Part 49: Dimitri Gets Absolutely Fucked Up

PART 48 - Dimitri Gets Absolutely Fucked Up

...Alright, almost ready. Got my command...



Got my motivation...



...And got some fitting music.



Let's do this.

So, yeah, welcome back, everyone. Today, we've got a real sonuvabitch of a map, and now that the disastrous first attempt is out of the way, it's time to attempt it properly. I've been playing this map for what feels like days. Hours and hours of testing strategies, figuring things out... first things first, this map is definitely the hardest so far in terms of doing it deathless.

Sturm comes HARD, and he does not mess around. The biggest problem with Sturm isn't his plens, his medium tanks, 30% attack bonus... hell, it's not even his CO power (though it can go fuck itself). No, the real issue is that he starts with 28 captured properties, equalling 28k a turn. Our COs start with 7 each, and there's not many neutral properties to bolster that number.

Usually I do a little pre-map explanation of my plan, but honestly? This map is so carefully-calculated that I may as well go through it step-by-step. One thing I will state is that I've given myself a tiny little advantage - Michael's lent his eject-button skills to Rin (who's being deployed as an APC for this map), Bernard and the other two armies. We'll need them if we're to have any hope of minimising losses.





It seems Grit and Eagle are ready too. One of them is going to be infinitely more useful than the other. _{Sorry, Grit.}



First, we don't really need to do much besides begin. One last word of warning, I'm playing without animations for this map. (So many attempts... I needed to speed it up somehow.)

Alfonse takes this airport - we need lots of properties as soon as possible, so we may as well.

"Right now, everybody is relying on me. Steve, Selena… everyone. For them, I will fight, and I will not lose!"



Howard, who's being deployed as an infantry, goes for the base. Expect to see many weird deployments this map - we need a lot of dudes, and hey, I want to give everyone a chance to shine in this last map.

“…This is the first time I’ve not had a smoke before a battle. And I feel… fine. Thank you, Mulligan.”



The remainder of the army move forward. So, we have two medium tanks, who are Tina...

“I refuse to bow to most men, but you are the lowliest man of all. If you underestimate us for a second, it will be your last mistake!"

...and Dave.

“This is for Craigsworth. For Colin. For Steve. For Barry. For Eric. For Bill. And for everyone else who fell in this war! Your tyranny will go on no longer!"

Don't worry, Rose is still around. She's the battle copter on the left.

“This fight won’t trouble me, as I could easily outmanoeuvre you all. What surprises me more is that I think my dude is finally ready to prove his tactical worth…”

And the other battle copter is our favourite girl, Lucy!

“I’m so pleased that I’ve been able to come this far. Nobody deserves to die today, except for YOU!”

Our APC is, naturally, best boy Michael.

“I… will not fight you. But you must be defeated, and I’m going to do everything I can to help put a stop to your reign!"

Mulligan's our missile squad, as per usual. He's gonna have several interludes in this map, that's for sure.

“We’re not gonna get a second chance at this. We’re coming in all guns blazing!"

And of course, our two anti-airs are the usual pair, Cassandra...

“Mulligan taught me that I must do my best for everyone. This army has treated me so kindly; I will repay them by refusing to back down now!”

...and the ever-creepy Carl.

“The blood of such a powerful figure… will be the tastiest of all."

This map does require quite a big army, though, so don't worry, we'll be deploying plenty more units. In fact, there are some on this first turn.



So, next to our good friend Bernard...

“How am I supposed to relax when you’re hanging around stinking up the place?"

...we have Rin as an APC!

“I’m tho happy that I can fight alongthide all thethe people. My friendth are going to do their betht, and tho am I!”

The infantry there is Wilbert, who won't get much chance to use his artillery in this map, unfortunately.

“You’re not even going to be a challenge for me. I am on the side of justice - that is why I cannot be defeated!"



quiet Grit, you've got things to do



And when I say things to do, I mean "make as much Meteor Strike bait as humanly possible". So, all Grit really needs to deal with the opening gambit is his indirects and one anti-air, so everyone else will be heading back to base to bait out Sturm's CO power. Oh, I suppose I should introduce them - the mech here is Dimitri, an-

"Dimitri here, commander of the Olaf Mercenaries." Dimitri says. "We defected from Orange Star at the same time Olaf did, and have served him and Blue Moon faithfully ever since. I get that we might not be on the best terms with ol' Orangey, but if you're willing to let us help, we'll do what we can."

He begins gesturing the army. "You probably won't remember everyone's names, but the two tanks are Leo and Diana, the artilleries are Ivan and Mark, the rocket squad is Anton, the anti-air is Boris, the missile squads are Anatoly and Valentin, the infantry are Peter and Eduard, and finally, the recon is Ludmilla."

Huh. I am definitely not going to remember that many names, but to be fair, most of them are going to sit there and take meteors to the face anyway, so there's probably not much point.



Everything moves up, to begin approaching Sturm, and in the case of Anatoly and Valentin, to absolutely ruin the opening gambit.



Oops, forgot Eduard. Catch up, man, you've got buildings to capture!

Grit needs the most money out of anyone just to keep up with Sturm's CO meter. Expensive units are the best bait, so we gotta mass-produce them if we can.



quiet Eagle, didn't you hear what I said to Grit?



I begin moving Eagle's units forward, and I make an infantry and an APC. Eagle doesn't start with an airport, as we established, so we need to capture the northern one ASAP.

Oh, right, I guess I need to introduce these guys. Can someone help?

"It's me again." says the fighter on the left. "Edgar, one of the longest-serving soldiers of Green Earth. Here we've got Otis as our other fighter, Wallace as our bomber, the two battle copters are Petra and Princeton, the infantry is Lorelei, the two medium tanks are Roland and Leon, and the anti-airs are Henry and Stefan. And the new APC and infantry are Finn and Conrad. Good to be working alongside you again - we're gonna give Sturm everything we've got, so command away."

Alright, he said command away. I'm gonna do exactly that.



This is how I leave everything on the first turn. Lorelei will be capturing buildings, whilst Conrad gets carried to the airport to get that. Eagle needs a fair amount of funds too, but with how many turns it takes to reach and capture the airport, he'll have a tidy amount to start churning out bombers without much help, so it's less important than Grit's capturing. Still, the buildings are here, may as well take 'em.



With everyone set up, it's time for the first real annoyance of this map. To have ANY shot of doing this whilst minimising casualties, we need some absolutely perfect RNG. We're looking for 4 things:



1) This lower fighter lands exactly on this tile.



2) All eight plens in the opening gambit charge us. Sometimes they don't, and that messes up the strategy.



3) Not a single unit from Sturm's army can go beyond the bridge. The small tanks can and will cross the bridge on turn one, and from there they can just start murdering all your innocent units.

and 4) for Sturm to just not be an asshole. The chances of all of these happening are slim enough, but having them happen in the same run? Downright frustrating odds. Still, we got the good RNG, so let's take full advantage of it!



Sturm does this a lot too. God damn it, Sturm.



So, it's back to our turn. This turn's pretty simple - block the bridges, destroy the opening gambit. Let's begin.



Both Alfonse and Howard finish their capturing. The base is going to be especially useful later in the map, since it's so close to the bridges. Guarding these bridges and holding off Sturm's assault is basically the cornerstone of the map - it's where the majority of the action is going to take place.



Wilbert hops into Bernard - Rin's going to be on baiting duty, so Bernard will be the one ferrying units back and forth.



He dumps Wilbert down south, where there's more buildings to be taken.

Now for the bridge.



Tina engages this medium tank - getting the first strike on it is crucial, so I'm glad it moved front and centre. But, of course, we only have two medium tanks, and the second one can't reach the other two bridges.



Dave sits near Tina, ready to get in the fray when necessary, but the other two bridges will be held by our new copter gal-pals, Rose and Lucy. Rose engages this enemy battle copter.



Lucy handles the other side. Copters are only really afraid of the anti-airs that Sturm's got, but whilst we buy some time to get more medium tanks and hold the line properly, they'll be quite adept at surviving against Sturm's tanks. Even his medium tanks barely scratch them.



Now for the opening gambit. Mulligan can take this bomber with ease.



Cassandra, meanwhile, goes for this fighter. It's not a kill, but it's decent damage.



Carl goes for the fighter on the other side. Dipshit's troops are in the middle, so you have to divide their attention between both parts of the enemy plen formations.



Michael is going to stand exactly here, for reasons that may or may not involve getting shot by a helicopter.



Rin is going to do the exact same thing for similar reasons.



And there's three buildings down below. I'd rather have them captured quickly, so I'm deploying another infantry to help Wilbert. It's Ingo, ladies and gents!

“Hey, Bill, Eric… I hope you’re watching from up there. I’m going to make them pay for what they’ve done to my brothers!”

Right, over to Grit.



Grit's got two things to be getting on with - firstly, dealing with the enemy planes, but also setting up our first lot of bait for Meteor Strike. It's pretty much guaranteed on Sturm's day 2 since you have to deal with the opening gambit if you want any shot at this map. Even taking out just half of it will fill his meter right up, so hey, let's get the bait going.



That's the bomber and fighter gone, thanks to Anatoly and Valentin. Boris, our anti-air, goes for the enemy fighter.



THIS is why this fighter has to land on that exact tile. On any other tile in this mountain range, only one of the anti-airs can target it. But here, on this 1-wide mountain range, the fighter can be attacked by both Dipshit and Grit's units. And we need it gone, because if left on low HP, it'll immediately shoot north and start bullying Rose, who then gets destroyed by the battle copter.

Remember when I said holding the bridge was super important? Yeah. Despite Rose being one of the few characters who doesn't die when they're killed, we need her alive because if even a single one of these three chokepoints cracks, we're done for. Hence the necessity of murdering this plane - thanks, Boris. You saved the first half of this map.



Everyone else is staying down there now, as most of them will be helping bait Meteor Strike. All we need up here is Ivan, Mark and Anton.



And we capture things, also. The more money Grit has, the more easily we can handle Sturm's CO power, pretty much.



So, we need to move everyone slightly away from HQ for this one to work. To guarantee the bait, we need to include a missile unit, but since they spend this turn taking out the planes, they can't move to HQ - so instead, we move the bait over to them, like so.

Now over to Eagle for more needless plen murder.



First, though, we need to get Conrad over to the airport. Let's bundle him into the APC.



Lorelei finishes her capturing, also. More money for more bombers!



As you can see, Eagle's fighters have no trouble absolutely wrecking the enemy bombers. They don't one-shot the fighters, though, so it's a better use of resources to have them go for the bombers.



And so Edgar will also go for a bomber. Unfortunately, we don't have the firepower to take out the other fighters - we'd need three anti-airs, and we only have two. Still, we can actually sort this out with some AI abuse.



Henry goes for this fighter to finish it off.



And Stefan attacks this one. This is the crucial bit - remember that in this game, units on 2HP or less flee to find a base to heal. This fighter is now going to run away instead of attacking anything, and we can hound it down with our own fighters next turn. We couldn't do this on the left because Grit's direct attack penalty means he leaves Sturm's fighters on 4HP rather than 2HP.

This map is very, very specific. Don't even ask how long it's taken to figure out all of it's little quirks.



Everyone else just heads north to help out, though I take care not to leave the expensive units close to each other. Armageddon is coming, after all.



Judgement day cometh.



AND TODAY HE HAS JUDGED...



DIMITRI AND FRIENDS!

"Is that a fucking meteor?!" yells Dimitri, seconds before impact. In a blistering explosion of light and heat, the sky itself is blotted out by an immense impact. Soon, though, the light clears, and the heat fades...



"Who... the fuck... are we fighting..?" gasps Dimitri. He looks around at everyone. "Is everyone alright?"

"Mostly..." Ludmilla sighs. "Urgh, that was annoying."

"Everyone form up and get back to base! We need to make repairs!" commands Dimitri.



As predicted, the last fighter runs for it. Not far enough, though.



Rin may or may not have been attacked by a helicopter.



Michael was also potentially shot by a helicopter.



This big, black, imposing medium tank goes for Rose...



And does absolute squat. That's the damage it did WITH Sturm's CO power attack boost active!

Of course, he does more things too. You'll never guess what.



If you guessed "continue making an obscene amount of dudes", you were absolutely correct. The biggest annoyance here is the battle copter, which can ignore the chokepoints at the bridge and come over to my side anyway; baiting them out and killing them is going to comprise a large portion of this map, since he makes them like, 5 days in a row.



Alright, our turn. Let's do some stuff.



First, Dipshit's going to be useful for once in his fucking life.



And he will repair our units in a very hyper way.



Using his newfound power, Wilbert continues capturing the same city.



Ingo also heads down to help.



Welp, we baited this copter for a reason. Mulligan, get 'er done!



The capturing fun continues. We'll need plenty of money. Why, you ask?

Isn't it obvious?



MORE MEDIUM TANKS, MOOOOORE!

Barold's gonna be a medium tank for this map, since there's not much else that's as useful offensively and defensively.

“I… I really just want to go home. But I can’t - not before I’ve done my solemn duty in putting you down for good!"



Carl, meanwhile, is just close enough to the scene to instantly tenderise the other copter. Positioning is key for this map, as the above proves.



God, that is satisfying.



Speaking of positioning being key, Rin's going to head up here so that she can bait out the next big threat - that massive fuckoff bomber.



She's not really in range to do anything, but always good to have an anti-air on hand. Thanks, Cassandra.



May as well make use of the CO power attack bonus and hit this medium tank a bit more. It can't really do very much in response.



And if Lucy destroys this enemy copter...



"I see an opening!" says Dave, charging in. "My dude said we need air support to win, so we need to prioritise murderin' the hell out of these anti-airs!"

"There's a veritable army of them. We shall slowly work through them - tell Eagle's air support that they won't have to wait for much longer." Rose replies.



Grit's army, meanwhile, now has a bunch of 2HP units who are doing nothing useful. Let's get started on the repairs.



And may as well purchase some missiles with all our money...



This is how things stack up. We still have (probably) a few more turns until another Meteor Strike is on the way, so for now we're just getting everyone repaired. Once they're a bit more healed up, we'll bunch them all together to eat the second Meteor Strike, with any luck.



With the main airborne threats out of the way, the other missile unit can move down. We'll join him with the 2HP one to get them healed quicker.



The capturing continues. Boris also doesn't have much to do, thinking about it...



May as well make him bait too.



Ivan, Mark and Anton continue heading north. In this arrangement, they're just out of range of Sturm's dudes.



Now it's onto Eagle. We need to move some of his troops over this side, hence why Edgar's flying that way. The general endgame for Sturm is to have a bomber and a fighter on both sides - this way we can pull off a nice pincer attack on his HQ area; since it's surrounded by mountains, air units have a much easier time getting in and out.

Sturm's factored this in, of course, and so he usually has a couple of anti-airs and missiles hanging around; the best way to beat this map, as far as I know so far, is a mixture of bombers, fighters and medium tanks. So that's exactly what we're going to try.



Otis, meanwhile, will be deleting this enemy fighter. Told you he hadn't run far enough.

"B-but..." I can hear you say through chattering teeth. "My dude! You've failed to account for the anti-air right there!"



Awfully bold of you to assume that I'm that thoughtless. Wallace can handle it with no problem.



Everyone else continues advancing. We'll need them all as close to the mountain entrance as possible, so we have more options for handling Sturm's troops.



This is especially important for the medium tanks. Alright, good, let's-



fuck almost forgot about the infantry



I do the dropping off and the capturing. _{Yes, I lost several runs by forgetting to do this.}

Alright, NOW let's end turn.



Sturm, as usual, is a big asshole. I'd think of a more clever way of saying it, but all my available brainpower is being spent trying to figure out this godforsaken map.



The bomber bombs Rin, to the surprise of absolutely nobody. Thankfully, the mysterious power of the "eject button" is hers, and she escapes without a scratch!

"That wath clothe!" she says. "I've done all I can... do your betht, everyone!"



The medium tank thinks, for the second turn in a row, that it is a good idea to fire on Rose.



Works out just as unfavourably as before.



And all of those infantry he made begin to move down. They're gonna clog up the map until we can kill them all.

Well, hopefully he doesn't make any more battle copters or medium ta



oh god dammit

Welp. That was all for Sturmy boy.



At the beginning of my turn, we continue capturing down here with Ingo and Wilbert.



There's another battle copter that needs baiting, so Michael moves to Rin's recently-vacated forest.

Also, I apparently forgot to screenshot it, but Mulligan killed the bomber. It was very cool and awesome.

~Here's a hypothetical Mulligan interlude.~

[a hypothetical screenshot of Mulligan firing upon an enemy bomber in a manner described as "cool and awesome"]

~We hope you enjoyed today's Mulligan interlude.~



Rose will be exiting the battle for now, also. She's done what she needed to do - as for who's going to guard the leftmost bridge in her place, well, we'll get to that.



Howard does some capturing.



Alfonse helps.



Barold heads upwards - he's still not close enough to the leftmost bridge to guard it, so what on earth am I going to do?

This was a joke. I already know what I'm going to do.



Sturm's infantry are just annoying, so I move Cassandra up to shoot this guy full of holes.



Carl joins her - with all the infantry wandering around, some delete buttons will be nice. It'd be a waste to have the medium tanks spend their turns killing infantry, after all.



Speaking of the medium tanks, may as well have them continue their assault. Dave opens fire.



Tina follows suit, and she snags the kill thanks to the lack of defensive terrain. Slowly, we're thinning Sturm's numbers...



With the anti-airs still hanging around, and the medium tanks all but gone, it's probably time for Lucy to get going, too. She's done what she needed to do.

Now then, back to Grit and his crew of meatshields.



So... let's see here...



If we join the two tanks, we can get them at 8HP, and fully repaired in one more turn.



The missiles can join, too. Fun fact about joining - an undamaged unit can join with a damaged one to fully heal it, but not the other way around. Also interesting, any HP that goes over the max is converted into funds. Since the unit was on 2HP, and was healed by a 10HP unit, we saved 2HP of funds. Missiles are 12000, so 2HP becomes 2400 funds for Grit. And hey, we need all the funds we can get.



Grit was on 3800, but with that extra 2400, we can afford a nice shiny artillery. This is Inessa, according to Dimitri. So, uh, hi Inessa.

I hope you like meteors.



This is how everything shapes up at the end of the turn. We're getting a decent amount of funds together now!



These two nerds just keep capturing. Not much else to say, really. The rockets/artillery squads aren't doing anything, so let's ignore them and go back to Eagle.



Capturing buildings!



Capturing airports! Man, it's really going down over here. Stop, I can barely handle the excitement.



For the first time in like, forever, I use an APC for it's intended purpose of supplying some stuff.



Wallace will be flying into this little space here. Remember how I said we need a bomber on both sides for the pincer attack? Wallace will be handling the left side for us. Once we've got the airport captured, we'll make some bombers to take care of the right side.



And Edgar will take his place here. The medium tank still isn't on low enough HP to move back to base, but it's also incapable of firing on fighters, so right now, Edgar is a completely unbreakable wall.



Otis takes his place in the mountains. For the most part, he doesn't have anything to do besides sit and wait to be useful later on in the map.



Time for Sturm to do things. Hopefully not the murder things - we've been relatively lucky so far.



Michael, the OG meatshield, does what he does best.

"I'm gonna bow out here, guys. Keep at it - we're slowly wearing Sturm down!" Michael yells as his APC explodes. He's thrown just clear of the wreckage, and turns to face the enemy. "...This army can't fail here. We're going to beat you, Sturm!"



The rest of Sturm's units just kinda gather around here and



he makes another monkeyfucking bro copter



God damn it, Sturm. I hate your copters.



Mulligan. Show Sturm how much I hate his copters.



The capturing continues. Still, Edgar bought a turn, so now...



We can park Barold here, and we've got three medium tanks guarding the bridges! This is definitely going well. We just have to keep it up now.

"Just gotta get through..." Barold murmurs to himself. "Thanks, Edgar. I'll take things from here."

"Alright, if you're certain, young 'un." Edgar replies.



I don't think we have enough medium tanks yet. Selena, join the party!

"People like you don't understand anything but war. So I suppose I'll have to convince you that you're in the wrong by force!"



Lucy and Rose just kinda hang out over here like the cute kids they are.



And more capturing. Dipshit's greed knows no bounds.



Carl moves over here. If it's not obvious, we're going to eat another Meteor Strike soon. I'm getting everyone out of the way.



Tina keeps her assault up.

"Think you can keep up with me, Dave?!" she yells. "We're gonna destroy every last one of these bastards!"



"Don't even challenge me. I'm not going to slow down for anyone!" Dave replies, opening fire.



This enemy battle copter has this movement range. Remember this for later.



Ingo finishes his capturing.



Whilst Wilbert moves for this last neutral city. Things are slowly turning around.



Right, now Grit... I don't know if we actually have the resources here to bait out the second meteor. Hm.



Well, we don't have much money, but may as well spend what little we have by deploying, uh, who is this?

"Nika..." groans Dimitri, who's still suffering from being hit by a fucking meteor.

Nika. We deployed Nika.



And the capturefest shows no signs of stopping. It's a party, and neutral cities are invited!

Speaking of capturing, Eagle's got some to do, too.



So let's get on that. The more important one, of course, is Conrad.



But first, I have an immense desire to murder the hell out of this infantry.



OK, back to capturing. Conrad captures the airport! Next turn, Operation Bomberspam begins.



Now we're going to move Leon, our APC, precisely here. Remember that bro copter from earlier? Since Orange Star is out of APCs to bait with, it's Green Earth's turn.



And we have an anti-air to conveniently remove the offending copter with next turn.



Meteor Strike is coming, though, so we'll need to shift some more of our units out of the way.



The expensive ones are the fighters and bombers, so we definitely need to keep those to the side. Edgar can head up here...



And Wallace heads vaguely over here.



...This could be a rough enemy phase. Here we go.



Sturm, please don't kill the hell out of my tanks with your big space meteors, please



STURM PLEASE



oh thank god

"Argh, again?!" yells Dimitri, as a meteor of equal size and power to the last one crashes directly into Blue Moon HQ, totalling everything and making all those repairs absolutely useless.



God bless Blue Moon. The finest meatshields I've ever seen.



The copter takes the bait like a NERD.



This infantry thinks he can fuck with Alfonse and get away with it. This isn't Scaredy Tutorial Alfonse, Mr Sturm's Infantry! This is Confident Endgame Alfonse!



i mean yes ok that wasn't a good example of alfonse being badass but he's still alive, at least



More infantry think they can do damage to things. I dislike it.



Mostly because they ARE doing damage to things.



And hey, did you think we were going to get away with Sturm not buying a fuckload of units this turn?



...Kind of? No bro copter or medium tank, so honestly, I'll take it.



Right. Let's counterattack Sturm whilst we can. An interesting thing I've noticed whilst playing, and I'm pretty sure it's true, is that on the turn after you use your CO power, you cannot fill the meter up at all. However much damage you do to Sturm on this turn, it always shows his CO meter as completely empty, and I've noticed the same against other COs. Hence, we counterattack now!



And what better way than with a big ol' medium tank? Get 'em, Barold!



Dave doesn't quite get the kill here, bringing this anti-air to 1HP. Still, it's pretty much neutered.



Tina murderfucks things, though, because Tina is an unstoppable force.



Howard finishes this capture. We're starting to make quite a bit of money now, which is nice!



Cassandra destroys this infantry.



Carl destroys the other. That's what they get for mildly inconveniencing me.



That gives us enough time to bring Selena up. The more tanks, the better, really.

Or maybe I just like medium tanks. One or the other.



I want to move Mulligan upwards, too. If Sturm makes any more bro copters, I'd like a quick and easy delete button that doesn't involve baiting, and he needs to get to a base so he can restore his ammo - he has killed quite a number of air units on this map so far.



Speaking of baiting, it's Bernard's turn.

"So, Michael, rather than an eject button, do I just need to parachute out?"

"Yeah." Michael replies from HQ. "You got this, Bernard. Don't worry!"

"Heh." Bernard says, grinning. "Michael, when have I ever been worried about anythin'?"



Wilbert finishes capturing this last building, and now these two don't have much to do.



So, uh, they'll be joining the bait squad. Now they've eaten two Meteor Strikes, they need all the help they can get.



In order to help even more, Lucy and Rose will also be moving down to provide their funds.



also we still don't have enough medium tanks

It's Von Panzer! What a lad!

"Harrumph! I had hoped to never see your face again, Sturm, but now I see that you must be defeated, and if I must be the one to do it myself, then I will!"

Meanwhile, on Grit's side, more things happen.



Capturing things!



And then there's this bunch of useless garbage. Let's start joining and repairing and deploying, shall we?



Well, this is a little better. Definitely gonna need more support, though, so thank goodness for the Orange Star reinforcements.



On Eagle's side, finished with capturing the airport, Conrad goes for the base. We don't need it to deploy anything, since Eagle's only concerned with air units, but the funds are gonna be useful.



We finish this bit of capturing too. Now to push ahead!



And to do that - bombers! This is Frederick. He's gonna fly over to Sturm's units and one-shot a whole bunch of them.



Wallace makes it to the leftmost mountainside. We're almost ready for the pincer attack, but not quite.



And we delete this annoying copter. God, there are so many copters in this fucking map. Why are they only 9000 funds.



May as well get this infantry whilst I'm doing nothing. The fewer of those there are, the better.



And this is how Eagle's units shape up at the end of the turn. Time for day 6.



...But that'll have to come next time. We managed to fight our way this far without losing anyone... hopefully we can keep it up through the second half of this map! See you next time, everybody, for the conclusion to the Final Battle!

***

The Barracks: Barold and Wilbert 1

Yawning, Wilbert makes his way to the convoy vehicle and hops in. He’s the second person to arrive, and sees Barold already in there, wolfing down some breakfast.

“Ready to move out today?”

“Can’t go any worse than last time, can it?” Barold says between mouthfuls. “Today’s the day… I hope we can beat Sturm.”

“…Yeah. In a way, though, I’m kind of sad.” Wilbert replies. “Our long journey is coming to a close.”

“We’re some of the longest-serving soldiers.” Barold agrees.

Wilbert turns to him. “What do you intend to do when it’s all over?”

“Honestly?” Barold says. “Go home.”

Wilbert nods. “Yeah. I… I get that.”

“You’re staying with Tina, right?”

“Yeah.” Wilbert replies. “…Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.”

Barold looks at Wilbert, curious as to what could make him so secretive. Wilbert eyes him carefully.

“…Tina’s about a month pregnant.”

“No!” breathes Barold. “No way!”

“Yeah. That’s why we’re thinking about heading back to the capital and getting a little place. As much as I’d love to continue serving, I joined this army to support my dad. And now I’m leaving it on the verge of becoming a dad myself. Kind of poetic.”

“I had no idea.” Barold replies. “Wilbert, you’ll make an excellent father. You’re damn good at things you set your mind to.”

“I hope so.” Wilbert says, then he shrugs. “I’m just glad I’ve had the chance to shine during this campaign. My talents have pulled me through; now I just have to do my best in a very different field. Fatherhood.”

“You’ll get there. And hey, I live in the capital too. If you ever need a sitter or something…” Barold replies.

Wilbert grins, and nods. “I’ll bear it in mind. Thank you, Barold.”

“No problem.”

The pair fall silent for a few moments. As more soldiers exit the barracks, ready to move out, Wilbert looks back at Barold.

“I’ll see you after the battle, Barold. You’d better make it through.”

Barold thinks on Alfonse’s words, and smiles. “I will. See you after the battle, Wilbert."