Part 85: Turn 73

Turn 73

Right after the disaster that was last turn, we're on full scramble to prevent U from winning the game. First off we were firing a bunch of mind hunts at U's lake throne which they haven't yet claimed.


Overall: not a success. One mindless commander, one astral mage, and one commander who just resisted anyway.




The other thing we did was Murdering Winter. Frostbite wreaks havoc on exposed limbs I hear. By last estimates there were between 1200 and 1400 feet heading towards chasos' thrones - and we killed about 50% of them, nice. That's by far the highest number I've ever seen from a remote attack spell like this and it probably killed more feet than we have units total.


Elsewhere we see the usual failed assassination attempt. Ancient Clowns are so good.


Our "scouting" party of now infirm and feebleminded Bearded Ladies attempt to find a humourous death.


I'm glad burning man is now back to witness the end times. The odds that I'll be able to commit any forces to killing him once again before the end of the game are pretty low honestly.


Here we can get a look at just how diminished U's massive army is. All the imps are dead and the feet are down to mere triple digit numbers. Sadly the autoblessing Mu-Atlas, not even the pretender, and all the punchy mages are doing just fine.


In fact I don't think we've seen the non-pretender Mu-Atlas before. He's got the same testicles as the pretender, the item that autocasts the upgraded divine blessing spell called Echoes of Mu. This one has been given some powerful magic resistance gear almost certainly with mind hunt in, well, mind.


How does U summon those? It's an enchantment 8 summon costing 85 earth gems. Wait, U has had Earth Blood Deep Well up all game right? Those 20 earth gems a turn mean that they can probably have a lot of these guys.



Let's think back to this poorly aged paragraph from turn 41. U can get a LOT of these guys. I'm starting to think that we might be pretty screwed here.

Once again the Chaosos AI decides that we're the real threat here.


This is the turn that we get to discover the U also has a bunch of navel themed teleport spells. Guts from U requires E2H3 and will teleport the caster and their troops while through the Navel is requires only E1 and is a personal teleport only. Both are enchantment 0, not that it really matters at this point, and can only be cast into caves, and can be cast from either U's cap or any other cave.



With the attack come 3 of these immortal guys who have all been empowered in blood and the main commander is the Son of Mu we've seen previously.



They easily stomp 1 PD of course.


But what's this? Our own internal troop shuffling has wandered into the province and been ambushed by U's newly teleported forces! If I had known that this would be coming I could have scripted e.g. soul slay or even, you know, brought an actual force along.


Clowns of course pulverise the feet especially when there's no Mu-Atlas to bless them. Some corrosive spit, the anti-pie, is coming in from the blemmye cows.


After a bit of buffing, the big guys on both sides wade into the fray.


Pongy here is not messing around. 20 protection, mistform, invulnerability, ethereality, 75 hp, and a whopping 21 defence skill versus the Autoktonios' 13 attack.


The small clowns kill all the feet but sadly fall to the onslaught of cows leaving Pongy surrounded and routed.


His stats are reduced by the routing, the surrounding, the multiple attacks, and the fact that all of these attacks are magical so the Autoktonios don't give a fuck about any of the mistform/ethereality/invulnerability. It's only a matter of time.


Oof this was an unfortunate one.


U didn't bring along much siege strength so they're quite far from actually breaching these walls but 1) there's nothing stopping them from teleporting in a bunch of grubs or whatever next turn, and 2) their presence is still a massive barrier to our mobilisation. Forget just a single clown wandering around backlines, now this is what I call a raid.


In happier news, our own assault on U's nearest throne is going as intended. We didn't break the walls in one turn but I think it's quite possible we will next turn.


Quite concerningly next door U has brought in a counter-attack force consisting of their pretender and a thousand-plus feet. We have a fight on our hands! We're going to send in a Murdering Winter cast since the last one went so well. The province is in heat 3 so I think that means that the 8 damage will go down to 5? No problem for killing feet.



Our plan for the fight is to take this mere F1 Ancient Clown, boost him up with a hat, power of the spheres, phoenix power, and a communion, and have him cast Fire Storm. Twist fate or no twist fate, this spell will incinerate U's whole battlefield and thanks to our bless and buffs our own troops should be pretty protected. Krusty is surrounded by some very massive bodyguards to prevent any attempt to interrupt his casting. Apart from that we also have the usual relief and howl, as well as battlefield-wide luck and the usual clown buffs, thunderstrike, and soul slays.



Two smallish raiding forces from U, one over on the mantis cap. We have a lot of researchers sitting in here but the odds that this force is going to sit around to siege is really low.



And the other over on the U/clown border. This one we will actually respond to as our forces here are ready to move out and pressure the throne there and maybe even rescue our god.



In a move of unexpected foresight by me I've also decided to scope out what's inside this fort before I storm. We've got a big line of D3 mound fiends, one with a staff of storms to prevent flying attacks. They put out a LOT of skeletons.



Apart from that there's not much though. Unfortunately we don't have the research for solar brilliance or the death mages for wither bones so we're just going to have to push through those skeletons with our 70 or so enormous clowns. We do also load up with a bunch of casts of Living Fire on the sidelines. The fire elementals are ethereal and so can go through the walls to hopefully be able to get to the mages in the back and avoid the scrum in the gate. Howl, mass protection, relief, etc all going off too. We don't have the fire magic for Fire Storm here unfortunately.



Right, we are kicking off that raiding force from our cave throne. Now's the time for our Imaginary Clowns to shine! At this point we will also be spamming Enslave Mind.


I have however noticed that our prophet doesn't actually have any magic leadership so he can't lead any of his fellow imaginary clowns into battle. We're forging him a hat to help with this. Please ignore the fact that I was a dumbass and gave him holy water forgetting that prophets are blessed at all times, just be glad it wasn't a shroud. Still though look at that 40 strength thanks to the two points of chaos power and my lands all being turmoil 3.


Finally, Anglia went AI last turn I think they had some IRL issues. It's not like Kitfox is about to do anything so it's all down to us!