Scenario Review: SotBE 16 - Coward

[sine_nomine]

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Nightmare 1.12.4

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
9.5
200 starting gold (minimum)

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Clear
"Hey Chief, it's pretty odd. Shan Taum doesn't seem to have too many of his men around."
Are you kidding me?

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Lot of enemies, not so much gold. Fortunately you have terrain and healing on your side. The time limit can also be an issue as you can't really sit back in your castle until you've dealt with the nearby enemies or the enemy will refuse to attack and you won't finish in time.
Ogres are really annoying to deal with, especially when the enemy has so many.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8.5

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Nothing
I'm almost tempted to complain about gold, but it's my fault for going in with no gold carryover.
I don't think the southwest leader needs bodyguards. That would prevent you from securing villages and would prevent assassination, but since you need to kill all three leaders to end the chapter I think it's good to have assassination as an option.
I'm not sure if it would be better or worse to change the turn order so the strong enemy acts last.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Several restarts, a couple times because my defenses couldn't hold out (above average damage taken), once due to time limit, and twice because my luck was TOO good (I had something like -15% damage taken).

[LordWolfDan]

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

- 1.14.5, Challenging

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

- 10

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

- Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

- It's good, but where could have Shan Taum gone to' anyways? It looks like I'll be finishing him off for the finale?

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

- Orcs swarming up everywhere, it was pretty frustrating

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

- 5

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

- Have AI focused less on Kapou'e and more on the other soldiers

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

- Few times I had to restart it because of Kapou'e being killed. Not to mention that I lost my chill when I had to sacrifice two of my trolls and one warlord >.<

[max_torch]

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Warlord(Nightmare), 1.14.17, 200 + 46 = 246 starting gold, no reloading turns

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
5

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Perfectly Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
What is the purpose of this dialog exactly?
"Hey Chief, it's pretty odd. Shan Taum doesn't seem to have too many of his men around."

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
None

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
None so far

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Well, I tried to experiment with aggressively killing the nearest leader and take his keep right away. Turns out its actually doable, I did it but I lost my loyal assassin, and it requires repeating until you get lucky, so I decided to stop experimenting with this.
In my first attempt to actually play properly I won.

[mal_shubertal]

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.16.6 Nightmare 256 starting gold
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
3
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
very
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
I like the dynamic between Shan Taum and Kapoue and the callbacks to their dialogue during Sham Taum the Smug.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
income management, figuring out the right number of veterans to recruit to get a good early finish bonus
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
3. boring.
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
This scenario is basically indistinguishable from Shan Taum the Smug, unfortunately. It's the same basic premise: You're playing against a Northerner opponent who heavily uses ogres instead of trolls and has a big gold advantage but attacks recklessly. And the same exact player strategy prevails: establish a line of trolls, rotate intelligently, win through attrition due to mass regeneration. There's a little more strategy in recruitment due to the Great Horde incentivizing you to use more whelps, but overall it just feels like a boring filler scenario, and is a big letdown after the very unique and varied scenarios leading up to it. It's also ridiculously easy, with the nearer enemies recruiting mostly lvl 1 fodder, which is a jarring decrease in difficulty from the last scenario. They do have a line of dialogue where even one of your units notices that this is weirdly easy. So I guess the meta-idea is this is kind of a feint by Shan Taum to trick you into over-recruiting and wrecking your economy before the REAL showdown, but it leads to a pretty boring level.

You could improve it in lots of ways. One is changing up the recruitment patterns, so having the enemies recruit tons of pillagers or lvl 2 trolls, which would give the all-troll strategy some trouble, or having the enemy recruit a small force of lvl 3 units, like "Shan Taum's personal bodyguard covering his retreat", rather than the usual swarm of lvl 1 and 2 units, to force different tactics. There is a big swathe of swamp and some sand areas on the map that don't get much attention, so you could have Inarix go to the unused keep in the swamp and recruit an all-saurian force to help you out, like Gruu did with the trolls in Back Home.

Actually, this could be a very interesting scenario if you covered most of the map with swamps/sand/water, so the player would be incentivized to actually use a lot of saurians, which have been basically useless for most of the campaign due to all the frozen terrain. You could justify it by saying something like, "the spring snow-melt has washed out all the roads and flooded the whole area!" or "Shan Taum knew we were coming and flooded all these fields before we got here to slow down pursuit!". Shan Taum could even recruit some nagas for the occasion, which are a Northerner unit that hasn't shown up yet in this campaign. You could also frame it as an ambush, like you confront Shan Taum on the usual map, and he's like, "you fell into my trap!", then he has his naga cronies detonate a nearby dam, transforming all the flat areas on the map into swamp and shallow water, then they attack you while he flees.
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No. A complete cakewalk.

[SpenceLack]

(1) v1.18.2. I played on Easy, but with the caveat that I would never reload no matter how unkind the RNG was to me.

(2) 3.

(3) Clear.

(4) More proof that Shan Taum is a cowardly villain. Character development is good!

(5) You’re boxed in a corner, with two enemy leaders nearby, so there’s no easy way to go out and grab villages. But once you fend off the first wave of attackers, the rest of the level is just boring mopping up.

(6) 2. In the last level there were 4 orc leaders and the objective was to kill all enemy leaders. In this level, there are 3 more orc leaders and it’s the same overused kill-all-leaders objective. Yuck! How many more orc hordes are we going to have to blunt our blades upon? Variety is good! Variety is the spice of life! Use it! At least the previous level had some redeeming gameplay value because the snow forced the player to use unconventional tactics. Here, it’s just normal terrain and the whole level is just bland, bland, bland. Change the enemy faction, change the mission objectives, make some interesting gameplay tweak, do anything other than an inferior rehash of the previous level.

(7) Narratively, this level is fine. It’s the gameplay that’s the problem. This level could be scrapped and the campaign would probably be better for it. Shan Taum’s cowardice could be handled in a cutscene or just ignored, since his villainy has been pretty well established at this point. If the devs wanted to be really crazy, they could replace this level with level 5. As you may recall, level 5 has the player fighting undead, but the plot was just pointless filler. That pointless filler could be replaced with the plot of this level (level 16), with some slight modifications. In the modified plot, when Kapou’e shows up to confront Shan Taum he discovers that Shan Taum has had all the Kapou’e loyalists in his part of the Great Horde executed, and he’s made a corrupt bargain with some local necromancers: The dark mages are given the corpses of the slain orcs to raise an army with, on the condition that the first target of that army is to be Kapou’e! Shan Taum then flees after siccing his new undead allies on Kapou’e. So this way you’ve got variety with gameplay because you’re fighting a different faction, and Shan Taum’s villainy and cowardice remain a part of the plot.

(8) No.