Aurorarcher leads Khazad out of their cavernous homes

[Aurorarcher]

New turn came quickly as we're blitzing this on when the game is at +120 turns .

So, yeah - the rust (-10% strenght) was removed when I opened the save. I guess you can remove the weapons penalty immediately but melee units can't get rid of -10% strenght unless you wait a turn in the city.

Anyway, On Jale's front things are getting interesting.




Jale moved his big stack from capital to Mustkrat. F5 tells me that Jale has 4 ships in the city.




My units:




I can't put my units on the land just like that. I have 19 units but Jale has around 35, so even though my units are stronger they can't match an army that is 2X of mine. What I'm trying to do is to lure the units west... and maybe take some poorly defended cities from west.

If I can drag the units far enough my land-stack should have an easier way to march to the capital (currently cap with 3 defenders). If not then Mustkrat or west should become less defended.




Either way, I'm trying to make Jale to focus on more than one city at the time. There are about 10 axes following behind the flashed stack. I have couple 5 movers incase Jale doesn't pay attention.

Jale might be trying to surprise me from east:




I did cash-rush that Trireme incase Jale moves his galley more forward. I also finished Poison EoT 122. Why? Well first of all assasins get way too little use so might just try them out and more importantly I get to hit those tasty adepts of Jale. Also their ability to hide could become worthwhile - but it won't work against Jale as he can see those with floating eyes.

[Aurorarcher]

I didn't of course notice that the Galley was going for Ice mana (and also a chance for Amurite's GA).




Jale quickly connected the Ice mana. Now some of his Adepts have Ice 1, damn it, well played Jale . I moved my Trireme to block trade connection, so I don't think he can promote anymore adepts... not entirely sure how blocking TRs work though. When blocking TRs it says something like "no trade through this tile", but I'm pretty sure it takes into account adjacent tiles as well.




On T123 I moved my ships west and landed one Chariot (should've used axeman actually) to see what's going on. Oh, hello city with only one injuried defender!




It burned.










Which put AC over 30. Oops, Blight is going to hit now. I had thought it hits the first player in turn order first but apparently it needs to go through one full cycle before it strikes (meaning it'll hit me first even though I'm last in turn order).

So Blight hit pretty bad. Welcome few turns of starving .




On Jale front I razed two cities. In the first you can see Jale's warriorstack hunting me.







In the end I also tried to pillage the road under ruins and then run away with 4-move chariot. Of course I forgot (before I read what it says when pillaging) that the ruins would get pillaged first .

I also stupidly enough landed some units on the desert thinking myself that Jale couldn't reach that tile...




But he can if he'll first move units on the hill and THEN use haste afterwards (it doesn't work the other way round obviously).

Near his cap Jale used Slow and also turned 2 tiles to desert to make it harder to move through his territory, another great move that I hadn't even considered viable (forgot to take pic). But I moved my stack back, I can do so much more once I'll be able to use spells again.

[Aurorarcher]

I took one of southern cities of Jale on T125, which I had to keep to avoid my galley getting killed. I knew Jale couldn't have very much nearby as his army was mostly in the NW region.




I used Hawk to check Jale's core. On T126 Jale brought more units in Bugsby's hand so I left the city empty, no reason to let those units die.




I also captured the last western city of Jale, excluding his island city which I'm probably taking on T127.




Jale also got another GS (no picture) so he has now two of them. It seems that he is going to doublebulb Sorcery (I think he can take most if not all of it with 2), which is a bit scary but the problem he might face is how to upgrade all thsoe adepts. According to demos Jale's GNP on T126 was 19 . Nevertheless, I am likely to face Mages in couple of turns.

[Aurorarcher]

So Jale did indeed bulb Sorcery, good for him. I already got a first touch of his summons here.




In the west I saw his island city didn't have very good defenders.




I took the city and kept the city.

Jale is now down to 5 cities. He took back the most southern city which I had left empty. Dave is probably planning to switch to OO for Cultists because he researched Message of Deep a while ago (maybe 2-3 turns ago).

[Aurorarcher]

Defenders of Macebook.




Jale is coming with a ministack combined with wizards and warriors. Not sure what Jale think he can achieve with it, but sure, bring it closer so I can eat 'em!




Small surprise boat-suicide-attack-raze-the-city-stack waiting for T129. I can actually reach two cities. My units are pretty badly injuried but I have enough units if somehow Jale fails to reinforce Macebook.




He should see the ships easily if he uses floating eyes next turn... there's always a chance he won't .

That annoying serpent hit my Privateer down to 4.9 health after hitting enter.

[Aurorarcher]

So Jale put enough defenders on Macebook (not a surprise):




I retreated my units back to island city.

Opening T130 brought some interesting news.




Dreylin has switched to Apprenticeship ! Looks like Dreylin is alive again !?!?

I decided to hit Vent from Vest, killed few centaur archers, and also had to take a bear out because it was blocking my roads (lost a chariot there). Turns out Vent's cap is, well, you know... well, just a take a look at the pic!




His power is 80k but he has at least 2 centaur archers in the east doing God-knows-what.

This is the last turn when Jale's WS is still preventing me from using spells. I positioned a small galley stack to fork two cities.

First Jale's units in the east, some could be in the fog.




Planned landing zones.




And my units (the rest are in the city):




Notice that all of the units have a promotion available - infact all of them can promote to Mobility. This means that from landing spot #2 I can hit the capital right after landing + using Haste on the same turn. Spot #1 is easier as I'd only need to use Haste. It'll be hard for Jale to decide where'll put his units. He might even be unaware that I can hit his capital from here (notice his big stack is standing next to it right now).

Most of his Wizards seem to be in west too so my ships are probably safe from getting hit by fireballz.

[Dreylin]

Dreylin has switched to Apprenticeship ! Looks like Dreylin is alive again !?!?

Huzzah! Can't keep a good Vampire down this close to Halloween!

[Aurorarcher]

[Aurorarcher]

Time to put an end to this game with three last pictures from the turn that didn't even matter. Still, I wanted to play this turn just to take two capitals .