Last night, we gathered again to decide the fate of the world. Some weird placement, forced somewhat by the proximity of Aaron's home city to Alien Island. If the aliens start at their Island, Aaron can't start in his city, and vice-versa. Aaron won that one, and so the aliens wound up blocking me from my home city, and so on and so forth. If I'd known (or used more forethought) I coulda done a lot wiser things in the draft phase. But I didn't, so I started off in S. Africa with the Saharans (close enough). On my second turn I went for Smaug's jugular, and failed comically. That left me with no wind in my sails, and a vengeful Smaug. I survived, but was never very significant. I thought there was going to be a humongous battle over Alien Island and the World Capital, but as it turned out, Ken as the Aliens also had a pretty lousy start, and he's the only one who can take the World Capital without sacrificing 5 troops. So instead of being a battleground, the WC turned out to be a barrier protecting Aaron, who just sat like a cancer in Australia, slowly spreading and building until he metastasized and dropped 36 troops on the map and smashed his way to victory. Other fun details: Ken got eliminated by Graydon, and Graydon got smacked hard by a viral outbreak.

Only 1 game left in the campaign, and here are the standings:

Ken 4 victories
Aaron 3 (and on a 2 win streak)
Mike 3
Smaug 2
Graydon 2 (last in this list, so he has more to complain about)