Part 47: Turn 38
Turn 38Welcome ladies, gentlemen, and clowns, to the big event! The one, the only, the mod arena! We'll get to see what weird and wonderful mod bullshit people want to throw away for no gain. Everybody is aware that I'm planning to LP the game so there's a lot to live up to!
First off it's U versus Anglia. U put in a Gavagai Chieftain, that's prime mod bullshit if I've ever seen it. Three attacks dealing 45+ damage, 30 morale (from being a prophet), and 136 hp but it's "balanced" by having only 12 magic resistance. Its items are heavy armour and a Bear Claw talisman for some more stats. It's a prophet so additionally is autoblessed with twist fate and +10 strength - "only" a 30 strength base. Of note though it has no resistances at all.
Anglia have brought us a Light Artillery to this fist fight! Sadly no gear, I would have liked to see a shroud on it for the thunder weapons or perhaps some gear that gives minions - a water bottle or acorns or something.
The cannon immediately opens fire and it's only a glancing blow! The shrapnel can't penetrate the thick plate and the Chieftain hasn't even had twist fate popped yet. Can the crew reload in time to get a second shot off?
No they can't. Instantly dead even though the various secondshapes as crew die. First victory to U.
Next is Karanaac versus Iram. Let's see what giant rock the AI has decided to put in, I know it has some. This might actually be really good for me because that's one fewer rock I have to kill later! Nope never mind it's just some random dude from their pond.
Iram is not doing a lot better here but to be fair their good mages presumably all just died to hordes of feet. They've got just a random human commander with a couple of construction 2 items. Not even the legendary greatsword of sharpness!
Well of the two, the one with no weapons or armour comes off worse.
Then it's us versus Mantises! We have a very expensive mage with just whatever gear happened to be on hand because I failed to prepare and our Impossible Clown took all our good equipment on him when he died.
We're against an ungeared cheap mage, where the only thing the AI sent them into battle with was a research booster.
The AI is already spamming Phantasmal Warrior and will keep at it the whole battle. I don't know why they love that spell but at only air 1 there's not a huge number of better options. We start off very strong with some buffs then a big Thunder Strike that sadly gets negated by Mistform.
Next, in order to prevent enemy troops from reaching us and stopping us from casting we conjure up a water elemental. We don't have the research for the big ones yet but even the size 3 ones are reasonably good fighters. Sadly this costs a very large amount of fatigue and so puts Bleak and Juvenile to sleep for some number of rounds, stopping us from casting.
In that time, a half dozen phantasmal warriors ignore the water elemental and start whaling on our champion! Being fatigued out and being hit by multiple opponents is a pretty bad situation, you get huge penalties to defence and the attacks start to score critical hits. Let's see how well the phantasms do:
Oh that's right, they're useless I nearly forgot. Their attack is magic resist negating and we have 21 MR here. We wake up briefly to fire off another Thunder Strike, which misses, but puts us back to sleep for a while.
Eventually Bleak and Juvenile remembers that he has holy 3 magic, and so starts spamming the 0 fatigue smite, which kills the mantis in a couple of hits.
The next bracket is U vs Iram. Who will win, the giant mod bullshit monster, or a normal human with some random gear probably all gotten via events.
Oh right yes.
Now for the real show, Clowns versus U! This is our chance to show the world what's what. We buff a bit with Miming Display as the Chieftan runs towards us.
Then fire off a great Thunder Strike that sadly that gets eaten by the twist fate.
We get one chance to give ourselves a quick blessing and then we're in melee. The first volley of monstrous blows is almost all negated by the armour and buffs! This is how it's supposed to go!
We get a real good counterblow in,
Then it's just trading hits back and forth
This is a brutal fight with us at just 24 hp and the Chieftan at 36. One blow from either could finish the job!
An attack comes in but we successfully repel it!
But wait, the Chieftan uses his thirty morale to power on through and ignore the repel.
Okay we can survive this, with our armour it's very possible to survive a 45 damage hit with 13 protection, 24 hp, and the power of mime. Oh wait no, the Chieftain's crush is armour piercing. Let's see what those rolls give us (and if the miming's 50% trigger saves us):
Fuck. Fuck. We were so close! One hit away! Now this fucking mod bullshit is going to win the whole thing and get a shitload of experience, finally transforming into the mason that U has been so desperate for.
There's only one fight left, with U vs Chasos who snuck in at the end as per usual. This mage must have caught a disease from somewhere and, going to die anyway, decided to go out fighting. Sadly with only astral 1 and no pearls they're not going to be able to do much to take advantage of U's low magic resist.
The mage does come with a handful of phantasms at the start of the battle to keep the Chieftain occupied for presumably one round each.
Chasos is also casting a weird mod spell, I wonder what it does?
Oh. That's what it does. The Chieftain didn't even kill the first phantasmal wolf.
It's a custom low-fatigue soul slay, that only affects sacred units. That requires holy 3 but only air 1 and is available at zero research. What? What is going on? They also get custom versions of charm at H2A1 that doesn't have the sacred limitation, and then an AOE 15 charm at holy 5. This seems insanely good to me given that they have recruitable H3s.
Well congratulations to Chasos, whose mod bullshit lined up nicely against U's mod bullshit. We probably could have beaten Chasos with our really high MR but that's just how these things go.
The rest of the turn seems so much less important now. Another undefended province taken from the mantis AI.
Our forces go to sit on Karanaac's last fort. If we found the Steel Ovens last time, I can't wait to see what incredible sites this one has in store!
We stormed the mantis throne fort! As per usual our boys in blue (trousers) stand still to get buffed while the fort defenders fire off their worthless slings.
Also present in the battle is a Crystal Mage, which the throne lets you recruit. Slightly less important now Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar is out of that whack-ass crystal prison but still going to free up the crafting burden significantly.
Clearly the mage has been left alone and bored here because he's brought along a bunch of toys. Crushers are not good but seem pretty funny if you were to turn them into a commander as a more expensive and worse version of an astral golem. Clockwork Horrors, despite their cool name, are merely okay for the short amount of time before their clockwork runs out and they stop working.
They run forward and don't last a single round against our concerted circus of clowns.
Meanwhile the crushers match up against the Enormous Clowns and while they last a bit longer they don't kill any before falling in turn.
Sadly I failed to put any clowns on attack rear and so they're all fucking milling around being useless trying to get onto the walls while getting peppered with Blade Wind by the Crystal Mage.
Still though there's only so much a single mage can do on their own and eventually he just runs off never to be seen again. Luckily there's a totally different Crystal Mage here offering their services to us now! Just have to claim this throne first.
In other places, the undead AI has apparently decided it doesn't like us trying to vulture some of its provinces so instead of trying to defend its capital next door it's just going to attack our now undefended north side.
Next to Anglia yet another fucking Chasos indie attack takes a province. I'm starting to suspect that these aren't accidental but presumably if they were a remote attack spell they'd be targetting better provinces? Seriously what kind of nation, just from existing across the map, starts causing bad shit to happen to everybody else.
Back in the caves, the AI has done what it does best and has assembled a giant death ball. We're going to get thaumaturgy 3 for teleport next turn so in the meantime we just sit here, claim the throne, search it, and preach a bit.
We gear up to storm Karanaac's last fort and send our reinforcements down south. If we can make the mantises fight both our forces at once so much the better! What could possibly go wrong with an attempt to pincer a numerically superior large force with two smaller ones?
At our cap we send a force to deal with the Chasos rebels, our god is making a nature booster for our lizard shaman, and you can see a sneak peek at UW expansion force number 3. Neither the Atlantean Militia or the shambler skin wearing Impossible Clown actually made it into the water so let's see how these ladies manage. They can't possibly do worse.
Finally Anglia claims a throne - putting them, Chasos, U, and us at one claimed each.
