Part 69: Turn 57

Turn 57

Mind hunt tally this turn:
1 scout

0 pretenders

Well we're going to keep firing them off. We'll get him eventually!

Anglia cast Gift Of Health, one of the better mid-game globals. We know their research is way better than this so the delay might be due to boosting up to the required N7 mage. Thinking about it though we know they have barkskin in their bless so I'm not sure why their pretender didn't cast it sooner. Gift Of Health is pretty difficult to fight into and is by far the best way to heal large numbers of units.



Chasos cast Gale Gate, a late game (Thau 8) gem generator but it's not one of the ones that's a threat to the entire world or anything. I am totally fine with our ally against Anglia, and possible ally against U, having this up.



First up let's clean up that mindhunted Anglian province. I figured that a half dozen clowns that stood and got buffed up would be able to kill the cav no problem. However there's one thing I failed to take into account:


Guns are still really good! We've seen a few times now that if I underestimate them and fail to buff, bless, and Arrow Fend correctly I'll get punished in return.


The raiding force recruited a commander too so they're going to be able to keep moving from next turn. We'll just go back to mind hunting it, but for now we're still firing off at Karanaac's pretender. We've also gotten up to a half-decent number of troops in the area so it might be time to actually fight soon.


Oh I didn't notice this before but this is where Anglia's main army has gone off to - they're the force that went onto the candle last turn and has now jumped onto Karanaac's throne.


I uh don't really have a plan for dealing with this just yet. It might be time for some more god teleporting attacks but it's only been one turn so they probably can't storm this turn.


I did not verify this fact however. Those mages are happily researching away with no idea of what's about to happen to them.


Given that their main army has run off somewhere else it's time for us to take advantage of this. We're going to take Fennoscandia and then try to move onto Anglia's cap itself!


If you look carefully at that screenshot though you'll see one pretty concerning detail. Hmmm we'll be seeing more of this one in the future.


Anglia moved a small force on top of Fennoscandia's throne but I'm just going to break siege immediately as there's so few mages and guns.



I'm pretty concerned about this army that's building up next door and I'm pretty keen for it to stay put. So, Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar is porting onto it and is going to sit here while I take more and more of Anglia's provinces. An immobile porting onto a fort is a pretty decisive move because they're not going to be able to leave until it 1) dies, 2) casts returning in battle, or 3) has some friends turn up to take the fort. Also in this screenshot you can see Jellybean continuing to waltz through Anglia lands.



We took the last mantis fort with only a single clown death (it would have been boring to have none). Just a few more provinces to go! Our main mantis-killing force is heading towards Anglia's force via a few mantis provinces.




Anyway enough endless back and forth over provinces that don't really matter because they can't be defended, let's see the arena battles!
Oh look, U brought some bullshit. Turns out that some of their unique 1-spell casters are implemented in a way that doesn't give a shit about a magic slave collar. Also he's got a giant fuck-off axe that does huge amounts of damage (even if the attack value is really low), unresistible decay even on a miss and also resistible curse. Finally he is diseased so would probably die anyway. Could he be the perfect people's arena candidate???


The only thing that could be better would be a giant no-slots rock that would be able to take advantage of the low MR of U with some castings of Soul Slay or Enslave Mind or something. Let's see what Karanaac brought:


Sigh. What a shock result.


Chasos sent a generic commander that at least has one of the feeblemind swords that we saw on those event troops all that time ago.


Fire elementals don't give a fuck though. Anglia, myself, and the mantis AI failed to send anybody so victory goes to U!