Any race without clerics (troll, woodedelf, ogre, iksar, barbarian, half elves) are toast before the war gets properly underway. Half the races lose right off the bat. Races without porters (ie no wiz or druids) lack strategic mobility.
Halflings have very few playable races; no winner there.
High elves? Only one melee. No dice.
Erudites have no warriors. No sow. No dice.
Dwarves? Stout and sturdy but no intelligence casters. No sow. Not contenders.
The races with best chances?
-gnome (good class spread)
-dark elves: as above; add shadowknight
-human: they have all classes except shaman.
Humans win. Diversity means they miss out only on the class only available to races without clerics.
-Humans start out with domination of opposing sides of the largest continent. A slow pincer strategy controlling the coasts and squeezing out the competition between. Oggok and Grobb are close proximity and destined to fight each other into the ground. Leaving qeynos (with HHP as a forward base) to run over rivervale. Dark elves put up a formidable and balanced force and will not drop quickly. Freeport/neriak stalemate. Humans mop up grobb and oggok easily (no rez).
-iksars start out with an isolation advantage but won’t hold out in the end without the ability to rez the dead.
-faydwer will fall to gnomes in the long run with kelethin dropping first followed by felwithe. Kaladim holds out for a long while but this only helps out Freeport since they can ignore the coast behind them and focus inward on their continent.
-Odus enjoys initial peace and prosperity but lack the power to assault qeynos. Erudites live until humans of antonica dominate most of the the mainland and then go down in an epic assault.
You’re then left with an iksar hoard controlling kunark, gnomes infesting faydwer, and humans controlling 80-90% of Antonica. With no enemies at their backs qeynos fortified oasis and 2 human armies are now free to invade neriak. Outnumbered, the dark elves will fall unless gnomes invaded from the East (which they won’t do - they give up strategic advantage of fortifying and digging into butcher block mountains.
Humans have antonica/odus
Gnomes have faydwer
Iksar have kunark.
The invasion of Kunark is bloody but iksar have few classes and no rez. Iksars don’t stand a chance but losses will be great.
Final showdown is between gnomes and humans. A massive fleet invasion on butcherblock combined with snipe squads porting into gfay and steamfont; the gnomes are overrun.
Humans win. Strategic starting locations, proximity fighting between opposing races, and the near full complement of starting classes. It wouldn’t even be close.
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