The Let's Play Archive

Advance Wars

by Paul.Power, Sockerbagarn

Part 27: Highlights Reel: Kanbei's Error? as Max

Skanky Burns posted:

In case you weren't sure how this would be received, I would certainly like to see this mission played with Max to compare it to how Sami went.
Fair enough, let's do that then. This is going to be a bit longer than the other two highlights reels as I feel there's a bit more to show off in terms of strategic differences. Still going to be shorter than a regular post, though (and - gasp! - I'm not going to bother with arrows)



First up, may as well mention that I managed to tweak my strategy on Mighty Kanbei! as Andy to deliver a 7-day perfect score.



But now it's time for Maximum Force.



For what it's worth, this (and the Andy perfect score mentioned above) are on the A-Route save, hence the mission number being 10 rather than 11.

Day 1



First up, I'm actually going to attack this bomber turn 1. May as well, given that as Max I can one-shot it and not have to worry about it damaging my missile launcher or something.



The usual capturing antics.

Day 2



Kanbei moves his air units to meet mine.



And again, with Max we have the luxury of actually decent damage and not having to worry about the threat of Kanbei's counterattacks.



Woo.

Day 3



This time the T-Copters don't have to worry so much about taking damage.



So I can clean up the air force with no real harm done.



One disadvantage of Max here though is that, without Sami's extra movement, I can't reach that island in one turn with a T-Copter. I can live with that though.



And let's get an attack in on that "north central island" tank.

Day 4



B copter attacks Kanbei's N.C.I. infantry to make it basically impossible for Kanbei to win (again, at this point Sami was not in a good position B copter wise), and the T copters start distributing infantry.



Sticking that fighter out in the middle of the ocean again because why not.

Day 5



Finishing off that infantry.



T copters head back to pick up new passengers and I send my fighter in to pick off one of Kanbei's own. Will the decoy trick work on the AAs again?



Sadly, no. Because this time Max's fighter had already taken some damage, it couldn't survive even one attack from Kanbei's AA. So the other two didn't get dragged around the map trying to follow it. Shame.

Day 6



Ah well, at least it charges up Max Force.



Which allows me to finish clearing out the N.C.I.



And that in turn lets me start landing infantry. Yep, this time we're going for a property capture win. Well, HQ capture's out given we can't budge those AAs now.

Day 7



Got enough guys up here now to win this in two turns.

Day 9 (not much point in Day 8 shots)



I've built up quite the B copter force. Let's see if we can do some damage on this island, maybe get that Power score up to a perfect.



The Yellow Comet APC is pretty much the most hilarious unit in this game.



Could only take down two units. But given the APC was loaded, maybe that counts as three...? Oh well, we'll capture the last two properties and win this.

Now, at the end of the mission, we get Kanbei's standard "By my sword!" spiel that you saw in the Sami run, but because in this timeline we didn't beat Kanbei Arrives! fast enough, we also get some extra dialogue from Sonja (or rather, this is the standard dialogue and the "extra" dialogue is the three bonus missions we'll be starting on shortly):


You know this is because you never let me finish what I'm trying to tell you!
But... But... Sonja, I...
And one more thing. Orange Star's objective is not to conquer Yellow Comet.
Are you mad, daughter? They were...
Father! Shooting first and asking questions later is not a good strategy.

To be fair, the same could be said of both sides in the OS-YC conflict.

If you were suddenly attacked, you'd return fire, too!

I mean, didn't we technically fire the first shot when we attacked those rocket launchers? Oh, well. Not going to complain about not being held responsible for this war.

Well, I...
If you leave them be, I'm sure they'll depart without any trouble. No more attacking, Father! Understood?
Um...
Hmm... The Orange Star Army... They're not all that I imagined they would be.

Hey, hey, that was deliberate. I didn't want to have to play through your fiddly awkward fog-of-war bonus missions three times.

As that's the case... it's up to me to act.

Ooh. Act on what? Act... on "him"?



Property capture victory screen this time, since I actually had to take 15 properties rather than cheese the HQ. I still didn't manage to get that perfect power score, though .



But it was a day shorter than the Sami run. No rank up to Grey Hen in this timeline, probably because I've only played ten missions on the A-Route. And because I didn't complete the bonus criteria on this run, we get dumped straight into Green Earth!



Home of the best character...



... with the scariest face. But that's all ahead of us, because first we've got some showdowns with Sonja to take care of.