Let’s Play Invasion from the Unknown 2.0 (Parts I and II)

[Inky]

S17 - Voice of the Armageddon

[This is my second try. Galas died to some extremely bad luck the first time.]

Last time, we successfully made our way into the lands of the Chaos Empire.

Two days into our journey, we came across a road quite evidently built by our enemies amidst the tall mountains not long ago. A new confrontation was imminent.

This scenario isn’t quite as easy as the status table would indicate – there are a lot of high level enemies already placed on the map. We're also facing chaotic enemies, and this scenario takes place during perpetual night!

Turn 2


I recall some powerful veterans, and since we’ll be fighting some extremely powerful chaotic enemies, it really helps to get some fresh recruits as distractions. Skeletons are perfect for the job, being quite durable for the affordable price of 14 gold and able to do some nice damage too especially with leadership.

We start off in the north; there’s a pretty weak enemy in the center (so we can use his keep to recruit some reinforcements later), and a very powerful enemy in the south.

Turn 3

A scouting bat reveals the central enemy leader:




Our units continue making their way south, to a set of bridges over a swamp.

Turn 5


We started to advance cautiously over the bridge last turn, but the undead were even more cautious and didn’t come out to attack.
Looks like we’ll have to attack first.


We first use our arcane heavy hitters to blast the two skeletons blocking the bridges out of the way.


Next we zap the rayblade in the northeastern castle hex with Mal Keshar and kill off the nearby demons, using the… less important… units to screen the others.

Turn 6


Well, the cannon fodder pretty much all vanished last turn, but on the bright side everyone else is doing just fine and we’ve lured the necromancer leader out.

He’s really beefy though and we only have a couple hexes on him, so he’ll be a real challenge to take down…


…just kidding! Mal Laraghor, meet Unor. (To be extra safe, we first moved Elynia next to Mal Laraghor to illuminate him.)


And we easily clean out the rest of the pathetic army here. The easy part of the scenario is over now; now for the hard part!

Our vampire bat starts scouting further south…


It’s our old pal Mal Hekuba, with a bunch of high level undead with him and some nasty imps too.


Trash talking is one of Mal Hekuba's many talents, along with vanishing as soon as he's attacked.

Turn 7


Mal Hekuba starts recruiting, though it sure doesn’t stop him from talking…


In anticipation of the nasty enemies we’ll be facing, I blow my remaining gold on a prowler and more spam.

We then just wait around the keep for the imps to come to us, since we don’t want to advance further and get into range of the high level units stationed in the southern fortress.

Turn 9


The trio of imps has arrived: a level 4 armageddon imp, a level 3 gutwrencher imp and a level 2 blood imp.

We’ll first try to clear out the level 3 Gutwrencher imp with Mal Keshar’s help.


Mal Keshar gets lucky and demolishes the level 3 imp, so we start working on the Armageddon imp.

As usual for really dangerous chaotic enemies, to minimize damage taken we first have Elynia illuminate it, then have another unit slow it (using the shyde from the 70% defense forest hex), then have Elynia attack in ranged.


We then have some more heavy hitters start pounding on the Armageddon imp, and the rest of the units manage to get rid of the blood imp in the south.

On the enemy turn, the Armageddon imp gets the bright idea to attack Elynia in ranged. This is what happens to things which attack Elynia in ranged:



Turn 10


Our troubles are far from over though, as a horde of necrophages and soulless starts heading our way.


The enchantress and Erathan soften up a necrophage for the skeleton to finish. Then we use the necromancer, Elynia and Mal Keshar to soften up two more.


We finish off the nearby necrophages and use a poor innocent bat as bait (also to help block that hex).

Turn 11


Due to some very good luck last turn we only lost the vampire bat, even though a forefather came out to attack the ghost.


The enchantress attacks and leaves the forefather at 1 HP, which is perfect for the ghost to finish off and level up.


The ghost levels into a shadow, and Elynia and a spectre help the skeleton finish off the Chaos bowman, leveling into a cool death baron! (Well, it looks cool at least. Trying to get it to go anywhere useful with its 5 movement when there’s bad terrain is not so cool…)


Galas and Unor team up to kill the remaining crossbowman and everyone else gets to work clearing out corpses.

I use the bat to shield the wounded prowler but sadly, I carelessly left Unor exposed and next to a castle hex which the enemies could use…

Turn 12


The necrophage and soulless teamed up to kill Unor, my favorite unit
Ah well, Mal Keshar can be my new favorite unit now!


We clear out the two corpses (rest in peace Unor, your valiant contributions will not be forgotten) and try to start luring out the high level enemies out one by one.

Turn 13


We managed to lure out one of the ghasts at least. Apparently the other ghast and spectre on the left didn’t want to come out to attack the necromancer in the castle.


We kill the ghast and try to lure out the rightmost spectre next. Galas also attempts to bait the other ghast.

Turn 14


We’ve successfully lured out the nearby high level enemies!


We clear them out and use the walking corpse to try to lure Mal Hekuba out onto 40% defense.

Turn 15


It works! That corpse was the best 8 gold I ever spent.


As usual we first illuminate him, and then attempt to slow him. The enchantress is pretty much guaranteed to slow him and survive.


We then soften him up with Elynia and a spectre.


We try to finish with the death baron, but annoyingly Mal Hekuba just runs away before we can finish him, denying us the valuable XP!




Losses: Unor (he will be missed!) and a lot of spam (ghost, skeleton, 3 bats, corpse)

[kjn]

Just remember that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

I agree, all too often "free" loyal units are a liability since future scenarios assume you have them even if they're not heroes. (I think there's sort of a vicious cycle: Most players restart whenever they lose a loyal -> most campaign authors assume players have all the loyals and balance the scenarios accordingly -> therefore it's usually a good idea to restart whenever you lose a loyal.)

I was more thinking about the unit named Tanstafaal.

[Inky]

kjn: Ahh, I assumed you were referring to my comment at the end of S14 about getting a free loyal unit!

S18 – Ashes of Wesmere

Six more days passed before we reached the end of the mountains, and we came upon the desolate landscape that once saw three godlike beings do battle for Irdya’s fate.

Mal Keshar is really enjoying the scenery.




Yep, we’ve gone for way too long without a cave scenario. Not that it makes much of a difference with all these perpetual night scenarios.


This is a pretty short and relatively easy scenario.

Here’s the overall layout of the map:


There’s a keep with a Chaos Empire leader near the south, and the cave entrance we need to get to is in the very southeast corner.

Turn 2


Since there aren’t any villages on this map, we’ll start next scenario with minimum gold no matter what we do, so we mind as well spend all our gold.

The key to this level is spectres, spectres, and more spectres. They’re the only ones who can move well through the difficult sand terrain covering this map, and their melee arcane damage is the only good way to take down the nasty enemies we’ll be seeing soon.

Turn 3


These drones come in two creepy varieties: the extremely dangerous assault drones, and the slightly less damaging but much faster sentry drones. They’re weak to arcane and nasty in ranged, making spectres the ideal method of taking them down.

This scenario is basically an unsettling preview of what is to come; expect to see lots of these drones in the future!


Our Drone Extermination Force of spectres gets to work, and we use a skeleton to block up a weak point in our formation.

Turn 4


The skeleton died alarmingly quickly (tip: do not bring skeletal undead on this scenario; the drones do impact damage) but at least it soaked up two nasty drone attacks.


With some difficulty, we manage to rid ourselves of the three nearby drones. We clear away some of the fog to the south, revealing… more drones.

Turn 5


Even spectres are in danger of dying, if you let multiple drones gang up on them.


Blissfully, that was the last of those level 2 drones. The strange alien looking terrain full of holes will randomly spawn level 1 drones each turn though.

Turn 6

We keep heading south…


JUST WHAT WE NEEDED






The good news: there are only level 1 drones around now.

Turn 7


The bad news: there are A LOT

We start taking out as many drones as we can, focusing on those four drones in a line in the center, as well as the two drones in the upper left.


We manage to wipe out the four in the center, though we don’t manage to finish off the two on the left.

Turn 8


They’re everywhere!! Since most of our units are on the left, we’ll focus on the drones on the left this turn and ignore the rightmost drones for now.


We thankfully manage to wipe out all the nearby drones.

Turn 9


The chaos empire troops start to arrive from the south. I have never been so happy to see demons and imps because at least they AREN’T DRONES!


We continue getting rid of nearby drones and start heading east while healing. We make sure to put Mal Keshar on 60% defense, since he’s susceptible to being chain attacked by drones.

Turn 10


Several drones kindly saved us some trouble by suiciding themselves into Mal Keshar last turn.


Thankfully there aren’t that many Chaos Empire units around, so we easily continue to make our way south while healing.

Turn 11


We get a glimpse of the enemy leader, all by himself.


We spend this turn finishing off the rest of his army.

Turn 13


We finish off the enemy leader. We’re now basically done with the fighting for the entire scenario; the path southeast is mostly devoid of enemies.

Turn 15


Though one thing to watch out for is these nasty things. They’re invisible and can skirmish, so it’s best to keep a very tight formation where none of your units can be backstabbed.

Turn 16


Yep, more of these annoying things. Due to our tight formation they couldn’t manage to backstab anything though.

Turn 17


We get a glimpse of the exit, guarded a lone brave soulless rider. I was pretty paranoid and completely expected some kind of ambush here, but it turns out there wasn’t one.

Turn 19


Since there’s no early finish bonus we could have stayed and farmed XP off the various units scattered around the map, but doing so would be rather boring, so we just move to the cave and end the scenario.


The most dreaded sentence in all of Wesnoth has to be "You will start the next scenario with the defined minimum starting gold."

Gold is really scarce in this part of the campaign, which is why quality (AMLAed units with good traits) is better than quantity (leveling lots of veterans) for this half of the campaign.


Losses: a skeleton

[Sudipta]

Thanks a lot for returning to this. I loved your lets play part 1 and have been waiting for you to start the second part. I have played the old version of IftU before, so i am using your playthrough to know the differences beforehand, , since i plan to start the new version after a few days, after i finish some other UMC's that i have been pending for quite some time.
Also, i find it remarkable how you accepted Unor's death so easily. I would have replayed the scenario just to keep him alive. Anyway, keep up the great work. Your witty comments and jokes really breathe life into your playthrough. The best part is how u masterfully depict Mal Keshar for the Undead God he really is!! I really love your take on Mal Keshar and his actions. IMO, he is the greatest character in the history of Wesnoth, especially the stuff he does in AtS.
Btw, are u planning to make a LP on AtS in the future? If u do it, i am sure its gonna be beyond epic! I plan to do a replay of IftU and AtS as soon as i get the time.

[ahmannar]

First of all thanks for these awesome and descriptive walktroughs. I had planned to start this campaign again(lost all my saves a few months ago when i was near the end of it ) and this should be helpful to see another point of view.
The question about losing your berserk champion is indeed a good one. At least i am a person that can´t move on when losing "special" units(be they loyal ones, with some kind of equipment or something not possible to recruit) and i tend to always start the scenario again if that happens. Don´t you feel the need for it in a situation like that?

[Inky]

Thanks for the comments, both of you, I really appreciate it!

Losing Unor: Well, as with all berserking units it was only a matter of time before he died; honestly I'm surprised he survived for so long!

I do sometimes restart to resurrect loyals/my favorite units, but I find that when I go into a scenario with the mindset that I won't restart unless absolutely necessary, it makes me plan more carefully and play better as a result. (I'll probably restart any time someone dies in the last section though, because on my first playthrough of IftU I lost too many veterans and got stuck, and had to replay a lot of scenarios to fix it.)

AtS LP: I'm thinking about it- AtS is my favorite campaign after all. I think there's a revision planned sometime in the future, so maybe I'll wait until then.

S19 – Under the Sands

I do not know for certain whether I would have changed our fate had I the power. There was a lesson to be learned from our next encounter with the enemy, and perhaps, in time, it would prove crucial for our survival.

Because soon after entering the caverns we would begin to realize the full breadth of the menace that threatened to end all life on Irdya, and I would personally bear witness to the terrifying power of Chaos.

We’re stuck in a dark, rotten cave that reeks of sewage. Great, this trip just couldn't get any worse...


Oops, spoke too soon.




Galas collapses, meaning Elynia now has to do all the work (as usual) and lead us out of the caves.


You know, we’ve gone a really long time without a massive dungeon crawling scenario. I was starting to think I was playing the wrong campaign.

Turn 2


We get 140 starting gold, which is 7 recalls (we made sure not to let our income go negative on turn 1). I get another healer, and due to the abundance of cave terrain and chasms, I go for a mobile ghostly undead army.

Turn 3


We start heading out of the entrance. Note the apparently safe position of my wraith, who had big dreams of one day growing up to be a spectre.

Turn 4


Surprise! This cave is full of these invisible skirmishing backstabbing shadow minions, so get ready to randomly lose veterans for no reason.


We get revenge for our wraith, clear out the level 2 drone, and form a line.

Turn 5


We get mobbed by drones, but these level 1 drones are really more of an annoyance than a threat.

We’ll first have the spectres fly over the chasm and clear out the blue drones.


The rest of the units just stay back and heal. Mal Keshar stays in the back, because otherwise he could be killed by the drones attacking into him one after another.

Turn 7


We continue clearing our way through the horde of runner drones. The pesky shadow minions continue to show up every so often (mostly one by one, thankfully).


We get rid of the remaining enemies in the north (the northern path is just a dead end).

We then start heading south toward the drone leader.

Turn 9


We rid ourselves of the drone leader and start exploring west.

Those tall blue glowing things have 0% defense and can be drained, meaning spectres and wraiths can use them to get a free full heal!

Turn 11


We start heading west, and get a glimpse of a bunch of chaos empire troops coming from the south. I was a bit careless and left Erathan with 43 HP on 50% defense in range of one of the assault drones…

Turn 12


Yikes, that was close! Fortunately Erathan managed to dodge one of the four drone attacks.

Meanwhile, Mal Keshar gives the team some friendly encouragement.


We use the ghostly undead to get rid of the two drones, and I put the other units next to Erathan since I’m paranoid that one of those invisible shadow minions will get to him.

Turn 14

We advance westward cautiously, since those chaos invokers aren’t to be taken lightly.

Showing wisdom unusual for their kind, the invokers refrain from attacking Mal Keshar.
We’ll try to get rid of all 3 this turn, since they can wreak havoc on the ghostly undead.


Elynia and the shyde take one down…


Another gets backstabbed to death…


And the potential threats in the Chaos army are all gone now!

Turn 16

We get rid of the remaining chaos units and move into the large central chamber filled with a variety of species.

The spectres happily start devouring the local wildlife.

Turn 18


We backstabbed the eyestalk for the free XP, though we attract a bunch of drones our way by doing so.


We clear out all the drones, but as usual they will constantly respawn from the dark hive areas.

Turn 20


A couple drones appeared out of nowhere last turn.


We send a small delegation to deal with them, and get a glimpse of a Matrix Core. Each core destroyed in this scenario will reduce the gold of some of the enemies next scenario by a bit, so it’s worthwhile to do if you can find them. There are 5 total, but some of them are very hard to get to.

Turn 21


Ka-boom! The first matrix core goes down.

Turn 24


Meanwhile, our group in the center has been slowly making their way across the chasm.
It’s kind of slow going though, as we’re constantly harassed by enemy spawns along the way.


We clear them out and get a glimpse of the Chaos Empire leader. He really must have drawn the short straw when it came to deciding which location to be assigned to.

Turn 26


We start making our way towards the leader. To the east is a dead end with another matrix core.

Turn 27


Two cores down!

Turn 28


We start working on the enemy leader, making sure to illuminate and slow him with Elynia.

Turn 29


And Mal Keshar finishes him off. The poor guy wasn’t even important enough for a cookie-cutter death speech.

Turn 30


We continue on south toward a swampy area, guarded by some hideous creatures which look like they have way more appendages than strictly necessary.

Turn 33


We head further into the infested swamp, in what seems to be a pretty safe formation…

Turn 34


It’s official: the Shadow Minion has replaced the Elvish Scout as my new least favorite Wesnoth unit.

Losing that spectre was extremely upsetting, as he had 3 AMLAs!


We get revenge for the spectre and advance towards a fork: the right path leads to a massive hive of drones and matrix cores, while the southern fork doesn’t have enemies and just leads straight to the exit.

Turn 36


We start exploring the hive, though it seems Erathan is scared and wants to go home.

Turn 37


Two nightgaunts team up to get rid of matrix core #3.

There are actually two more matrix cores much deeper in the hive, but getting to them is very involved so I skipped them.
Destroying them will make the next scenario easier though (and next scenario is quite difficult) so it's probably worthwhile to destroy them if you can.

Turn 38


Whew, that was scary!! The nightgaunt barely survives a beating by a horde of drones. Good thing he can skirmish!


Everyone runs away for their precious unlives!

Turn 39


We move Elynia to the exit in the south, but she will refuse to leave if Mal Keshar is still in that hive.

Turn 40


Mal Keshar runs out of the hive, pursued by a bunch of drones.


Let’s get out of here!!

Cutscene:


We move to a keep in the south and try to revive Galas…






I can already see it: The Epic Story of how the Grand Lord Galas passed out and had to be carried through the entire cave while everyone else did the fighting.


I’m rich!! I just can’t wait to see what I’m going to recruit next scenario with this 7 gold!
I had pretty terrible income because those annoying shadow minions had gone on a village grabbing spree in the north. I hope they go extinct!!


Losses: a spectre and an experienced wraith.

[Iris]

Worth noting that if you haven’t gotten to Dark Hive (S22B) yet,

Spoiler:

there is a minor balancing change in the newest release as of this writing (RC 7) that may have non-negligible implications for it.

Also about the matrices,

Spoiler:

you actually want to destroy as many of them as possible, especially if your gold is running low like in your case. Certain enemy sides in the next scenario get an initial gold factor of 1 - 40*(destroyed_matrices/total_matrices)/100. So you should probably be fine even without the additional carryover gold.

[Inky]

shadowm: thanks for the comments! I've updated the campaign (S21 onwards will be from the latest version) and I edited my advice in the previous post (to say that it's worthwhile to destroy all the matrix cores).

S20 – The Heart

[Second attempt. I wasted too many turns attacking the northern leader on the first attempt, and ran out of time.]

Cutscene:
On our way to the Chaos Empire’s capital, we meet up with an unexpected ally.



It's our useless dwarven allies from the end of Part I, and if you think they're going start being useful now you're going to be sorely disappointed.




Elynia’s plan is to start a zombie apocalypse in the enemy cities as a distraction while we assault the capital with the dwarves – she’s starting to think like Mal Keshar now!

----------------
The day of the battle arrives…

This so-called Emperor would feel my wrath. He would pay dearly for what he did to Anlindë, to my lord Lédinor, and to the thousands of elves he tortured and killed in the Valley. This would be the end of his reign of blood and destruction.

First she wants to start a zombie apocalypse, now she starts getting sarcastic – she’s been spending too much time around Mal Keshar.


That battle speech was just a little bit underwhelming.


Althurin shows Galas how a real battle speech is done! That’s 9 exclamation points, compared to Galas’ measly 3.


Even the dimwitted Chaos leaders can give a proper battle speech!

Scenario setup:

This is somewhat of a finale for the campaign, and is the last scenario which uses the full recall list (so the less important veterans are expendable).

Defeating all enemy leaders is a much more difficult objective and is likely more trouble than it is worth, especially since there aren't so many turns.


The allied dwarves are under our control this time, meaning they won't be quite as useless as before.

The amount of gold these enemy sides have depends on how many matrix cores you got rid of last scenario (they start with about 360 gold and it's reduced by 8% for every core you destroyed - I got rid of 3 of 5 for a 24% reduction).
There is also a fourth enemy leader who will appear on Turn 2.

Here is the overall layout of the map (which looks like a 5 year old wrote all over it; I have yet to master the art of writing with the mouse):

There are 3 enemy leaders inside the fortress, and a fourth leader will appear on Turn 2 in the northeast.

The fortress can only be entered through the two 1-hex wide bridges near the top, meaning it’s essential to have ghostly undead who can fly over the chasm to help break the bottleneck.
To complicate matters further, a large group of demon zephyrs and drones will spawn from the chasm surrounding the fort every so often starting from Turn 3.

Turn 1, First Dusk


I recruit the low level fodder first to save on upkeep, since I started with almost minimum gold and need to make the most out of it.

Next, we get to control the dwarves' side:

As the objectives imply, the dwarves are expendable. Their primary job in this scenario will be to lure off and kill assorted units like demon zephyrs spawning from the chasm so that they don’t go east towards Galas’ units.


We get access to some cool level 2 recruits. It doesn’t really matter what you recruit with the dwarves though, since they're only a distraction force anyway.


I start spamming fighters, as they are relatively cheap, durable and damaging. They are also very slow (4 movement) so I recruit them first so that I can follow up with 5 movement scouts and ulfserkers later.

Turn 2, The Short Dark


A nasty enemy leader suddenly appears in the north!


However, the more difficult (and more important) front will be the southwestern one, so I decide to just ignore the northern leader for now and try to rush southwest.

I start recalling veterans, calculating my gold so that I'll have exactly 120 gold (for 6 recalls) next turn.

Turn 3, Second Dawn


A horde of demon zephyrs starts coming from the southwest. I leave Elynia on the village, since the zephyrs like to range attack her and often end up dead as a result.


I spend all my remaining gold on recalls (recalling the fastest units last) and everyone else heads straight southwest.

One very important thing to note: the coming day is the only daylight we’re going to get for the entire scenario before it turns perpetually night, so we'll need to make the most out of it.

Turn 4, Second Morning

A couple things happened last turn.

The good: The group of demon zephyrs all attacked Elynia in ranged and pretty much wiped themselves out.
The bad: A whole ton of new enemies (the light teal ring of units on the minimap) have spawned from the chasm!


We clear out the two wounded demon zephyrs and everyone continues to rush southwest, so that we can meet the bulk of the chaos army while it's still day.


Meanwhile the dwarves head southeast and start attacking a demon warrior, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they got attacked by a demon warrior...

Turn 5, Second Midday


Since it’s broad daylight we can safely continue to attack the chaos units here.
First we’ll get rid of the nearby invoker and drone.


A necromancer turns the invoker into a corpse, which I do at every opportunity in this scenario- free instant cannon fodder!

The enchantress then blasts the drone from the village. Uninspired by Galas' battle speech, she decides to make her own.


Mal Keshar and Elynia then get rid of two more nearby units, and an expendable ghost and skeleton help cover the left flank.


Meanwhile, we’re being flanked by the northern leader’s forces. Galas pours out all his life’s anger onto an unsuspecting chaos lorekeeper.


We finish off the lorekeeper and soften up the chaos invaders.


On the dwarves’ side, we’ve attracted a few assorted units our way.


With the help of ulfserkers, we clear them out.
We’ll basically be camping in this three village cluster picking off units for the entire scenario, so I’ll skip over most of the future dwarves’ turns.

Turn 6, Second Afternoon


Because it’s still day the chaos army has done a pretty pathetic job attacking, not even managing to kill the cannon fodder.

We’ll start by killing the two rightmost level 2 enemies (the blood imp and demon zephyr) since they’re the most exposed.


With the help of the death knight’s leadership, we manage to feed the kills to the two ghosts.

Our next goal will be to kill off the two level 2 demon grunts on the left, since they pose the biggest threat.


Mal Keshar and a lich successfully team up to kill the northern one, but we get some rather frustrating bad luck with the southern one, with the enchantress missing all four of her magical attacks.

Turn 7, Second Dusk


Sadly our only enchantress got killed by two demon grunts, which was rather infuriating since one of them should have been dead last turn.

To add to our problems, there’s a fleet of demon zephyrs coming at us from the west, which is the biggest threat at the moment.
I’ll send the lich team to zap the northern one, and the ghostly undead squad to take care of one of the further ones.


We get more bad luck (which turns out to be a trend in this scenario) with the wounded spectre not managing to land a single hit (which also means he doesn’t heal) and the useless nightgaunt missing all 3 attacks, so we don't manage to finish off the zephyr.


Well at least the rest of the units are doing better. Elynia and a shyde get rid of two nearby wounded units, and on the right the death knight gets rid of the assault drone.


We then put our nightgaunts and necromancers to good use on the remaining units.
We also successfully level both ghosts in the process, with one becoming a wraith and the other a shadow.

Turn 8 (from now on, all turns are night)


Finally, we get some good luck and the demon zephyrs completely fail at trying to fry the undead in the west.


We finish off the group of 3 enemies in the west, and meanwhile the necromancers start blasting the doom guards, which are very resistant to damage types besides cold.
We'll then just have Elynia illuminate and slow the remaining doom guard.


Meanwhile, we’ve been completely ignoring the northern army, which is starting to catch up to us from behind.

Turn 9


In the southwest, we’re facing a bunch of berserking hounds and mages.
The dogs make a tasty snack for spectres, who can even heal up from attacking them.


Erathan and the death knight then get rid of the chaos magus, and we also use a nightgaunt to soften up an invoker so he can be turned into a corpse.


Once again we’ve been focusing all our attention southwest and completely ignoring the northern flank.

Turn 10


We're being attacked from all sides now, as another horde of flying units has spawned from the southwest and we’re also being assaulted from the north.

This time, we’re going to attack north and retreat from the southwest, since we want to lure all those demon zephyrs onto land where our land forces can help wipe them out.


We first get rid of the nearby northern enemies blocking our way: a necromancer makes another corpse out of a dying invoker (having extra cannon fodder is extremely useful in this scenario!) and Galas helps a skeleton level up to a revenant.


Everyone else runs north, and some expendable units help cover the vulnerable southern flank.

Turn 11


We’re being besieged from all directions! Fortunately, we only lost a walking corpse last turn.

Our first priority this turn is to get rid of the demon zephyrs in the west to allow our ghostly undead access to the dangerous assault drone on the left.


With the help of magical units we clear out the western blocking enemies, allowing us to set up a nice backstab on the assault drone.


With the assault drone out of the way, we next start clearing away the zephyrs and other enemies in the south.


Finally, we clear out the wounded northern enemies. I made a mistake and didn’t notice the rayblade in the north when I moved Elynia to the village, so I had to send my shydes north to help make kills and shield Elynia.

Turn 12


We continue to be plagued by demon zephyrs, but fortunately we didn't lose anyone last turn and the attacks from both directions are nearing an end.


We clean out the nearby enemies, and things are finally looking good here.

Turn 13


We can now begin to advance across the bridge.

Turn 14


The experienced wraith got fried by the demon zephyr (I am having an awful time keeping my wraith/spectre units alive this campaign).

Time to fight our way past the bridge bottleneck.


A spectre demolishes the demon zephyr and Mal Keshar softens up the doom guard, which is finished off by a spectre (flying undead are absolutely essential for breaking through this bottleneck).


A death knight then obliterates the chaos invoker, freeing up a hex for the lich to come out and attack.

Meanwhile we get rid of a nearby sentry tower, which will bombard any unit next to it with a 100% chance to hit ranged attack. Two nightgaunts on opposite sides will automatically kill a 130 HP tower from full health, which is the only good way to take them down (though I miscalculated here and used a shadow instead by accident).

Turn 15


Everyone ganged up on the southern nightgaunt, who is left with 2 HP! Thankfully I had the foresight to use the highest HP nightgaunt in that hex, since it is the most exposed.


In the east, we start clearing away the nearby enemies and working on the leader, though we get unlucky and don’t manage to finish him. I make sure to avoid the hexes next to the sentry towers, as their fire ranged damage would fry the ghostly undead.

We continue to push into the fort, and start whittling down the western leader (I put the death knight in the most exposed position, because I consider him the most expendable of my level 3 veterans).


Meanwhile, the dwarven keep is under siege from some of the northern enemy’s forces. Althurin will just take advantage of his good movement in hills to run away to the south.

Turn 16


We got some good luck last turn, with the enemy not managing to do any serious damage.


In the east we finish off the enemy leader and clear out the demon zephyr. I can’t get rid of the sentry tower this turn so I just slow it so it won’t fry my nightgaunt.

In the west, we illuminate and slow the leader, who is the biggest threat around. The rest of the army starts pouring into the fortress.

Turn 17


The enemies ganged up on the death knight last turn and finished him off, though he was expendable anyway.

We start killing our way through all these nearby wounded enemies.



Meanwhile, the dwarves have been picking off stragglers northwest of the fortress this entire time; they start making their way across the bridge, though realistically they won't be able to do much here.

Turn 18


We attracted some high level enemies from the south, and meanwhile a fresh horde of flying units has shown up from the chasm yet again.


Everyone retreats further west into the fortress.

Turn 19


We’ve lured out a few more enemies from the south, and the demon zephyrs and some invokers from the northern army are bothering us in the north.


We zap the southern enemies into oblivion, and send a bunch of ghostly undead to deal with the northern enemies.


Meanwhile our dwarven units are pretty much getting wiped out by the zephyr horde. Good thing they’re expendable!

Turn 20


We’ve finally gotten rid of most of the enemies around.


In the north, our ghostly undead venture out to pick up some last minute free experience.


And in the south, we start pushing towards the center of the fortress.

Turn 21


The lich almost dies, but our way into the center of the fortress is mostly clear now!


We made it!!


Just in time too, as Althurin and the dwarves were in a pretty tight spot over here.


Galas really needs some lessons in money management; I think he has a chronic spending problem.


Losses: the enchantress, death knight, wraith, revenant, 3 walking corpses


This is basically my whole recall list.

[Delicius169]

I played 20 scenario, Heart yesterday.
And in my gameplay dwarfs side was the strong one, the one who could hurt the most. I ve given potion of berseker to the dwarf rune master (the leadear of this side), and as it also ads some resistances, he has about 70-80 %resistances on physical. And because he is leader, enemy preferes to attack on him. So he kills alot of enemies in retalion
Also I used ulfsekers- they are most valuable in this scenario-against towers, which has no meele attack.

But I am playing on easy difficulty, thought I dont have advantage of knowing what is going to happen....

[Inky]

Delicius169: Wow, a berserking Althurin sounds awesome indeed!! (It's too bad that he is only usable in that one scenario in Part 2.)

S21- Innuendo

[Two restarts due to losing units in the initial bottleneck fights.]


Even the doors are our enemies here. On the bright side, bashing them in is an educational experience giving 4 XP per door.


Has this ever worked? I doubt even a walking corpse is dumb enough to fall for that.


It’s highly recommended to restart whenever anyone dies, as there are quite a few scenarios still left in the campaign.


I called some earlier scenarios massive dungeon crawls, but I spoke too soon – this scenario is a massive dungeon crawl.

Turn 1

This scenario takes place indoors where all units do normal damage, though later scenarios will be underground so chaotic units will be especially useful to bring.

We’re allowed to bring 8 veterans for the rest of the campaign, so I go for:
- 2 shydes (healing and slowing)
- 2 necromancers (arcane resistance, making free corpses!)
- lich (cold resistance, for zapping the cold damage demons)
- 2 spectres (for taking out assault/sentry drones, and scouting)
- nightgaunt (skirmishing and scouting)


Most of these units have the resilient trait and some AMLAs, which really helps their survivability.

Turn 2


A welcoming party of chaos units comes flooding out of the passage.


In what will be our main tactic in this scenario, we just form a solid line so any unit is only reachable from 2 hexes, and let them come.

Turn 3


We start clearing out the wounded enemies, and with the help of the skirmishing nightgaunt, we easily get rid of most of the initial force.


The northeast room where the chaos invader came from is empty, so everyone heads further west.

Turn 4


The path west splits into a southern fork and a northern one.

Turn 5

Elynia explores the southern passage – what surprises await us?


Nope, nothing special over here. Just the usual massive chamber full of enemies.

Turn 6


The northern fork turns out to be a dead end, but with a nice potion giving +1 movement and +1 ranged damage.


Meanwhile in the west, there are a ton of dangerous enemies, so we’ll just camp in the bottleneck and pick them off slowly for the next few turns.

After many turns of rotating and attacking in the bottleneck…

Turn 14

In addition to the enemies already in the chamber, there’s an enemy leader in the west whose army (consisting mostly of chaos invokers) will arrive and further clog up the bottleneck.

Two demon warriors beat up Galas, but now they’re ready to be blasted by Mal Keshar and the lich.


Erathan then gets rid of the chaos magus, and now we’ve gotten rid of the most threatening enemies around.

Turn 18


After several more turns we finally make it through the horde of enemies and we’re left with some wounded invokers, which means...


The necromancers gleefully bash the invokers' skulls in using their plague staffs, producing free corpses!

Turn 20


We start to explore the large southern chamber, encountering only scattered enemies now.
There are two paths leading north (which will join together later).

Turn 22


In the northeastern path, a necromancer tries to lure out the chaos magus and lich since he has good arcane resistance.

Turn 23

Everyone else heads west, and some units explore the small dead end rooms in the southwest.

452 field reports?! The Warlord probably spent more time writing these things than Galas spent writing in his journal.

As expected, the Chaos Warlord who killed Anlinde managed to survive the cave-in.


We get a glimpse of an enemy leader in the northwest, along with a couple chaos razerman guards.

Turn 25


In the northeast, our way is blocked by two gates, so these units will head west to help out with the leader.

Turn 26


In the southwest, Galas gets a nice HP boost, and we also loot a chest with 140 gold which we won’t be able to use anytime soon. There’s also a bow which would give an archer unit the marksman special (though I neglected to pick it up since I forgot that Erathan uses bows).

Turn 27


Meanwhile we start approaching the northwest leader.

Turn 28


And down goes the leader. The touchgem north of him opens one of the gates to the east.

Turn 31

We start making our way northeast.

There were some high level undead in the chamber, which we baited out with the help of a corpse.

Turn 32


The spectre on the left opens another gate blocking our way northwest.

Turn 33


We get a glimpse of the enemy leader here, an ancient lich. He has a large movement range so we make sure to stay back with most of our units.

Turn 35


We lure the undead further south and get rid of them, being careful to stay outside of the range of the ancient lich leader. The bone shooters are the only somewhat threatening enemies, and they are easily destroyed by spectres.


Meanwhile, some units go exploring in the east, which just turns out to be an empty dead end, though they do pick up some free experience.

Turn 39


A few turns later, we’ve gotten rid of most of the undead and are ready to advance on the leader.


Time to put our corpse fodder to good use! It turns out there are also two dangerous wraiths hanging around here.

Turn 40


The leader and wraiths just couldn’t resist the smell of fresh corpses.
We'll get rid of the wraiths using our arcane magical units, and then kill the abomination to make a space so we can slow the leader.


We got some pretty bad luck trying to kill the ghoul but at least we managed to slow the ancient lich.

Turn 41


Fortunately, the leader has decided to run away like a coward rather than try to attack.


We first get rid of the ghoul and use Elynia to slow the ancient lich again (she’s guaranteed to survive this turn, and we should be able to kill the leader this turn).


We successfully slow the leader, and now he gets to meet a REAL ancient lich!


Finally, a necromancer finishes him off. We then activate the touchgem on his keep, which opens the gate from earlier leading further east.

Turn 45

Everyone spends several turns walking back south toward the newly opened passage.

There are some assorted enemies in the passage, but nothing we can’t easily handle.

Turn 47

We kill off the enemies in the passage and start to advance further...

Now what? It can't be worse than an ancient lich, can it?


It's worse...
Don’t worry, Galas has a brilliant plan- everyone run away!

Turn 49


Everyone retreats back down the passage so we can deal with the assault drones first before the rest of the enemies arrive.


We can safely get rid of the drones while still being out of range of the boss.

Turn 50


We start blasting the demon grunts with Mal Keshar and the lich, who resist their cold damage.

Turn 51


The imp boss unwisely comes out to attack Mal Keshar, so Mal Keshar attacks him back. Elynia then illuminates and slows him.

Turn 52


This time the imp range attacks Elynia – he’s really lacking in self preservation instinct.


We easily finish him off.

Turn 53


We get rid of the last demon, and can now advance into the eastern chamber.

Turn 55


The northwestern part of the chamber is blocked by a gate, so we start exploring east.

Turn 57


We come across a giant maze of prison cells.

Turn 58


One of the northern cells has a free loyal… swimming soulless. With an astounding movement of 2 hexes per turn, he is surely destined to go places and do great things!! (And I thought the loyal scout was useless…)

Turn 60


And one of the central cells has another useless soulless. I guess it was too much to hope that we’d find anything remotely useful in here.

Turn 61


Oh wait, now we’ve found a free loyal… enemy soulless. This has not been a very productive trip so far.


Meanwhile we discover a hive area to the east.

Turn 64


It takes several turns to break through the bottleneck and enter the hive. There’s a necklace lying around on the right, and a cage with an elvish lord near the south. Finally, a somewhat helpful ally! Wonder who it could be?

Turn 65


The elvish lord turns out to be Ledinor, who we totally forgot about stayed behind to help us escape the valley way at the beginning.


He won’t be joining us this scenario though.


Freeing Ledinor causes a bunch of powerful enemies to come through the previously blocked gate leading to the exit.
Everyone retreats into the eastern passage so we can fight them in the bottleneck.

Turn 66


A shyde picks up an amulet which will make it a little less dangerous for her to slow enemies (like the Chaos Warlord) which do ranged arcane damage.

Turn 68


Meanwhile, we continue to retreat further into the bottleneck to fight the high level enemies. We just play it safe, rotating and healing and slowly killing off the enemies one by one. The drone boss went wandering around the west of map, so we won’t have to deal with it.

Turn 71


After a few turns, we finally reach the end of them and can start heading to the exit.

Turn 72


Everyone rushes for the exit, led by a brave necromancer…

Turn 73


Nooo don’t go toward the light!!
…phew. The necromancer gets rather unlucky and is almost killed by drones coming from the chasms. It’s always a good idea to send flying undead ahead to scout the chasms.


We kill off the two drones, and the way to the exit is mostly clear now.

Turn 74


Meanwhile, we send a couple spectres exploring across the chasm in the southeast of the dungeon area.

Turn 76


There’s a nice sword to be had here which gives a cold slowing melee attack, but sadly it can only be picked up by certain living units which are too far away now, so we have to leave it. (There's a touchplate nearby which opens a passage on the left so walking units can get here.)

Turn 78


We finally make it to the exit!


And we managed to keep all the important units alive, thanks to our fodder corpses.

[mousyack]

I'd love to see you do the last fight. Camping in narrow passages is nice but it won't work forever

[Inky]

mousyack: I haven't gotten to the last fight yet, but hopefully it will be soon. I actually dislike the bottleneck camping tactic since there's not really any strategy involved, but it's definitely the safest method, especially when you're supposed to keep every single veteran alive.

S 22A- Face of the Enemy

We head deeper into the hive. I find it amusing that we’ve apparently been dragging that dead fish soulless with us the entire time.


Ledinor has recovered enough to fight, which means we have to babysit him now.


This is a relatively short and easy scenario and is sort of a prelude to the next part (which is anything but short and easy).

Turn 2


We start following the path southeast. There are some dead end hives along the way which will constantly spawn new drones.


My favorite *cough* unit, the dead fish, just gets left behind where it can contemplate its uselessness until it gets killed by the respawning drones.

Turn 3


Further south we enter a cave area, and Ledinor tells us what he’s been up to. Though it seems like we don’t want to know…

Turn 5


Further east, the cave splits into two paths.

Turn 6


The northern path just leads to a dead end with some weird creatures, like a giant purple bug.

Turn 7


The southeastern path leads to a gate with an absolutely pathetic pair of level 1s guarding it. The chaos empire must have had to cut budgets after wasting all of their money installing these flimsy doors everywhere.

Turn 8


Opening the gate reveals a large group of enemies. We’ll just use the time honored tactic of camping in the bottleneck and slowly picking them off.

Turn 11


Meanwhile, the two spectres explore the water area in the northeast.

Turn 12


There’s a crystal glyph far in the east, though first we’ll have to fight our way through the various creatures infesting the water.

Turn 15


The glyph reveals the backstory of the people who made them.




They also created all these annoying drones!


Meanwhile, Mal Keshar lures out and kills the nasty hellhound which was hiding in the back. After that we have a clear path to the gate right behind it.

Turn 17

Once we open the gate in the southwest, all our units automatically enter the chamber beyond.


...into a waiting ambush!


We're surrounded on both sides, so for now we'll attack on the left and retreat on the right.

Our priority will be to eliminate the three dangerous threats on the left: the razerman, the drone and the magus.


A spectre and nightgaunt team up to kill the drone, and Erathan leaves the magus at critical HP. I’m sure you know by now what this means…


Another free corpse! On the right we just retreat, especially from that nasty chaotic iron mauler.

Turn 18


A chaos magus from the south and the iron mauler start heading towards us.


We take them out and form a line so that the dangerous razerman can’t reach.

Turn 19


We get rid of the remaining magus and razerman, with Ledinor getting some nice XP in the process.

Turn 20

Suddenly in a flash of light, the Chaos Warlord appears in the west!




Turn 21


Elyssa is dangerous enough on her own, so we’ll hang back out of her range and get rid of her army first.

Turn 23


We continue to retreat way back so we can lure out and kill the zephyrs first.
Two drones have also spawned last turn.


We kill off the zephyrs and just keep a defensive line.

Turn 24


Our priorities will be to get rid of the two drones, and then whatever enemy units we can. Fortunately the drones are separated from the other units and are easy targets.


We take out the two drones (and manage to give one of the kills to Ledinor), and have the necromancers zap the wounded invoker and fire guardian.


Galas and Mal Keshar then attack while also shielding the more fragile units like Ledinor.
Meanwhile, a spectre in the south lures away the demon zephyr, who loves frying ghostly undead.

Turn 25


We easily make our way past the remaining few enemies.


Finally, we can turn our attention to the warlord now.

Turn 27


The chaos warlord comes out of her keep to zap Elynia, along with an invoker.


We slow the warlord with a shyde and start zapping.
And of course, we turned that dying invoker into yet another walking corpse. You never known when they might come in handy.


Meanwhile, a couple spectres start clearing out enemies in the southeast, where a large gate is blocking the path to the exit.

Turn 28


The Warlord lost some HP attacking Mal Keshar on her turn, so we can hopefully finish her off now. It’s too risky to try slowing with the wounded shyde again (and the other shyde is out of range) so we just zap her to death with necromancers, since they have some arcane resistance.


Of course it wouldn’t be that easy though… Elyssa has an annoying habit of fully regenerating when killed.


Fortunately, she’s slowed now and will have 1 movement point for a few turns, allowing us to flee for our lives!


Yes, that’s what we meant.



Turn 29


Everyone retreats southeast toward the exit gate, while Elyssa slowly makes her way back to the keep.

Turn 31


Mal Keshar opens the gate in the southeast. This causes Elyssa to regain her movement, so she can now move to the keep and start recruiting again.



Turn 32


Unfortunately we have a couple units still in the northwest who are pretty slow, and Ledinor got attacked by the warlord last turn.


Our heroic bunch of corpses will delay the enemies so Ledinor can run away. Fortunately Elyssa will just stay in her keep and recruit, and not follow us.


Meanwhile, we head into a cave section in the southeast. There are a couple drones lurking in the southern area across the chasm.

Turn 34


Otherwise there's just some pathetic wildlife here. We're fighting ants now? That's the job of bugspray, not our godly shaxthal killer squad!

Turn 36

As we get closer to the exit, Elynia starts to explain her plan.



Galas engages in some wishful thinking…


…which is quickly and brutally crushed. It’s not Galas’ day.


The final obstacle in the south is only a spider; moving to the southern border will just directly transition to the next scenario, which is the real battle against Elyssa.


Losses: a bunch of corpses

[pauxlo]

There’s also a bow which would give an archer unit the marksman special (though I neglected to pick it up since I forgot that Erathan uses bows).

Galas also has a bow, so he likely could use it?

[mousyack]

I actually dislike the bottleneck camping tactic

I'm afraid you haven't seen the last of it...

(I for one actually got so fed up with this tactic that I lost two veterans to Elyssa's brutal leadership in 22A as a result: rushed her troops instead of falling back because I've had enough of being a coward cautious; but didn't reload because meh whatever).

Anyway, looking forward to the emperor fight =)

Galas also has a bow, so he likely could use it?

I think I've tried it and he wouldn't have it saying he's not a real archer, that human guy being the only one who's worthy (except if you bring an elvish or undead archer for no reason, I guess).

[Sudipta]

[u]Scenario 9 – The Mage[/u]

Of course, this is Wesnoth, so if you give the RNG a chance to mess with you it will. It was definitely my mistake to leave the hole in the line on turn 7 and to advance with Keshan on turn 8 instead of pulling him back, but I still feel the need to say… I hate bats!!!!
Next time: we go to take down a lich, but not all goes as planned…

I just read your LP on dead water and imagine my surprise when i came across this! I thought bats were the most awesome unit type for you