Erfworld 141 The Battle for Gobwin Knob, Page 128

[Oracle_Hunter]

This turn-based strategy game confuses me! There are no cards or life points! How are we supposed to play it?

I don't see what the problem is. It's just the same, but with miniatures.

[AlisdairM]

What a bunch of party-poopers! This was one of my favourite pages for some time, and in no way hurts my suspension of disbelief.

Last time we pulled a rabbit out the hat with Wanda dance-fighting. Wanda is a fan favourite though, so that is made of win...

This page we find out Ansom also has a dance fighting bonus, and he calls on Charlie for support to communicate that bonus to all stacked units in the courtyard. As he knows he wants his bonus to be the one that counts, he orders in waves of unlead troops.

In a PC strategy game, this would all be some abstract mechanic handled by merely moving some units on the board. In Erfworld we get some awesome visuals added by Jamie, with some pop culture references for good measure, which is totally in keeping with the style of the story. And suddenly everyone is complaining?

I don't think we have too many more twists to come - my metagamer looks at the page count and wonders how many pages we are willing to pay for binding into a printed book ;¬)

BTW, anyone remember the old Michael Jacksoon Moonwalker arcade unit? (NOT the home console versions of the game!) Now THAT was dance fighting :)

[Jural]

I don't know why people say it wasn't foreshadowed or a "boop pull." Personally, I imagined Ansom had some counter to Dance Fighting when such a big deal was made out of his side having it a strip ago. Ansom is typically very resourceful, and has been all Erfworld long.

The exact maneuver was a surprise, but not the fact that this isn't over yet!

By the way, I expect Parson's side to have one more trick up their sleeve as well... this isn't over yet.

I'm loving this whole seige, two heavyweights going toe to toe, Parson with the superior mind and defensive set-up, Ansom with the superior grasp of the rules and numbers.

[Doc Roc]

Well, the bit with Wanda dance-fighting has been foreshadowed quite a bit actually. For example, the part where she's playing with her new toys and making them dance Thriller? It's been speculated ever since that thread that she'd get jiggy with the bonuses.

This, whether you like it or not, is a boop-pull from my perspective.

Your mileage may vary.I do think, though, that I've said enough. I didn't mean to be this vehement or argumentative.



Aside: In most Real-Time Strats I've played and enjoyed, very little was abstracted away or hidden by the game system. This is less true of some of the TBS games I've played, to be fair, but most of the time everything is laid as bare as possible and the rules are very very consistent. It drives me up the wall when things come out of the side-hatch in scripted missions, for example.

[Trazoi]

What a bunch of party-poopers! This was one of my favourite pages for some time, and in no way hurts my suspension of disbelief.

Last time we pulled a rabbit out the hat with Wanda dance-fighting. Wanda is a fan favourite though, so that is made of win...

This page we find out Ansom also has a dance fighting bonus, and he calls on Charlie for support to communicate that bonus to all stacked units in the courtyard. As he knows he wants his bonus to be the one that counts, he orders in waves of unlead troops.

In a PC strategy game, this would all be some abstract mechanic handled by merely moving some units on the board. In Erfworld we get some awesome visuals added by Jamie, with some pop culture references for good measure, which is totally in keeping with the style of the story. And suddenly everyone is complaining?

I can only speak for myself, but it's been more of a gradual feeling that's been building as new spells and rules have been introduced over the last dozen or so pages in rapid succession. This time the feeling is exacerbated by combining a new twist on a rule with yet another use of Ansom's supply of get-out-of-stupidity-free cards.

On the more general issue of a PC strategy game, the bit I'm not getting (and haven't been getting for the whole comic) is how units seem to be moving and performing actions out of their turn. My understanding is that this is Ansom's turn right now, so Charlie's and Parson's units should be relatively passive. But they seem to be able to take their own initative somehow.

[Doc Roc]

I generally look at Erfworld the same way I would look at Rome:Total War.
Turn-based strategy with hexes, real-time clashes between armies. Almost impossible to do on a board game, but I really enjoyed it much more than Civilization (N). I know, sacrilege, but hey.

[Trazoi]

I generally look at Erfworld the same way I would look at Rome:Total War.
Turn-based strategy with hexes, real-time clashes between armies.

That would make sense. Although it does mean that once a battle starts, the rest of the world is effectively in limbo until it's over. Stanley won't be able to get back to Gobwin Knob mid-battle!

[Vreejack]

Normally this sort of thing would not be possible. Normally the Archons would be able to fight and help kick Parson's butt. If Parson had a large aerial force of his own then the archons would not be able to stand there and guide the dance-fighting as they would be too busy fighting, and thus would be distracted from setting up the steps. If Ansom had waited a turn he could have used the archons to attack normally and they would have destroyed Parson's forces---normally, but this turn they are wasted, and yet immune to attack. Ansom has simply found a way to use them that would not otherwise have made sense in a typical situation.

So how does Parson respond? He needs to disrupt the dancing somehow. Or maybe he can read their steps and counter them. Maybe Maggie can help.

[Bawon von Howse]

well...the only battle where we've actually seen dance fighting previously was the ambush at the choke point....here, transylvito pulled some west side story manouevres only to get out danced by the knights rocking it!

...so, here, we've seen both party's dance, however we haven't seen that there was a winner...Ansom may counter with his 'DDR' moves...however, as we have no real idea how the mechanics of dance fighting work, we have no idea how this will affect anything.

Parson seems to think that this is going to be bad, but as we dont' really know what happens in a dance-off then who know's what's going to happen!

to me, it seems like it's another Ansom counter to a brilliant Parson plan (as we know this happens all too often)...whenever Parson does something out of the bag, the following strip has Ansom just blow it out of the water!

[ishnar]

I think Ansom has a thinkamancy headache incoming. Either a headache or make him see arrows that aren't there. Something distracting anyway.

[Wyvv]

Yeah, I gotta say, this seems like it came way, way outa left field. Even worse is Parson admitting this could be gameover for him. It just seems. Up until this point, every page had me completely immersed. This one took that away. If their isn't another turn around or two pretty quickly, and the rest is just a wrap up, I'm not sure if I'll buy the book when it eventually comes out.

*sigh* I think I'm beginning to understand how some of the other users feel about Charlie. If this had just been some special ability of Ansom's carpet, maybe with him calling it a mat when asking the archons to get it for him(or someother small reference), I probably would've had a much better reaction. Everyone didn't think Charlie was able to do anything from the airspace though, and it just leads me to wonder why he can do this but not influene Parson's troops in anyway.

[datalaughing]

Stanley won't be able to get back to Gobwin Knob mid-battle!

Stanley can't move until GK's turn, and Ansom is free to keep attacking as long as he wants until he wins or decides that there's an advantage to stopping and waiting for next turn. That makes sense even at the board game level. It's like Risk. You can attack the neighboring country until you run out of guys or decide to stop.

One would guess that if things start going badly for Ansom, despite this new twist, he'll stop and end his turn so he can start fresh with the Archons next turn. After all, it would be much harder for Parson's troops to take the offensive than to defend. And even if Parson wasted the coalition's ground troops somehow on this turn or on GK's turn, he has nothing that can hit Charlie's archons, except for a few archers and maybe casters from the tower (tower boarders airspace and gives a bonus to casters).

Since nobody knows Stanley is on his way back things must not be looking too good for the folks in GK, which explains Ansom's overconfidence. He's already lost most of his troops. Even if all of his allies lose their ground troops, he's still got the archons who can pick off GK's ground troops from the air when they can move out of their zone.

[Oracle_Hunter]

*sigh* I think I'm beginning to understand how some of the other users feel about Charlie. If this had just been some special ability of Ansom's carpet, maybe with him calling it a mat when asking the archons to get it for him(or someother small reference), I probably would've had a much better reaction. Everyone didn't think Charlie was able to do anything from the airspace though, and it just leads me to wonder why he can do this but not influene Parson's troops in anyway.

This isn't Charlie, it's his Archons. And they're not the only people who can act across zones - Maggie was all set to smash Ansom in the Courtyard even while she's in the Dungeon.

It's the unexpected which has proved decisive in the story thus far. Jilian finding the Wounded Dwagons. Parson using hit-and-run on the Siege. That's why Parson has reacted so negatively here - DDR was unexpected, but he knows that his Dance Fight strategy has been harmed to some extent. If his Dance Fight bonus is utterly neutralized (worse case scenario) then he knows Ansom can steamroll him; if I were Parson, I'd be Gloom & Doom too!

Fortunately, I'm willing to bet that Wanda's Inherent Ability is able to overpower Ansom's improv trick - which Parson will no doubt note in the next page - and that the only result of this maneuver and counter is to turn the Courtyard into a meatgrinder for both sides. That helps set up an epic confrontation between the Generals, and possibly Bogroll's Sacrifice.

Unless, of course, Parson surrenders instead of fighting. There is so much left to be decided!

[Knight13]

*sigh* And yet another of Parson's brilliant plans is ruined by the unstoppable intervention of Charlie and his Archons.

[MythicFox]

Sorry, I'm just not seeing how this should be able to work from what we know of this universe's mechanics so far. I understand that Parson's not going to know every little thing about this universe and how it works and keeping us in the dark helps surprises happen. But I think we're drifting into the territory of the Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon when cards could get away with having super secret abilities (often arbitrarily tied to something in the artwork) because we can't see the text on them anyways.

Ansom knowing a thing or two about dance fighting? Okay, I can buy that. But as far as everyone else -- on both sides -- knows, the Archons shouldn't be able to get involved until next turn. And I just can't believe that it's a matter of "everyone else assuming that assistance means combat." It breaks my suspension of disbelief that Ansom can pull off a move like this that nobody else could have possibly seen coming. It feels like a DM rewriting a monster's stats in the middle of the combat and hoping the players don't notice and call him on it. It's like there's no point in rooting for Parson at this stage, because either he's going to lose due to factors he can't even begin to pretend to control, or because the only way he's going to top this is with an equally-cheap deus ex machina that will undermine all of his planning and tactical ability.

Parson doesn't feel like a warlord, or a general, or a player any more as of this strip. He's beginning to look like a ping pong ball bounced between two paddles named "Charlie" and "Ansom."

[keybounce]

This page we find out Ansom also has a dance fighting bonus, and he calls on Charlie for support to communicate that bonus to all stacked units in the courtyard. As he knows he wants his bonus to be the one that counts, he orders in waves of unlead troops.

BTW, anyone remember the old Michael Jacksoon Moonwalker arcade unit? (NOT the home console versions of the game!) Now THAT was dance fighting :)

Gaah, did you have to remind me of it? Sadly, I do remember that video game. I just lost.

What we see in this page is just like what we've seen so far: Parson has fewer troops with a much higher bonus, Ansom has tons and tons of troops with a lower bonus. He's come up with a nice way to provide that dance-fight bonus to a very large number of infantry. Like he said, "Fill the courtyard".

"Almost no one in Ansom's coalition can dance-fight. Uncroaked infantry, led by a master-class croakmaster, can". Well, now we find that ordinary infantry, led by masters of visual guidance, can also.

[kukn]

The way I see it, Ansom is making use of the archons' (passive support (Thinkamancy)) abilities to merely range project the dance bonus, which otherwise has a zero (in-stack) range.* Which is a perfectly logical and reasonable game mechanic. The reason it seems so out-of-the-rules are the special effects and the fluidness of a real-time story set into turn-based game concept.

Having said that, I personally found this page weaker than the last dozen and somewhat detracting from the tension. That is partly because I didn't at first understand what was going on at all...

And it did kind of grate, it does seem like we're dropping out of the (absolutely awesome) ruleset of the game.

*edit: It is also plausible that they can make it possible to confer the dance bonus even to units that cannot normally dance. That is again a reasonable strategy game option.

[SteveD]

Disappointing strip. All that buildup for nothing.

Erfworld is getting frustrating again.

[Murderous Hobo]

If you don't get what happened, the Archons cast:

Dance Dance Revolution.
+5 To dance Fighting.

So now Ansoms infantry can dance.

[Doomduckie]

Disappointing strip. I was hoping that the defense of the gate would finally signal the end to

10
Page N: Ansom: "HAHAHA I HAVE TRUMPED YOU WITH AN UNEXPECTED PLOT TWIST, PARSON IS DOOMED"
Page N+1: Parson: "HO HO HO MY CLEVER PLAN IS PUT INTO PLAY YOU ARE DOOMED ANSOM"
Page N+2: Ansom: "HAHAHA I HAVE TRUMPED YOU WITH AN UNEXPECTED PLOT TWIST, PARSON IS DOOMED"
Page N+3: Parson: "HO HO HO MY CLEVER PLAN IS PUT INTO PLAY YOU ARE DOOMED ANSOM"
Go To 10

I mean, maybe it'll get better from the current Death Note scheme collision that I'm feeling tangled in right now.

I'm probably misinterpreting that this comic is a continuation of the things we've seen for the entire siege. But it's still disheartening, because it seemed to have let up for just a little- before this we got 1 or 2 pages without a 'sudden plot twist in the siege signaling the apparant downfall of one side'.

[AlisdairM]

Even worse is Parson admitting this could be gameover for him.

Actually, Parson just says 'game over'. We don't know for which side yet...

[Samargh]

There is a counter...

almost all of the air defences...

????

[Subtext]

Ugh...the strip was kinda funny, but...somewhat lame too. As already said, these sudden twists get a wee bit repetitive :-/

Anyway, Thriller with Uncroaked should get a huge awesome-bonus over Uhn-Tiss...

[Lichtouch]

Hm... Slowly but surely, this comic appears to be all about which faction can pop out the most ridiculous thing.

Bats become insanely powerful around leadership?
Foolamancers can alter reality itself.

Wanda can bring back thousands of undead troops, even if they're rubbish?
Ansom suddenly gets the help of Charlie.

Parson organizes a Battle-of-the-Hot-Gates style bottle-neck and uses dance-fighting to his benefit because Ansom lacks dance-fighting?
Turns out all of Ansom's troops can dance-fight after all.

This is simply getting sillier and sillier in my opinion. But, I will continue to observe.

[Wyvv]

This isn't Charlie, it's his Archons. And they're not the only people who can act across zones - Maggie was all set to smash Ansom in the Courtyard even while she's in the Dungeon.

Yes, but we weren't being told for several pages in a row that Maggie wasn't going to be able to do anything. It's not that they can do things out of zone, so much as we were told over and over again that they wouldn't be in the fight until the Coalition's next turn.

It's the unexpected which has proved decisive in the story thus far. Jilian finding the Wounded Dwagons. Parson using hit-and-run on the Siege. That's why Parson has reacted so negatively here - DDR was unexpected, but he knows that his Dance Fight strategy has been harmed to some extent. If his Dance Fight bonus is utterly neutralized (worse case scenario) then he knows Ansom can steamroll him; if I were Parson, I'd be Gloom & Doom too!

We weren't told over and over again by both sides that it wasn't going to happen though. On top of that, but they didn't just suddenly happen. That's another way I think this twist could've worked better. If it had taken more pages. This seems pulled out of thin air though.

Fortunately, I'm willing to bet that Wanda's Inherent Ability is able to overpower Ansom's improv trick - which Parson will no doubt note in the next page - and that the only result of this maneuver and counter is to turn the Courtyard into a meatgrinder for both sides. That helps set up an epic confrontation between the Generals, and possibly Bogroll's Sacrifice.

Unless, of course, Parson surrenders instead of fighting. There is so much left to be decided!

I think it'll be worse if he surrenders. Out of all the sudden turn arounds, this one has the least(I'm tempted to say none, but I know that's not quite the case) build up, and if it's the last one, it just kind of ends things on a dull note. If you're right about how it's not as big as Parson's statemeant makes it appear, to me anyway, I think things could end on a better note. Still, for something to pull me away like this really shocks me. Even SO3's plot twist didn't manage that.

[ShiningTed]

I'm surprised to see all the negative reaction to this. I thought this bit of pop-culture was exactly what we should expect from Erfworld, and a brilliant twist.

I am just amazed at the fact I didn't see it coming - and I watched some bizarro short movie on DDR earlier today, and it still blind-sided me. While I agree the pacing of the comic can be insanely frustrating, this effort yet again confirms Rob's genius as a writer (imho).

[datalaughing]

But as far as everyone else -- on both sides -- knows, the Archons shouldn't be able to get involved until next turn.

Not even a little bit true. For one thing the Archons have already been involved this turn. They wasted Wanda's airforce. So saying "everyone knows they can't get involved" is a logical fallacy. They can't attack directly if the target isn't in their zone, but there was nothing anywhere that said that they couldn't get involved in some other way. Parson surely didn't discount that possibility. He doesn't scream, "WHAT!? They can't get involved until next turn!" He looks up and basically goes, "Oh." He wasn't expecting it, but he's not treating it like it's impossible.

[Sebastian]

A littl too Deus-ex-machina-y for my tastes, of couyrse we have still to see how it develops, if it fail spectacularly it could still be fun.

Last time we pulled a rabbit out the hat with Wanda dance-fighting. Wanda is a fan favourite though, so that is made of win...

Yes, but Wanda dance fighting was fun, (plus, there was cleavage, that never hurts.)

[Requiem_Jeer]

Lets see...

Parson's side has:

Wanda's huge uncroaked bonus (applied to weak uncroaked, probably puts each uncroaked at a strength slightly higher then the basic infantry they're facing)

Parson's Leadership bonus (he's in the combat, so he probably grants a larger portion of his bonus, and his bonus is probably higher after he got that sword)

Dance-fight bonus (probably significant).

Now, Ansoms side has:

-a dance-fight bonus, probably small

-Ansoms leadership bonus (implied to be big)

-and strength in numbers.


That small dance fight bonus probably doesn't do much, but Ansom's full leadership bonus is now applied, which is a huge leap in effectiveness. Maggie can probably sap this bonus though.


But allow me to present a hypothesis on how dance-fighting works-

I've noticed that equipment seems to be a significant factor in effectiveness. Jillian and her armor, Wanda and her wardrobe, and others. Every time people dance-fight, they seem to have on appropriate clothes (well the leaders anyway). I would theorize that the ability to dance-fight is granted by either the unit itself (as might be the case for the transylvitans) or by the clothes they wear (Ansom seems to have a pretty all-purpose suit, not to mention Wanda's rather garish outfit).

I propose that the mere act of dance-fighting vastly improves the effectiveness of the units, but a much smaller bonus against other dance-fighters, with the bonus being weighted against the better dancer. I think that Ansom's move, although the fact of his leadership bonus is now applied is probably more important, was simply to eliminate the dancefighter vs. non-dancefighter bonus, as the dance-fight bonus that the Coalition has with that stunt is likely minimal.

Even if this is not the case, the greater amount of numbers the coalition has will make any bonus granted more effective.

[HandofShadows]

Well Ansom had a good inventive idea. He will be able to contol the troops in the courtyard, though I don't think it will be nearly the same as Wanda's level of contol. But it will be enough to cut into her dance fighting bonus a fair amount and allow Ansom to use this greater number of troops to swamp GK. Interestingly this show the difference in the styles of Ansom and Pason. Parson tneds to give operational orders (you go do this job) but leaves the details to the person doing it (relies heavily on personal initiative of the person being given the orders). This is how many modern armies operate. Ansom is still doing it the old way where one commander tries to give large groups of troops orders and there is little in the way of personal initiative.
In this instence there is the possibility that it can back and bite him in the tailbone. The trick he is pulling is highly dependant on him and his ability to "communicate" with the troops. Take Ansom out and it falls apart. If Jack shows up he could easily screw things up by making the arrows point the wrong way. Not that I think he will show up though. But there is a very simple way to screw with Ansom's plan. All that needs to be done is to make a cloud of smoke that can obscure the dance steps.

BTW has anyone noticed that Ansom does NOT have the Archenpliers with him?