Where The Wild Things Are Year 1: Early Winter

 Turn 9 - Scout The World

Intro to blesses and adventures in scouting.

Winter's here, so it's going to be getting cold soon. Sadly none of the Enkidus have trousers.

Happily all of the Enkidus have copious amounts of bodily hair. Let's look at these battles! First up is Bright Gate, which is that nice little farmland chokepoint we attacked with a big stack of wildmen:

It occurs to me that I haven't really talked about blesses! Sacred troops, as well as having lower upkeep, are capable of being blessed. What a bless does is determined by the magic paths you buy for your pretender - 4 points in a path gives a minor bless effect, which increases in power when you reach 6 and 8 before adding another, generally more powerful effect at 9. If you've got cheap, ubiquitous or badass sacred troops it can be a good idea to take a major bless (i.e. 9 in one or more paths plus some 4s or 6s maybe).

Our Enki's Chosen can only be recruited in Ur itself, and aren't all that good, so it wasn't worth spending points on a major bless (we took scales and an awake Pretender instead, to make us rich and prosperous and to have a giant eagle to drop on people). It still doesn't hurt to bless them, though, which is what Sendak does in this battle (pictured above) and has been doing in every battle so far.

Fire 4 gives blessed troops +2 to Attack, and Air 4 gives them +2 Precision and increased missile range (Spike actually has 5 points in both of these paths but he'd need 6 to increase the bless effect and we couldn't afford it). The extra attack is a bit useful for our Chosen, as is the extra morale which comes with any bless; the extra Precision does nothing for the infantry, but will help our Sacred mages blast stuff a bit better. Blesses! More on these if they ever become more relevant!

Our Enkidu infantry, sacred and profane alike, steamroll Bright Gate's defenders.

Wicked. Meanwhile Spike Jonze is testing out his new spell in another aptly-named swamp province, The Sodden Mirk:

I think this is 10 Solar Eagles? If I am correct then the few militia who manage to cross the battlefield without catching fire and pluck up the courage to take a swing at the almighty glowing godbeast before them now have a 90% chance of stabbing at an illusory Spike Jonze instead of the real one. It's tough to be the little guy.

That would be all, but we have a surprise third battle today! Last turn I ordered a scout on our western border to attack a Throne province, in order to see what the defenders had in store. This is a good trick with provinces bordering your own as you can order the scout to stand around on the battlefield a bit then run back to safety; unfortunately I forgot to issue orders to this scout so he tried to kill all 80 enemies on his own.

Oops. The unfortunate FOOLHARDY scout is Incinerated by a wizard. Now we know exactly what they have here, though! Some militia, some human infantry, some rubbish wizards and this guy:

 

Fire 4 is pretty good! He also has lots of magic gems, which can be used to fuel powerful spells. Could be a problem! It probably won't be though because Spike Jonze came from the sun and is almost entirely fireproof. 

Here is an image of Ur, circa Early Winter Year 1:

hmm yes nice nice

We continue our plan to crush and kill all nearby independents, attacking some Horse Tribe punks in the east:

and sending Spike after some more Wolf Tribe suckas in the west:

haha we all know how that one goes

Also pictured here is the scout trick again:

This time it will definitely work!

Ninbahar we are all rooting for you. I may not have mentioned before that those boxes that come up when you look at enemy provinces saying "The province contains about 90 enemy units" are unreliable; the province might not contain exactly about 90 enemies. Having candles in a province you don't own gives you some info, as does having scouts around, but the only way to get a precise number is to attack and enumerate subsequently.

There are two more points of interest this turn. First is that we have uncovered the Fomorian capital!

It's just across the lake or sea or whatever that is from Ur. The Fomorians are fairly amphibious and also can sail, so this is a Bad Thing - they could besiege our capital directly from their own, while our footsloggers have to take the long way around. This will have to be dealt with... eventually. For now though I continue sending giant hairy guys with horns to infiltrate their territory:

Enkidus: sneakier than you might think.

The other thing is that I've started building another fortress!

 

 

Hooray! This fortress is, in fact, a Fortress, and its construction is being overseen by a scout I had lying around because any commander can build a fort. It costs a fat wad of cash to start and will take 5 months to complete, during which time I will hopefully not lose the province to invaders of any sort. It's going up in Titan's Steps, from where as you can see below it will control the south-eastern pass into my territory:

  

Forts take a while - I might have started this sooner but I didn't, partly because Ur's forts cost a bundle (many EA nations can put up shitty wooden Palisades that cost a mere 600 gold). Look forward to seeing it completed... 5 posts from now!

Next time: I will probably explain what Thrones are unless Fomoria declares war on me in which case I might not