Part 69: Postmortem
BATTLE STATISTICSThe roster of the Drunken Slavs, as of the end of the Spellcross war:
Habitually Red (Sane Max's Own) - Mobile Infantry
"Doctor" Snark (Mage Killers) - Mobile Infantry
Mael Radec (Radec's Rhinos) - Destructor
Solrick Skaft (Scion of Emer) - Mobile Infantry
Svetlana Aliyev (Rusalka) - Destructor
Cholmondely Featherstonehaugh-Smythe (Sphinx Battery, Royal Artillery) - Roland
Erik Spanner (The Toolbox) - Destructor
Lazarus (Forlorn Hope) - Mobile Infantry
Grand Inquisitor Solaus (The Balkanian Inquisition) - MLRS
Joe Moore (War Boys) - Mobile Infantry
James "Griff" Griffin (Party Crashers) - Destructor
Basil (Paladin) - Destructor
Michael de Boulogne (Chivalric Order of Saint George) - MLRS
Gregor (The Swell Swords) - MLRS
T. Hinman (The Ethereal Corps) - Mobile Infantry
Stephen Smith (The Counts of Monty Python) - UDES
Reginald P. Linux (Doom Squad) - Leopard 2A5
Sigrún Raske (Sigrún's Skysmasher Brigade) - Roland
Gordon Frohman (Concerned Citizens) - Mobile Infantry
Roger Murtaugh (The Less Than Lethal Weapons) - Roland
Vlasta Děvínská (Paper Tigers) - Universal 2R
Bob & Doug McKenzie (Royal Canadian Red-greens) - Mi-24
Emil Västerström (Trollhunters) - Mobile Infantry
Grandalt Noddington (Tea Battallion) - Leopard 2A5
Pusher Robot (The Space Robots) - MLRS
Uzgob (Deff Skwadron) - MLRS
Hulk Hogan (The Hulkamaniacs) - Leopard 2A5
Iron Tager (Sector 7)*
Antia Gray (Chum)*
*Never saw combat.
Lost in service:
William "Bill" Browning (The Bullies, Humvee): Killed in Mission 6 by Arrow Throwers.
Skull Face (XOF, Piranha): Killed in Mission 14 by Dark Elves.
Sersan (Anoa, Rangers): Killed in Mission 16 by Golems.
Bonaventura Ferrer (Confederacion Internacional de Militadores, Heavy Infantry): Killed in Mission 22 by Mechanical Towers.
Amina (Les Amazones, Piranha): Killed in Mission 22 by Golems.
Ash Kleef (Ashsavers, Humvee): Killed in Mission 25 by Mechanical Towers.
Catherine Ulysses (Smart Patrol, Humvee): Killed in Mission 28 by a Wizard.
GyverMac (Gyver's Grinders, AMX-13): Killed in Mission 29 by Dark Elves.
Langdon Alger (Red Sprites, Humvee): Killed in Mission 33 by Mechanical Towers.
SGT Turtle (Turtling Tanks, Leopard 2A5): Killed in Mission 35 by a Wizard.
Atom ikk Rab (Those From the Depths, Universal 1R): Killed in Mission 39 by a Dragon.
Billy John (The Truther Squad, Roland): Killed in Mission 39 by a Dragon.
Logan "Hardtack" Smith (War Dogs, Mobile Infantry): Killed in Mission 49 by a Dragon.
Ragna T. Bloodedge (The Black Beasts, Humvee): Killed in Mission 50 by AT Orcs.
Isara Gunther (Edelweiss, M1 Abrams): Killed in Mission 50 by a Fortress of Terror.
Jorji Costava (Cobrastan's Best, M1 Abrams): Killed in Mission 50 by a Fortress of Terror.
Mr. Spooks (Ghost Legion, Universal 2R): Killed in Mission 53 by Hell Riders.
Billy Mays (Infomercial Men, Mi-24): Killed in Mission 62 by a Fortress of Terror.
Amelia Earhart (Time Warp, Mi-24): Killed in Mission 66 by Black Angels.
Anil E. Hilated, Esq. (Polite Obliteration, M109): Killed in Mission 67 by a Mechanical Mammoth.
Charles C Thuluu (Strange Aeons, Universal 2R): Killed in Mission 67 by Hell Riders.
Patrick Gallagher (Just in Time, Destructor): Killed in Mission 67 by Hell Riders.
Aethereon Darkfyre (The Mary Sues, UDES): Killed in Mission 67 by a Fortress of Terror.
The deadliest enemy type, to which the Drunken Slavs lost a total of four units, was the Fortress of Terror.
The overall casualty rate for the Drunken Slavs was 45%. Fortresses of Terror, Dragons, Hell Riders, and Wizards were responsible for 50% of these casualties between them.
The most dangerous unit type to field was the Humvee. The enemy destroyed five out of six Humvee platoons the Drunken Slavs fielded for an overall campaign casualty rate of 87.5%. Humvees accounted for 21% of all losses suffered by the Drunken Slavs.
GAME ANALYSIS
This being a narrative LP, I didn't really talk much about the game's mechanics save for a few OOC posts. To be sure, I imagine anyone who follows the LP would pick up a pretty good grasp of how the mechanics work, but I'd like to talk about them from someone who's played the game and someone who's into game design as a hobby. With that said, Spellcross has a huge flaw that I would like to discuss here:
The best strategy is also painfully tedious.
That's not to say I think Spellcross is an awful game, of course. If I'd thought it was awful, I wouldn't have spent close to a year of my life doing a narrative LP of it. But in a game entirely about planning and executing strategy, this is a serious flaw that makes the experience much less enjoyable, and I wouldn't be surprised if it led to even fewer people completing an already obscure, niche game.
I'm going to list the factors that cause Spellcross to have a boring optimal strategy, and I'm going to contrast them with a much more fun game from around the same time period, the original X-Com. X-Com shares a lot of gameplay mechanics with Spellcross, but for reasons we're about to see, the resulting game plays very differently and is much more enjoyable. And so, here are the reasons that winning SPellcross is often an exercise in tedium:
1. There's never any reason to hurry.
None. Ever. At no point are you ever under any time limit, implicit or explicit, in Spellcross. Oh, sure, there are missions that seem like they should be urgent - say, rescuing someone trapped behind enemy lines, or preventing the enemy from awakening a monster that could easily wipe out the combined military strength of every nation on Earth - but everything happens in RPG time. No events will ever occur until you complete your objectives or reach certain points in the map, and with rare exceptions, the enemy is content to stand there and do nothing until you get into their engagement range.
For comparison, while not having formal time limits on any of its missions, X-Com gives the player plenty of reasons to move quickly. In terror missions, you have to find and kill the aliens as fast as possible before they can kill civilians. Aliens that use psi-attacks can hit you from anywhere, meaning that your only defense is to figure out where they are and destroy them as soon as possible. Eventually, on any map, the aliens will start actively hunting you down. Finally, and more subtly, is that your starting position in any map is tactically terrible: the Skyranger (along with all other transports) has your soldiers packed together tightly, unable to see much, with very few of them able to fire out of it. It's very possible that there are aliens nearby waiting to take advantage of your vulnerable position. Getting everyone out of your transport and onto more favorable terrain as quickly as possible is the obvious thing to do, priming the player to be proactive from the word go.
2. Splitting up is pretty much always a bad idea.
You'll tend to want to bring the absolute maximum firepower you can wherever you find the enemy. The more units you bring, the more times you can hit them, and the more times you hit them, the more of them you kill before their their turn begins. Enemy units tend to appear in large groups, concentrate fire on your most vulnerable units, and are difficult to escape if you get into a fight you can't handle. You can get away with spreading out your scouts if you're careful, but once you encounter the enemy, doing anything except bringing in every gun you can bear is inviting disaster. The entrenchment mechanics don't make this any easier; they tend to favor the enemy, since again, they very rarely move until they've spotted you. This means 2-6 attacks (depending on unit type) wasted chipping away the enemy's entrenchment bonus before you can do any real damage to them.
Now to be fair, you can see where there were at least attempts to alleviate this - Undead and Harpies have area-of-effect attacks that will paralyze your units, and you'll need to spread them out to minimize the damage. Unfortunately, they're introduced in chapter 2, absent from chapter 3, and stop being relevant in chapter 5.
How does X-Com compare? Well, large groups of soldiers still do have the obvious benefit of allowing for concentrated firepower, but there's also plenty of reason to spread your men out. Firefights in X-Com tend to be over quickly, since enemies come in small groups and it's rare for most units to survive being shot more than once or twice. If you don't manage to kill an entire enemy group before you run out of attacks, it's not a huge problem as long as you've left your guys enough time units to get behind cover. Without needing dozens of attacks to wipe out an enemy group, you don't need to concentrate your soldiers to fight effectively. Spreading out your soldiers allows you to cover ground more quickly as well as flank enemies, letting you hit them where they aren't protected by cover and avoid reaction fire.
Of course, X-Com offers a few disadvantages for clustering your soldiers too tightly, too. Large groups of soldiers are more cumbersome to move around, having to waste more time maneuvering around each other to get into attack positions. They're more likely to hit each other with friendly fire. Of course, the biggest concern threat to tightly-packed soldiers is that entire groups can be wiped out by a single alien grenade, and later on, a single blaster bomb. Good armor improves your odds of survival against these, but in either case, spreading out is your best defense.
3. Your best scouts are slow, expensive, and brittle.
In the first half of Spellcross, you'll rely mainly on Humvees for scouting. They're expensive early on, but they're well-armored and fast enough to get out of trouble quickly. This applies less and less so as you progress through the game and face deadlier threats. Humvees don't get any replacement units or upgrades, so they start to die more easily as things like Golems and Hell Riders become more common, but they remain your only scouting option until you can buy radar trucks.
Fuck radar trucks.
It's not that they aren't useful - quite the opposite, they remain your best scouting option until the end. However, while they're your best scouts, that doesn't make them good scouts. Their large vision range is all they have going for them. To actually take advantage of its vision range, a radar truck has to have its dish up. The truck can't move at all while its dish is up, and raising and lowering the radar dish eats up almost all of the truck's action points. In other words, if it wanders just a bit too close to the enemy before it raises its dish, then stick a fork in it, it's done.
This also means that to actually do its job as a scout, a radar truck has to get into position, wait a turn, raise its dish, wait a turn, lower its dish, wait another turn, and then it can finally move to the next spot to scout. To make matters worse, even the improved radar truck, the Universal 2R, doesn't have a vision range much better than a lot of common enemy units - 12 vs. 6. That's twice as far, but it also means that to ensure that you see the enemy before they see you, you have to stop and fiddle with radar bullshit at a bare minimum of every 6 or so map tiles. If you dare take shortcuts with any of this, you run a very real risk of having your expensive hardware explode. This is all assuming, of course, a Magotar doesn't happen to wander overhead and expose your radar truck to a Mechanical Mammoth camping a nearby hill. Mechanical Mammoths have an attack range of 12, by the way, so by the time you can see them, they can shoot you.
Scouting in X-Com, while hardly safe, is at least fast and easy. Both infantry and tanks can serve as scouts, and one infantry's as good as another for that purpose - Just pick a guy and dedicate all of their time units to moving rather than shooting.
Tanks can serve as specialized scouts as well, moving faster and being better armored than soldiers while also being useful for heavy fire support. They also upgrade in ways that keeps them viable throughout the game, in the role they started with. They're expensive, and they can still be taken down with a lucky plasma shot, but they aren't the unending sources of tedium and frustration that radar trucks are.
4. Mistakes are costly.
Should you decide to ignore all of these factors and try to complete missions more quickly, Spellcross will punish you. Severely.
If you want an example of this, see the second part of the final mission. While it has no actual time limit (see point #1), I played as though I were under one because it made sense narratively. It wasn't even as if I was being completely reckless, either - I pushed with my orc auxiliaries, I kept my UDES in the front so that they would absorb fire, and I used the radar trucks in a few different spots. The result of trying to complete the mission quickly and efficiently was four units lost.
Having that kind of casualty rate throughout the game will absolutely murder you - especially if, as was the case for 3 of the 4 units I lost, they're heavily upgraded main combat units with experienced crew. Those take a lot of money to replace, and they won't be much good until their crews get some experience, which requires you to carefully weaken enemies with other units and then use the green units to finish them off. Of course, since inexperienced units don't hit as hard and get fewer attacks pre turn, it just makes it that much arder for them to catch up. Things only get worse if you lose a unit carrying an officer. Losing an officer causes entire sections of your army to suffer reduced stats across the board. Officers can be difficult to replace on top of that, since they're only available for recruitment sporadically.
In this case, unlike the others, the same applies to X-Com full-stop. Replacing soldiers requires a lot of money early on and, later on, drawing from your limited and unreliably replenished elerium supplies if you want to keep them armored. As in Spellcross, veterans perform better than rookies across the board, so replacing a battle-hardened soldier is going to require many missions of investment into the new guy. This only gets worse if the soldier was psi-trained, because then you'll need to spend several in-game months training the new soldier in a psi-lab - assuming, of course, their replacement has a high enough psi-score to be worth bothering with.
While Spellcross shares this aspect with X-Com, it takes on very different meanings in each game. In X-Com, these losses encourage you to step back, re-evaluate your strategy, and go in the next time with a better plan and a better understanding of the game's tactics. In Spellcross, there's rarely anything to take away from a unit loss except "God damnit, I guess I'll have to go even slower from now on."
And on a related note, an issue that's not directly connected to the above but significantly magnifies the problems...
Spellcross is too damn big for its own good.
From beginning to end, this LP consisted of 67 distinct missions on about 60 different maps. Let's compare this to a few other strategy game campaigns, just off the top of my head: games in the Advance Wars series tend to have ~25-35 mission campaigns, Military Madness has 16 missions (and then harder versions of those same 16 missions), and Panzer Tactics DS has 30 missions. 67 missions is absolutely enormous for a turn-based strategy game, and I think that Cauldron HQ would've done better if they'd cut half of them altogether.
While it's common to assume that more content is always better, content that a player doesn't enjoy is going to be a net negative, since they'll have to slog through it to get to the fun parts. If you want an example of how being too large can actually ruin a game, look no further than X-Com: Terror From the Deep. TFTD had a lot of problems compared to the original X-Com, but which mission type is infamous for being horrible and boring? Yes, it's cruise ship terror missions, which play identically to regular terror missions except that they're twice as long. Doubling the length of a mission and changing nothing else transforms it from reasonable and fun (by TFTD standards) to a miserable, joyless slog.
Adding to this are the effects that the player will not directly see, but will almost certainly feel. For a given budget, the more maps you make as a developer, the less time and care you can afford to give each individual map. You also need more new ideas to keep missions interested and varied and there's only so much you can do to do so for a given set of mechanics. Introducing new content, such as Spellcross does with new enemies, new weapons, and new research, can help keep things fresh, but the more maps you have the thinner you have to spread those out.
In summary, I think there are two key design lessons to take from the flaws in Spellcross:
1. The actions that will help the player succeed at the game should also be actions the player will enjoy doing. Never make the player choose between tedium and failure if you can help it.
2. Quality over quantity. Add enough new content, and you eventually start compromising the time and care you can afford to give it. The question to ask isn't "How much content can I afford to make?" but "How much good content can I afford to make?"
AFTER THE WAR
With all that said, I think it's best to end this LP on a positive note. With the war over and the Drunken Slavs disbanded, what became of the former members of the division? What would they do with their lives in this new, magically-awakened world? I'll let them answer that question:
Cythereal posted:
Major Svetlana Aliyev and her squadron had joined the Drunken Slavs at the outset of the England campaign, and served as one of the regiment's primary armored units for the rest of the war. With the war's end and slow dissolution of the Drunken Slavs, Aliyev returned home to Russia with the rest of her unit and did their regiment's name proud in a vodka-fueled celebration in Moscow. The opening toast of the victory celebration, Aliyev raised to all the fallen soldiers of the Drunken Slavs, particularly her friend Patrick Gallagher who gave his life in the final assault. The armored unit named after a malevolent river spirit in Slavic mythology was returned to the Russian Army, and most of Rusalka Squadron's soldiers went back to their posts.
Aliyev herself did not. Weary from the war, Svetlana Aliyev instead sought and was granted a teaching position at the General Staff College in Moscow, along with a promotion to colonel, to teach the Russian military leadership the many hard-won lessons from the war and about the application of magic in warfare. Eventually, Aliyev wrote a book recounting her experiences with the war, ending with a cryptic observation that having seen the Titan for herself during the final battle, the closest of any of the Drunken Slavs save Alexander himself, Aliyev was no longer certain of mankind's place in the universe.
Dr. Snark posted:
Even after the end of the climactic battle with the Titan, the "Doctor" continued serving with the Drunken Slavs for as long as he could despite the unit slowly dissolving over time. When the final order came in for the unit to disband, he used what pull he had to recreate the Mage Killers as a small international taskforce dedicated to stomping out any magical beast that would threaten the peoples of Earth. When the Mage Killers were disbanded as well, the "Doctor" spent the rest of his career working as a tester for various flight suit developments and military equipment.
It is said that in certain bars in Sydney you can hear him regale listeners with stories of how he fought in the war's largest battles and how he killed some of its most fearsome beasts. But no matter what the story, he will always finish with this toast:
"To the Drunken Slavs. The craziest lunatics in the world and the best comrades a man could ever want."
Night10194 posted:
Here Lies Captain Patrick Gallagher, Mailman, Father, Defender of Earth. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet could keep the Darksword from the Titan's face, and not even death could stop him making the last delivery. Just in time.
my dad posted:
Lazarus never stopped complaining about not being given a chance to drive a flame tank.
EponymousMrYar posted:
Gordon Frohman joined the Drunken Slavs under the most curious of circumstances but his efforts and contributions to the cause were no less worthy than others. While he never got to drive any of the artillery pieces he had hoped to use in 'outsourcing' his absurd abundance of explosive red barrels he greatly benefited from the extra suit of Flying Jetpack Armor he was given instead. I mean have you ever flown in a Jetpack before? One that could also rain down a million bullets over your foes before you? It's way sweeter than it sounds.
Yet all good things must come to an end. With the War over and the last remaining threats of the Forces of Darkness dwindling every day there wasn't much reason to keep Gordon in armor. Especially after he used it to go pick up a pizza for the fifth time.
No one really knows what happened to Frohman after he was discharged from the Drunken Slavs. Some say he ended up in Chicago where he created a sausage kingdom with nothing but a used hot dog cart and twenty dollars. Some still find mysterious red barrels marked with a stylized explosion sigil on them in their warehouses. Yet others tell of two figures appearing in the fog or from around the corner: one dressed in a black headwarmer and kevlar vest, the other a sharply dressed man with a grey briefcase always held in his right hand. Such sightings are fleeting however, as all reported sightings say that they only stay in sight for a second before driving off in their magical hovercraft... Guys, guys stop laughing. I'm serious about the magical hovercraft.
No seriously. Magical. Hovercraft...
Why does no one believe me about the magical hovercraft!?
chiasaur11 posted:
No-one expected anything from Private Emil Västerström, except, perhaps, the man himself.
Assigned to garrison duty prior to the invasion, his transfer to active field duty with the Drunken Slavs was more an act of desperation than anything else. His survival came as something of a shock to all concerned. Post war, he managed to parlay that success into a government position, ending with a tenure as Minister of Defense that future historians would describe as "competent", "unremarkable", and "Less of a disaster than might be expected, all things considered."
His memoirs were nowhere near as well regarded.
Kaptain posted:
Uzgob dream of having an orcish flying squadron was dashed due to the sheer rarity of orcs who can read an altimeter andcrashland a plane in acceptable way. His thankless job as the New Orcish Nation diplomat at least allowed him to fly around the world.
He still think to this day that "Orcish Diplomat" was, and still are a criminally dumb concept. What's next, a weaponized moons? An orc with mouth filled with tusks the size of tree trunks?
Sersan's body (at least what left of it) as per his will was buried in Mecca. Among his belonging is an Ouija board with bingo sheet on top of it. Due to its propensity to vibrate in a weird way, the company decided to throw it away.
Somewhere in the Himalayas, a shattered piece of wood vibrates menacingly. Words such as Chryssalid, Golden Ant, Codex, and Space Colonist Frog are scrawled on it.
AJ_Impy posted:
Cholmondely Featherstonehaugh-Smythe, officer commanding Sphinx Battery, Royal Artillery, served on secondment to the Drunken Slavs from the United Kingdom campaign through to the final titanic battle. His sangfroid under fire was notable, even to the extent of operating as a front-line spotter in a relatively fragile Roland when called upon. After the war and the disbandment of the Slavs, he returned to active duty on the home front, earning a fair few plaudits, decorations and eventually even a knighthood.
He never was able to convince his fellow Drunken Slav veterans how to pronounce his name correctly.
legoman727 posted:
As for our dearalien infiltratorcitizen of Earth, T. Hinman, touched by the sacrifices of his fellow troops, and very much in agreement that invading this particular timeline of Earth was a suicide mission, decided to quit sending reports to his bosses. Instead, he retired from the military life, and set out to help improve the planet. Currently, he's working on setting up a multi-national inspirational speaking and re-building company called ADVENT.
MightyPretenders posted:
Basil, who had joined so that he could fight in a tank rather than cower with the refugees, returned to his homeland at loose ends when the Drunken Slavs finally disbanded. After making a quick first draft of a novelization of the war, he applied to a research laboratory looking into magic's other potential uses.
Rumor was that this facility began by inventing everlasting torches, before moving on to other things and eventually began researching time travel...
Oblivion4568238 posted:
The Balkanian Inquisition was one of the first units to leave when the Drunken Slavs were disbanded. Inquisitor Solaus and his men had signed up to rid the world of the Forces of Darkness and prove the strength of humanity against magic. Instead, when the final battle was upon him, he found himself in a magic-protected vehicle, firing magic-enhanced missiles, guarding a magic sword that had been acquired with the help of magical beings of light (worse than orcs, at least those are corporeal), and, worst of all, working directly alongside a platoon of orcs. It had all been tolerated in the name of finishing the mission and destroying the Forces of Darkness, but the moment it was clear that the war was over, the Inquisition left their artillery where they stood and marched all the way back toGrandaltScandinavia. There, they returned to their secret churches, and continued working on the weapons and interrogation devices they had left when magic had invaded the world. After all, with so much magic still in the world, they had a lot of work to do. As he held up the latest prototype, Solaus truimphantly crowed "Magic will never expect the Balkanian Inquisition!"
ZogrimAteMyHamster posted:
After the disbandment of the Drunken Slavs and following disbandment of The Toolbox, Erik Spanner hastily retired from frontline service "before we see another fucking war" and took on a somewhat quieter role in the military, training new recruits in the use of the recently-developed weapons and technology enhanced with what he still termed "Magical Bullshit". The safety record with such unfamiliar and uncoventional firepower in the hands of trainees currently stands at a miserable two weeks without injury or fatality; maybe the new guys aren't quite ready for such toys just yet.
Klaus88 posted:
Mael Radac disappeared, his last recorded words being, "I have to go, my planet needs me."
Junpei posted:
Here lies Ragna T. Bloodedge, who longed for a gun that shot life-draining bullets so he could heal himself while he murdered monsters. May his soul rest in peace, wherever his soul may lie, whether in heaven or hell.
grandalt posted:
Having served with the Slavs for a limited time, few people noticed the time when Grandalt Noddington left, managing to take one of the flying suits with him. Those who did were swayed with a long-winded explanation that while it did serve as a weapon of war, it would also make for an excellent means of making tea. Once he was cleared, he made his way to Scandinavia, where he opened one of the largest tea shops in the world.
Stephen9001 posted:
Stephen Smith and the Counts of Monty Python continued to serve with the Drunken Slavs until it was disbanded, whilsts doing so, and afterwards, they spent time doing comedy sketches based on the war, and made a point of always letting any friendly orcs join them. Stephen when not doing either of his jobs of leading a wall of metal or trying to be funny, was an outspoken advocate for trying to integrate the free orcs into human society, often trying to use examples of orcish humour to win people over. In his moments of seriousness, he would always remind people to never forget the sacrifices people had made, and everyone hated politics because it so often spat on those sacrifices, so why are we letting politics cause division across the world now that the war was won? In short, he continued to try to protect others, using whatever means he thought best.
Loxbourne posted:
After mission after mission of being relegated to rear-area air defence, Sigrun found herself decorated and promoted but mostly a footnote in the flood of bestselling post-war memoirs. Her moment in the spotlight finally came six years later with the filming of A Thousand Years Of Woe: The Tragic Life and Heroic Death Of Aetheron Darkfyre. This...dubious...tabloid investigative documentary claimed to blow the lid on the secrets of the Magical Bullshit War's most decorated unit and was packed end-to-end with lurid allegations about the personal lives of the Drunken Slavs. In passing it finally credited her unit with the last dragon kill of the war.
Thus inspired, and offered a huge advance by her publishers, Sigrun rushed out her own rebuttal in print, collaborated with Osprey Publishing on a coffee-table book on the Dark Forces' equipment and vehicles, and finally released a four-volume trilogy of dreadful romance novels detailing the supposedly-torrid-yet-amazingly-kinky barracks life of the "Inebriated Serbians".
Sales skyrocketed.