CFB Risk Day 12 – It’s Groundhog Day…again (also, Notre Dame is finally dead)

Note: Today's recap written by a guest-speaker, filling in for our friend EastCoast Esq. Get well soon – that's an order, soldier.

“… every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.” – some guy

Yesterday news broke about the fall of Ann Arbor to rogue attackers from osu, with a call to action put out for all the Maize & Blue faithful to join the cause and liberate our homeland… and by God you responded.  Yesterday alone saw our team grow by *96 new players* - a daily increase that hasn’t been seen since the first days of the game.  Magnificent.

Michigan is *still* the most powerful team in the game and we will need every bit of it to win.  We recorded 834 players last night with a combined power of 1785 stars (and remember – each player’s number of stars increases the longer they play the game, even after a few days); both numbers were large improvements over the previous night’s values.  OSU is still the second most powerful team in the game, but has now had two consecutive days of *decline* in player count (527 players for a combined 1146 stars).  We need to continue our growth to stay ahead in this game (Texas A&M is gaining fast, but we’ll talk about them later), so if you haven't already - get involved!  If you already have, the get *someone else* involved!  Recruiting matters.

So about that…  We intended to strike the forces holding our homeland hostage and take it back.  And we hit it.  Hard.  I mean, we dropped a proverbial nuke on the place.  We had 237 players that sortied to take back Ann Arbor last night… that’s over one quarter of our whole damned team – with a combined star power of 516, after multiplier bonuses – dedicated to reclaiming that one territory, despite fighting on fronts spread out across North America.  … and it was rebuffed.  This wasn’t like firing a nuclear missile at a large spaceship looming ominously over your city and seeing the massive explosion, only to find after the smoke clears that the large alien ship still just sits there smiling at you (having powerful protective shields which can apparently easily absorb nuclear blasts).  No – osu only had seven (7) players (likely rogues) defending it, with a total star power of 13.5 after accounting for multiplier bonuses.  This was the equivalent of dropping a nuke on rat, only to find that somehow the rat was hiding in a radiation shielded tin canister that miraculously had large concrete debris fall all around it and above it – yet not crushing said canister – with the concrete debris protecting the canister from the blast wave and intense heat.  And the rat calmly climbs out of the rubble a few days later and proceeds to defecate in your kitchen cupboards (which also somehow survived the destruction).  We had a 97.45% of winning back Ann Arbor and just got shafted by the luck of the roll.  Bad beat.  Oh well – we try again tonight.  We *are still* going home.

This would be a good time to have a high level view of the war: some way to visualize how things are progressing... like a map.

 

 

With all that being said, things are still looking good… maybe good-ish (or at least OK).

 

A reminder before getting into further details:  we are still active members in the Big Ten Alliance, having (formally) non-aggression pacts with osu, Wisconsin, and Nebraska… with the stated goal of killing the SEC rather than killing each other.  It’s a nice theoretical construct at least.

We still hold the northeast corner of the map, a region known as the Canadian Shield, which is giving us a nice bonus multiplier that amplifies all of our moves (both attacking and defending).  The central portion of Canada is another one of these regions (called Northern Lights) and Wisconsin is trying to expand to fill that space.  We still have small skirmishes with them in this region as well as around the Great Lakes, most of this being the actions of rogue players exchanging territories (Wisconsin was able to take back Madison last night, which was where their largest attack was focused).  The northwest corner of the map is still under our control and we have been working our way south along the coast to try and take the entire Pacific NW region (we almost managed to kill off Washington in the process).

The mid-Atlantic region and adjacent locales (east Appalachians and Ohio river valley) are becoming a jumbled mess.  Aside from the normal squabbling over border territories between Michigan and osu, Georgia Tech has managed insert themselves into the area… even taking control of a piece of eastern Ohio.  We also happened to retake Toledo (again) due to some lucky rogue actions and Wisconsin grabbed Cincinnati.  Tennessee got a second straight night of ridiculous luck and nearly doubled their number of territories… not to mention securing the entire West Appalachia region and now get a bonus for that.  Iowa State is confined to the upper Midwest now and they will continue to harass Wisconsin for at least a few turns.

Our earlier amphibious landings in the Southeast have allowed us to create a nice little pocket in Georgia and northern Florida, for which we still hold a beachhead connecting to our New England territories.  This has put us in direct contact with other SEC foes: Alabama, who has until now been somewhat holed up in their home region, and Florida, who has been trying to kill off Georgia and UCF (the latter of which died last night).

Looking west of the Mississippi river in the south is where things start to get dicey.  That is where you will find Texas A&M, currently the third largest team by player count but in second place overall due to the large number of territories they control.  They also happen to control two entire regions in the Texas/Arkansas/Louisiana area and are getting *double* the bonus that we are.  To make matters even worse, they are not significantly threated on their eastern, western, or southern flanks.  Most of the teams near them (Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma) are either directly allied with A&M or else not strong enough to truly challenge them.  The only team that is close to challenging them is our ally Nebraska, so of course A&M is focusing most of its attention on hitting Nebraska – with positive results the last few turns.

Further west, There are still a handful of very small teams (Oregon, USC, Stanford, Hawaii) trying to survive for a few more turns by hiding out in California.  This will not be an option for them much longer as Nebraska has been approaching from the east (and may be compelled to flee that way if A&M forces the issue) and we are pushing down from both the north and from the south (courtesy of our expanded beachhead in Baja California).

Wrapping up the southernmost end of the board, Mexico and the Carribean are both at serious risk of becoming A&M strongholds as well in the next few turns.  They have already made significant forays into these regions and there isn’t much to stop them.  We do have our Baja California outpost to try and contest the rest of Mexico, but we also were able to take Puerto Rico last night using one of the seaways connecting to the East Coast mainland (osu is down there too now, having taken the same route the previous turn).  We might be able to fend off A&M from taking the whole Carribbean from there, but regardless the situation down south is really starting to… heat up.

A final reminder: it is strongly recommended to join the Michigan Discord server and coordinate with our friendly team leaders for assignments/orders (see link below). This is how to *most effectively* use your attack & defend moves to get us closer to actually winning the game.  However… fighting for your school, your team and your home is always a good thing, even if you have your own ideas about how to do that.  In the end, it’s still a game and the purpose is to have fun.

Team Standings

We are now down to fewer than 25 active teams in the game and the final rankings are beginning to take shape.  Here is where they stand thus far (teams are ranked by # of territories first, followed by a mix of metrics examining how efficiently they used their players & stars, calculated by Reddit user u/blissymaster):

1.    Michigan (43 territories)

2.    Texas A&M (36 territories)

3.    (an) Ohio State (20 territories)

4.    Wisconsin (15 territories)

5.    Nebraska (12 territories)

6.    Tennessee (10 territories)

7.    Texas (7 territories)

8.    Oklahoma (7 territories)

9.    Alabama (7 territories)

10.  Georgia Tech (7 territories)

11.  Oregon (4 territories)

12.  Iowa State (3 territories)

13.  LSU (3 territories)

14.  Florida (3 territories)

15.  Stanford (2 territories)

16.  Georgia (2 territories)

17.  Hawaii (1 territory)

18.  USC (1 territory)

19.  Washington (1 territory)

20.  Notre Dame (killed Day 11)

21.  Virginia Tech (killed Day 11)

22.  UCF (killed Day 11)

23.  Minnesota (killed Day 10)

24.  Baylor (killed Day 10)

25.  South Carolina (killed Day 10)

 

So remember to drink your Ovaltine, submit your move before 10:30pm today and have fun taking back OUR castle!

 

Steps To Play Every Day

(1) Sign up for a reddit.com account if you don’t have one already

(2) Visit collegefootballrisk.com – Click Sign in with Reddit – Select Michigan as your team

(3) Join the Michigan Risk discord by going to https://discord.gg/DRQyjp56kP (this is now a permanent link, so there should not be problems accessing it)

(4) Go to the "vetting" channel and type in your MGoBlog username and Reddit username.

(5) Once vetted, get your orders from the "orders" channel.

(6) Return to collegefootballrisk.com – Click on the blinking "target" icon at the bottom of the page (3rd button from the right), and then click on the territory you're attacking or defending.

(7) Talk trash with your fellow Wolverines as we prepare for tonight's roll.

How Does the Game Work?

It is up to each team to recruit players and coordinate moves. You can choose to defend any territory that your team currently holds or attack any adjacent territory. A "roll" happens each evening to calculate which teams have won which territories that turn based on the moves that were made by individual players. The ultimate goal is to conquer as much of the map as possible for your team. There are a number of different ways to do this, such as through recruiting players in sheer numbers or forming alliances with other teams.

 

Previous Recaps

Day 0 intro: https://www.mgoblog.com/mgoboard/college-football-risk-back-season-3-now-live

Day 1 recap: https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/college-risk-again-sign-1st-books

Day2 recap: No update

Day 3 recap: No update

Day 4 recap: https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/cfb-risk-day-4-it-begins

Day 5 recap: https://www.mgoblog.com/mgoboard/cfb-risk-day-5-and-why-they-nerfed-us

Day 6 recap: https://www.mgoblog.com/mgoboard/cfb-risk-day-6-feels-lot-real-life-sparty-gon%27-die

Day 7 recap: https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/cfb-risk-day-7-fcking-sparty-they-still-gon%27-die

Day 8 recap: https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/cfb-risk-day-8-we-need-you-avenge-orange-bowl-also-sparty%27s-dead

Day 9 recap: https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/cfb-risk-day-9-we-kicked-georgia-out-north-now-we-go-south

Day 10 recap: https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/cfb-risk-day-10-king-north-also-sorry-about-penn-state

Day 11 recap: https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/cfb-risk-day-11-ann-arbor-has-been-taken-not-drill