Part 2: Where There's Life...

Welcome back. We left off having trounced the Beast with heavy weapons, and are deposited on the world map. Unlike previous Advance Wars games, you can use this map to go back to previous missions and try to get better scores. Since we have just one location to move on to, we start there.






safe.



I have, it's roughly most "realistic" games out these days. That or brown.



Okay, not for nothing here IntSys, but you're trying to Use the idea of an impact winter, or impact darkness depending on the severity of the meteor strike. I understand that, it's a terrifying prospect. But Will's been digging himself out for weeks, he admitted it himself. In weeks, since the sun's been blocked out entirely, the average temperature would be dropping in areas covered by this darkness. Plant life would be dying due to the lack of sunlight for photosynthesis. Hell, just the effect on human psyche would be devastating. Ever work nothing but night shifts? Losing sight of the sun has effects on your mentality.
IntSys, you aren't Capcom, please don't start using Capcom science levels of ridiculousness.

















Never say Brenner isn't understanding. Will's just been rescued, he wants to help out and not feel like he's coasting through this new life. Of course, he doesn't particularly listen to directions, but we'll see that soon enough.









Brenner, stop tutorial moding me so quickly. Let me think about what I want to do. And... artillery?

The new unit for this chapter, Artillery is the first ranged unit in Advance Wars. Hitting targets anywhere from 2-3 squares away from itself, one can win or lose a game simply by the placement of these units on the field. As the blurb says, you need to have it set up before you want to fire, as it can't move then fire. But using tank treads with a mobility of 5 means short of forest or mountains, this thing will be able to roughly keep up with the rest of your forces. Just don't leave them unguarded.
Anyway, I follow Brenner's advice and throw the tank onto the road, having it attack the infantry.

This is acceptable. I then move the artillery into the forest below the tank, giving it range on both where the infantry and where the recon currently are. Finally, I move my own infantry onto the mountain range, and use it to kill the Beast's infantry.


I'm scared Beast, I'm scared. He moves his 8 HP recon up, and attacks my infantry on the mountains. I come out worse for wear on this, taking 4 damage. That's alright, it's the last combat the infantry is seeing.

And this is why. With a mountainlocked ruins being pointed out, that infantry is the only unit available to reach it, so he's making that trek across the mountains this turn. Before that though, the Beast needs another lesson taught to him, and Brenner needs one taught to him.

Remember last mission, when the tank did 7 damage to the recon on the first turn? The tank was able to use it's main cannon. As the last screenshot is showing, there's a bullet indicator on the tank. Somewhere between last map and this one, the tank ran out of ammo. I'm pretty sure I left 5 rounds in the damn thing, so unless they didn't like the look of some rocks, we've lost some ammo. Running out of ammo on a tank reduces the effectiveness against recons by half, and makes them almost worthless against anything with real armor. There will be ways to fix this later on, but the lesson here is never let your army go without ammunition, EVER.



get her back to camp!





Yes, leave. You're going to be much more effective against the tank, bike and recon rolling up against the rest of our forces. Great plan.











Alright, with that... useless introduction of a character over with, let's get back to the task at hand. We still have our artillery available to us, so let's use that.

Beautiful.











Will, I'm glad you're slightly suspicious of this, given I doubt as a recruit YOU had this much knowledge of Rubinelle's standing forces, military expenditures, and history of it's war with someone else. I wouldn't trust taking her back into camp.

We go from someone with extensive military knowledge to one with no strategy whatsoever. You see, the Beast parked his tank in range of my artillery. It's quite effective at what it does, leaving it at 2 HP. At this point, it's mostly mopping up. My tank finishes off the recon, and on his turn the Beast moves his tank in, and suicides on my own tank. He then moves in the bike. I decide to finish him with style.



I'm SO glad, Beast. You're a fun target.

Another S Rank, though at this point the game is kind of feeding them to you. This will eventually change, and I'll have to use strategy.

Hopefully he means ones we found off screen, or Brenner really can't count.










A quick fade to black happens here, to avoid us having to endure more talking this chapter.







I like Lin's thinking here. Why does nobody listen to Lin? Who knows, maybe light interrogation will snap mystery girl's amnesia. In any case, we're done with the mission, and onwards we go.
NEXT TIME!
The Beast! Again! Other people! Brenner's strategy to win wars!