As we all know by now, mental is my favorite of all the "little engine that could" teams out there. They're fun, positive, and not afraid to try massively involved pre-made strategies.

Many of these strategies are actually quite decent, and with a little execution they could even be lethal. Sadly, mental are far too nice to execute anybody, and thus are doomed.

Here's how a typical mental overmatch played out.

Mental takes a slightly unorthodox trade going low on the explosive units and quite a few archers. The distribution looks pretty nice, though, with a thrall/arc mid and two equal sides well-equipped to handle pretty much anything but a full heron rush.

...which is exactly what Thor did.


btw, not sure where to put this, but Gabba points out Thor's gholpack strat in planning time and fails to do anything else about it.



So like I was saying, mental has 2 equal flanks, each with half herons, some arcs, a dork, and a couple puss.

THOR sends a warrior/ghol rush north, and a full heron rush south, with just some bullshit mid.



The game is decided rather quickly as General X (not sure why his name warrants all capital letters) decides to run all the way from north to help south, instead of just ape-grape-raping north. A classic example of when NOT to shadow.


Thanks to genX's brilliant maneuver, mental is now facing pretty even forces on all 3 flanks, meaning that they now have to outplay a much better team in order to win.

This does not happen, so they do not win.

Mental players aren't all bad, per se, in fact they can be surprisingly scrappy. The key is to give them simple jobs and clear objectives, and if you can minimize confusion, there's quite a bit of talent to be seen.


Anyway, mental go on a giantojuggernaut north. The surprising thing is it almost works, thanks to THOR placing his peasants at the most dangerous camping spot possible, and refusing to move them for the whole game.

However, the juggernaut does not move fast enough, and loses quite a bit of material before it even gets across the river. generalX and gabba are a little too flustered by the enemy trow to realize they should try to attempt a rush on the enemy peasants (actually, pretty much all of mental should've pressed hard south the second as they saw peas. even so, it would have been difficult to pull off without some skill).

Once again, a good effort, some hope, but not really much chance.

Morale sapped, strategies gone, there wasn't much special left to watch in this game. Freakshow managed to kill everyone except hmp, whom they basically had to fight around in order to capture the flags, and then run away.

Some funny cb antics as always (floating warrior corpse, hi), but that's about it.


Potential Matchup to Watch Out For: mental vs TVR (or PoOp, if they show up)