Part 29: Turn 22
Turn 22Our anti-rock smasher arrived from Myrmecos! I'm not sure exactly when I'll have the opportunity to get it to my guys sitting in enemy lands, or if I'll even need it, but it's good to have one. Bashes up those rocks real good and also works against e.g. elementals and undead too should that ever come up.
Pokey, sitting innocently on top of Karanaac's cap, got hit by a seeking arrow! This was 100% fired by Karanaac's pretender since it's their only mage with air and I mean, what else is it going to do this turn if it's waiting for its eyes to grow back? Seeking Arrow is an enchantment spell and Karanaac absolutely have to get enchantment research early so that confirms it.
Luckily not only is Pokey a clown, who are tougher than humans, he's a giant size 3 clown. Not many blesses and certainly none of the other HP blesses keep their effect outside of battle - larger is basically the only bless that protects sacreds against ritual magic like this, Note that prophets, pretenders (in dominion), and people with the holy water or blessed shroud items are actually blessed at all times and so do get regular bless benefits on the world map. Pokey shrugs off the arrow.
Our troops move back to Academic Eremitage to pick up the stragglers and I absolutely triple check that I do order them to move. It would be real embarrassing if they missed the bus a second time. Karanaac also get a second chance to teleport some more stuff onto me but since I brought basically my whole force back I'm not too worried about it. U took the province to the east, Ernigrad, this turn making me glad I left stuff on the cap. Although I suppose U is pretty unlikely to try to contest me for it. Also note that due to how this map's provinces are laid out U can't move around Karanaac's cap it's a complete choke point. There's no more provinces they can take except going via me or via mantises in the caves.
Our two battles against Fennoscandia go reasonably well, taking out some PD and 600g of mages for no losses. We also got in right before the fort went up.
Angla had actually left Fenno's cap to take the fort down in the caves, so we can't gain any more ground here. They actually offer me the cap and I gladly accept. I'm not entirely sure why they don't want it but maybe they're not eager to battle through 50 armoured trolls? They're probably just worried I might turn on them next which, you know, I might.
We could go onto the cap this turn but since there's another 15 enormous clown reinforcements coming I decide to delay it 1 turn. The squad led by the Emerald Impaler instead go east to Hagrid's Forest and then the two squads will go onto the cap together. Our 50 strong force of UW indies will take one of the edge provinces too, little chance of there being much PD there.
Up north we take back that province that Eljudnir accidentally took from us. Since we've seen no sign of any attacks from them I guess it really was just an accident. They must have been pretty tempted to own the mistake and roll with it. We can also see that Iram (the fire djinn nation, summary coming shortly) has taken one of their cap circle provinces so they're pretty unlikely to want to start a new war while under attack. What kind of crazy OP nation would take on two neighbours at once and win??
Finally we get to see ants...fail to take one of the candle provinces? I have no idea why Kitfox is using the shittiest of the ant troops, the ones with only 6 protection - that's only just more than a clown suit!
Just look at all these numbers.
This was happening right in the top left candle. I see there's already a fort on one of them and all the candles are wastes so maybe this a force recruited only from the neighbouring province which can't produce any armour? I'm really not sure.
We can't quite afford to build a temple to go with our lab on the lizard shaman province without cutting back on clown college so we'll do that next turn.
Yet another unit we've not see much of are Buffoons. If you had non-clowns their morales of 9-13 then it'd be 100% worth putting a Buffoon in every squad. Clowns however have a morale of 15, plus another 2 from our bless, which is high enough that I can't really be bothered to spend the gold, the clicks, or the map move to keep buffoons around.
