Parrhesia and Integrity's Guide to Surviving Wesnoth

[Parrhesia]

this update follows one of the worst tech nights of recent memory

and my finger still hurts

SCEPTRE 4: What Adani doesn't want you to see

Spoiler

More Words(TM) incoming.

The art in Sceptre has been among the best of any campaign, but Thursagan's is perhaps the best of all. Look at that smug fucking grin. He's the best, and he knows it, and knows you need him.

The idiot brings up a good point. Also, honestly, literally every dwarf we've seen wears blue. We should really be in blue this campaign.

Something tells me we aren't even gonna be making a profit when this is said and done.

My internet went to shit a few screenshots ago. It's really fucking annoying. And, typically, it's the one time I forget that screens are taking literal minutes to upload that I accidentally skip by one. So, fuck it;

Thursagan's like, fuck it, we're going to the mines, and he'll bring some apprentices. Two homie runesmiths join up. Alanin sulks because he can't join up, neither can Krawg. And then, three days later when I boot the game back up...

Two years!

The least sexy chapter name in the campaign.

That... sure is a soup of punctuation.

Is this, like, a thing? I don't know shit about smithing.

Such is the gimmick.

This... this is not a sprite that zooms in well. Looks fine enough on the overworld, though. We can also recruit gryphon riders now! But the timing is... poor, they're hobbled in caves.

Oh, that's just sneaky. We have a village behind us, in a dead end, that is only apparent because I happened to recall a 6-move dwarf here. It's an easter egg as much as anything.

We only have a keep and a half of guys. Well, two keeps counting homies. We get really lucky; all three miners are quick.

This map is randomised. Apparently my seed is just kind of a boring line for four turns, until everyone suddenly converges at once.

... and they all beat each other up. And, you know, that suits me just fine. I'll let 'em wail on each other another turn, THEN sweep in. Which isn't very on-brand for my aggressive style, I know.

That's a lotta troll.

Still, we have a wedge. Thursagan one-shots goblins, incidentally. Even the slow ones with their tiny HP boost.

Damn, that rocklobber hasn't missed a shot yet.

We crawl on.

MONSTER INFIGHTING

H- hewwo??
Well, whatever. Thursagan dumpsters this guy and awaits the onslaught.

Okay, so, the rocklobber is a huge problem. It's one of those units I don't really rate for the player, but as an opponent, at night... I mean, it has 38 XP for a reason. Reluctantly, I hurl some axes at him. Fortunately, our enemies decide they have bigger fish to fry. Helpfully, the green troll even beats up the lobber some.

A couple pathfinders go south, Thursagan heads north alone and that looks like gold in the east to me.

aaa fuck it

Making a miner portrait would've been a waste of time, but it is still a little jarring to see no portrait. This used to be a lot, lot more common; now, I can't remember it since the fucking s*a orc.

Bye.
Gyazo beefs the screenshot, but on EP, a fucking gobbo almost kills a pathfinder in the south branch.

Bye.

East is secure.

Time to put most of our attention south.

Which, uh. Where the fuck IS the coal?

We eventually clear out this last troll.

Baglur promotes!

He has 10% worse physical resist, 11 fewer HP and 10% less dodge on defensive terrain (though 10% more on flat) than dwarven lords, and a fraction of their firepower (6 less per swing). Though 11x2 is a chunky javelin.

Okay, we're at financial equilibrium (... at -60) with 22 turns left.

All hands on deck to kill this guy!

That's... great, my man.

Miner gets a kill! Y- yaaay! And they do actually get nice, chunky animations for it.

We do not have the HP; everything is danger zone territory now.

But thanks to some nice hammering, and a lot of chip damage - scouts are a godsend, believe me. Just fucking trust me, scouts are incredible - we get the job done.

Hey, we'll probably even get the triple.

Thanks to the shock of villages in the blue cove, we're actually getting sixteen gold a turn now.

Thursagan gets another boss skull to add to his collection, finishing quite a tidy day of work.

The full map, now explored. The eastern blue wing is where most of the villages are hiding.

Well, we cut it close, but we did a damn fine job.

We only ever saw the one ogre, one that the lobber killed for us. That was a good map, both as a map and for us; both for our bottom line and our experience.

Despite the complete wipeout on map 1, we have a core building.

 

[BrightBow]

I would really like to know why Krawg is still hanging around. I mean, I like the guy. But it still confuses me.

[euklyd]

ok it's not quite fair to dump on sentinel defenses without mentioning steadfast doubling? resistances on EP

don't get me wrong I still hate the class but they're not THAT bad

[BrightBow]

It doubles resistances but can't go higher then 50%.

So in the case of Sentinels with their 30% Blade and Pierce resistance, they would still only have 50% on enemy phase rather then 60%.

Edited July 16, 2019 by BrightBow

[euklyd]

yep! but it is still better than lords! 

so they do have something. I still wouldn't use them lol

[Parrhesia]

You have to give up so, so much to go down stalwart. But after some thought I realised why they're good on flat and bad on defensive terrain; IIRC 50% both on flat and hills when max-promoted. They're the guys you slam on weak terrain to maintain the line, the gaps in your formation. And Sceptre's quietly made it so that you have a lot of holding-the-line maps where their defensive ability is useful.

... Buuuuut they have literal javelineer DPS and I just cannot look past that.

Edited July 16, 2019 by Parrhesia

[Parrhesia]

SCEPTRE 5: How to squeeze blood from a stone

Spoiler

You know, after a... how to put this... fucking impossibly bad start, Sceptre's growing on me.

The writing on the whole has been solidly okay. Thursagan, though, is a real cut above; he bleeds character. Does he give a single fuck about status here?

To be fair, my man, you--

yeah that

He goes south.

Sceptre's dialogue, more than probably any other campaign, has characters contradict each other, cut each other off, and just plain forget shit. It fits the character of the campaign being a bunch of bickering, ornery dwarven grognards. I like it a lot.

He heads south, and like seventeen different SFX play to simulate him beating the everloving fuck out of the Fantasy Koh-i-Noor.

f

This contract's just gonna get more and more complicated.

V... valid point, but, also, uhhh-

Noir's his thunderguard homie.

u
uhhhhh
are
are you okay,

Okay seriously you look like a fucking SA emote. I dont' remember which one but you so so so so do.

Owned.

negotiation: 1

this is cute but please let me stop taking screenshots

Sceptre has a really strong aesthetic. This idea that the reality around this great artifact that they made was... basically a comedy of errors, a bunch of idiots blundering around trying to build a stick, arguing constantly.

No early finish bonus. It's sandbagging time.

Before rebooting the map, I discover I've played Wesnoth for 99 hours. All on this LP.

After a couple turns, this guy shows up in the southwest.

Well... he's... not wrong.

This objective reads to me like cowardice. We're going for it. Not for the double kill... probably. Maybe? We'll see.

Maybe. 300 gold isn't all that much.

This file's never seen a promoted gryphon rider. Maybe now's the time.

I've been pretty down on steelclads versus runesmiths. This screenshot should both illustrate why, and illustrate why that matchup is turned on its head on mountains.

Elves can't navigate hills for shit. Only the scout can poke at Krawg and, frankly, good luck to him. Meanwhile, two gryphon riders can pick up the northeast between them.

For everything I've said about runesmiths, our man here hits 2/4 and gets hit by 2/5. So.

Now, I have a decision to make. Is it daring or stupid to try and pincer them here?

I go for a cautious version of the daring maneuvre, which would've been to take that village. Baglur can really earn his corn here. The runeboys continue to take up the big terrain, along with a nearly-promoted guy. Unfortunately, this thunderguard remains on a magic pixel...

... and blows his shot, and takes a tomahawk to the head.

This is working out, though.

Our favourite Whig gets to Lord, and we get another pair of explorers for our trouble.

Is this a good move? No, but I consulted my What Would Thursagan Do armband and this was what I got, soz bae

Never in doubt.

A spicy turn, but it's needed. We have to wrest control of these caves, and they're our best defence.

Well, they take down a green fighter. Good on 'em! That's some spirit.

Thursagan never misses.

We... very nearly clear out this knot of guys, which doesn't bode well for this explorer.

Be with ya in a sec, Glonny.

Rugnur creams a marksman to promote!

... and this guy dodges like 5/6 30%s. To live. He kills the fighter and probably Tris will follow. Then Thursagan misses both 70%s, and I wind up running a homie runesmith into a guard spear which inevitably shreds him-- let's try that again.

Yeah, better. Also this time Thursagan hits both shots and creams his opponent. We have the dwarf lord surrounded, we can end him at any moment and bring Rugnur home. I... wish I knew what 'hero' meant. Lyndar's stopped recruiting but still has 181 gold in the bank, which makes me suspect he cranks it back up when he's under threat. My best guess is that the heroes are Rugnur / Alanin / Krawg / Thursagan / Durstorn - apparently not Baglur - that's everyone listed as needing to survive.

Alanin shreds this guy to promote.

Maybe heroes just means everyone.

If you're wondering what the east of the map is, it's a bunch of income for me to seize. By the time it's all said and done, we're making 30 a turn. So my plan is to ... 13 turns left, Lyndar produces a bunch more T2s, we can't reliably schlep there AND back. So I'm gonna just keep Krawg waiting in the east to swoop in and end the map at any moment.

After the explorer on the ice gets his village, we'll have 31 / 34 villages. If they don't strike out east, we might just snipe a 32nd.

Briefly. We need to clear out east with our main forces, quickly. Meanwhile, the steelclad Baritone's missed six straight 60%s against this same guy.

They can come at us any time they'd like.

And they do, in a... confusing array. Their strong/resilient Hero survives the return volley by a single HP, which, you know, you have to respect - literally any other combination of traits and he'd be dead.

Well, the result is inevitable. We have eight turns left. Not enough to kill the enemy and get back... probably not even for our gryphons. Besides, isn't it better to let the one man bring the news back to the rest?

I don't know if we've covered gryphon masters yet. Their increased combat abilities are... tepid, 15x2 and 51 HP over 12x2 and 34. But they level fairly fast, and really, the important part is the 2 (!) extra move.

34 / 34 villages.

On the penultimate turn, this guy shows up. Dear listener, I need not tell you how we stomp him into paste. And on turn 24, Krawg belatedly flies in...

Ten advancements. TEN. I'm not sure that map succeeded if it was going for pressure, which is kind of hilarious after how fucking extra map 1 was... but, you know, it was a fun map. I have no idea why map 1 is so bad when the rest of the campaign is, in fact, pretty good. Thus far.

Here's old Durstorn if you don't believe me that his portrait's... changed.

I tried to turn it into a Discord emoji. It doesn't quite work, but, hey!

 

[BrightBow]

Okay, I love the title of this update.

You would think that Landar and his goons would be busy with that whole "civil war" thing. How much toll were they gonna ask for in the first chapter anyway?

Btw, among the campaign's portrait's there is a pretty sweet portrait of an Elvish Marshall in winter gear, that doesn't seem to actually be used in this campaign. I don't have the means to upload images but the Wesnoth database does actually use that portrait to illustrate the Elvish Marshall class, so I'm just gonna link to that.

 

Resolution is somewhat lower then the one in the files, though.

Edited July 18, 2019 by BrightBow

[Parrhesia]

SCEPTRE 6: Thud!

Spoiler

Well, that's... a bland enough name.

Included with minimap. That's a lotta dots!

Durstorn is mostly a good character, but this is a liiiiittle strong on the 'he's very confidently wrong about everything' angle.

And this line is... weird, coming from Rugnur's mouth. He's spent this entire time as the border guard in WAY over his head, and now he's mouthing off to his boss about honour? It's been some years, but, nah.

Thursagan, though, remains on-point, and probably one of my favourite characters in these campaigns. Rugnur hasn't earned the right to flout authority, he's a cog in the machine; Thursagan doesn't give a fuck ABOUT the machine.

Swoosh! Durstorn attacks!

Yeah, I, the text swoosh just, stays there, forever. Watch it gently fade.

, and then with an equally red Thud! Thursagan fucking brains him.

... and that's why there is an east to this map.

... hey, so, you know how this campaign's been going on for like, eight years by this point? Alanin, a veteran soldier, is really starting to hit Jagen status.

I've said it before. I'll say it again. Sceptre's art is among the best of the campaigns.

Alanin is also very on-brand for the campaign's tone. He was clearly only meant to be here for like... maybe a couple years at the very most, and come back, sceptre in tow. And we get ... you know, more personality from him than from Kalenz. He has like eight lines, and yet he comes across as kind of a sulky bitch - he said 'fuck that' to the caves earlier, and is saying that again here - maybe even lowkey a coward, but hey, he's been with the dwarves under siege for a decade, that builds some kind of loyalty.

So, let's do this. Oh, another nice detail; some of the houses are elven now. It HAS been several years.

And they flat-out razed our starting fortress last map. This is all of green, we actually have a pretty clear run to the northeast. On paper. Rugnur will make it there in seven turns; full keep first turn, nothing after that.

Alanin has a shorter run (well, he doesn't, but he has nine move instead of four), but he's gonna want a screening force. Krawg and the pathfinders, probably. I'm not entirely sure how I'm gonna play this.

Three homies north, the explorer team with Krawg south.

First hostilities on booth flanks on turn 3.

Their hero-heavy loadout is encouraging in thr north; they're gonna have a hell of a time standing up to dwarves.

We can really only whittle down here, but both green and purple have stopped recruiting.

Just... had to open my fucking mouth.

This last attack is pointless and reckless. Right now it's about surviving; Rugnur's probably in the clear.

Hm. No. The sequence of RNs EXISTS that will get us through this, and more caution in the north will help... but not as much as just having three more guys per flank will.

Sure, go into the caves, I guess... ?

This loyal thunderguard lacks the melee moxie of the last thunderguard I had.

On the bright side, in daylight, Alanin can fucking one-shot quick / not-strong scouts.

And then run when the going gets bad.

They pepper our northern battalion with arrows.

Alanin really, really needs to get moving, but on the bright side, south sweeps down through the mountains and murders like six elves.

Similarly, in the north, our screeners beat the enemy back. Just about.

So what's clever and infuriating about this map is blue. They're occupying our caves, taking our natural escape route - and if Alanin ranges too far ahead, those scouts will cut east and cut him off.

Awful finishing costs us precious time in the south.

hnngh.

You ever get that failstate feeling?

Because, yeah. Take three: cowardice!

Alanin is officially a Loy Going His Own Way. Breaking the west bank will hopefully keep the elves off his tail. The purples, definitely; but it's the blues I'm worried about.

Usual shtick here, but with a tendency towards cowardice and two expendable scouts.

I was expecting a final line from Alanin or something, and I'm kind of low-efforting this update, which is on its third attempt while I've had a right index finger smashed to paste. Anyway you can probably surmise where he went.

Elves turn into fewer elves.

I'm more conservative than usual. We'll head back into the cave, take on the haters.

But doing better than this. I play the turn over, looking for a new approach, not just better RNs.

Our scouts really want to get hit by everything and die in this reality. Happened last attempt, too!

BAGLUR WILL CHOKE THIS POINT

hhhhhhhhhhhhh

We came through this... not amazingly.

We snatch a few final kills. Thursagan is 12 XP from tier 4.

Yep, we sure Escaped those Caves alright!!! Ha ha!!

Don't let my twice failing to find the right approach fool you, that was a good map. Again.

 

[BrightBow]

I suppose it's possible that Durstorn is intended to have been corrupted by the ruby. I mean, he was drawn with those insane eyes (and yes, the file is called durstorn-insane.png) before the negotiations with the other dwarves even started. And Rugnur did not properly explain how dangerous that thing was:
"He gave us a magical stone, called the ‘Ruby of Fire’, and told us to make a sceptre out of it, to keep in the bad magic, or something like that.

For comparison, there is how Haldrick II explained it to Rugnur:
"Some form of magical aura makes those around the stone act... strangely. I noticed it with my father. The longer he stayed near the stone, the more arrogant, almost evil, he became."

Of course the problem with that theory is that Durstorn was not the one actually working with the jewel. Well, maybe his personality just made him more vulnerable to the ruby's influence.
And of course, you could make the case that Durstorn was actually the one least affected by the ruby, and everyone else was crazy. And that's why they all decided to hold on to it for dear life, even if it meant murdering Durstorn. But while this makes plenty of logical sense, Durstorn was the one drawn with the crazy eyes. So it's very far-fetched to think this was the intend.

Edited July 21, 2019 by BrightBow

[Hardric62]

Impressive work with these campaigns. Some of them make me thankful I prefered custom campaigns when it came to that game. It is also nice to see which ones will look the more interesting to play.

Speaking of them, Parrhesia, do you or Integrity have any project about trying one of them, or will you go strictly for the 'official' campaigns (they might be long and on an older version of Wesnoth, but revansurik's trilogy was the best campaigns ever for this game)?

[Parrhesia]

I've been meaning to try custom campaigns at some point. That said, probably not within the scope of this LP. It's already been a very long project - 100+ hours for me thus far, with two very long campaigns left to go. And that's skipping Burning Sun, since, well...

That also said, if you want to use this space to talk about custom campaigns you particularly like or rec, feel free to.

SCEPTRE 7: Ridin' on a horse, ha // You can whip outriders // I been in the Knalga // You ain't been up off those woods, now

Spoiler

Rugnur had fled across the Arkan-thoria, but Alanin could not do that. He went south - back to the Wesnoth border.
The elves followed both of them. First I will tell of their pursuit of Alanin, before we descend into the caves to learn Rugnur's fate.

Oh, beans.

... what's
that last clause.

OKAY, HOLD THE PHONE.

Sorry, just the sound of my priorities readjusting in the space-time continuum. Turns out the green leader has nothing to say when you cave his stupid bony skull in.

Anyway, we find some homies. Don't get used to 'em.

This map is a tube. We can't turn back, we can't fight them off.

Seconds before tragedy.

This map is an exercise in building nets.

And there's not, ultimately, a huge amount to say. Alanin - and only Alanin - summons homies when he gets to a village, but has to keep moving south. 

And the villages are somewhat awkwardly spaced, which means you do have to balance Dudes vs. Pace.

I have not made an attack order all mission.

Until now. One down.

Spearmen have a semi-okay javelin, and bowmen are semi-okay in melee.

Which means that the enemy wears themselves down, and you get a chance to pick off one or two here and there. It feels good, you feel strong. This is the best I've ever felt about having a javelineer.

We bring down a third who impetuously attacks a spearman alone and is left on Basically None health.

... Well. One outrider nearly murders himself on this guy's sword. Then the other - presumably their leader - does.

It's a good thing Alanin never stopped moving.

Not spotted in this screenshot: Glitharry. They're ambush spawns. Which, in this very specific context, is fine!

Nobody wants to fuck with Big Vug.

We kill another couple outriders. Get another javelineer. I think I've promoted four javelineers in my history; the first spearman I ever promoted, a guy in the Two Brothers section of the LP, and two guys on this map.

... I think I overshot it.

Another one down, and with that...

The map unceremoniously ends there.

Seven riders. This may not have been the most ... visually interesting update, but it was a really good little map.

Remember these guys!

 

[Hardric62]

Eh, seven elf riders dead, I'd call this a good win. Nice campaign too indeed, it makes me want to give it a try, and dwarves aren't amongst my favorite units.

 

Now speaking of custom campaigns I've played (also general indications for the rosters, in case of allergy to some factions, and spoilered for length)...

 

Spoiler

 

-The first I think about is... well, the first I tried actually, Count Kromire, which is played with the Vampires Factions of the custom era Era of Myths. It takes 10 chapters maximum, and the escalation of battles felt rather smooth, with a progressive unlock of the full roster, and the time, enemies and money to build up a sizeable army. Although the final battle pits you alone against three/four opponents at the end depending on your choice. There is another custom custom campaign centered another faction of that Era, but I don't think it was finished, and the last map from it I remember is downright vicious with invisible foes...

 

-Another one was A New Order, a quite long one set in Wesnoth's future (although before the third sun), and is centered around a barbarian faction which invaded and subjugated the country, and the struggle which will lead to the kingdom's rebirth (these guys are mainly neutral, with almost no ranged/magic attack or healing, but pack ridiculious resistances, except for mages... when the setting is itself low on mages). You can end up with these barbarians, elves, loyalists and bandits in your army, but the campaign can also give you 'soft reboots' to your roster by making you select a handful of units you can keep past some major events. It also tinkers a sort of world map for some of its sections, and a 'score screen' for the end of the campaign. Interesting, but not a personal favorite.

 

-That would be revansurik's campaigns. The first one, Soldier of Wesnoth, is a standalone, set between 'canon' and the campaign I mentioned above, and the occupation of the main character is pretty much in the title. You end up fielding mainly a mix of bandits, 'peasants' version a la Liberty and loyalists. The campaign is rather long and ramps up nicely from maps from the start to quite epic battles.

Next comes Revansurik's main trilogy,  A Song of Fire, War of the Jewel, and Aria of the Dragonslayer. It stretches from the distant path of Wesnoth's world to the area of the two suns before Under Burning Suns. The whole thing is just epic and so nice. While there will be a 'main' roster centered around elementals across the campaigns, you end up fighting alonside, agaisnt and adding to your roster a large quantities of factions from canon and several customs eras, you go from quests involving smaller amounts of troops to epic battle where you can empty a bank and deploy large and mighty armies with matching opponents, in defense, in offense, with a rather large selection of heroes who, starting from the second campaign, level up mainly through a more custom menu where you choose where they can get better, with new or improved attacks, abilities (I believe... Burning Suns went that way with its protagonist if I remember it right).

But there is also cons for that last recommendations though. First, since revansurik has been out of the community for a while so while the campaigns were finished, they haven't be ported to 1.14 by other members of the staff yet (I remember Soldier of Wesnoth was), so it would mean download 1.12.6 to play them. The third campaign was also as far as I know revansurik's last work, so the end segment had to be approached a bit more carefuly to not go too fast and break events sequences (I did this on one of the very last missions), and one of the mission before that presented a glitch, although the fix for it is also available on the campaign's thread. I also don't remember readin here why Burning Suns is vetoed, but if it was its altered day/night cycle, this third campaign does follow it.

Still, if you are searching for long campaigns going to places with big battles and large rosters, mighty heroes and extending accross time, I cannot recommend this campaign enough, despite my technical problems with the last one.

 

 

[Parrhesia]

SCEPTRE 8: Not a Metaphor

Spoiler

Thus Alanin escaped from his Elvish pursuers. But the dwarves were not so lucky. I would say that, perhaps, their betrayal of Durstorn was coming back to haunt them. For the section of the old eastern mines that they reached in their flight had long since become the lair of Khrakrahs... the dragon.

Well. 202 gold and unlimited turns and a lot of shroud.

(Why you no surrender? All they want is the magic stone!)

This campaign is such a mood, honestly.

Alright then. Let's head out.
Oh, incidentally, did anyone spot the new pokemon either just now or in the preview of the Canon Escape Map?

Thursagan's final promotion is terrifying to behold.

I recall everyone promoted with the quick trait I can find. That isn't many people. Then all four (!) explorers, and pad things out with scouts.

Oh, fuck. Bona fide berserkers.

Oh holy shit!

Holy everloving fuck!!!

It's all about the fighting retreat, as frontline trailblazers kill off about a million bats.

Now, monster infighting is still a thing that--

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Artwise, this is a good dragon. Spritewise, this dragon is an incredible work of pixel art.

Thursagan, as always, fucks given't.

Ohhhh god. It attacks. Augthol gets insanely lucky, landing all three axes and dodging everything.

We're running.

Ahh, bless. A berserker spends himself on a hopeless charge against Kuhnar, the homie steelclad, who promotes.

Well. I. Intended to capture the dragon in this picture as he fried this guy alive in his armour. But he just yeets west. Instead this guy gets attacked by six or seven bats, not exaggerating, I lost count, and kills all but one on the counter.

I let Kuhnar hang back to repeat the feat. As I'm typing that, the batslaying quick lord gets toppled by, like, the ninth bat he faces.

We gain a little ground... a little. We can only really move as fast as our slowest guys, and Thursagan, Rugnur and Baglur all move at a mighty 4. Krawg, it depends; he's bad on cave floor, but can go quickly on roads. He could've actually flown over that lava gap to the north.

Ooh, something's on that village.

We've been lucky with their berserks. None have been quick as far as I can tell, and they've made terrible decisions - two dying to my homie now-lord, one mostly killing himself on bats.

Okay, well. He's still... three more turns out.

why are they doing that

Baglur's entire career has been leading up to this day, except that he takes most of his health in just one turn, Jesus.

Okay. 'Easy'.

All we can do is gum them up. Throw bodies in their way. But you can creep one space a turn through ZoC.

krawg may have erred

It's Rugnur's tur--

okay yeah anyway dragons have eight move

--n to hold his point brilliantly.

Definitely rotation time now.

During all this, Krawg murders a bat.

Hey, a berserk strays too far west murdering bats. Maybe the dragon will give the straggling elven infantry something to chew on.

I think you get the idea with the chokepoint by now.

Dragon, what are you doing... meanwhile, Baglur snipes a lord. It's a dumb move, but it's swaggy.

I let Baglur fly close to the sun.

Kuhnar pulverises this guy on PP, we stand our ground, and...

Guess who can now deal 15x4 ranged damage. Thursagan might just be the strongest unit in the series.
...
what am i talking about there's a dragon right fucking there

'Wesnoth can't do a fighting retreat', I hypothesised after map 1, which was truly dreadful. The past two maps have both been good fighting retreats. Who knows anything anymore?

 

[Parrhesia]

SCEPTRE 9: But nobody came

Spoiler

There is a reason the Sceptre of Fire is the ultimate lost artifact. Nobody thinks any of this will end well.

This... this is our entire recall list.

Daily reminder of how cool Thursagan is.

("Krawg smells orcs in this cave!" Yeah, that took me like ten seconds to parse.)

It's the end.

This is it; every fucking nobody we've ever dealt with. Nobody walks away.

Not going that way. Yet.

Witness this fucking deathball.

We're. Uhm. Pretty well surrounded.

Let's smash some heads. We know there's probably two more factions at least, since we haven't seen blue or green yet.

This guy, Tril, and a scout, Anthaas, are brutally clubbed to death. 30 left.

Well, here's green.

Nobody quite wants to tangle with lords. Trolls in caves are no joke, but a lord is a lord--

Hell. Who invited you?

Included with minimap. Shit's getting crowded.

This isn't actually another objective. We're still in with the volcano plan.

Another scout goes down. There is nothing nice about any of this. We literally have to push everywhere just to make headway.

Hey, still time for this guy to get promoted.

Fighting everywhere. We slam the glyph with our newly-minted pathfinder...

... and the earth shakes, between every line.

Ooh.

It's revenge. It's literally just revenge. I can get behind that.

Rugnur gets us off to a flying start.

... belay that.

Guys who aren't Rugnur get us off to a fliern't. Thursagan waddles back to the front lines - he's still never seen combat as an arcanister!

Kuhnar and Glos barely stay in the fight, but we lose more and more, and--

Their escape is cut off, and--

The battlefield... narrows. A horse screamed. An outrider is dead.

And Thursagan has entered the battlefield.

Our losses are brutal. We need to push forward, and some people need to be put into 'hit or die' situations, and blow it. Even a lord.

Blue rail against their fate, but get demolished in the north.

We lose Spooky. The battlefield shrinks more. The cork is in the bottle.

More go down - the battlefield shrinks further and further, swallowing up more and more of the enemy.

Just one left, now.

This section of guys are all just called Guardian, incidentally.

The last Avenger has one HP left. He's strong. That's the HP.

And as Baglur impales the avenger...

Nah, we'll be f-

The lava rolls in, one slow stage at a time, systematically killing everyone on the board.

With one exception.

We did the job.

Alanin has seen some shit.

And even he's undergone character development. Started as kind of a wimpy loser, is now telling the royal guard they can get the fuck out of his way.

Sceptre put more effort into Alanin than most campaigns into their actual protagonist. He's an old man now, and, of course, now before royalty. So the outfit change makes sense.

... Haldric has gone the fuck to seed. This art tells you EXACTLY how the past 15 years went.

Krawg YEETS across the map.

("Me see the sceptre. Rugnur had it. Lose it in the cave.")

(... nnnno idea.)

Alanin will be fucking vindicated by history.

The End.

You did good, guys.

Subtract 17 dead - chiefly these promoted guys - and 22 kills. You can't get a fully accurate reading if there's an epilogue sequence - it goes forward a chapter and wipes your autosaves (which you can turn off, but I don't want to), and then the replay likes to count itself twice.

So. What to say about Sceptre...

Unlike the campaigns I wrote the most about, Memoirs and Legend, Sceptre pretty much realises the extent of its potential. Sure, you could sharpen up the writing technique a little, but it's not written badly - and a thing I've been meaning to say somewhere but have never quite found the space is it's entirely possible that any number of these campaigns was written in another language first, and translated into English later. Wesnoth has a very multi-cultural community, and has been translated into a number of languages - in fact, the campaign authors' notes for artists and translators make for very interesting reading.

Point is, Sceptre basically accomplishes what it sets out to do. It's a fairly small-scale campaign that answers a very important question in the Wesnoth lore, the third of the three campaigns that pretty directly flesh out HTTT. We have the explanation on Konrad's mentor and his elf, now his MacGuffin. The main concept of 'giant national epic actually the story of bunch of morons failing to put together a stick and then exploding' is a really good joke, and it's executed well. You have a shitty border cop, explicitly your worst possible unit, a moron who everyone disregards, as your lord, going down as the 'greatest dwarven hero'. You have Thursagan, probably the best character in Wesnoth - the take-no-shit enchanter who only cares about the end result, and knows he's the best out there, and that he's needed. The kind of guy who could confidently say, 'fuck it, let's blow the volcano and more or less hope we don't get wiped out in the aftermath' without even a moment's hesitation. Baglur, the confident veteran to be a foil to early Rugnur, before he gets a bit of a spine. Alanin, who illustrates how damn long this has all taken. And Durstorn, who is a little overdone as the dumb boss, but still, he basically works. And the dialogue is very staccato, very tit-for-tat, very 'bunch of greybeards and grognards bickering over details'. It works. The visuals as well, I'll say for the 5000th time, are excellent; this probably has the best art of any campaign. Funnily enough, Rugnur himself never gets alt artwork, but does he really need it? Mood portraits are nice and all, but tend to be very underutilised - compare that to the very clear progression of time and character development on Alanin and Haldric, and Durstorn's eye-twitch.

The theme was borne out by the map design. You were rarely on the front foot. Map 1 was a genuinely awful fighting retreat; maps 6, 7 and 8 were actually good fighting retreats, and of course 9 is a doomed last stand. Maps 4 and 5 were the only real 'go forth and rout' maps, and even of those, 5 had a probably unbeatable green elf on the fringes. A full overview is less necessary, given there were just nine maps; 1 sucked, 2 and 9 were fine, 3-8 were good. Sceptre started rough, but it won me over. A good time was had.

And I never had to train a single useless fucking thunderer.

What's next? I'm way ahead of / Ike's way behind schedule, so I'm stealing another campaign from him. I'm not gonna take the only other dwarf and undead campaigns, and I'm not touching Rebirth. So that leaves...

I'm going in blind, except for a skim through the walkthrough which seems to promise this will be anything but straightforward. Still, I cruised Legend. This should be easier than Legend. Right?

 

[BrightBow]

It's good that you beat that map so smoothly. In my case, that's not quite how it went. Thursagan got killed several times by lava, which seems to trigger completely at random here. And that's still a Game Over, even though everyone dies at the end of the map anyway. So this whole thing ended up being really frustrating.

[Parrhesia]

Oof. That's a major L. It's just a few blind spots like that, or like map 6 leading you to believe in saving your money, or The Entire Map 1, that really do keep Sceptre out of the top tier (Dead Water / Liberty / South Guard, so far) of campaigns.

I think a boost came from the fact that I just... had a really beefy recall list. Especially from blowing all my gold in the canonical map 6 experience. It'd be easy enough to come into this map with only 20 guys, and I could see then really struggling to push effectively. But then, 32 was kind of superfluous, and I was pretty much hurling guys away through lack of room to maneuvre.

[Parrhesia]

I gave myself a short break.

Invasion 1: Walk softly and carry a big mace

Spoiler

Loys vs. Undead is a really shitty matchup that everyone hates. Invasion asks; what if entirely that?

I exaggerate. I hope.

The scene is set, with more Pretty Good Art.

Three enemies with ~100 gold each; us, with 130 gold. We can recruit heavies, spearmen, cavalry and magi. Gweddry is a traitless sergeant, Dacyn a homie white mage.

The way to green is, how do I put this; painfully clear. And what's more painful is that we won't be able to capitalise on it. Night falls soon, and with enemies coming in from north and south... the prospect of 16 more XP kind of falls flat.

Fighting at night is not gonna be good.

We pull back from the overconfident approach, and--

Our best unit vanishes. Great. Fucking great.

yo.
YO.
LOOK AT DIS SKELETON.

In fairness, Gweddry's art's pretty great, too. Though there's the feeling that his right / our POV left hand is holding a big rock.

We take up a relatively defensive position, maybe hoping to bail our our bait guy on the village. It's very much a stretch goal, though.

Just barely! He goes down on the last arrow. He'll be missed.

We get Gweddry a big chunk of XP. A big issue is that sergeants suck at fighting, and he has no traits, and three promotions to get - if we can snipe kills for him, that's our #1 priority.

I... really don't like it being turn 12 and having no clear objective. What I do like is having a quick shocktrooper.

Oh, thank God. Just in time to stop me from summoning a wave of reinforcements!

I appreciate the rendition of Joe Cotton-eye, but really, there's a time and a place.

Iiii.

So, yeah, this falls in alongside the 'you're having a laugh' series of stretch goals.

Especially given it's full-keeps time for everyone.

This map is a paean to heavy infantry.

If we hang around longer, well... it's tempting. But the exp gain will be minimal, so too the gold. And the bats are overwhelming. We'll lose people, not least this half-promoted infantry...

So, yeah, yeet.

That was... exacting. The early finish condition is an insult. But we had the tools for the job. Playing to our strengths, sticking to what heavy infantry and magi do best, we were able to outlast the enemy, hold our own at night and sweep by day. Keep this idea in mind for next map...

 

[euklyd]

I have such an increased appreciation for Hammer now, wow

ty for the rehabilitation 

[Parrhesia]

I didn't give myself a short break, I just lost track of days. Also oops there went my buffer.

INVASION 2: The allegory of the cave full of ghosts

Spoiler

Oh, God. Oh fucking Christ. Never have I been filled with so much dread. Caves - loyalists are fucking terrible in caves, movement cut to shit, and it's always dark. So cutting through trolls, in permadark, trolls who have full mobility and good evade... trolls who regen...

I hate this map already. I hate it so much, already. I hate this map - I hate, this map.

Crumple zone: one fresh infantry I accidentally gave a name, two green magi.

Okay. That. Got a lot better.

Except the dwarves seem to be... a family, not a clan.

And that's Stonard's contribution for the map... what's Gweddry doing?

Fixing his problem of being terrible at fighting, that's what.

Piss.

The writing has been, highkey, exceptionally bland thus far.

So has this map's comba--

Hhhhhh!!

This mage gets swarmed by ghosts and dies.

Jesus.

A few lucky hits across the board stabilise things - getting yet another shock trooper doesn't hurt. But I'm not gonna lie - we end up needing to scum 2/3 40% dodges to get through the turn.

I think I might in large part be significantly worse at earlygame than mid-late. Which is weird since I'm quantifiably good at multiplayer. But then, people promote fast in multiplayer.

Things get a lot better when we retake this natural chokepoint. And I free a point here seeing that a scout will probably throw himself in to be martyred...

And he does, which eases the burden on people who matter significantly.

One tantalising turn away, which means Yyrreddin is dead as Fuck.

Unfortunately this frees a bat to go kill Dacyn, whose death quote I forget to capture.

Fortunately I get another opportunity immediately after.

Further in doesn't help.

This is a zero-risk turn if the dwarf just recruits in the second tile.

The RNs align. It takes three from three 60% dodges, which is resoundingly unlikely. I hate savescumming, but honestly? I'm tired of this map.

The scout making it robs me of 16 XP, but, like, you know, we're alive. I'll fucking take it.

Goodbye, tantalising chest.

That'd be an okay map if you removed ghosts and bats, but you have no way of fighting ghosts semi-capably, let alone outrunning either unit. Not even magi - spectres SHRED magi at night, and magi only deal 5x3 to ghosts in caves. The map... was bad.

 

[euklyd]

On 8/1/2019 at 6:02 PM, Parrhesia said:

Oh, God. Oh fucking Christ. Never have I been filled with so much dread. Caves - loyalists are fucking terrible in caves, movement cut to shit, and it's always dark. So cutting through trolls, in permadark, trolls who have full mobility and good evade... trolls who regen...

why did you pick this of all campaigns to steal from ike anyways

[Parrhesia]

Hammer and Secrets were out because Ike actually likes dwarfs and undead.
I would rather die than play Northern Rebirth.
He'd already done one long easy loyalist-ish campaign in HTTT.
And I was already slated to do Rise.

INVASION 3: Dork adept

Spoiler

What's... this adept doing... ?

Why does this guy have his own keep.

Well, this seems like a relative breather map after the garbage preceding it.

We should cruise through this. This is a route split. If we go east, we get another route split after that. It's a risk/reward deal, but fuck it, I deserve reward. I deserve to make the earlygame even harder for an even easier lategame! Er, wait. Well, we're doing it anyway because I'm stupid. We pulp the apprentice on the first turn.

Blue recruits this guy. Not much to say. It's basically a cavalryman with the slow trait, and no good traits, and with undead resistances.

We summon our entire recall list, which is six guys.

They push in, even at night, and hey! We get a lieutenant for our troubles. Gweddry is a little less terrible now, and his leadership will be relevant just as soon as I use the recruit function again. He celebrates by nearly dying next turn, but hey, he made it through the important bit.

Uh, are you sure about this?

We clear them off.

Then take the bridge with a view to luring the necromancer.

Enemy phase is uneventful. They don't want to approach is. Unfortunately, this goes for the necro too - but that's fine, we'll just have to go get him ourselves.

The grind never lets up in the west. The far western shock trooper isn't far off being overrun, either; we have a definite time limit here.

Here we go.

Er. Well. Two blows are exactly enough to cave his head in. That was easy.

Map, a.

 

[Parrhesia]

University happened. The clockwork-regular update schedule may be a thing of the past.

INVASION 4: Loyalist don't surf

Spoiler

Unfortunately, by going east last map, we opened ourselves up to More Fucking Undead.

On the bright side, this map is really atmospheric.

This is a really stupid idea; this is what we are going to do.

Tempting though it is to kill this guy.

No, we're gonna punch this guy in the teeth with a pleasant mixture; three green heavy infantry and three veteran shock troopers, and three green magi and one red, one white and one on the brink of promotion.

We're starting to develop a core, at least.

A bunch of these villages are beaten up and lightly damaged. It's a nice touch, one I can't really recall seeing anywhere else.

A night push is ugly, but it's also our only real option when we're on the clock like this.
I reload the turn when it opens with four straight 70% fireballs whiffing. Like, come the fuck on.

This guy opens up Gweddry to finish with a crossbow that I only now realise, when it does a chunky 6x3, was ALSO imbued by the amulet. My first thought is we need to get some bowmen on this shit. My second is that we can't recruit bowmen.

I'm really happy with myself until I discover that leaving your leader isolated in a moat is really stupid. I... have no real excuse for this.

Anyway, when not making unforced errors...

Things go better.

But, slowly.

This looks bad, because it is, but we need to start clearing roadblocks.

Time to lure. Very, very reluctantly. Please bite.

Reminder, because I'd forgotten: plague victims on villages don't turn.

This is reckless, but I need this lure, damn it! I've captured every village in the south and we're still losing money, but there's 28 houses on the map; every turn saved is huge.

It's a happier time to be in the west. Except for the skeleton rider, who runs into the male mage's staff and dies, and for the male mage, who gets zombified right afterwards.

The lich finally let himself be lured. The issue is that it's nightfall, so melee isn't exactly... viable, except for maybe the last shot. Oh, and 45 damage will kill a mage. We don't have a choice, though.

Both magi luck out and survive, and leave the lich on ten health; Gweddry crossbows off the rest with two lucky shots. Shock trooper was the backup plan, and would probably have done the job.

Hey now that I've tanked my economy going east, what if I bitch out now?

Eastern Invasion has not impressed thus far.

The map is bad. Your pivotal push has to happen overnight for the sake of your economy, and the reliance on swamp / beach / water slows down your heavy infantry, who are exactly half your viable troops, to a crawl.

 

[Parrhesia]

INVASION 5: The Peter Molyneux approach to stretch goals

Spoiler

This is a mistake.

Fuck me dead, Dacyn, I get it.

It's not possible. This is a story about regrets.

This map is huge. We don't have much time.
In the western corners, the dark sorcerers to kill to escape. Each has just 100 gold, shouldn't be too much issue.
In the north and south, five knights and a paladin are imprisoned with revenant guards. They're the prize for this map.
In the centre, purple, with 400 gold. Further east, Mal-Ravanal with 500 and most of the map in his pocket.
So, objectives? Save all the knights and fucking gun it to one of the sorcerers.
Using Dacyn's five move as a base, we're 3 turns from the NW, 4 from the SW, 5 from the paladin in the far north and 6 from the knight in the far southeast. We have 26 turns. I'm using all my money.

I hate this a lot. What I think I want to do is go for NW, since it's closer, and send out a ranging force SE at the same time, winning the map before they're overrun.

Turn 1's reinforcements. Purple and black are going easy on me, for now. The map is gorgeous. I don't know why the maps are so much prettier in what has otherwise been a fairly wretched campaign to date.

A keep of heavy infantry, including one freshie. A keep of magi, including one freshie (and a guy with good traits from the recall list who spent last map picking up southern villages).

Initial skirmishing buys the southern platoon time, I hope. But the odds already suck, and it's already almost night.

This guy decides to just eat every single attack.

We have 14 units. The rest of the map has 64. And they're all converging on this position. And it's... still... dusk... ? I make a decision. The decision goes: Fuck This. I roll back a few turns. Keeping my recruitment. But we're gonna do this high-speed, low-drag.

Ughhhh. Why? Literally why?

Dacyn fragging a ghost triggers a whole Thing.

Why does this map exist?

We maneuvre defensively to shield our guys, to let them make a break for the skeletons.

This guy goes down, and when he does, the southwest revenant attacks and kills his escort.

Interestingly, Yry retains his white colour scheme, just as Dacyn is green. It's a little disorienting, but I like it.

We free this guy. Ysurell promotes into a red mage. All my intelligent magi are going the red path for the forseeable future.

It's now a race to free the paladin and kill the mage in about four turns before we all die.

The knights are basically worthless... here. They'll be invaluable in future maps, and make for easy paladin promotions to help with undead in the future.

The spectre decides to promote Gweddry. Enna manages a bunch of dodges to survive.

This is... not the happiest board-state I've ever been in.

But it looks to be holdi--

Fuck.
You.

At this stage, I'm willing to say fuck it and try again. It sticks, the second time. Not a whole lot happier, but.

This campaign is rated 'Easy'.

This... does not feel good, but we get the last guy out.

Hhhh.

Oh, fuck off!
Wesnoth breaks down if the day/night cycle is fucked with.

I savescummed the everliving fuck out of this turn. This turn, and this turn alone. Strangely, the successful turn - aka, no tier 3s dying, Gweddry the usual suspect but the archmage and even paladin potentially falling  - is the only one which sees the red mage fall. This is an acceptable loss. Any situation in which a guy who is a T2 kill off promotion to archmage dies, unluckily, being an acceptable loss... that's a bad situation. But it's a bad map. You just do not have the cattle. The angle was terrible, but it was the only plausible one. The heavy infantry can't slog through the swamp, otherwise.

Fuck off.

This is not a good time.

 

[BrightBow]

Of course the game was really insistent that you don't want to keep going east.
...but then gain, I also don't really see the point of any optional maps where your entire purpose is to fail miserably.

You know, I'd say that if you gonna do an optional map like that, where you can confront the main villain like 10 chapters too early and face appropriately terrible odds... just let the player beat the campaign right then and there if they somehow manage to win anyway.

As is, if you do manage to beat the Lich here, he will just teleport away. Won't even end the map or anything if I interpret the scripts correctly. Talk about a letdown.

Edited August 10, 2019 by BrightBow