AAR: Multi-Player After Action Report (Now Discussing Turns up to 13-16)

[Immaculate]

No need to apologize- the intention had always been to slow things down a little bit to allow players to post their updates and still play the game(s).

Not all of us spend part of every night awake with a child who just needs to be rocked while we write the update.

[jotwebe]

R'lyeh - Turn 3

Turn 3 starts off with a nice event:



Where is turn 2? I seem to have mislaid it -- or have been made to mislay it... What happened that the aboleths do not want us to know? Are we, perhaps, better off not knowing, lest the terrible truth crush our puny intellects in its inhuman vastness?

Let's go with that.

Anyway, 400 extra gold, sweet.

Yöt-Webbogoth successfully conquered his first province, it had Amber Clan tritons. Here we see him taking on his second. This one is defended by unexceptional triton militia:



The tritons rush up to him gamely enough, but then only a few can bring themselves to actually move into the reach of the kraken's arms. At the last moment, the triton warriors freeze time and time again. Meanwhile, the kraken spews clouds of poisonous ink at them.



The Ancient Kraken comes with a fear aura out of the box -- this reduces the morale of units close by. I took a dominion strength of 10, which is where the awe comes from. Awe makes it necessary to pass a morale check before attacking every round. Nice synergy there.

The kraken isn't immune to its own poison clouds, by the way, although it does have a 50% resistance. Together with its massive HP, its not much of a problem.

Unlike the wyrm, it doesn't regenerate, but recuperation does a good job of removing any afflictions it does pick up.

Meanwhile in R'lyeh, I get lucky recruiting a mage: A nature pick, just the one I wanted.



This little guy will get to site searching in Yöt-Webbogoth's wake (behind a slave priest I think I recruited the turn before). I'm hoping for a kelp fortress site. In vanilla, there tend to be a lot of those. CBM I think made them a lot less common.

Interjection from an older, wiser jotwebe: "Yes, they had their rarity set to 1, whatever that means exactly. CBM adds another nature site, the Kelp Grove, that needs N2 to find. This little dude will walk (or swim) right past them."

Still a good outcome. The other possibilities (EWS) I can also get on aboleths.

For now, I recruit another one that will go in the other direction, and finalize the expansion army. I think I recruited all slave trolls last turn.



The lobo guards are there to stiffen the starting troops, which have been diligently patrolling the whole time.

Why have I recruited 60 gold gibodais over the cheaper 40 gold giboleths? They only cost upkeep like a 30 gold unit, since they're holy. And it's very unlikely they'll die during expansion, so they'll stick around quite a while.

Why didn't I recruit all gibodais, then? 'Cause I'm indecisive, I wanted critical mass for my mindblast battery and also wanted to get the show on the road.

That's it from R'lyeh -- ahead of the pack!

[Warhammer]

Been a bit busy, I have had this done, but forgot to post.

Turn 1

What remains of our once proud empire? How were the believers enslaved? My punishment and their debasement shall be avenged!

Caelum is a nation of flying men. They have unsurpassed strategic movement capabilities. Their archers are among the best of the Early Age. Add to this with unsurpassed Air magic capabilities in the Early Age and you have a force to be reckoned with.

Let’s break their standard units down. The Caelians come in three different varieties. The first are the Spire Horn Caelians. They are differentiated from their brethren by their 50% shock and cold resistance. High Caelians have 100% cold resistance. Finally, the Raptor Clan has slightly above average strength, but no resistances to the elements.


Each one of the clans has an “elite” unit. When referring to Caelian units, “elite” is a term that should be used loosely, as their units are not strong in hand to hand. The first of these three “elite” units are the Tempest Warriors.


The Tempest Warrior is a decent unit. They are completely resistant to lightning which will come in handy later in the game. Their attack skill and defense skill are higher than many basic units, but their size 3 hampers their performance. One nice thing about them is their Ice Lance. This is a magic weapon, which means they can hit ethereal units out of the box. One of the limiting factors of these guys is their map move of 2. This limits their usefulness to us.

The second of the “elite” Caelian units is the Iceclad. This unit is a little stronger defensively than the Tempest Warriors. They retain the map move of 2. But their resource cost is substantially higher. The two advantages they have is their cold resistance of 100%, and their Icicle Mail gains protection with each additional cold scale. However, unlike Tempest Warriors, their resistances do not mesh well with what we will be doing later. However, I may use these as a change up vs. my normal forces.




The last of the “elite” Caelian forces is the Iron Crow. They are the Raptor Clan elite. They have arguably the best stats of the Caelian “ground” troops, but they are not worth investing heavily in. They have no resistances so they will not be very useful in our mage heavy armies.



One other ground unit I should mention is the Mammoth. These beasts are tramplers and can lead an army of archers into battle. One of the best traits of the Mammoth is their average morale. The Achilles heel of Elephants is their morale of 5. The Mammoth with their superior morale will not rout as easily.



So if most of our units are junk, what will we be using?



The Eagle King is the backbone of Caelum’s Power in the Early Age. These guys are a A4W1E1H2 mage-priest with a FAWE 10% random. These guys are expensive, but they are a force to be reckoned with. They can fly into a province, self bless, fight, and fly out again. They have a map move of 3, along with guaranteed access to cloud trapeze when that becomes available. They are 100% shock resistant, and have 50% cold resistance. Plus, the have Awe +2, so anyone trying to whack them with a pointed or blunt object need to make a morale check first.

The other mages are nice, but we will not see any of them for a while, so I will not discuss them yet.

Based upon our units, our early strategy will be to build up a force of Eagle Kings. We will use our massed mage power to expand, but not quite yet. I will send my scout north to determine who my neighbor is in that direction. Ideally, there will be one or two weak provinces I can nab with my starting army, but we need to wait until next turn to see what that brings.