Erfworld 140 The Battle for Gobwin Knob, Page 127

[Talic]

Probably not. It's been mentioned and shown before that Uncroaked units are just puppets of their Croakamancer; if they didn't have somebody giving them direct orders, they'd just stand around gently rotting. They need Wanda to give them the coordination and motion to do a proper dance-fight, and if she wasn't able to pull it off herself- well, we don't know for sure, but my guess is they could attempt it (ie, Wanda could still have the power to make the group try to initiate a dance-fight), but they'd have a pitifully small bonus for doing so. And if speculation here about the mechanics of dance-fighting is right, trying to dance-fight when you suck at it just hands the bonus to the enemy. So it's better to not dance-fight at all unless you have a reasonably good skill at it. Or a massively boosted skill from making a thousand undead units do Thriller, as the case may be.

I don't think so. Most games that run on rules like this have a "you can" or "you can't" system. This one seems to be the same (In the current strip, Parson states that Ansom's Coalition, by and large, are incapable of dance fight). Thus, if the unit can't, it can't even try.

However, it seems that all warlords may be capable of dance fighting.

So far, we've seen:
Stanley and KiSS
Transylvito's troops
Jillian
Archons (when dancing with warlords)
Wanda
Uncroaked infantry (when led by a master-class necromancer)

have all been referenced as dance-fight capable. It stands to reason that a great many, if not all, warlords/generals can dance-fight (note that casters are considered warlords and can lead stacks). However, only dance-fighting units get the dance-fighting bonus.

So, if you have the following:

2000 troops, attack 2 each. = 4000 attack
Let's say Parson's +2 applies to all.
2000 troops x +2 bonus per = 4000 attack
Let's say Wanda's HUGE bonus is 8.
2000 troops x +8 bonus per = 16,000 attack
And say Dance fighting is a modest 4.
2000 troops x +4 bonus per = 8000 attack
Total: 32,000 attack
For sake of argument, let's say the garrison applies a x3 defensive bonus. (Gobwin Knob is the toughest defensive fortification in the known world)
Total: 96,000 attack

Now, let's say Ansom has 10,000 troops, 2 attack each. = 20,000
Ansom has a bonus of 5, let's say.
10,000 x 5 bonus per = 50,000
Let's say other leadership is negated, and they don't benefit from terrain.
Total: 70,000 attack.

That would be a rough mock up of the pending battle, if it goes according to Parson's line of thinking.

While Ansom's forces may be greater than 10,000, likely coalition forces will demoralize after that many troops are dropped, and end the attack to wait for Charlie's forces.

Also to be noted, Parson's main maneuver is to seize on split forces.
1) He attempted to pull air and woods units away from the rest of the column, in order to isolate and destroy them.
2) He attacked the tunneling contingent of the coalition, when it got too close to the city, when it was isolated from the rest of its army.
3) Ansom believes his error was not moving quick enough, when in truth it was a lack of coordination. He divides his forces again, attacking before Charlie can join.

And the days he can brute force in are coming to a close.
Every loss shrinks his army and swells the enemy's.
The enemy is entrenched.

Likely, if he breaks off after losing 10,000 troops? Parson's army will probably be 5 times its original size. At that point, when entrenched, it may well be unassailable at that point, until the uncroaked decay.