Warlords Battlecry II Battle Report Number One

This is a battle between Mick ‘The Reaver’ Robertson, and Chris ‘The Doctor’ Proctor, and we expect a titanic struggle between these two protagonists. Both have impressive records coming into this bout, and both have built up a devoted fan base. Your thoughts, Orcan?

OM:Yeah, what’s a ‘protagonist’? And what sort of building is an ‘auspices’. We Orcs don’t like fancy words.

TW:I try to forget that you are an Orc, Orcan, but you make it so difficult. Anyway for today’s battle both combatants are using Tournament Heroes, set at Level 15. Mick will control a Barbarian side with his Dwarf Hero and Chris will be running a Wood Elf army. Orcan, how would you fight this battle?

OM:Well I wouldn’t fight with Wood Elves, they’re just horrible little weedy guys who shoot missiles and then run away, cos if they stayed to melee they might get a hole in their tights.

TM:I’m sure that it hasn’t escaped your notice that I am a Wood Elf, and just for the record I’ll say that Wood Elves can and do melee against honorable opponents. But Orcs smell so bad that we’d prefer not to. But I can see that this commentary team isn’t working, basically because you’re as thick as a Treant’s leg. We’ll have to something about that.

While Chris and Mick are working on their heroes, an Orcish Shaman is called. He prepares a powerful medicine, and smears it over the business end of a large club. Momentarily distracting Orcan (not a difficult task) he then belts Orcan on the back of the head with the club, a process the Orcs call ‘injection’. (Many Orcs are reluctant to visit a Doctor). When he regains consciousness, Orcan has a splitting headache and the concentrated brainpower of twenty Orcs. Now somewhat overqualified, he returns to his commentary position.

TW:Orcan, what do you think of Mick’s hero?

OM:Mick’s gone for a Dwarf, Rogue, Merchant, then bought the Master Merchant skill, which adds +6 to his Merchant ability. He’s also bought Trading, which allows resource swapping at 75% efficiency, and Wealth, which gives you +1 income per mine. He’s then put 4 points into Charisma (a good move for a Dwarf, because nobody likes taking orders from a short guy who has to stand on a fruit box to be seen). A further 3 points into Command, (for reasons outlined before), and 1 into Conversion and Speed, respectively.

I’d say that this is a hero who is looking to buy his way to victory, and who intends to enlist very large numbers of other people (at the lowest possible cost) to endure pain, suffering and probable death, in order to ensure his triumph. If Mick’s hero, (imaginatively called ‘Mick’) survives this battle, he’d be a natural as an executive of a large software publishing company.

TW:Thanks Orcan, I just love your new way with words, and might even let you read my Thesaurus at half time. Now what about Chris’s hero?

OM:Well Chris has tried to do the same thing, but hasn’t been quite as single minded as Mick. But before I go on, I’d just like to make a point about Hero names, since Chris cleverly called his Hero ‘Chris’ in another spellbinding display of lyricism. The WWF charter clearly states that a fantasy game requires a fantasy name. For instance, I greatly admire your name, which to me evokes a picture of a weedy little oik, too weedy for even a weedy Wood Elf army, and who was therefore forced to become a commentator and pontificate on matters which he’d never experienced.

TW:Well thank you Orcan, and might I just say that your name suggests a homely (but repulsive) Orc couple who think up their baby’s name before conception, but sadly each use up their single brain cell in the immense effort of doing so, and thus have none to pass on to their offspring.

OM:You must have been there! Anyway, Chris clearly felt the need to spend a reasonable proportion of his Wood Elf Bard’s points on maximizing morale bonuses and getting Nature Magic skills, in order to be able to summon Unicorns for healing purposes. This is a Hero who will still try very hard to exploit his conscripts, but who will have to hang around the edge of the battle, and share some of their risks, in order to make them effective enough to guarantee victory. Should ‘Chris’ survive this battle, he would slot right in as a Producer in a large software publishing company.

TW:So let’s see how the battle unfolds. The players have chosen the ‘Tough Towers’ option, so nobody is going to go for an early rush.

OM:That’s right, both players are using their merchant skills to build up their production capacity, and to research unit upgrades. In fact Mick is able to set up two complete bases, one in each bottom corner of the map. As his production ramps up, he feels that he can afford to start probing towards Chris’s base. Screen 1 shows how these probes are faring.

TW:Not very well! I see a lot of dead barbarians.

OM:Actually, Tristan, the trained eye sees much more than that. Note the fact that Chris has stationed groups of Sprites on top of unclimable hills, from where they can take a heavy toll of Mick’s units. Only the Barbarian spearmen are engaging them, and they will be at a disadvantage. This disadvantage will become severe when they become distracted by the fiery deaths of many of their comrades, courtesy of Chris’s Fire Arrow upgrade. The Sprites are backed up by Gladewardens, who would be equally effective on top of climbable hills, and in Towers.

TW:Hey, that’s pretty sneaky. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

OM:Not so fast, my mulch-munching friend. Look at the Strategic Map, and notice that Mick controls only a small strip of territory along the bottom of the map, and hasn’t even been able to explore too much beyond halfway. By contrast, Chris was able to virtuously complete a quest and received a group of ten Eyes Of Oros which made perfect scouts and enabled him to see almost all the map.

TW:Thank you Mr. Rejected By Goats. But you missed the fact that Chris also gained early control of a Temple, and has put Dragon production into top gear. So all in all, it looks like fortune is definitely smiling upon him.

OM:Absolutely. Have a look at Screen 2. Mick continues with his series of probes, and another generation of Barbarians becomes crispy fried food for the crows (unless we Orcs get there first, of course).

TW:I understand completely. It must be a crushing disappointment to be continually outwitted by those wily crows. But while we’ve been chatting, Chris has put together his first serious attack of the game. With some Dragons from his Temple, Chris is able to damage a fair portion of one of Mick’s bases, before reinforcements from the other base snuff out the attack.

OW:And Mick is not happy. He puts together a big attack of his own, including Tempest, the Barbarian Titan. He is shown in Screen 3 leading his Barbarian hordes, (5 Dragons, 20 Reavers and 20 Barbarians) and cleaning out another weedy patch of Wood Elves. What a glorious sight! It makes me feel like picking up my trusty scimitar, and jumping right into the battle.

TW:Surely you’d prefer to wait until the bodies have ripened for at least a week. Anyway, take a closer look at Tempest. With only 25 HPs, Tempest is fugit. He seems to have died attacking a peripheral part of Chris’s empire, and is finding the combination of Ancient Treants, Gladewardens, Dryads and Sprites just too tough on defense. Remember, even as you kill an Ancient Treant, it splits into two ordinary Treants, which must be both frustrating and demoralizing. Like all primitive sides, the Barbarians are good if things are going well, but drop their bundle when things go bad.

OM:Sure a few Barbarians might skedaddle from a battle, but that’s because they can see how it’s going to end. It’s better to run on your feet than to lie sprawled across the ground in the stiff and unnatural postures of the dead, as we Orcs say.

But a least we know what’s going on. Chris has just defeated a major attack, killing a Titan and five Dragons and the rest of the Barbarian horde, losses that even a Dwarf Merchant hero can’t quickly replace, and yet what does he do? He returns a library book, or chooses a wine to accompany dinner, anything except attack when his opponent is weakest and expecting defeat.

TW:That’s not true, Wood Elves don’t have libraries, as in order to ensure quality reading, we never read any book that we haven’t personally written. And Chris is sending some Dryads and Dragons on tower busting expeditions.

OM:Sure, that’s the Wood Elf way. Turn up in overwhelming force, burn down a tower or two, then retire to the treehouse to write long poems about how brave you were. I’m talking about decisive battles, where you advance to the heart of the enemy’s base, expecting at least 80% casualties, but aiming to cause him 100%. There was a moment there with a Barbarian head perfectly teed up for kicking, but Chris failed to counterpunch when he had victory in his grasp.

TW:Well, I take your point. It reminds me of a verse I wrote in my childhood saga, ‘Battle of the Really Big Backyard’ where having conquered the Sandpit I agonized over whether to attack the Garden Swing or defend the Chrysanthemum Bush. You, I take it would have attacked the Garden Swing?

OM:I would have strung you all up by your heels and…well, never mind. The point is that, by leaving Mick alone, Chris has allowed him to build up a truly stupendous attacking force. Remember, there’s no real limit to the size of a Barbarian army, as they can always produce the horde powerups from the Chieftian's Hut to increase their army limit.

Mick’s final attack consists of 10 Dragons, 32 Reavers and 32 Barbarians, and it’s totally unstoppable. The end result is shown in Screen 4, as Barbarian units scour a landscape that’s devoid of Wood Elves. Their towers are toppled, their trees are burnt, and their poetry is ashes, beyond all reclamation. For this, especially the poetry, all Etheria is grateful.

TW:It was a lucky shot!

OM:Sorry, my hopelessly deluded arboreal amateur, the stats never lie. Look at Screen 5. Both sides built almost exactly the same number of buildings, but while Chris lost all of his (as you would expect) he only managed to burn down 25% of Mick’s. That’s just asking to be outproduced, as Chris eventually was.

TW:So the lesson to be learned from today’s battle is…?

OM:To win a Warlords battle, you must attack. Forget the casualties and hit hard.

TW:Well, score one for the Primitives, but when your medicine wears off, you’ll be dumber than a bunch of rocks, so I can still feel superior.

Alas, it comes to pass just as Tristan foretold. The spell wears off, and Orcan finds himself as he was, except that all the big words left in his brain are causing severe brain damage. Being an Orc, he doesn’t notice.

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