Part 35: Turn 28

Turn 28

With the trap now sprung, the mantis pretender jumped all the way to the west of Kirkostaculis, on our border with U. Unfortunately this means, if they weren't already aware, then U now knows that we're being quite successfully raided by the mantises. I didn't bother recording a new gif, if you want you can go back and rewatch the old ones for the same effect.


Speaking of U, they make an attempt to capture that one roadblock province between their lands and Karanaac bringing along one leg thug and three shatter Sophotatos. Shatter deals a large amount of damage against rocks and these three mages auto cast it every turn so should they get into range of a rock unmolested they stand a really good chance of killing it. Also about a hundred feet and a handful of leg sacreds.



However there was one thing that Karanaac brought along that U could not consider, the ultimate counter to unbuffed feet: like 20 PD of really shitty troops.


Shatter has a really short range and so it can be quite challenging to get your mages to walk up to rocks to cast it. In this case the mages, who also are E1H1 mages, walk forward until they are in range of the Ichtyids and NOT the rocks and then stop to cast random garbage.


Meanwhile the feet themselves to manage to run forward to the rocks and...do absolutely no damage while dying in droves to poison cloud.


The leg thug with its 3x24 strength attacks does at least manage to get a little bit of damage in but soon eats a smite to the face. Being mindless it's immune to astral shield and soul slay but NOT the holy spells.


Meanwhile the U mages suffer from the classic ermor/sceleria problem: the only units left on the battlefield with minds are the commanders. So astral mages spamming paralyse and soul slay can only target them. They get stunlocked to oblivion and the shitty PD clean them up at leisure. They never once get close to being in range.


Oof, this is pretty indicative of why rocks really suck to fight. Heavy amounts of them just sitting there and your troops totally failing to do anything to them. Still I'm happy though, that'll keep U from pressuring Karanaac lands for a while.


Now that we have thunder strike up and running I'm feeling a lot more confident about taking those lizards on. We take about 20 enormous clowns, 2 air mages, and Pongy who cast Coordinate Slapstick Display and then default to thunder striking. Even if the mantis pretender turns up again, and thinks to buff lightning resistance, she will probably get one shot by a thunder strike if it hits. It is a Good Spell (tm).


We also go to retake the province that she just captured. Now this is a smaller squad and probably won't be able to take her on in a fight but I'm betting that the mantises don't have another 800 gold to waste like that again and are pretty unlikely to think that I'd be so stupid as to fall for the same trick twice. Unfortunately for them, I'm willing to risk it.


Talking of being stupid, I don't exactly remember why my forces decided to sit next to Karanaac for another turn instead of breaking the siege. Maybe I just wanted to let them bring more reinforcements for me to crush, maybe I wanted to patrol down the clown-boosting unrest here to make it a fair fight? The best answer I can come up with is that I was hoping that, fresh from their victory, the mantises would come fight me in this very unruly province. Looking back that seems really dumb and I should have just gone right back to Karanaac.


With no sign of aggression from Anglia and with the fort just finished, our big clown force over here can start moving towards the mantises through the cave system.


Anglia themselves are now sitting comfortably on Fennocandia's cap and I'm pretty confident that this is the end for them. Would have been real nice if I'd had gotten it but them's the breaks.