Unforgettable Moments

[Unwise]

Here’s mine.

I convinced many of my buddies to buy the game, and we were anxious to try out the MP aspect of it, despite all being relative newbies to the subtleties of the game (a state that continues).

I played in the game as Arco and petty much squandered any opportunities to advance myself. When the player with Pangaea turned his green eyes on my provinces, I was only able to mount a token defense as I had sunk all my cash/resources into a large cabal of mages.

Finally, he besieged my home castle and stormed the gates with a force that outnumbered mine by about five to one.

I had a medium-sized force ready to repulse him, but no real hope of doing so. However, I carefully scripted my five mages, one priest and the pretender (a blessed statue).

First, the pretender was to cast Astral Shield and Fire Shield. This was on the assumption that Pangaea's forces would eventually get to her and start hacking away at her 200+ hit points. Astral Shield causes a lightning strike on every hit, and Fire Shield... well, you know.

Then I wanted her to use the mind-control spells and then finally to cast "Horrific Vapors" in a scorched-earth tactic. My priestess I gave only one order to: cast resist poison to protect those nearby from the horrific vapors spell. The other mages were to cast a variety of summoning spells to stock the battlefield with an array of elementals.

The horrific vapors spell causes poison mist to cover the entire battlefield. My thought was that my forces would be gone by turn five, or at least significantly depleted, and poisoning the entire board would hurt Pangaea's guys much much more than mine. By having the priestess cast resist poison, it would protect the "rear echelon" guys like my mages on the off-chance they were still alive.

What happened however, was that the two (or three) mind-control spells that my pretender cast took over some relatively large beasties like the kith lions while they were in the entryway, and they were able to hold off Pangaea's forces much longer than I had assumed.

In fact, they (and the elementals) took out most of Pangaea's heavy-hitters other than the troll court. The trolls came in and finished them off. My conventional forces all routed, including an elephant that trampled a few of my hoplites and ran straight at the little cluster of mages in the backfield.

Apparently one of the mages was awake to the elephant’s threat and paralyzed it just before it could turn them all to jelly.

Meanwhile the sole military commander, decked out in mediocre magic items including a dragon helm (cast fireballs), an air shield (lightning bolts when hit), a frost-sword, and a pendant of luck (harder to hit) stood alone in the causeway between the two sets of walls. He was able to take out a large amount of Pangaea's troll shock-troops after all the mind-controlled lions were dead. When he finally died and the trolls came through the gate, they were all on fire.

Outside the walls, the massed arrow fire from the towers (along with ballistic spells from my mages) were taking out Pangaea’s archers and fodder. Between that and the poison, most of them retreated along with the few remaining commanders (I took out five of six commanders).

The climax of the battle came when the Last three or four trolls (including the king) came through the gate, burning merrily. I had the priestess and a single mage remaining (where my sessile pretender went, I have no idea – collapsed from exhaustion perhaps?), along with the paralyzed, routing elephant.

Biting my lip, I braced for the end – I knew that my pathetic mage and priestess (now almost at the end of their endurance) would be hard-pressed to repulse the burning trolls. Then, to my wonder, the trolls stopped to finish off the paralyzed elephant. This took a couple rounds, during which time the mage and priestess were able to toss in a few more shots. The trolls apparently decided that beating on a frozen pachyderm while their skins blistered and charred was not the best of ideas, and took to their heels. They never made it out.

So at the end of the battle, Pangaea got away with one commander and a smattering of fodder. I had a mage, my pretender, a priestess and a paralyzed, gimpy elephant now riddled with battle afflictions.

I eventually lost the game, but that one razor-thin victory was worth the game regardless.