Part 101: Pools of Iron - recap

Mission Recap

Game film: LP Pools of Iron (TFL 1.5)

So the Legion is going to be "Aragorn attacking the Black Gate", and we're going to be Frodo. Except if Frodo were trying to assassinate Sauron. Excellent plan.

Combat-wise, this is a quirky little smorgasbord of a mission. The player gets to do what he's probably been wanting to do ever since Out of the Barrier, which is to break out the Dispersal Dream spell for a little orgy of destruction. After that, a trow fight (without our nice forest giant crutch) which can be either brutal or finessed, and then some thrall-sweeping so you can take out any remaining aggressions.

Only one fight in the mission will truly make you pay attention. The trow fight, if you do it the "clever" way; or the thrall fight, if you lose a large number of zerks vs. the trow. (Or I guess both, if you try to be clever and fail. ) But overall it's a good warmup for what's to come.

By the way, when I was crossing into the lake at the end, I inadvertently illustrated a weird engine limitation: you can have at most 30 units selected at one time. Since I had 31 live units, when I was doing "select all" there was a zerk on the left that remained unselected. Not a big deal usually, but something to be aware of when you have a lot of units to control.


Click on the overhead map below if you'd like to see the full-resolution landscape texture.




Screenshots:










Victory!




And the cumulative bodycount: