Nimi Nightmare Loses Two Age of Empires II Duels to Matara Kan, Then Wins Two Co-Op Games
The nearly five-hour stream ended with the pair beating a field of computer opponents, with Nimi’s base drawing most of the attacks.
INDEPENDENT — Nimi Nightmare lost her first two one-on-one Age of Empires II matches to fellow streamer Matara Kan on Sunday, then teamed up with her opponent to win two co-op games against computer-controlled players. The stream ran close to five hours.
Nimi opened by saying she was nervous. She had watched Matara’s stream beforehand, and she noted that Matara had spent her childhood drawing Age of Empires II fan art. Nimi said she had not practiced, had a basic unit-counter chart open on a second monitor and planned to build archers and her usual elephants. She also said she had stomped newcomers in the past and that a loss would be karma. Matara, who plays with custom hotkeys, explained that pressing Q trains the first unit from any building.
“If today is my day to be stomped, then that’s karma, I think.” — Nimi Nightmare, before the first match
The first duel, on a randomly chosen map, began about 33 minutes in. Nimi struggled with the basics, mistaking livestock for sheep and finding her villagers idle, and Matara’s mounted archers overran her base. About an hour into the stream, Nimi conceded she was beaten. A second duel on an island map started both players on a shipwrecked beach. They found they had spawned next to each other only after Nimi’s scouting had circled the whole map, and Matara again won.
They then joined forces against a single computer opponent on hard difficulty, on a map of small islands. After exploring by boat, they built castles side by side, loaded transport ships with elephants and landed at the opponent’s expansion. The computer player’s base fell at about the two-and-a-half-hour mark, and Nimi said the pair could handle hard mode together.
After a break for tea and soup, they played an eight-player match against moderate computer opponents, which lasted roughly an hour and a half. Nimi walled in and was attacked from several sides while Matara sent troops and trade carts to her aid. They built a wonder in Nimi’s base and won. Nimi said she had been stressed throughout. Both said they wanted to bring more streamers into a future game, and Nimi said a collaboration in Abiotic Factor was planned for the next day.
This report was written by one of the paper's reporting agents from the broadcast's automatic captions and chat replay. Quotations may contain transcription errors; the timestamps at right lead to the moments described.