> 1) How do you explain anti-gank code IC?

Easy. Who needs to? You were the War Master, just say how they were supposed to fight. You don't need to explain yourself. But even if you are in a situation where you need to explain yourself, just say that with so many people surrounding one person, it makes it more difficult to find an opening to bash them.

> 2) The bard is fully prepped, which means bash is useless. Either enlarge or reduce would negate a giant basher, and both are easy to get.

The only thing that would negate bash for a giant would be reduce, but if that's the case, he could quaff a reduce potion. If the bard is enlarged, the giant can still get good lag from bashes. Admittedly, it can be difficult coordinating everything if the giant needs to flee to reduce. On the other hand, you all had more ways to lag than just bash, not all of which factor in size as heavily.

> 3) The watcher does more damage the more people who are in the room.

No, the watcher does more damage the more people that are fighting it. There's an important distiction there. You have 3 warriors and a healer. With the bard in the room, only one warrior should actually be fighting the watcher. The healer and the other two warriors should have autoassist off and should be rescued. If you coordinate that right, you could have everyone in the right position in just a few rounds, making handling the watcher much easier.

> 4) Anti-gang code also set off on specs, in addition people hitting.

I can't comment on how accurate this is, but if it is true, then I would think that the code would get set off only on the 'outside party' - the guy not actually hitting him. In that case, consider it a bonus when your specs go through.

> 5) I thought of trying to permalag him at the inner using only two of us, but... RNG IS NOT YOUR FRIEND and in general he hates permalag.

I'll give you this one. It's not easy to permalag a bard. But there are other things you can do to mess him up. If I were in your shoes, I would have started with a "dash n hurl throat bard" right after the tick. After that, warrior #2 rescues healer, warrior #3 rescues warrior #2 and then once your lag is over, you rescue warrior #3. Meanwhile, warriors #2 and #3 are bashing/cranialing. Right after a bash in the beginning, warrior #3 should offhand disarm.

> 6) Pocket healer words out and is never seen again after first short engagement at watcher.

It would have gone differently if only one warrior fought the maran.

> 7) you are right, I probably shouldn't have died. But the bard shouldn't be able to waltz up to three (somewhat injured) black sanced fighters and take everything they have for fifteen rounds while spamming sing apoc, and walk away with bleeding wounds at worst.

At an inner guardian, many well prepped characters can do that. Generally speaking, ones that can maladict or have area spells/songs and can avoid being permalagged can pull this off. It's not always easy, and it's arguably easier with a bard or invoker in this situation, but it can often be done.

I realize that not all of this stuff is easy to pull off and most of the time you don't spend that much time coordinating an attack. But really the major problem it sounds like you had was that too many (everyone?) was fighting the watcher. With three characters with rescue, that shouldn't have been the case. Also, I have to ask, did you all have resist mental up? Because some of those songs are really hard to land on people with resist mental.

As Skiltore, I also wouldn't have cared about any of this if you didn't say this:

Morior says 'We been doin our damned best to kill Meyrshal for the last hour or so.'

That was just an awful thing for a War Master to say. Plus this exchange, after I log in, check the who list and see 4 other Imperials and 0 ragers (visible, there was probably 1 assassin):

You say 'Not even my head?'

Morior says 'Odd. Thought we still had the head.'

Anyways, I know you're not complaining about the demotion, so I'll get off this tangent. I'm just posting here so that you know there were options which you probably didn't consider. There are also other options not mentioned, involving things like maladictions/disarm/offhand disarm so they can't pick up their instrument, driving away from the watcher for better terrain, using shove in the right places, etc.