Heroscapers
Go Back   Heroscapers > Blogs > Sylvano the Wasabus

Notices


Rate this Entry

A spectacular victory for York

Posted September 13th, 2013 at 01:41 PM by Sylvano the Wasabus
Last night I suffered one of the most humiliating defeats in all my time of Sylvano Scape playing.

Our big game is incredible fun- but there’s tension too as some of the battles are really very important to the final outcome.

Japan of the Japan/Undead alliance has advanced a rather large Army and it was constantly receiving reinforcements. This army moved forward to threaten York and their main outpost, Rose.

York has been the good guy in this war, in my opinion. They built the Central alliance by constantly sending troops to help out the other groups- Jandar, Arc, Templars and Einar. In doing so they also created a ring of protection for themselves- for all these other groups were around the York lands.

The fall of Arc and Einar changed everything. Orcs were coming from the South to threaten the middle of the map, and with Einar gone there is nothing to hold the Undead/Japanese back. So a large Japanese flotilla crossed the island-strewn sea and danced with York.

When I say danced I do mean danced. York had to suspend all reinforcement action and gather an army. The York army was larger than the Japanese, so Japan constantly side stepped the Yorkies, while gathering more reinforcements for themselves. And then suddenly, they had enough and engaged- Japan with 660 points and York with 600. The York army was protecting both their home outpost and Rose and a loss would put them out of the game and truly doom the Center Alliance.

Both York and the Japanese are my factions. We each play five different groups in this game. I asked my eldest son to play one for the looming sea battle. He made me chose. I like the Japanese at sea- I have had some luck with boarding parties and the samurai counterstrike makes them a real threat to artillery crews, who usually are weak figures with low attack and defense. I chose Japan.

My son groaned. All my sons tease me about York. It’s a faction I created entirely by myself and they always make fun of it and tell me how weak and pathetic it is. It may not be true. It might just be something they like to tease me about. Or it might be very true.

So I chose Japan, even though I really wanted York to win. I made my son promise to fight his best as York even though he really wanted Japan to win. This is sounding pretty twisted isn’t it? We picked our armies in secret, as we usually do. It was to be a naval battle so we picked ships and gear too.

I tried to be smart. I took Jandar as mercenaries, because they have the cheapest units in the game. I took six ships with artillery, and three tiny ships- two with archers and one with a mage. I bought brustwehrs- we’re using castle battlements now on the ships- and armoured a bunch of the ships. My 600 points bought me a fairly large fleet.

My son took Charos the dragon as a mercenary, and put him on a boat. He laughed and laughed. You won’t be able to kill him! He taunted me. You’ll go after him and I’ll kill you with my ships! He had only a medium size fleet- five ships- but they were all heavily armoured. No one took any fire ships.

I can’t remember who got initiative but it didn’t matter. Sometimes the start of a battle is all about maneuvering for the best first hit. It ended with Charols tantalizingly in front with the largest Yorkist ship in range right behind. I moved forward and hit Charos with everything I had.

It was a good first firing- I used the mage to buff attacks- he gave six figures +1A. I gave the bonus to the artillery in range of the mage and one archer. I shook to see if the artillery would fire 7+ and only one failed. We hit Charos again and again but he rolled well and at the end of my turn he only had five wounds.

Some of my ships did not even have armour, as I had gone for quantity over quality. York’s artillery fired and took out three crew and Charos flew over and took out another. I never shook a single shield in defense.

That left me down to three artillery pieces. My turn was horrible. Two of the pieces jammed, the mage attempted a powerful spell and failed and my one attack did no damage. York attacked again, firing and Charos biting and once again I shook not one shield.

It was pretty obvious at this point how this was going to work out. Japan was going to lose. But the army was far from their home, so I chose to fight it out rather than retreat to try and inflict damage on my enemy and cost them points.

But my guns and ballistae kept jamming and the mage kept fumbling his spells and things got worse and worse. I did manage to hole York’s biggest ship and it started to sink, but by then I was pretty much out of the game.

Charos finished off my mage and the Yorkists began to try and salvage what they could from their sinking ship. They got the 2 ballistae off and most of the brustwehrs.

My last actions were pathetic- my final two ships, without enough crew to fire the artillery pieces, pushed a cannon and a ballista overboard so they could not be captured by my enemy. It wasn’t enough though. York captured almost all of my ships, plus several ballista and brushtwehrs. When the points were added up Japan- me- had zero points and York had 210 more than they started with- 810 in total.

I wish I could say I had deliberately thrown the battle to protect York but i would never do that. Instead I must admit that I fell for all the tricks my son played. I went for Charos initially, failed to kill him, and then his fleet took advantage of my weaknesses and hacked me down to nothing. A pathetic loss. It certainly saves the central alliance for now, but it stings, you know? Sea battles can be unpredictable- I think I’d better stick to the land in the bloody days to come.
Total Comments 4

Comments

Old
ZBeeblebrox's Avatar
Great update...but are you sure you did not just want York to win...you know your son rolls like fate is on his side
Posted September 13th, 2013 at 10:35 PM by ZBeeblebrox ZBeeblebrox is offline
Old
greygnarl's Avatar
Love it. York finally wins and you put yourself on the other side.
Posted September 13th, 2013 at 10:44 PM by greygnarl greygnarl is offline
Old
chas's Avatar
This is pretty much what happened historically when the Japanese invaded Korea, at the Renaissance Era naval battle of Hansando! Of course, Korea had all the projectile weapons and turtle ships. What is a brustwehr?

Hooray for York! Er, uh, I mean...

I have a pal who frequently outrolls me in many games--he just did it in two of my new Epic Battlecry 150 game I made up. All that work just to get rolled off the board. Sigh. But a good time is had by all, and that's what matters.

When Charos flew, was he able to "land" on the water, or did he alight on your ships?
Posted September 14th, 2013 at 08:42 AM by chas chas is online now
Old
Sylvano the Wasabus's Avatar
brustwehrs are large portable shields.

Charos started on his own ship- it's a great range extender because the ship can move and then the figure can move. He could have landed in the water, but then my ships would have had height on him- so my son very careful shot out enough space for him to land on my ships with his artillery. And luck was with him....
Posted September 16th, 2013 at 08:34 AM by Sylvano the Wasabus Sylvano the Wasabus is offline
 
Recent Blog Entries by Sylvano the Wasabus

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 03:54 PM.

Heroscape background footer

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
User Alert System provided by Advanced User Tagging (Lite) - vBulletin Mods & Addons Copyright © 2024 DragonByte Technologies Ltd.