Part 59: Chapter 59 (Battle) - You Are Not Allowed To Blow Up Your Own Pipe Seams

Update 59 (Battle) - You Are Not Allowed To Blow Up Your Own Pipe Seams



Welcome! Long map today so we'll slide right into the start of the map - CO votes this time were Sami and Sonja for the orange team, Eagle and Grit for the blue team, and Jess and Jake for the green team!



And hey, Sami, Sonja, Eagle and Grit are 4 of my least used COs, on account of them literally being unavailable before now, so that one commenter is gonna be at least 4/6s satisfied with today's outing. As another plus, I don't have to explain skills because only Jess and Jake can even run them - they're just using a mix of "big damage" and "take less damage", nothing super notable this time around.

Today’s Deployments
Orange Team
Rin, Infantry
Dave, Mech
Michael, APC
Fleur, APC

Blue Team
Ludmilla, APC
Nika, APC
Matilda, Artillery
Darwin, Artillery
Kurtz, Rockets
Alina, Bomber
Valeria, Stealth Fighter
Petra, Battle Copter
Eva, Aircraft Carrier

Green Team
Adelaide, APC
Sebastian, APC
Alfonse, Anti-Air
Von Panzer, Tank
Selena, Medium Tank
Lena, Neotank
Abelard, Megatank
Ingo, Artillery
Lloyd, Battleship



We'll show those Black Hole dogs what Macro Land COs are made of!

Indeed, Sami. The time has come to put our tag battle skills to the test.

Oh yeah, these guys technically don't know how to tag battle. Wild.



So, our foot units aren't going to be seeing much combat, but there's a couple of important things they need to do. Rin prepares to leave with Michael.

"Ah, Michael! Ready to get going?"

"Of course!" Michael replies, nodding. "Let's get away from the front lines, though! We'll leave that to the reinforcements!"



Next, Dave hops into Fleur's APC.

"Ah, Monsieur Dave... it seems we have orders to secure bases and find silos."

"Yup." Dave grunts, sitting down. "Better get started, then - I have a horrible feeling this is going to be harder than it looks."



Rin gets dropped off up north, ready to move in on the city.



As above, so below. It's important to drop the infantry up north and the mech down south, since that means they can both reach their cities on the next turn - if Dave had gone north instead, he wouldn't have been dropped off close enough to reach the city in one turn.

That's all orange team have to do for now, though, so let's play with some old friends.



An Olaf clone! Ha! How convenient! I've always wanted to face him.

He sucks.



Next up, Eagle and Grit! Grit's in charge right now - since the enemy's stuck behind these pipe seams until I smash them, we can move Grit's indirects over and start poking them, then switch to Eagle once the enemy forces are depleted and just kind of slaughter them.



Grit's hired the Snowbound Free Company in their entirety - Alina, Eva, Nika and Valeria are all present today. I'm going to do a sneaky tactic here by landing Valeria on Eva's aircraft carrier.



Eva drops Valeria off further down the map - moving us pretty far through the map without expending any fuel on Eva (besides that which she used to actually get onto the aircraft carrier). This might not be super useful in a normal map, but in the snow, we use double fuel. Even planes do, for some reason. As such, saving every bit of fuel we can is going to help out, especially for stealths who aren't good with fuel at the best of times.



Everyone else just kinda moves forward, with Kurtz bringing up the rear in the rockets. Sigh. I love rockets, but I'd have liked some levels on Grit so I could take the forest movement passive. Frankly, the new COs should have at least come in at a rank other than 0. This is like when you get Sophia in FE6 and she's god damn level 1 in chapter thirteen.

Well, OK, Eagle and Grit are infinitely more useful than Sophia, but you see my point.



What's up with this? He didn't rat us out or anything, did he?

Oh my god, Jake, at least two people have said it's a clone. Fucking pay attention - that was a Dipshit-tier stupid question.

Sorry. I don't know. I'm an expert in weapons and tactics, but I'm not much for reading people. I know that he'd do anything for Blue Moon, though. That's for certain.



So, with the blue team being focussed on ranged damage and getting the planes in position to wreak havoc, the green team are going to be moving the tank squad in to blow open those seams and block off the enemies from coming through. The battleship, meanwhile, is on ranged-damage and destroying-cannon duty.



Jake's got the passive that increases sea damage by 20% for a bit of extra firepower, so we'll do a similar thing to the blue team where I switch to Jess once we've done all the ranged attacking.

Selena, in the medium tank, turns to Lena. "...It's nice to be deployed alongside you like this."

"I... still find it kinda strange." Lena replies. "But this is better than what I had before. It's not like Koal or Kindle ever actually respected me."

"We'll do this together, Lena. I promise."

"...I know."



With all our forces in position, it's the enemy turn. The first few turns are going to be a lot of us just kinda... moving towards the pipe seams. Once we get there, that's when the action starts properly.



Most COs waste all their fuel slogging through the snow, but not my dear Olaf.

The cold is nothing to me...

This cloned Olaf is just like the real one. He's unstoppable in snow! This beautiful blizzard promises me a swift victory! Aha ha ha ha!

Man, I've disliked villains before, but something about Kindle genuinely makes me want to punch her in the face.

Anyway, the enemy can't do much because-



whAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING



THEY'RE SHOOTING THE SEAMS! THEY HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT FOR 1 AND A HALF GAMES, WHY NOW?!



Fuck me. Alright, change of plan - we need to be way more aggressive, before the enemy pours through those seams and slaughters us. Thankfully the anti-airs and tank aren't doing much to the seams - the stronger tanks could oneshot the seams, so we have to be glad that Kindle's not smart enough to utilise them.



I still can't fucking believe this. Spiral Garden was like, a great time to showcase that the enemy can destroy seams if they want to, but no, just a wonderfully horrible surprise about 80% of the way through the game.



So, Sami's back! And that means Capt * is back, her advanced capturing command...



...which increases her capture rate by x1.5. It's not super handy here, but honestly, being able to still two-turn capture with damaged infantry is like, the best thing about Sami. Especially against Kindle, come to think of it, since Kindle's CO Power wouldn't do enough damage to prevent a two-turn capture.



Rin does the same thing up here, meanwhile. I know it might seem silly that I'm capturing these cities, but we do actually need them.



For now, let's get on with Operation Get The Fuck Over To Those Seams Already.



And hey, you remember I was talking about Grit carriers? Here we go! It's not super useful since the copters are staying well out of range, but that's still immensely satisfying to see.



The rest of the units move in, and not a moment too soon - see those artilleries? The tanks and anti-airs might not do much to the seams, but the artilleries certainly will, so artillerising them priority number one right now.



The green team only has two ranged options, but once Lloyd is in place, he can just fire off battleship shots at anything I don't like, so we'll be fine with that.



Again, we need to liberally refuel our soldiers, since we're using double fuel - especially since Abelard, in the megatank, doesn't have much.

"These pipes... seem foreboding." Abelard murmurs. "We must be ready once they break through."

"Of course!" Petra replies over the transceiver as she flies her battle copter forward. "I'm gonna show Eagle just how much I've learned in this fight, and I'll do it by not letting a single enemy past those pipes!"

"Very good. I look forward to seeing it, Petra." Abelard says, smiling to himself.



Out troops are almost there - Lena's pulled ahead, thanks to the Neotank having great movement, but it'll take a good few turns for any opponents to break through the seams anyway, so we're not in that much of a rush.



Black Hole's turn once again!



I swear, things get more exciting once we actually get through this pipe.



The artilleries landed some good shots on the upper and lower seams, which is a concern, but we'll get there.



At least one of them is going to perish this turn. Two, if I get my way.



And what's with those cities to the north and south...

The snow feels unnatural. Sonja, do you think...

Sonja? Rose?

I heard something once about a country that ran a strange experiment... They used a huge pair of electrodes to channel energy and alter the weather.

Yes, I remember reading about it. I don't believe it was successful, however.

True, their experiment failed, but what if Black Hole mastered that technology?

Are you saying, if we capture those cities...

Yes. We might be able to stop the snow.

I gunned for the silos on my first run-through of this map, so you can imagine my frustration when this was brought up and I had to drag my infantry all the way back to capture those cities.



But this time, we're prepared - Rin nabs the first one right away!



And down south, Dave gets the second one.

Dave tosses the strange device to another soldier and readies his gun, looking around in case any Black Hole soldiers are still in the area. "Get that to the Commander, then get moving."



We'll detonate it!



And voila! snow-overlay.png is gone!

Now we can fight on an equal footing!



Let's get the blue team into position and start ranging things to kingdom fuck, shall we?



First, Kurtz is going to rearrange this guy's face from a remarkable distance away. I have fucking missed you, Grit.



Well, we shot one thing that was harassing the seam, so may as well weaken the other one. The anti-air's not going to be doing any damage after being hit by Darwin.



The planes move themselves into position, meanwhile. There's not a lot they can do until we plunge in and get rid of those seams, and I don't want to do that yet. The minicannons will be able to target us if we move through the top or bottom seams, so they need to go before we move through.



Come on, green team, get into position already.



And this is the guy that Lloyd needs to smash. No ranged fuckery for you, Kindle!



We're almost ready - this might look good, but the megatank's movement is... genuinely atrocious, so I want Abelard to be right next to one of the seams before we begin our assault in full.



Let me guess: shooting the seams?



At least there's no chance of taking them out this turn. This could have been a much harder map if the AI was slightly better. I... guess that would be the case for a lot of AW maps though.



The weakened anti-air retreats and is replaced by a full-HP one. This is actually good for us - by bringing the higher-HP anti-airs closer, we can hit them with Grit's artilleries and rockets too, meaning that there's nothing left to challenge Eagle's air superiority.

...

Thanks for the commentary, Clone Olaf.



They swap over - this doesn't affect much. The whole area inside the pipes is road, so neither Kindle nor Olaf benefit, especially now the snow's gone.



The question is, what do Dave and Rin do now? I was going to call them "the orange team" but there's like, 4 of them, that's barely a team.



The next thing they do is get back into Fleur and Michael and book it for those silos. The spread damage, whilst all of Black Hole's forces are clogged up against these pipe seams, will be excellent.



In particular, if I can kill that megatank with silos and ranged units, without having to actually fight it, I'll be happy.



Speaking of, let's see what Grit's gonna shoot today.



I move Kurtz forward so that he can target practically anything around the northern seam - also, crucially, the minicannon that's in range of that northern seam.



Darwin has graduated from shooting anti-airs and now decides to go for the megatank. 2 damage a pop isn't too bad, actually - well done, Darwin!



I move Matilda, the other artillery, in, so she can start harassing things too. The planes are still primed and ready, but we're not quiiiiite ready yet.



Green team! Let's go!



Yes!

_{I didn't actually do this. I was just checking how much damage the anti-airs do to the seam, and how much HP it had left. Good info to know - we have at least 3 turns!}



Abelard is in position and ready to go megatankin' once the seam's opened up. I've also moved Lloyd for the same reason as Kurtz - so I can start hitting the minicannon that's targeting the bottom-most seam.



Now let's see how Clolaf is going to ruin my day.



I mean, "opening a seam in order to reveal a big fuckoff megatank ready to kill the enemy" doesn't ruin my day at all, actually. In fact, it would make my year to watch the enemy forces shit themselves.



This is all that happens this turn, more shooting seams. Those copters look like a nuisance, though... They'll be able to handle my tanks just fine, and I can't send Alfonse in to anti-air them whilst there's like a million medium tanks hanging around. Hm.



This is going to involve Big Brained Play, I can already tell.



Dave is dropped off on the silos.



Rin's already there, though, and can launch one right away.

"Ready, Dave?! Watch me nail this shot!"

"I'm watchin', kid. Do it." Dave replies, giving a brief grin.



BWOOM! The main thing we're doing here is just thinning out this crowd, so that once the seams are open, we can just clean house.



The primary targets here are the various tanks hanging around, and we can hit all of them in their current formation. Next turn we'll get two other silo shots to weaken them even further!



But for one of the tanks, we don't need to wait that long...



Kurtz lands the first blow on the minicannon.

"Minicannon still standing, but I'll take it out with another shot. Is everyone holding up OK?" Kurtz asks.

"Certainly." says Abelard. "I must say, Kurtz, this megatank... I feel giddy as a schoolboy every time I step inside. You and the Weapons Development division really outdid yourselves."

"Oh, it was... well, you know, we do our best. Gavril did most of the work..." murmurs Kurtz, a little taken aback by the frank compliment.



Matilda fires on the megatank, in the meantime.

"The megatank may be incredible... but Black Hole's version is just a facsimile. I'll prove it!" she says, firing off her first shot.



Matilda does a whopping 3 damage to the megatank, putting it right into kill range for Darwin - how could he not take the shot?



"Amazing work, Darwin!" Petra says, beaming. "Conrad said you were a great shot, and I see he was right!"

Darwin, inside his tank, blushes, but cannot reply; he makes a mental note to thank Petra after the battle.

"Indeed. It seems Green Earth is in safe hands with this new generation of soldiers." Abelard muses.



My planes are itching to kill... but hold back, my pretties. Be patient. The horrible anti-airs must go first.



Then it's up to the green team to do the same for the bottom seam.



I mean, there's no second megatank to kill, but I was more referring to the chip damage on the minicannon.



And hey, since Ingo's here, he decides to artillery this anti-air to weaken it, like we did before. Hopefully it should get replaced with that full-HP one hanging out at the back.

"Artillery" is definitely a verb. "He artilleried gracefully."



Our tanks are now in prime position. As such, there's one last thing to do before we end our turn...



And that's switch over to Jess.



Jess' tanks, with Jake having the CO synergy skills to give her ATK +8% and DEF +10%, should be pretty fucking strong once we begin our assault.



Speaking of, this tank apparently has a deathwish, and continues attacking the middle seam. You'll note that I haven't attacked or weakened this tank, and that's on purpose - we actually want the middle seam broken, since it's the only one not in range of a minicannon.



The anti-air retreats and a bro copter decides to go for the-



-seam. Shit.

"The enemy's broken through!" gasps Matilda.

"Evasive manoeuvres, Snowbound!" Alina says, and Valeria winces.

"It's not the Snowbound Free Company that are in trouble - it's Matilda, who can't retreat in her artillery."



The other bro copter moves in to attack Matilda before she flees - thankfully, she survives. My god, that was stressful.

"I'm OK!" Matilda says, gasping. "I'm... ooh, goodness..."



Thankfully, none of other enemies move in, so a small breach was fine. Plus, it has another advantage which I'll show you in a second.



First, let's silo some bastards, shall we?



I decide to target here - I probably could've hit the medium tanks on the base, and you'll see why that would have been nice later, but I decided against it because I was like "they'll heal the damage off anyway".



Still, good damage all round. That Neotank's days are fucking numbered, and the number is today.



This time, Rin goes for slightly over here, so she can hit the medium tank up top, too. He can't heal shit, so hitting him is extremely worth it.



And outside of like, one anti-air and two medium tanks, the entire enemy force has been utterly fucked up.



Time for the blue team to take advantage of that. Remember that fun advantage I mentioned before?



Grit. Carriers.

Eva pulls up the transceiver. "Oh, what a SHOT! The way is clear - Val, if you take out that other copter, we can move in and fight the enemy on their own turf!"

"Understood. Though I don't technically take orders from you, you know..."

"Do it, Val, Eva's right. We need to take advantage of the silo support the orange team have given us." Alina says, and Valeria nods grimly.

"Fine. Let's begin, then."



We can also take out the minicannon, helping out even more!



Matilda just hits this mech, since there's not much else in her range.



And hey, one seam's gone, may as well rip the band-aid off: Darwin destroys the middle seam, setting the gream (that's green team, but cool) up for their assault.



Valeria rips through the bro copter, by which I mean "only managed it thanks to the luck bonus".



Petra moves in and takes out the tank - it'd be a waste to use a megatank or Neotank to crush such a weak enemy, so we'll have Petra do it to open the way.

"There we go! Ready for the green team!" she says to herself. "Um, did I do alright?"

"You're doing great, Petra. Keep it up!" Alina says. "We're right behind you!"



And indeed, Alina moves in and helps out Petra by slamming this anti-air. She couldn't one-shot the full-HP one down below (Grit's one weakness, Actual Direct Combat) but we'll deal with that on the green team's turn.



And that's all for the blue team this time! We've really thinned out the crowds, though - Kindle and Olaf are basically working with a skeleton crew. Admittedly, a skeleton crew backed up by two currently-healing medium tanks, but we're getting to that.



Let's swap to Eagle, shall we?



That gives Alina and Petra a big offence and defence boost, which should help in case these anti-airs decide to murder us. Besides, Grit's basically contributed everything he can do on this map, and Eagle's CO Power is way more useful right now. You'll see why next turn.



Right. Now let's let Jess go absolutely fucking apeshit.



Ingo checks the damage on the seam. Oh, god, that was way closer than I was hoping... right, good job we're going all-in then.



Speaking of, this anti-air is a big threat to Petra and Alina, so we need to squash it. Ingo, after checking the seam, can do that, no problem.



That cannon needs to go though, so Lloyd happily battleships it from afar.

Hm. "Artillery" kinda worked as a verb but "battleship" doesn't really. Now we know.



We begin moving in! Von Panzer strikes the Neotank and destroys it without even slowing down. Man's on a mission.



Abelard can- holy shit, HOW much damage?! We have to. We have to.

He blasts the recon out of fucking existence with the highest damage we've ever seen, I'm pretty sure, and looks pretty damn proud of it too.

"What a shot!" cries Petra.

"There's... absolutely nothing left of the recon..." breathes Ingo, watching in horror. "Megatanks are..."



Lena does similar levels of overkill to this anti-air, ensuring that it will no longer threaten my planes on account of being totally eviscerated.

"There! Kindle, I won't let you continue this madness!" Lena says. "I... think I get it now."



Selena doesn't quite have the movement to catch up her Neotank-driving sister, but she's ready for next turn.



Black Hole's turn. And there's an issue - they have their Tag Power.



I went with the strategy of "kill them so hard they have nothing left to dual strike with", but the medium tanks are a big problem.



Olaf's Blizzard slams us first - 2HP damage to everyone, and summoning snow again. Bleh.



Then this mech comes in and attacks Nika!

"Argh, I'm under attack!" Nika says, watching as her APC shrugs off the hit, breathing a sigh of relief. "OK, OK, I think I'm chill."

"Good - look after yourself!" Eva says. "God, this is such a huge gamble on my dude and Rose's part... and I'm too far away from the action to help out."



A medium tank, healed up to 9HP, goes for Abelard, but he takes minor amounts of damage...



...and counters for fuckload amounts of damage, so I win this encounter.



"Abelard, you can't handle more than one of those. I need you to retreat now." Rose says.

"If I retreat, the medium tanks will go for the soldiers behind me, Commander Kuroda." Abelard replies. "Is it not a risk either way?"

"I... yes, but I have foreseen that we will survive. It will be tough, but..."

"Then allow me to make it less tough. You must save your strength and tactical acumen for the battles to come, should you not?" Abelard says, furrowing his brow as he spots more medium tanks headed his way.

He survives, but so does the enemy. The other medium tank joins with this one, making a new one with 8HP, and suddenly I am very concerned about Abelard.



An anti-air goes for Alina, but...



...again, it does not really work out. Well done, Clolaf.

...

Fun fact: "..." is Clone Olaf speak for "I suppose we should switch."



And switch they do, back to Kindle.

Thankfully, Kindle doesn't have the ability to ignore the snow that Olaf summons, so this was kind of a bad order to do the Tag Power in. I am certainly not complaining.



The mech lunges at Nika again.

"NIKA!" yells Alina, watching from above.

"Alina, I need to say-" Nika replies, and bullets begin tearing through the APC.

"What? What do you need to say?" Valeria barks. "Nika, answer us!"



"...I needed to say I've been making some tweaks to my APC. It won't go down THAT easy!"

Alina and the rest of the Snowbound Free Company breathe a sigh of relief.

"Oh, Nika..!" Eva says. "Man, even I wouldn't have risked that..."



The medium tank moves on Abelard.

"Abelard, why?!" Petra says. Over the transceiver, Rose's small voice pipes up, too.

"Yes, Abelard - there is a way to survive. I don't mind taking on the difficulty of doing it that way, so-"

"Rose, Petra... you're both so very young." Abelard replies, watching the tank prepare to fire its cannon. "I am an old, old man, and I did not have to be here today. When Edgar retired, he asked me if I wanted to continue leading the Old Guard or if I wanted to retire with him. I chose to stay, and I remember exactly why. I said to him..."



"I will die on the battlefield, so that you don't have to, Edgar. So that nobody else has to."

The final words of Abelard ring through everybody's transceivers as the megatank explodes in glorious fashion, blasting chunks of flaming metal everywhere, striking the enemies around and piercing through their armour: the final hurrah of Green Earth's longest-serving soldier.

"ABELARD!" screams Petra, but there is no reply.



We have to keep moving forward. Abelard gave his life so that we could deal with those medium tanks - so let's deal with them.



There's not much the orange team can do about it, though, so they just pass their turn. Dave and Rin are probably just playing cards.



Blue team - it's time to get some motherfucking vengeance.



And this is how we do it - Eagle's got a bit of an upgrade, according to the goons, and as you can see, they're right. Now, even his regular CO Power gives his planes an extra turn, with a big firepower penalty. Sounds good to me!



First thing we need to do is murder everything we can. Matilda takes out the mech to let Valeria get through.



Valeria moves in, but isn't in range to do much. Alina, though, gets her bomber over to the medium tank and drops her bombs.

"Every soldier deserves respect! And you will learn to respect Abelard - if we have to beat it into you!" she cries.



Petra flies over in a fit of rage. "I won't... I will NOT let you hurt any more of my friends!"



Time to send these planes into overdrive.

Or, underdrive, I guess, since our firepower is cut in half.

Checkmate!



Let's do it! Mini Lightning Strike!



Petra mutilates this artillery that thought it could run. You think we were gonna do HQ capture? No, no. We're routing this map of every stinking Black Hole unit we can.



"Now perish." Valeria says, opening fire on the medium tank and virtually destroying it - it just about holds on, and Valeria raises an eyebrow in surprise.



Meanwhile, this APC is trying to hide, too, so Alina crushes it with a bit of chip damage. We'll finish it next turn.



And hey, Darwin's come through the seams, so he can chip this APC, too.



Green team's turn, and they've got a bone to pick with Black Hole, too.



First, we burst through this seam thanks to Lloyd.



And then Selena obliterates the APC. The chip damage was... probably not necessary, actually.

"There we go. We lost someone, but that never holds us back - it only motivates us to fight harder." Selena murmurs.

"Well said, Selena." Adelaide says. "Abelard was... very important to Green Earth."



"And this..." Lena says, turning her cannons on the half-destroyed medium tank, "was the tank that killed him. Get crushed!"

Just a single shot is needed to blast through the medium tank, destroying it entirely. Lena nods, and some of the soldiers watch her with newfound respect.



Black Hole's turn, but... they have an APC left.



It retreats to the city. On the plus side, it has extra defence stars! On the minus side, my entire army is like, three spaces away from it. Bad move, overall.



We'll just skip orange team, who do nothing



and get right on with the blue team. Do it, girls.



And with a final blow from Valeria...



...and Alina, we win!



Commander Nell already briefed us. Consider us a part of the Allied Nations. So this must be Commander Jake...

'Sup!

We've heard impressive things about you.

Not from me, you didn't.

I'm Sami. I'm second to none when it comes to infantry battles.

I'm Grit. Y'all can leave the indirect attacks to me.

I am Sonja. My troops have an edge in Fog of War missions!

Oh, fuck, there's going to be another Fog of War mission before the end of this campaign, isn't there?

Call me Eagle.

Feel free to explain what you do, Eagle. No? OK.

Now that we have Macro Land backup, we can fight on equal terms. Let's gather up the troops and head for the other battlefields.

Very good, Commander.

And...my dude? Thanks.

Heh. You owe me, Rach.

Oh, of COURSE you didn't do this just for the good of the world! How about I pay you back by not firing you instantly?

You don't have the right to fire me! ...I think.

Commander Rachel! We just received fresh intel! Clones are popping up all over the place!

Roger that. Get ready, everyone!

I'm all over it!

Yes, Commander! We've gotta crush these clones--and find out how they're being produced.

You're right, Vanessa. Black Hole was annihilated, yet their army has regenerated. What's going on here?

I have an idea, but I'm not working with much intel. We need to wait for my scouts to report back.

We can't wait; we have to move on. The moment you get more intel, let me know, my dude.

Aight. Everyone else might be distracted by the clones, but I'm onto you, Von Bolt... I'm watching you.



And we win! Unfortunately it was at the cost of one of our own, but it's an S-rank nonetheless. As usual, the higher-ups do not care about individual soldiers dying.



Jake promotes, too, giving him access to a few new tools. Very nice, that may come in useful!



Fucking... Eagle. Goddamn, that's a Jake-tier line.



Our next mission begins, so let's see what's going on here...



But I know how to take out a group of low-class trash. Please, my lord, let me take them to task.

Hhh... Kindle...

Yes?

No one...hhh...has caught on...hhh...to my plan...hhh... Have they?

Aha ha ha! Not a chance. The allied forces are in disarray... Our surprise attack has panicked them. Those uneducated philistines have no idea what we are planning.

I hope you speak...hhhhhh...speak the truth...

My lord?

And the...hhh...status of... the...hhh...secret project..?

The project is almost complete. That my dude may have beaten Sturm, but he will not be able to stop you once we activate it--you cannot lose with THAT on your side! Aha ha ha ha! Was there anything else, my lord?

Bah! Enough...hhh... Leave me...hhh... I grow ..hhh...tired. I must...hhh...rest.



New map, new fun. And... a lot of forests.

I heard this area gets a lot of rainstorms... That would explain the mud.

Aw, fuck, it's all over the hem of my coat...

There's no time to gripe and moan. We'll just have to slog on as best we can.

We're near Black Hole's front lines... Who knows what they're planning? Everyone step lightly and keep moving!

Eep!

Whoa! I've got you, kid--try not to slip over in all this muck!

...

My dude, the tanks are...

Aaaargh! We can't have our medium tanks be stuck! I need those!

Hey, why are we stopping? What did I just say?!

The lead units are stuck in the mud!

Stand aside! I, Javier, will rescue you from any and all manners of distress!

This is what happens when you lose focus! Ah, hold on... Let me help, too.

It was inevitable under these conditions. We should have scouted ahead...



Don't say ANYTHING! I know, I know, we were in a rush!

I'm just saying, if we'd waited like an hour or two for my scouts to get back, we'd have been way more informed!

Audio trigger: "my dude and Rachel arguing" activated. Enemy troops detected. Launch primary defensive applications.

By your command.

You...

It's Commander Drake!

Oh, my god, how many times? It's a clone!

By the keen edge of my blade! Could this be another of those clones!

YES! IT IS!

We still have units trapped in the mud! They'll be overrun by the enemy!

Move it, people!

My dude, stop despairing over the intelligence of our superiors--we need your expertise if we want to save these soldiers.

Right, right, the soldiers come first. Here we go, then! Follow my lead!



So, here's the bottom half of the map, with the orange team... everything is fine and good, just need to push ahead and take on the enemy.



And here's the upper half, where everything has gone to shit for the blue team and we are going to get rocketed to death. Please place your votes for COs this time around - I'm thinking of not using the Macro Land COs for the blue team at least - the forest movement passive sounds like it'll break this map in half, but hey, it's up to you guys. See you all next time!

***

Update 60 (Intermission) - On A Night Like This