Darkness Rising

[MarbitChow]

"Since the cloak is single charge, then I think our best choice is to have me use up a single charge from the tower to hit her with Shockamancy. That way I have something to do, and we don't waste a more valuable caster's action to strip the cloak from her. After I do, T. Coil can open up a can o' whop ash on her."

Note that Tower spells and stored energy can only be used against Flying units.

[The Colonel]

Bill waves a heartfelt goodbye to Rona on the turn the alliance breaks.

Tod, how many uncroaked archers are needed to shoot and how many uncroaked "mines" are needed?

[0beron]

Note that Tower spells and stored energy can only be used against Flying units.

-_- nevvvvvvermind then, I'll stand around and be useless instead as previously planned. *throws tiny pebbles at crudely carved representations of fairies, in a sad analogy of how effective I'll be in combat against them*

[WaterMonkey314]

MarbitChow, is the unit reference with all units we currently have in Dis City up-to-date?

From Tod's math, I have 7 16-hit Wards to lay per turn - proposed wards are below:
Turn 6:
3 x L2 Warlords (Rowan, Tyler, Lian).
DF-8
2 x Royal Guard (Bert and Ernie)
1 x Archer

Turn 7:
7 x Archer (whole Archer stack should now be warded)

Turn 8:
7 x Melee unit = Tod, please specify which you think are most strategically important.

Turn 9:
Tod, is it better to conserve juice for the battle or to ward some of the newly arrived units?

Revision on warding, taking into account the new units:
Turn 7:
2 x Archer, 5 x Garrison Archer

Turn 8:
Ward 3 x Naughty Kitty, Garrison Warlord Reginald, and 3 more Archers.

Turn 9:
no wards - save all juice for the battle.

Also, what are our thoughts on expected combat losses? Are we likely to want to keep healing low-level units (in which case Junetta perhaps should get the Staff), or to focus on preserving critical units (that is, preserving Wards, in which case I should keep the staff)?

Also, 0beron, can't you just regular Fire attack Armolad?

[ETheBoyce]

That would put him in LOS of being fired upon and would do probably no damage

[0beron]

[Regular Fire attacking Armolad] would put him in LOS of being fired upon and would do probably no damage

Yeah, this. My job this battle is going to be to simply survive. Plus I will transport the spare cloaks I have to key units who lose theirs, and spend Juice to make new ones if need be. I might poke my head up to fire on some targets once the initial barrage has passed, but mostly I'm pretty ineffective.

[Lord of Monies]

You can use the tower spells, though, and considering all the other casters have jobs of their own you'll be useful up there dealing with the air defence.

[Swodaems]

OOC That went about as well as I was expecting it to. Well, at least the elves are nice and pissed off now. Time to see if that has benefits. And here's to hoping that flaming gump is an actual seperate unit type and not something we can create using the heck pup's pyrohalitosis./OOC

After Creperum shows me the image of the unit, I tell him, "At least we have given Queen Dibs reason to believe that we truely are an enemy of the elves. Did she give the name or location of the city the elves are returnng? This may affect our long-term plans if it is relatively nearby."

"You told me earlier that Queen Dibs desired to send a small force to learn more about us. Please arrange for them to have a chance to visit as soon as possible and ask Her Majesty to please hold off on taking the elves up on their offer until that visit has concluded. You may also want to ask if it would be possible for us to send a small force to Ix in turn. With more information shared between us and Ix, an arrangement more beneficial to both our side and their's may present itself. The elves gave up on their war with Ix far too easily."

On turn 7, after the call to Zoltarus: At some point when the Archons aren't in hearing range, I tell Junetta about the call and ask her opinion on the fact that Zoltarus is still alive. I also ask that she read over his diary and see if there is anything in it that does not make sense to her as a former Breathearian caster. (Did the Diary give the names of any other Breathearian casters that Junetta did not include in the group of currently alive ones that she knows about? Did it name a former chief warlord or ruler?)

Bill waves a heartfelt goodbye to Rona on the turn the alliance breaks.

Tod, how many uncroaked archers are needed to shoot and how many uncroaked "mines" are needed?

Given the fact that you'll have your staff back, I think we're better off with having you use pall raiser create 8 well armed Skele Archers during the morning of turn 9. More ranged damage pouring down from above on their ranged may be more useful to us than 16 more lesser uncroaked warriors. (The skele archers could attack at the same time as the lvl 2 elven archers. With Bill's hoard bonus and my hex-wide, the skele archers reach 16 com to use to poaur on the damage. (They can reach higher by layering attack modifiers on a single member of the group,) With those same bonuses, plus elevation and cover bonuses received from being on the wall, and +6 vs fire for being skeles, they should have about 23 def versus return fire from ground targets, so they'll survive a hit) Without using a potion, this will only leave Bill with 7 juice, but that will be enough to let him partake in the battle against the faeries.

(Alternative for Bill I want people's opinion on: Depending on corpse availibility, Bill can raise up to 8 skeles or 16 lesser uncroaked using pall raiser. (+1 extra lesser with his normal reanimator spell) With the 5 lessers and 1 skele he already has, he could create a full hoard (he takes up 1 of the 24 spots) of 23 warriors to place on the field. The 17 he raises in the morning can have 11(5+2+4) def and 22 hits if they take beefy. That should be enough for them to require a couple strikes from most of the enemy's units before going down. However, the potential for these units to be laying on the damage is low. Many enemy units will also have 11+ def and wards, and several will be able to attack the uncroaked before the uncroaked can attack. Bill can make the uncroaked attack faster and harder by giving them well armed, but the com 10 archers will likely be attacking with either 20 or 23 effective com if they layer their support and coorinates evenly. If the uncroaked sacrifice beefy for well armed, they'll only have 11def/14hits and will likely dust to a fire attack to a 20 or 23. (If the enemy doesn't layer its supports and coordinate evenly, then all bets are off.))

(MarbitChow, you've said that we can start the battle dodging, but I take it that having any delayed actions ready to go at Maxcombat+1 on round 1 would be out of the question.)

Pre-battle: Everyone starts dodging. for the lvl 4 units, this is a boost of 12 def. For Wandereus, 10 def. lvl 2s get 8 and level 1s get 6. If we have only select members of the lvl 4 units, the skeles, the brickbats and maybe the body guards in RLOS of the ground, but every other ranged unit is waiting back out side of RLOS, prepared to move forward. Dodging at lvl 4 (+12 def) + elevation (+4) + cover from crenelations (+4) + Varied leadership bonuses(2,5,7) gives the worst protected of them (Bill, who should only have 3+22 because of his need to not be stacked with a warlord,) 25 def versus the ground archers. (May want to tell bodyguard units to use Guard and interpose instead of bodyguard, so their target's def raises by 6. giving our worst defended unit in rlos a def of 31.)

(Sadly, a def of 30+ can be overcome, both by us and by them. They don't have to stack their modifiers evenly. A single archer unit could increase its attack drastically this way. Those skele archers I want Bill to make may be better of boosting the ballista captains with support/coordinate stacking.)

An interesting meeting for Brick to have witnessed. First off, would any of us had a better look at their warlord to see if she was holding any magic items? That was something the sacrifical Zed never got the chance to check for. With 5 of us there, one of us must have been able to tell, surely.

Yes. Armolad is wearing a Shockamancy-negating dollamancy cloak, and a Ward potion and a pair of Renew potions are on her belt.

That cloak protects against the effect of any single shockamancy spell? Not just hiya or hoboken like the cloaks Vinny can make?

(If I order the gate opened, Can I order it to stop opening and close before it finishes?)

[MarbitChow]

On turn 7, after the call to Zoltarus: At some point when the Archons aren't in hearing range, I tell Junetta about the call and ask her opinion on the fact that Zoltarus is still alive. I also ask that she read over his diary and see if there is anything in it that does not make sense to her as a former Breathearian caster. (Did the Diary give the names of any other Breathearian casters that Junetta did not include in the group of currently alive ones that she knows about? Did it name a former chief warlord or ruler?)

Noted. Since she still spends most of her relaxation time with Wandereus, she won't make it through the book nearly as quickly as you did. Expect results after Turn 10.

MarbitChow, you've said that we can start the battle dodging, but I take it that having any delayed actions ready to go at Maxcombat+1 on round 1 would be out of the question.)

All defending units can have delayed actions ready to go when the defenders enter. This is one of the advantages of defending. If you want to react on the same phase as an attacker, you have to declare a conditional (such as unit X enters the hex), but you can freely act on the following phase no matter what.

That cloak protects against the effect of any single shockamancy spell? Not just hiya or hoboken like the cloaks Vinny can make?

No, the cloak is identical to Vinny's. It's a Hiya/Hoboken-negating cloak.

(If I order the gate opened, Can I order it to stop opening and close before it finishes?)

Yes, but it will take as long to close as it spent opening. For example, if you start on Phase 5, and cancel the order on phase 9 of the following round, it will still be partially open until Phase 13 of the round after that.

[0beron]

OOC That went about as well as I was expecting it to. Well, at least the elves are nice and pissed off now. Time to see if that has benefits./OOC

You EXPECTED that to fail? And figured it might even go WORSE? And you don't even have an IDEA of how it could help us, you literally just gambled "well, lets' see what happens..." And to think I was chalking that move up to stupidity.

[Swodaems]

MarbitChow, you've said that we can start the battle dodging, but I take it that having any delayed actions ready to go at Maxcombat+1 on round 1 would be out of the question.)

All defending units can have delayed actions ready to go when the defenders enter. This is one of the advantages of defending. If you want to react on the same phase as an attacker, you have to declare a conditional (such as unit X enters the hex), but you can freely act on the following phase no matter what.

This fact is going to rewrite our battle plan. Our infantry can now move 16 squares in the first round. Vinny and Junetta can fire on the faeries both during and after the faeries enter the hex. Triage can heal during phase 7 and get to blasting faeries in phase 4. The Ballistaes can be used to fire 4 times in a single round. (According to my understanding of the delay rules, we would need to use Yuri and our NPC heavies as ballista captains to actually do this. The other possible PC captains would lose their delayed action before the enemy could enter the hex.) I can grant my bonus to 3 different stacks.

OOC That went about as well as I was expecting it to. Well, at least the elves are nice and pissed off now. Time to see if that has benefits./OOC

You EXPECTED that to fail? And figured it might even go WORSE? And you don't even have an IDEA of how it could help us, you literally just gambled "well, lets' see what happens..." And to think I was chalking that move up to stupidity.

I had a convoluted dismounting and live capture plan in the works that required that Armolad and Amandaria be a little bit further forward from their infantry when the gates opened during round 2 in a position that would look safe, but really wasn't. To acheive that, I wanted to piss the two of them off. (That is why I tried thinkagraming Amandaria. Like I said, that plan was epic levels of silly. (Also, to make the plan worse, capturing Armolad alive and having her turned is a bad career move for me. If she were to have my bracer and the chief warlord bonus, she would give a +3 hex wide as compared to my +2.))

Pissing off The King in Green with a failed negotiation was just a bit of RP fun. From a metagame perspective, I don't believe MarbitChow would actually put us in an unwinnable situation because of this, so we might as well have a bit of fun with the RP aspect of our game. That said, after this battle is over, I am planning to use my bracer to call both The King in Green and his Chief Warlord with some very interesting messages after the battle. (I'll be reiterating my offer of peace for cities. I'll be repeating it before and after every battle from now on. If we're going to have to fight the elves, then we'll be the ones doing the talking of peace. I think the game will be more fun that way.)

[Werebiscuit]

The Ballistaes can be used to fire 4 times in a single round. (According to my understanding of the delay rules, we would need to use Yuri and our NPC heavies as ballista captains to actually do this. The other possible PC captains would lose their delayed action before the enemy could enter the hex.) I can grant my bonus to 3 different stacks.

OOC The Ballistae will not be able to use delayed action to get 4 shots off first round as we cannot reasonably expect the elves to enter before phase 5 when their defensive bodyguards get to move. By that phase even the NPC heavies will have lost their delayed move /OOC

[MarbitChow]

Pissing off The King in Green with a failed negotiation was just a bit of RP fun. From a metagame perspective, I don't believe MarbitChow would actually put us in an unwinnable situation because of this.

I thought I made it clear early on that I would not deliberately orchestrate an unwinnable situation. If player deaths would occur, they would be a result of player's actions that got themselves killed.
A nation vs. nation war was a logical reason to prevent a large nation from almost immediately dedicating all their resources to crushing a small, upstart nation.
This situation has been removed directly through player action.
I'm not sure why you believed that my "Fairness Doctrine" did not apply to role-playing situations.

[0beron]

Yeah...that. Thanks a lot Swod/Tod.

[0beron]

As soon as this battle is over, I think one of our priorities should be leveling Vinny as fast as possible. Golems are the silver bullet to our newly created problem of having the Elves' full attention. I think our side's greatest asset is us, so getting us all to level is the best for our side. Golems are fairly strong when first created, but they don't gain XP. So by having a big force of my Golems, we can charge into battle, yet hog all the XP for ourselves. Uncroaked are also useful to this plan.

[The Colonel]

Uncroaked are the steamroller, The golems will be the PUSH needed to get the steamroller up and running.

Also, Bill follows Tod's orders, raising eight Skele Archers at the Requisite time.

[0beron]

Uncroaked are the steamroller, The golems will be the PUSH needed to get the steamroller up and running.

I think they're even, just different. Golems cost more, so you can make more Uncroaked, but they decay and require juice "upkeep" whereas Golems don't. It's all about trade-offs. And obviously Bill is already high enough level to be deadly with his uncroaked, we need to level Vinny to catch up with him. At level 4 he will be able to apply a leadership bonus to his Golems, and he'll have the Repair spell so all of his juice can be spent on keeping them alive in combat.

[ETheBoyce]

T. Coil is going to suggest to the king that we try and convince IX not to take the deal immediately and instead to try and drag out negotiations as long as they can, giving every inclination they plan on actually accepting the deal but are playing hard to get. The Green King clearly wants to crush us so instead of taking his immediately offered terms they should push for even more than offered, everything that Breatharia agrees to becomes a base to ask for more things, this benefits both our sides. An additional option is to demand only accept short term peace deals, albeit with harsher penalties, to force the KiG to constantly keep his forces on his other border for fear of a deal ending and Ix just rolling him when he's Nomming us. The reason Ix should do this is because the offer itself is a clear ploy from a weakened side. The deal more heavily benefits Breatharia because while the return of lost units and time to rebuild is nice Bretharia gains those benefits in addition to putting down what is in effect a rebellion in its own lands. Accepting the deal as is is a short-term gain for Ix while allowing the KiG to regain sturdy footing, given that Breatharia recently captured an Ix city fighting Breatharia at full power seems like a potentially losing proposition for Ix so forcing them to fight two wars at once, or a war on two fronts depending on future alliances, seems like it would be a much better long term plan for Ix.

T. Coil is going to try an suggest this by thinking at his king really hard in hopes of the King noticing and Thinkagramming him, or he'll tell Tod so he can tell the King himself; telling Tod is a last resort option as clearly Tod is in over his head when it comes to diplomatic negotiations and thus would likely not relay the information properly.

OOC: Are we in comic-Erfworld? If so when is this in comparison to the comic?

Edit: In the Uncroaked VS Golem debate, can Golems be warded? In the rules It appears so and as such I think Vinny's juiice should always be spent making more Golems instead of healing current golems, our Healomancers can ward them in place of healing. Also Dollamancy states that an item can be created with as many charges as the caster has levels, so could a highlevel nondollamancer create cloaks with multiple charges?

[Lord of Monies]

A sizable Golem force will be very beneficial, yes. However, remember the other tradeoff. Uncroaked are free. Golems have upkeep. We need to make sure we can afford them too.

[0beron]

Can Golems be warded? In the rules It appears so and as such I think Vinny's juiice should always be spent making more Golems instead of healing current golems

My juice would only be spent on healing in combat, because Golems restore to full health at the start of our turn. So in combat I heal them to keep the going longer, and in off-combat turns I crank out more.

Could a highlevel nondollamancer create cloaks with multiple charges?

Cloaks are the exception, they're always just a single charge. A high level Dollamancer could create a custom cloak with more charges or even a permanent effect.

Golems have upkeep.

Where did you get that idea? Golems don't require upkeep.