Part 201: Sauro - Turn 13

Turn 13
So, President Skroob the Earthmother has set out to do some site searching. Her prophet is sacrificing blood slaves at the capitol, and a Witch King is bringing 30 androphag archers to the province called Worshin, which is Sauromatia's side of the bridge to Lanka. It appears the northern army is also headed back ro that province, crossing the bridge with their collective tails between their legs. What happened here?



... I see. That is a pretty decisive loss, and we know that TheDemon is pretty good with defensive movement traps. Let's take a look at the battle and figure out how so many of Sauromatia's finest young cannibals could have failed their motherland so completely. On the Sauromatian side of the battlefield we have a knot of four Witch Kings, and three groups of 26 Androphag Archers (for a total of 78 as you see in the report). Lanka's side of the battlefield looks like this:



I count 24 Palankashas (and 4 Anusaras) covering for 80+ atavi archers, with two Raksharajas and the tiny Markata prophet in the middle and a knot of markata and atavi chaff in the back (probably to soak Fire/Attack Rear orders) and then waaaay in the back is a Bandar commander and a blood mage/priest. Because TheDemon moved his armies into the attacked province during the same turn that my attackers arrived, he gets to be on defense and therefore has the first turn. His atavi archers fired a volley that didn't really hit anything, and the Raksharajas cast lightning bolts that also did not do much. His prophet cast Divine Blessing, which of course gives those 28 high strength demons Quickness... and then those demons get to move. They cross the majority of the battlefield right away.

On Sauromatia's first turn, the Androphag Archers fired a volley that mostly inflicted poison on some demons but did very little real damage. The four Witch Kings each cast Raise Skeletons. Ordinarily that first wave of skeletons would meet opponents near the middle of the battelefield, and they would cover for the archers while the Witch Kings kept summoning more skeletons to replace the first wave. Eventually the enemy troops would grow tired of being shot and/or poisoned and either die or flee. Instead, at the beginning of Lanka's second round the important part of the battlefield looks like this.



Incidentally the red 24 23 (reading is hard, guys) you see near the Witch Kings is all that's left of one of them, killed by a Raksharaja's well-placed lightning bolt (and another Witch King was killed by a lightning bolt a couple of rounds later). Anyway the rest of the fight was a goddamn slaughter. There aren't anywhere near enough skeletons to stop all those demons from reaching the defenseless archers behind them. If the demons themselves weren't bad enough, after the first volley the atavi archers were killing several Androphags each turn, while the Androphags were too busy shooting at (or being murdered by) demons to return fire. What a disaster.

I can only hope that Dawkish and/or Xanrick learned from this battle and managed to turn these battles around, at least well enough for me to inherit something better than a demon-ravaged nation on its last legs.