), and, again, is the only one mining (three mines with a total of 19k gold). Love84 is sitting on 420 gold, 7 ghouls, 2 necros, and his DK/DL at levels 6.4/3.8. ebb still has the strongest army with 10 dryads, 4 bears, and DH/Priestess/Keeper at levels 6.9/7.8/3.9 and 1200 gold left in his bank.

HurtnTime's tanks and three gryphons head into Love84's base looking for blood... er... rubble... something. They blow up a gravehard and bring the Black Citadel down to 50% health before HurtnTime decides that his tanks aren't going to finish Love84 off and retreats after losing two tanks and two gryphons. Love84 runs after one of the tanks with his DK and ghouls, surrounding it and dismantling it. The remaining gryphon had been slept by the dreadlord and HurtnTime forgets about it, leaving it to be shot down by the necromancers and spirit towers. HurtnTime's newly resurrected MK starts to head from his main to his other two exps, but runs into ebb's forces on the way down and dies from a combination of slow poison, entangling roots, and being surrounded. HurtnTime is not happy.

The other two tanks are redirected towards ebb's base, where they succeed in tearing down the only Ancient Protector and one Ancient of Lore before ebb returns and kills both tanks, leveling his Priestess to 8. Then one more tank heads for ebb's exhausted exp and takes the (useless I might add) Tree of Life to 60% before ebb kills that one too.

HurtnTime is continuing to build tanks and gryphons while Love84 bides his time with his ghouls back home. ebb knows at this point that he can't let HurtnTime be the only one with income and makes another foray with his metamorphed DH at HurtnTime's towers.

HurtnTime tries to slow the DH down with his paladin, but rejuvenation keeps the DH quite alive as it tears down the lower four towers with his imbalanced green balls of goop, then all but one of the top towers. For some reason HurtnTime decides it would be a good idea to run his steam tanks right through ebb's forces... obviously it doesn't work and he runs them back behind his towers after losing one. ebb backs off, as his meta has worn off. In my opinion he still could have done quite a bit of damage, but I suppose he felt like he didn't want to risk it with no income.

But then HurtnTime shows just what he had in mind as his gryphons head into ebb's base and start stirring shit up, starting with the altar....

HurtnTime almost kills the Hunter's Hall before ebb quickly runs to the goblin merchant and buys two TP scrolls, using one of them to warp his entire army back home and chase the gryphons off.

Immediately after... the yet-again newly revived MK runs afoul of Love84's heroes and ghouls... and is cut down yet again, causing HurtnTime to cuss.

HurtnTime takes some of his idle peons in his exhausted bases and tries to walk them down to his other base, but are intercepted by ebb's dryads and slain. Oh well, that's some supply freed up!

This tells HurtnTime where ebb's army is however, and takes the opportunity to finish off ebb's hall and begins laying into the Tree of Eternity as ebb realizes that it's now going to be "whoever can kill who first", and sends his forces at HurtnTime's main and begins trying to destroy some tech buildings...

HurtnTime destroys all the remaining ancient buildings, leaving only moon wells and the Tree of Life at ebb's natural, and ebb has destroyed all the towers at HurtnTime's main, a barracks, and several farms, and then uses his last TP to go to his exp and try to kill HurtnTime's gryphons, as they are now beginning to smack the final Tree.

But the fact that all of ebb's forces TPed in on the right side gives HurtnTime enough time to run the gryphons away over the water before any of them are killed. And look at this, ebb pulls some trickery and starts building a moon well in the middle... but... look at that, it's a shade! Love84 announces ebb's little bit of hoo-hockey to HurtnTime, but otherwise leaves it alone for now.

ebb leaves his base again to try to do more damage to HurtnTime, and HurtnTime circles around to the other side of ebb's natural, and wipes out the four idle wisps before laying into the Tree some more. ebb sends his Priestess back over, causing HurtnTime to back off for a second. "i'm just going to leave my priestess there :(" ebb then sets his Priestess just to the right of the now uprooted tree and waits. HurtnTime comes back and ebb unleashes yet another Starfall, killing an innocent pig that just happened to be standing too close.

HurtnTime runs away to the safety of the water and after a few seconds asks "is it done yet?", and ebb replies "yes", lying in an attempt to pull the gryphons back into her spell. It actually works for about six seconds but HurtnTime runs away again when he realizes he'd just been deceived, but not before he manages to finish off the poor tree. At almost the same time HurtnTime's castle falls back at his main, crippling his tech. After the starfall finishes ebb moves his Priestess into a defensive position near his moon wells, trying to drive away the gryphons while the rest of his army rips the crap out of HurtnTime's main and natural.

Apparently ebb had forgotten that Love84 was still playing, because after HurtnTime kills off a couple of moon wells Love84 shows up with a hungry pack of ghouls and shows just how quickly even a level 8 hero can fall when alone and surrounded...

HurtnTime retreats with his remaining gryphons, leaving Love84 to finish off the final moon wells, leaving ebb with only one building keeping him in the game, the central moon well. He quickly crowds his entire force around it to protect it from any gryphons with funny ideas.

But... unfortunately... HurtnTime has mortar teams. Several. And they manage to blow up the moon well before ebb can do anything about it.

Just in case you didn't catch that, let me show it to you again.

So now it's down to a human with three heroes, gryphons, and mortar teams, and two mines of income, and an undead with no income, two heroes, and 10 ghouls.

I've been working on this report for three days off and on now, and I don't feel like detailing just how it ended, so let me summarize.

Love84 uses animate dead and gets... 1 dryad and 4 bears. With no upgrades. Or spells. Ghey. But he also gets a mortar team, which I thought was mightily funny. He kills a workshop with the mortar team but otherwise gets owned...

You know what? If you wanna know the rest, watch the dang replay, because the rest of the game consists of HurtnTime showing just how badly Holy Light + Storm Bolt completely fucking owns undead heroes.

Final Score:

Thanks for reading my report... I hope you enjoyed it.

This has been a UraniumAnchor report. Safe travels, and good games to you.