TheRubberDucky vs Angel{mit}

Welcome to my first attempt at a Strifeshadow battlereport. This is my first. I haven't played the game as much as I'd like to due to circumstances out of my control. So please correct me if I made any mistakes in unit names or discriptions. Also, YRM posted before me. Asdf.

The map is TheBlighting, as you can see on the tragic picture below. TheRubberDucky starts as white Sylvans in the east and Angel starts with green Sylvans in the west side.  Translation key for americans: east=right, west=left.

Sylvans is my favorite race, possibly because of the female peons with their green fingers and cute little humming voices saying "I'll make it pretty".

Ducky decides to power hard in the early game, he slaps down four Aether Towers. Angel does a more careful build, getting only three Towers but instead an earlier Defence Center.Ducky's fourth tower is placed below his main plateau, making it more vulnerable to attacks. Angel scouts early, right after his Defence Center. What he finds is a base with four Towers, one Defence Center still building and no other defenses.

Defense Centers are not defensive structures really, they're barracks.

He decides to attack with his first Elf Ranger. He also adds another two Towers, only one of them collecting Aether, the other relaying them back home since the distance is too great for one Tower to cover.

Aether Towers collect Aether from Aether pools. They store it untill they have ~40 and then send it as a ball of energy to the mail hall. If the distance to the main hall is too great, they can send it to another Tower closer to the hall.

Ducky soon sends his first Elf Ranger to defend his resource intake. However, Towers have rather low hitpoints, about the same as a Ranger, and the Tower is destroyed before the attacker is damaged fatally. He then retreats back to Angels base.

Ducky
then claims two more Aether sources with a single Tower pretty close to his town, but he needs one Tower to relay the Aether. (As I later noticed, this tower was in a formation of 3 Aether sources, but poor placement only allowed it to cover 2 of them.)

Aether Towers collect Aether from any pool that they "touch". They may be placed diagonally aswell, as shown in the picture.

Both players also grow their first Ikon/Arikon mines. 

These are the other two resources in the game, and can be collected from the same source. Unlike Aether, peons have to transport the Ikon/Arikon from the mine to the town hall. These Dual Purpose Mines can be converted into either Ikon or Arikon mines, this raises their efficiency by 100%.

Not to stay behind, Angel claims another Aether source to the south of his base. After the first attack, there is a period of build-up and powering. Angel grows a Mystic Grove, to get access to the Forest Nymph, a spellcaster. Ducky selects the infantry path, growing an Archery Range to mix some Archers with his melee troops, the Elf Rangers. Angel scouts Ducky's base with an Elf Ranger, which doesn't cheer Ducky up at all, in fact I hope his mother wasn't around to hear his extensive vocabulary.
Both players build a Weatherstone to defend their growing chains of Aether Towers. 

Weatherstones are defensive buildings that call down a powerful beam to eradicate their opponents.

Ducky builds his third Defence Center, which is strange. It is strange because he still builds only one unit in every Center. The Centers can be upgraded to produce up to three units at a time. Angel has built a chain of Aether Towers to the south of his base, collecting more Aether than Ducky. Still, Angel only has two Defence Centers. His are upgraded to produce two units at the same time though, so his production capabilities exceed Ducky's.

Angel gathers a force of infantry, rangers and archers, and two Forest Nymphs. The first Nymph summons an Elf Chronomancer, that kills a few of Ducky's defensive infantry. Ducky manages to hold the attack off somehow, but with heavy losses.

Ducky is in pretty bad shape, and he can't win with basic infantry units only, so he grows a Mystic Grove, to get hold of some Oak Spiders and Treants. He makes a fatal mistake  though, and his Grove traps units coming out of his Defense Center, which isn't very good, obviously.

Angel doesn't want Ducky to recover, so he gathers a nice little army of Treants and Elf Rangers, casts Expedience on them and attacks. He moves them towards Duckys back door, his northern ramp where he has a few towers but only a Weatherstone as defense. The troops make short work of the Weatherstone and continue to tear down Towers. When they're done they charge Ducky's main, where some infantry together with another Weatherstone fends them off.

With his Defense Centers upgraded, Ducky already has a new army outside of his base, itching to attack. He releases his troops and they charge across the map, into Ducky's main. Ducky is busy tearing down his own Mystic Grove though, and he kills it before turning toward the new attackers, which outnumber him both in numbers and in tech level. There is little he can do as Oak Spiders, Chronomancers and the brute force of Elf Rangers charge his men. 

Thus, the winner is Angel{mit}! This isn't the greatest game ever, but there are more where this came from =]. Look forward to a series of Strifeshadow reports :)