Part 38: Turn 31
Turn 31Ssaon'raha have indeed gone AI, but the war isn't won quite yet. The AI is pretty stupid but one thing they are good at is massing a large number of troops and run them into your lines. There's a few tricks you can do like herding their movement by buying PD but we'll see them as they happen.
First off we're jumping on top of one of their forts in the caves, it had 100 mantises on last turn but they're not actually here now. It's worth noting that this force still has 15 enormous clowns acting as bodyguards so the vast majority of fighting was done by small clowns instead - they're really good!
Next we're continuing to push into Karanaac's old lands that the mantises are in now. 40 enormous clowns and some commanders are facing the remnants from the battle last turn. Seems like the AI (or Giacomo when they went AI) did not bother to move them so we hopefully get to clean up some unprotected mages!
I didn't bother setting up thunder strike this turn so we mostly just get lightning bolts which are still good but take two hit to kill the big mantises (this is not 111 damage, this is 11 from the spell and 1 from the stun).
Still though our clowns kill off the few remaining mantis troops pretty quickly then it's just the mages at the back left.
I mean these smaller mantis mages are still pretty good with great stats, 3 good attacks, and fire shield 10. With our bless though clowns don't care too much about that and there's only a few non-clowns on our side that might be vulnerable.
This battle is a cakewalk really, only a matter of seeing if we lose an enormous clown or make it through the fight without any losses. But wait what's this?
The Emerald Impaler, despite his orders to stay at the back and be a good leader, has decided that he's had enough of spinning his wheel idly and is going to get a piece of the action. He zooms past the bodyguards, past the fighting forces too.
He runs past opposing phantasmal warriors, aiming for a real target.
Ladies and gentleclowns we've just lost picture! We can't see what's going on! I'm hearing now that we've got the feed back, let's go live to the floor. The Emerald Impaler has just stepped into their limo for a moment before the post-match interview he'll be back in a seco--
No... no say it's not true! It's just a bit right? He'll be back next season won't he?
The Emerald Impaler will live on in our hearts. He never made it into the hall of fame despite being heroically strong for about 20 turns at this point (still nowhere near as strong as a clown of course).
We get an uprising in that very same province - Mother Gaia herself is in uproar.
From those two battles one clown, Blood-Curdling, gains the soul butchering ability. Just what is going on in there? He now causes fear and also makes death gems when he fights.
The mantises send some more troops our way over the top of the Karanaac fort again.
So we are going to jump on them, they're just shitty little ones and we'll get a free shitty fort out of the deal too.
Speaking of forts we didn't quite break the walls of this one so we have one more turn hanging around.
Our reinforcements are on their way to retake the candle. Also pictured here is a massive Anglian force that, according to Xanrick, had nothing better to do than kill the Chasos indies that were there and then back off leaving the province to me with 0 PD??? Extremely suspicious. This clown force are absolutely ready to turn around at a moment's notice.
Up north in the lizard province we discover that while she was there the mantis queen actually tore the lab down! How very rude. Goewin here built the temple last turn so will build the lab this turn with all our event money we got. Then, maybe, we'll finally get one single lizard shaman that survives a whole turn - unless there's another Chasos indie attack of course.
We finally have a smallish force of clowns to go retake that peninsula province that was taken from us by said Chasos indies. Also the undead seem to be putting up a pretty good fight! This is mostly because U have backstabbed Iram up there having given up on doing anything in Karanaac's lands, thus taking the pressure off of the undead a bit. I, of course, immediately tell Iram that I'm open to backstabbing U. Speaking of, U still haven't managed to get one of those xpshape giants up to mason level and upgrade all their forts.
What's really nice about using the Bearded Ladies for researchers is that they have fortune teller. Hopefully the few bad events that make it through our scales will get stopped if I have enough Bearded Ladies there. I'll only really be massing them in Kirkostaculis itself but I'll be recruiting a few from every fort.
What's one step up from a Sideshow? That's right it's an Idiot! These guys are slightly below average humans. That's it. I will never recruit any and would not even if I was playing a scales build.
