Darkness Rising

[The Colonel]

I think well hidden until the archers are taken out. When they are down, you can just do fire support.

[BLANDCorporatio]

This does raise the question....what is Vinny supposed to do during this...?

Lol, one thing, though not necessarily in-game, is figuring out what they would do. If I were Armolad, who would I attack first?

Now, I've been rather out of the loop with unit stats for this game, and I'm not in the mood for walls of text. It seems though that the army we know of would not make a decent siege force. So what would they be banking on (apart from other units that we don't yet know of)?

[Werebiscuit]

Getting our ranged units out of the reach of their archers is obviously a good idea, but those fairies are rather dangerous regardless. We'll need to kill them quickly. And that 60H 20D mount looks like a prime target for Shocka.

Tower spells, out of LOS Will & Coil, plus ballistae will make short work of the fliers. We can then worry about the archers & leadership

That said, the army the scout saw seems fairly small. Am I wrong to assume that it would have serious trouble negotiating past our field defenses?

i was thinking the same, give them the same problem that we had... they need to reach the walls THEN break through...

[Lord of Monies]

Having you in the tower sounds like a good plan, Oberon. All our other casters have their own roles in the fight, be it shooting shockamancy, leading uncroaked or healomancy. If anything, it's a good thing you're here in order to man the tower and fire from it.

[Werebiscuit]

[Tower spells, out of LOS Will & Coil, plus ballistae will make short work of the fliers. We can then worry about the archers & leadership

just to note I wouldn't think ballistae would have arial area attacks but I don't see why individual arial attacks are not possible

[The Colonel]

Do I raise the corpses a turn before the battle?

[Werebiscuit]

Do I raise the corpses a turn before the battle?

OOC I would say no...best time to raise them is within the elves lines...but then I'm not commanding /OOC

[Lord of Monies]

Would it be possible to go out on the turn of the attack just outside the walls, dig some shallow graves, bury your uncroaked then cover them with soil? That way when the elves get close your uncroaked can rise from out of the ground and act as a flanking maneuver. I don't know how effective it would be as a fighting force, but it could be enough to scatter the leadership and disorganise them.

[The Colonel]

That was one of my plans. I have a five corpses sitting outside the city, do I lay more the turn after?

[Lord of Monies]

If they're outside then they're not going to be receiving a leadership bonus from you, so 5 uncroaked aren't going to last too long. Only if you have them to spare, I would consider putting more out there so that they can also work as a two+ round distraction.

[Werebiscuit]

Would it be possible to go out on the turn of the attack just outside the walls, dig some shallow graves, bury your uncroaked then cover them with soil? That way when the elves get close your uncroaked can rise from out of the ground and act as a flanking maneuver. I don't know how effective it would be as a fighting force, but it could be enough to scatter the leadership and disorganise them.

heh...if you're going for the scatter & disorganise. Think of the shock & awe of using corpses as ballistae ammo. Especially when that ammo after smashing into their lines gets up and starts smacking them. Pity Marbit has already ruled out non-standard attacks & tactics.

[Swodaems]

The Imps detect the Elven column, although it is slain in the process.

Did we lose 1 imp or multiple imps?

My thoughts on the battle:
(MarbitChow, hasn't the AOE nature of the ballistaes been removed? There seems to be some confusion on the point.)

Definitely some confusion on my part. I thought that was the point of the ballistae.

They were introduced before as AOE structures. However, the current rules don't mention anything about AOE.

Heavy Ballista : Requires Heavy ability to operate. Grants a Fire attack for [Combat + 4d6]. Grants a +4 Cover Bonus. Must stand at I-18 or AC-18 to operate.

With your side & hexwide bonus Yuri's leadership is almost as effective as Tods so you may want Yuri to provide Rolf's plus to def bonus and save space in Tods for some of the lesser leadership. Initially I would advocate melee and casters that aren't offensively ranged staying out of LOS until we can deal with the fliers and archers. Once their ranged units are nullified ( effectively thinned & leaderless) we can afford to field melee and move archers to the outer walls.
initially we COULD all stay inside or well back on the walls (negating their archery)and leave only high def units to deal with their fliers. When fliers are out of the way we can concentrate on archery and when they are nullified then have our melee take the field.

You're advocating protecting Wandereus, the 3 lvl 2 leaders, and lvl 1 leader in my stack until the enemy closes in? That might be a good idea for the level 1, but not for the others. They all have dance fighting to make up for what they lack in level. Wandereus' stack would be 9/9 and the level 2s would be leading 8/8 stacks. (I'm including my +2 hex wide.) I could take dance-fighting myself and draft a few dancers into the formation to get my stack to 11/11, but that would exclude the participation of most of the PCs in my stack.

[MarbitChow]

BTW Marbit. I'm presuming that the Faeries have Fly as a special. It's not mentioned in their stats that I can see...but their wings are a giveaway.

Yes, they should have Fly listed.

(MarbitChow, hasn't the AOE nature of the ballistaes been removed? There seems to be some confusion on the point.)

I'm not sure where the idea of AoE Ballistae came from. They grant a Fire action to Heavy units. That's it. All rules on Fire apply normally. They were first introduced here: (click), and have always granted Fire.

(MarbitChow, when you say Dying Cry ends at the start of their next Turn, are you talking about daily Turns?)

Yes, Dying Cry essentially lasts a full day, and Dying Cries are cumulative.

Do the leader's bonuses apply while they're Spaced-Out though?

Space-Out makes a unit Calm. (See the rules under Status Effects for details.) Calm units can still dance, and others still gain from their leadership.

The Imps detect the Elven column, although it is slain in the process.

Did we lose 1 imp or multiple imps?

Sorry - that's a typo. A single imp was lost.

[Werebiscuit]

You're advocating protecting Wandereus, the 3 lvl 2 leaders, and lvl 1 leader in my stack until the enemy closes in? That might be a good idea for the level 1, but not for the others. They all have dance fighting to make up for what they lack in level. Wandereus' stack would be 9/9 and the level 2s would be leading 8/8 stacks. (I'm including my +2 hex wide.) I could take dance-fighting myself and draft a few dancers into the formation to get my stack to 11/11, but that would exclude the participation of most of the PCs in my stack.

I'm advocating you provide protection/ enchancement to ranged units in the initial phases so we can deal with their fire support. Once we clear their fliers we can bring other PC's to the walls safely to deal with archery and your leadership can then switch ( you get a free re-stacking at the start of each turn, no ?)

[0beron]

Yes, Dying Cry essentially lasts a full day, and Dying Cries are cumulative.

Okay, so we want to kill the healers as late as possible, definitely don't target them, but if they get hit in AOEs then so be it.

Space-Out makes a unit Calm. (See the rules under Status Effects for details.) Calm units can still dance, and others still gain from their leadership.

Okay then, taking that Leader alive is no longer an option then. That's way too big a bonus for us to leave in action for the entire combat.

[Lord of Monies]

Okay then, taking that Leader alive is no longer an option then. That's way too big a bonus for us to leave in action for the entire combat.

Especially when you add in any accidental kills of an altruist elf. That leadership needs to be our priority 1. Tower can focus on fliers on its own for at least a round or two. That means T.Coil can shock the leader and have the ballistaes finish it if Rolf can't double-shot it. With leadership down, assess the flyer situation and if the tower is still doing fine, then any other ranged can focus on the siege at which point the hidden uncroaked rise from the ground and rush for the archers. They'll be surprised and have not much defense of their own so they should take some kind of a dent.

[ETheBoyce]

Here's the thing though, Archer will die before they get a chance to shoot; Will, Cupid, Yuri, Rolf, and I will all get to take shots before they get a chance to fire in the first round; we're defending for once which means they have to Move into our hex before they can shoot so we can shoot them the moment they step into the hex, and if they delay long enough to send the Level 1 Archers in before the Level 2 Archers our own archers will get to shoot them too, further they will wither be poorly defended on the first round or do far less damage as they have to be adjacent to the units giving them Coordinate/Guard bonuses and they have to come in one row at a time.

Question: How do stun effects from Shockamancy interact with the Bodyguard ability?

Fliers will be very easy to deal with in truth, all casters can use tower juice to augment their Fire attacks against enemy Fliers, or use the Tower Spells, combined with Tod's Leadership bonus any of them could one-shot the little buggers

[HerbieRai]

The farie threat comes from their special ability (1 auto hit). They can do 16 hits a round, and I'm not sure how much damage our casters can soak up. They may also be albe to take down the brickbats very quickly, since they only do 1 hit a time either. What AOE do we have at our disposal?

There is also the possiblity the commander wont enter our hex during the first round of combat. He does have 5 subordinates with leadership, and if we spicifically wait to fire till he enters, we may miss shots if he stays behind.

[MarbitChow]

Question: How do stun effects from Shockamancy interact with the Bodyguard ability?

Stun causes them to lose a move and action. Bodyguard does not require either - the guard just needs to be adjacent to the target - so stun has no effect on a bodyguard ability, other than to prevent the bodyguard from moving with the target (so a target can be Bull Rushed away from stunned bodyguards, for example).

[0beron]

What if the target BEING guarded gets stunned? Can/Does the Bodyguard take that instead? or does it go to the intended target?