Book 2 – Page 54

[GaryThunder]

Although I do note in the Haggar situation they found 4 and downed 4. 'Cept they needed to find 6.

Wow...I missed that completely. This means that Charlie still has Archons in the battlespace. This could be rather significant, affecting both battlefield intel and turn order.

[Sieggy]

With what? The casters are gone with the king, so magical attacks are out. I can't imagine why Trem would leave the archers up there when he can withdraw them to prevent their possible croaking / decryption. Besides, at this point, he needs them to act as a screen for Slately's departure from the city (after all, if he's out there with a light force, Haggar might still take that opportunity to kill / capture him). If the purples start attacking the tower, even if the archers are still up there, they're going to be more interested in getting the hell out of there (loyalty is one thing - standing there while a building is being demolished beneath you is quite another) than taking potshots at the Archons. Especially with no CWL or magical bonuses.

. . . and poor Ossomer . . . still up there all alone, to all intents forgotten and superfluous. How are the mighty fallen . . .

[Joe22c.]

One of the best updates in a long, long time.

The art has come a long way!

Also: Since when did Cesar become so much more interesting than Vinny?!

[Housellama]

Although I do note in the Haggar situation they found 4 and downed 4. 'Cept they needed to find 6.

Wow...I missed that completely. This means that Charlie still has Archons in the battlespace. This could be rather significant, affecting both battlefield intel and turn order.

Oh man, I did too. This COULD change the game bigtime. Especially since nobody on GK's knows that they are there. Actually, nobody in GK knows that Charlie's even involved in this. Although personally, at this point if I were Parson, I would assume Charlie was involved in every battle somewhere.

[atalex]

Also: Since when did Cesar become so much more interesting than Vinny?!

Not surprising, really. Caesar is an anti-hero plotting against a character most of us like, and arguably with good reason given how Jillian has let down her backers. Vinny hasn't even been seen since the last summer update and has fallen from "Ansom's right hand and conscience" to "Jillian's latest besotted love toy."

[atalex]

RE panel 5, I believe we are seeing the front of the Garrison where the Tower is located. The hole is farther behind that. And speaking of panel 5, is that Bat 5, I spy hanging from a belfry? Maybe that's who Slately is going to speak with.

Where do you see the bat? If you're talking about the red blob near the top of the tower, that's Ossomer on his carpet.

Ah, my bad. My perspective was off, and I thought the tower smaller than it was.

[GaryThunder]

I like the contrast between the "hard" outdoor light effects on Wanda's group and the "soft" indoor light effects on Caesar's group. Now that's quality artwork.

[Joe22c.]

Also: Since when did Cesar become so much more interesting than Vinny?!

Not surprising, really. Caesar is an anti-hero plotting against a character most of us like, and arguably with good reason given how Jillian has let down her backers. Vinny hasn't even been seen since the last summer update and has fallen from "Ansom's right hand and conscience" to "Jillian's latest besotted love toy."

haha it was really more of a rhetorical question. I completely understand why Cesar is so very interesting.

It's just so sudden. Oh the old days when Vinny was the badass.

[Raza]

Nice update!

Good thinking on the part of GK's field team. With the dwagons stuck on ground level while everybody else goes to look for the portal room, this is a sound use of their resources. Leaving one high level warlord with the heavies group was common sense, anyway. It's refreshing to see the protagonist's side gaining some benefit from a secondary character's initiative; this had been a little too reserved for Parson's opponents, before.

I'm enjoying Sylvia's mindset, describing things in terms of glory and beauty rather than being right or wrong, or strategically sensible.

That Doll is pretty cool. If I were an erfworlder, I'd definitely be a dollamancer... it's actually closer to what I do IRL than any single real world profession with a word for it.

Even with the purples yelling at the tower

I chuckled at this for a good three breaths.

[╒╦╧╬╩╦╦╛]

ow... Caesar will go Bat-shit when he will know how many units "survived" the fall...

Caesar: What do you mean all dragons survived?

[GaryThunder]

Yeah, but consider: Way back when, Charlie was just some loner with an artifact and some hot chick units and Wanda was just a gloomy necromancer. The depth of all the characters has grown...and Caesar out-Vinnys Vinny in all of his most interesting aspects plus having a subplot conflict with Don King. Plus he doesn't have the hots for Jillian, which is frankly unusual at this point.

I also found "the purples yelling at the tower" to be very amusing. If they use sonic attacks that (presumably) come from their mouths, there's not a whole lot of difference between that and yelling at the tower anyway.

[joosy]

Gah, so many wild cards in this fight. I count 4 different characters under suspicion of turning...

Eh wot? Who? There's Oss (fair enough), there's Ace (j/k) ... do you also count Wanda and Caesar, though "turning" means something different there (side-split, and inner power struggle respectively)?

They only took out three of the six archons above them and "momentarily" captured the leader. Also the archons couldn't fire back or use thinkamancy to confuse them.

A situation that is oddly ... reminiscent ... of some other situation we've seen. That's all I'll say about that and revert to avoiding the topic until next update or such.

ugh. correction. the archons were in the same hex as the Haggar units so they could have fought back but rather they chose not to or were overwhelmed. hmm..

[Decorus]

Collapsing the Tower will not harm Parson he did the same thing with GK in book one he collapsed the Tower onto himself when they fell back to the portal room.

[Sylvan]

Also, it is heavily implied that Haggar only took one Archon down, and the rest flew down to surrender. Make what you will of this.

Ahem. Emphasis mine:

"What's Charlie giving for the release of a captured Archon lately?" he snarled. "What're you worth, huh?"

{snip}

She lifted her head and looked at him with her good eye. "Over nine thousand," she said.

"So I've spent twenty-seven so far," he said.

So they killed three archons. At least, lets try to get facts straight here, since speculations on woulda-coulda-shot-or-not will not get anywhere. Which is a pity, as the discussion has its amusing moments. Like now, when trying to find differences between the risk of Hillary etc and the 19 decry-archons stuck above a city pumped with archers and casters. Why do you troll me?

I can multiply, thank you very much.

Also, that part you snipped? It says that one Archon was spotted and shot down. The other Archon flew down and surrendered. Also, which of the three pairs of archons were targeted? The ones who were most likely to be spotted.

In the text Haggar only spots one Archon. Yet, yes, we can tell by the math he has killed a total of three. Just because it didn't say he had spent 45,000 already doesn't mean he doesn't have all the Archons. I find it pretty likely that you have to take away a units hits to torture them (Jillian healing at dawn in book 1 implies she was wounded from Wanda's "tender ministrations"), so I read that text as Haggar having already killed two Archons during his interrogation and threatening her with the same if she didn't stop telling him to call Charlie and pay him money to find out why they were there.

So, my question to you is, where did the other two archons come from? Yeah, yeah, all speculations aside, it doesn't say either way. Which is why I said it was implied that they all surrendered. Don't accuse me of giving people the wrong facts and trolling if you're just going to snip the important bit and do the same to me.

Of course, another poster has already pointed out that the other two may have escaped. I don't really see two Archons being incredibly plot-relevant, especially since Charlie has already dealt with Haggar in the same update I linked in my previous post. None of it really matters, I was just pointing out that Haggar didn't shoot 3, 4, or 6 Archons out of the sky easily. He shot *one* Archon out of the sky using a column seven hexes long that was stacked specifically to counter Archons (maximum spotting, Warlords giving their bonuses to Archers). And the only Archon we know they spotted was in the riskiest position she could possibly be in.

[atalex]

And now that I think about it, I am amused that Wanda describes the plan of bringing down the tower as "my orders." That was Parson's plan almost from the beginning. Wanda is finally getting around to it after her Jillian obsession has delayed her for, by my count, 75 updates (both text and full), and only when it is likely too late to get Slately.

[Atomic]

I understand I'm in the minority here (or maybe I *am* the minority?), but I can't stress how much I disagree with Wanda's decision. It's almost certainly going to go wrong from a military-view, a literary-view and a plot-view... She's gonna mess stuff up. I can just feel it.

1.) The military reason: Splitting your forces over any distance is rarely a good idea from a strategic standpoint, especially considering the long distance they'll be separated by...and the fact that the two forces would now be divided by a building/wall they can't penetrate and a massive amount of enemy units. That's without even touching on how close the odds were before the detaching Wanda's group.

Not only does it halve the offensive and defensive capabilities of each group (or stack, depending on how the Dwagons would benefit from leadership verses stacking bonuses), it puts both groups at a much larger risk of being destroyed by a massed attack from the Jetstone-ian forces. Caesar actually points that out in this very update (see below), even though he's likely under the assumption that Gobwin Knob's forces are still together... And if he recognizes that the Gobwin Knob forces are halved, well, then Parson wouldn't have needed to come over, 'cause the full might of the Gobwin Knob army would've been enough to win the battle...

I'd say they gotta rush that Atrium with everything they got, all at once, or they're just feedin' the enemy new units.

2.) The literary reason: This sort of ties in with the 'plot' reason below, but it's slightly different, so I felt like it deserved its own point. One of the first rules I learned about fictional/creative writing was that, when creating a story, everything needs to progress the plot/character development in some way or another. Rob is obviously a talented writer, so from a meta-perspective, I can't imagine him making an error in Parson's wording at the end of Page 52 (see below)...a fact which is highlighted with Wanda telling Sylvia that they have [her] orders, not Parson's. (see below that)

"Then she goes: mass decrypt, take that army to the dungeon and secure their Portal Room.

"Pretty thought. Do we have the orders?"
"You have my orders."

3.) The plot reason: Tied into the above point, of course, but more-so in the fact that Rob simply wouldn't have had Jack speak those words if it wasn't going to have an impact on the story...to some degree or another, Jack's suggestion is gonna have an effect on the battle. I just get this really foreboding feeling; intensified by the fact things seem to be going well for Gobwin Knob the last few pages. Tie that into my first point about the military implications, and I'm betting we're gonna look at a major player in the battle dying. Soon.

Death Watch:
1.) Jack
2.) Sylvia
3.) Don King
4.) Pierce
5.) Ossomer

[Swodaems]

I think the proper answer to Ceaser's "How many units survived that fall?" is "All but 1, but that 1 was probably a pretty decent level." (If dying and being Decrypted counts as surviving.)
Jack says here that 'all the dwagons are alive, as are most of the riders.'
I am going to make the assumption then, that before the fall, unless a riding unit can be proven decrypted, it is alive.
Another update allows us to name the only riding units we can prove decrypted: KC (Former Unaroyal chief warlord,) Ossomer and Sylvia. (The Archons are decrypted too, but they don't count)
Here we can see the dust of a single Decrypted, premassderypt. (Look under the beam in the Penultimate panel if you didn't see it a first glance. (No, damned idiot that is sure to protest due to their crappy display, that is not Antium's shadow. It is the wrong shape and at the angle would be off considering all other shadows in the panel.)) Given that we know of only 3 decrypted riders in the air force and Ossomer is still in the air while Sylvia is proven alive, i propose that the dust belongs to KC. So much for the idea that having a name alone grants you immunity to death.
Farewell KC. Those of us in your fanclub will always remember you fondly. You had the most awesome character design in the comic and it is a pity we never got to actually see it,

[kreszantas]

I understand I'm in the minority here (or maybe I *am* the minority?), but I can't stress how much I disagree with Wanda's decision. It's almost certainly going to go wrong from a military-view, a literary-view and a plot-view... She's gonna mess stuff up. I can just feel it.

1.) The military reason: Splitting your forces over any distance is rarely a good idea from a strategic standpoint, especially considering the long distance they'll be separated by...and the fact that the two forces would now be divided by a building/wall they can't penetrate and a massive amount of enemy units. That's without even touching on how close the odds were before the detaching Wanda's group.

Not only does it halve the offensive and defensive capabilities of each group (or stack, depending on how the Dwagons would benefit from leadership verses stacking bonuses), it puts both groups at a much larger risk of being destroyed by a massed attack from the Jetstone-ian forces. Caesar actually points that out in this very update (see below), even though he's likely under the assumption that Gobwin Knob's forces are still together... And if he recognizes that the Gobwin Knob forces are halved, well, then Parson wouldn't have needed to come over, 'cause the full might of the Gobwin Knob army would've been enough to win the battle...

I'd say they gotta rush that Atrium with everything they got, all at once, or they're just feedin' the enemy new units.

2.) The literary reason: This sort of ties in with the 'plot' reason below, but it's slightly different, so I felt like it deserved its own point. One of the first rules I learned about fictional/creative writing was that, when creating a story, everything needs to progress the plot/character development in some way or another. Rob is obviously a talented writer, so from a meta-perspective, I can't imagine him making an error in Parson's wording at the end of Page 52 (see below)...a fact which is highlighted with Wanda telling Sylvia that they have [her] orders, not Parson's. (see below that)

"Then she goes: mass decrypt, take that army to the dungeon and secure their Portal Room.

"Pretty thought. Do we have the orders?"
"You have my orders."

3.) The plot reason: Tied into the above point, of course, but more-so in the fact that Rob simply wouldn't have had Jack speak those words if it wasn't going to have an impact on the story...to some degree or another, Jack's suggestion is gonna have an effect on the battle. I just get this really foreboding feeling; intensified by the fact things seem to be going well for Gobwin Knob the last few pages. Tie that into my first point about the military implications, and I'm betting we're gonna look at a major player in the battle dying. Soon.

Death Watch:
1.) Jack
2.) Sylvia
3.) Don King
4.) Pierce
5.) Ossomer

I would have to say that you make a compelling argument, however a suggestion to step back and think about Jack’s statements a little closer. 1) Jack statement begins with a suggestion in panel 6, not an order. 2) Jack is not a commanding unit therefore could not make any other unit do anything; he is simply being used as an extension of Parson, and if it was such a questionable suggestion Wanda would have been contacting Parson. 3) She is not deviating from the plan at all, merely as another stated playing the cards Fate dealt her. 4) Note again by Sylvia’s words that it is a pretty thought! Sylvia recognizes Fate when she sees it and should be #1 on the death watch based on who you have listed. I still think its turnip king myself due to a hardware failure…

[╒╦╧╬╩╦╦╛]

I don't know if it's been asked before but:

9th panel's blond warlord (warlady?) on the far right ... Is it princess Peach Toadstool?

[the_tick_rules]

We also have to wonder if Jetstone is prepared to deal with dwagons attacking from the inside. I doubt they ever expected big aerial units to be inside the atrium attacking from the inside out. The dwagons could go on a massacre spree, maybe even easier since jetstone's best are now running, leaving everyone else without their leadership bonuses and caster goodness. It does look somewhat like peach, but it's hard to tell if it's intentional or is it just some generic figure that just happens to look a little like her.