Part 57: Shadow of the Mountain - recap

Mission Recap

Game film: LP Shadow of the Mountain (TFL 1.5)

When we last left our intrepid band, they were fleeing Silvermines with the arm of The Watcher in their baggage. Now it's time to turn and fight... which gives us a classic defense scenario that most everyone agrees is among the best missions in the campaign, especially for co-op.

Although the infobar says "defend the legion's standard and baggage", only your survival is required for victory. You can maneuver and fight however you like. But, staying on top of the hill is usually the right choice.

Funnily enough The Watcher's arm actually is in your baggage, and you can bust it loose with a big enough explosion. I didn't end up having time to do it in-game, so I'll leave it as an exercise for the viewer.

As for the fighting... I did a pretty good job here of scouting out the incoming waves and setting up defenses. In the trow attack though I committed one of the cardinal sins of trow-fighting: clicking to attack while my units were off to the side of the trow's path. Since the trow is faster than your units, you always want to try to direct them into its path and only click to attack at the last moment; otherwise you get them chasing along in the trow's wake like I did here. Only two splatted archers was probably getting off easy for that mistake.

P.S. Check out the comet in the cutscene. Harbinger of Doom, man. Also, did you notice that the volcano looks different on the world-map now?


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




Screenshots:










Victory!




And the cumulative bodycount: