The Let's Play Archive

Advance Wars

by Paul.Power, Sockerbagarn

Part 85: Advance Campaign Mission S4: Captain Drake! AC as Sami

Advance Campaign Mission S4: Captain Drake! AC as Sami (or "That sound Zoidberg makes when he scurries off to the side.")



Youtube
(11m36s)

Here it is, that mission that gave me so much trouble when I tried it for myself. Can Sockerbagarn beat it?

... well, presumably, I mean that's why there's an update and all. Joining him are ScotchDK and myself.



"The first time I played through this map I thought I was making decent speed and ended up with a B-rank! The slog through the forest took too long, especially since I kept getting pelted with blizzards. I realized that trying to optimize the normal approach was not going to be enough to get me that S-rank. Yes, this is another of those property capture maps where you don't want to take the lion's share of the cities.

"As you've probably heard, when it comes to properties location is paramount. That's why we're going to ignore those poorly positioned houses on the central island and go for the grand prize of this area. I'm of course talking about the beautifully located Green Earth HQ.

"Drake has a big navy, but it is divided on each side of the bridge that leads to his HQ. Thus if we just head south we can avoid most of it and with some clever positioning eliminate his naval forces in that area. Drake being focused on the wrong objective will attempt to take control of the central island, hopefully allowing us free reign over his starting island. However, his attempts to win by property capture will not be in vain if we fully ignore the central island. Drake will capture enough properties to win before we can take his HQ if we do not slow him down. Landing some troops up north before both landers are sent south will allow us to disrupt any attempts to capture the properties on our side of the mountain pass.

"As usual when fighting Drake, you're not just fighting his troops. The weather is also on his side in this match-up. Oddly enough the weather you'll be hoping for is rain and not snow. If the blizzard hits, your navy will be slowed down to a crawl (the slow kind you do on land, not the fast kind you do in water!) This may give Drake the time he needs to fully take control of the central island and dash any hopes of completing the HQ capture in time.

"Smooth sailing S-ranks or bloated blundering B-ranks? Only the RNG knows."

Fun times. Incidentally, some addenda: here's a screenshot from that alternative history where Socker decided to win by property capture instead. He got an impressive army together...



... but sadly it was only fast enough for a B-Rank and well, since that plainly isn't good enough for Socker, he re-recorded for the HQ-capturing speed-run S-Rank you see in the video. But this run did give us something else:



Yep, that's a Drake submarine in port, with Drake's innate two-star defence bonus combining with the port's three-star defence to make a five-star defence bonus. Bask in its sheer tanky absurdity.