Erfworld 75, page 69

[Krelon]

...
Whats the chances the first frame of the next comic is a single sword attack from Jillian taking out all three archons?

39 percent

[Grug]

Parson uses his real-world knowledge and guesses the Archon's truenames, allowing him to control them.

[BRC]

My Theory!
Charlies Contract with Ansom expires just as they are about to finish off the stack. We don't know the specifics of the contract, But charlie dosn't seem like the type to put his valuable assets in an indefinate contract, and I doubt that mercenaries as expensive as the archons would be hired for any longer than they thought they were needed.
Mind you, I have absolutally no evidence to back this up, but theres no evidence against it either.

[Drakron]

Stupidest. Comic. Ever.

A Deus Ex Machina solution! Wow, great!!! If 3 girls do that, why even bother bring an army?

Because they hired Charlie after they started moving to the Siege.

Also sometimes you have horrible overpowerful units in these type of games but they are offset as having huge upkeep cost/high production cost/long production time.

And last even overpowerful units tend to have a terrible weak spot as counterbalance, take the siege units that can break walls (and likely can deal insane damage to ground units) but are terrible weak against air units.

[Gez]

I just want to point out that the third Dwagon looks suspiciously unwounded. Except for being torn to pieces by the Archon that is.

I'm not sure what that spell is, exactly. You don't see the magical energy causing the wounds, for example. Maybe it's a spell that increases all hit point loss suffered by a wounded enemy, widening all the pre-existing wounds to the point where they could slice a grown dwagon apart?

Stupidest. Comic. Ever.

A Deus Ex Machina solution! Wow, great!!! If 3 girls do that, why even bother bring an army?

They're not three girls, they're three archons. Actual Erfworld girls, such as Wanda, Jillian and Dora, need mounts to fly, for example.

If they're Di* Ex Machina, then they've been out of the machine for quite some time. I don't remember any forum speculation saying they'd turn out to be weak and useless against badly wounded dwagons.

(* Plural form of Deus. Variant plurals include Dei and Dii. While I should have used the feminine plural, Deae, I thought Di was more appropriate to the pop culture angle of Erfworld. Look, three Ladies Di! )

[StickMan]

ouch I hope they came up with a plan B just in case.

[Dervag]

Power... overwhelming...

They can each take out one wounded dwagon per turn, at least; but it isn't clear how powerful they are compared to uninjured dwagons, or how much it's costing Jetstone to keep them in play. Jetstone has vastly more resources than Stanley, so it's not surprising that he can afford a few hole cards like the Archons.

[BoneLord]

WHOA! OMG! I never thought the Archons would be THAT powerful!

It is OK to feel bad for Stanley right? I mean, Stanley IS still the bad guy, isn't he? What about Parson? I feel bad for Parson.

[Mystyco]

hipotesis are the following:

a) jillian winnig this first part of the battle
b) jillian retreating with ansom? not sure
c) jillian back to fight with ansom safe from dwagons
d) jillian back-stabbing every single unit in ansom army

that's just fine for me :E

also don't feel bad for stanley, his only presence give the world a good reason to wish to be on ansom side :|

also yay, we'll see someone croack in the next panel \o/

[Scientivore]

The Archons are Consultants!!!

Of course they are more powerful when you pay them more... and they will use more BUZZWORDS!

...Karsil

Yes! They must be Moneymancers, as well as Thinkamancers: they magically turn schmuckers into buzzwords! This also explains their obsession with up-selling and cross-selling.

[Girl Wonder]

WHOA! OMG! I never thought the Archons would be THAT powerful!

It is OK to feel bad for Stanley right? I mean, Stanley IS still the bad guy, isn't he? What about Parson? I feel bad for Parson.

It's absolutely fine to feel bad for Stanley. The GK crew are the protagonists of the story (Note: NOT the good guys, just the characters that we shall ultimately care more about what they do... not necessarily care about as characters, but whose actions we are more concerned with and invested in). So, if you feel bad for Stanley and Parson, that's perfectly in keeping with their role and means the storytellers are doing their job.

And it's still early on in the 'big' story, so they're supposed to have their obstacles defined (as well as their goals) and suffer their setbacks. It makes the big story that much more interesting to play out.

Even though Stanley, Wanda, Parson and Co. are the 'bad guys', and Ansom, Vinnie, and (now) Jillain are the 'good guys', in this story it's the good guys with the legions of Stormtroopers, and Death Star, and control of most of the 'Galaxy', and it is only natural that early in the story their power and control of the situation be shown to be vast, so that we care more about how the protagonists are going to get out of this alive.

I feel bad for Stanley (immature obsessive that he is) and Parson (sarcastic Everyman out of his element) and Sizemore (humane realist) and Bogroll (loyal victim of circumstance). I don't feel bad for Wanda yet. She's far too proud and needed to be taken down a notch (the same way some were so happy when the almost-as-proud Ansom got shnookered by the empty hex ruse). If she learns from this, and takes a little air out of her own balloon because of it, I might even feel bad for her one day.

[fractal]

Everyone's talking about the Archons, but look at the gwiffons in that first panel! Those are the most ferocious marshmallow peeps I've ever seen.

[rosebud]

Simply put, we were set up to expect Ansom to win, so why is it "interesting" to see him win?

<stereotype>hot chicks</stereotype>

(Also, most root for the main characters, who are Team Stanley.)

[Lamech]

Yes! They must be Moneymancers, as well as Thinkamancers: they magically turn schmuckers into buzzwords! This also explains their obsession with up-selling and cross-selling.

Then what happens when Ansom runs out of pre-paid buzzwords?

[ag30476]

Stupidest. Comic. Ever.

A Deus Ex Machina solution! Wow, great!!! If 3 girls do that, why even bother bring an army?

So what did you expect when Parson said Jillian had a 61% chance of totally wiping out the dwagons?

[ag30476]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0075.html Here, Julian calls for the Archons to take the weak stack first, thus clearing the way for her to reach "the warlord".

There are several things wrong with this. Firstly: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0066.html Panel 4. All of the "A dwagon" attack force is *in the same hex*

The 19 dwagons and 3 warlord in the hex (map location) are split up into 3 stacks (stacks do the fighting) with 1 warlord each and 7, 7 and 5 dwagons thus making 1 weak stack. Stack bonus maxes at 8 so that's why the 2 of the stacks are at 8. The Klogs explain this. Just hit the catalog link above the comic (scroll) to find the relevant klogs.

Secondly: If she is attacking the wounded dwagons, Julian would not need to have the way cleared to "the warlord". Julian is a warlord unit, and thus her forces can selectively engage anyone in the hex.

Yes and that is what she is doing. She gave the same command to the Orly's when she was captured by the dwagons.

She could charge right up to "the warlord" and croak him (this principle is illistrated in pannel 5 here: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0073.html One of the archons is casually jabbing Manpower with a finger. If the current comic demonstrated an attack on the wounded dwagons, it would require a *substantial* suspension of disbelief on my part to believe that everything suddenly became a lot harder when Julian and Co have first-strike capability (because of Parson's order not to attack until attacked).

The poke at Manpower is before combat. Jaclyn could not coup de grace Manpower. You either buy that Erf is quirky and has combat rules that exactly follow a wargame or not.

Thirdly, the Dwagon attack team has *three* warlords in it. Julian's refers only to a single one. Granted, that could be an indication that she is personally recroaking each of them one at a time. However, it is an extremely awkward turn of phrase, and implies that her primary objective is to reach a *singular* warlord. If I'm wrong about all this, I submit it for inclusion in the "Erfworld Bloopers" thread, unless of course it is an effort on the author's part to build this very sort of speculation and dramatic tension.

See stacking note above.

Fourth, from a plot standpoint, this is the best way to resolve the gambit. If that many dwagons die, and Jetstone does not take *substantial* losses in the process of achieving this, the balance is shot to hell and GK is booped. If Julian is paralyzed or turns, Ansom is croaked or captured. Either outcome gives the plot a robust boot to the groin, as it effectively ends the rising action, puts us past climax, and initiates the falling action. It could be this issue of Erfworld is coming to a close, but I personally believe the story has a lot of life in it yet. This works well to preserve the status-quo, as it diminshes both parties in the conflict, but not to a point where their side is crippled. GK loses some good dwagons (possibly quite a few, as Julian implies that she plans to croak multiple hexes, see current comic), and Ansom is reinforced. GK has it's strongest dwagons preserved, and can take out the siege, thus making for a more balanced confrontation later. The spell on Julian is up in the air, though this course of action implies it is still preseved (thus sparing Wanda's life). By the same token, it does not make her a traitor in Ansom's eyes because her action is perfectly justifiable based on her stated loyalties(adding evidence that the spell is to remain intact) In short, this line of reasoning keeps the story alive and interesting.

Those are my observations, and in my view it is very reasonable to conclude that Julian is killing plenty of healthy dwagons, leaving the wounded ones be, and going to back up Ansom.

I don't necessarily disagree with your plot observations but Jillian is attacking the wounded dwagons. All the dwagons in the lake hex were wounded. The healthy dwagons around Ansom have not been engaged.

[Roquen]

So what did you expect when Parson said Jillian had a 61% chance of totally wiping out the dwagons?

Hoped for miscalculation!

[galdon]

from a gaming perspective, parson's odds of winning at this point are about 0.000%. 25 to 1 in pure army size difference againced him, losing 3 of his only 5 warlords, somewhere around half of his only powerful unit, and ansom still has 40% of his siege left, so they wont be forced into the tunnels and parson cannot afford to try another tactical strike againced the siege.

add that on top of the facts that this is parsons first time playing in erfworld, as well as everything anyone knows about ansom suddenly goes to mush because vinny magically knows exactly when to tell ansom when not to do one of his normal moves and saves his ass. so he has no useful knowledge of his enemy and now jillian has gone completely to ansom's side, leaving them without a secret weapon.

so yeah, in a gaming perspective, parson simply cannot win this battle anymore, he can only win by the author making up some extreemly powerful 'toy' in tomorow's breakfast and making up a series of even more bizzare happenstances in order to give parson back the lead.

[5tephen]

Alright, those Archons seem overpowered.

Surely a force like them in the world would be deeply un-balancing from the point of view of armies and world ruling intentions?

[BRC]

add that on top of the facts that this is parsons first time playing in erfworld, as well as everything anyone knows about ansom suddenly goes to mush because vinny magically knows exactly when to tell ansom when not to do one of his normal moves and saves his ass. so he has no useful knowledge of his enemy and now jillian has gone completely to ansom's side, leaving them without a secret weapon.

Vinny dosn't magically know when theres a trap, He's just a general skeptic, thought it through, and decided that Jillians "miraculous" escape was a bit too suspicious for the coalition leader to head in. He didn't know there was a trap, he thought there MIGHT be a trap and that ansom going in just wasn't worth the risk. In short Vinny knew because the writer wanted him to know for that instance.

[MReav]

Is it just me, or do the Dwagons look surprisingly unharmed?

You know... aside from getting totally blown away.

I mean, the third Dwagon looks like the only damage it took was the shredding attack and the second the vapourization.

Are they rescuing the prince?

[Lamech]

from a gaming perspective, parson's odds of winning at this point are about 0.000%. 25 to 1 in pure army size difference againced him, losing 3 of his only 5 warlords, somewhere around half of his only powerful unit, and ansom still has 40% of his siege left, so they wont be forced into the tunnels and parson cannot afford to try another tactical strike againced the siege.

Umm... Parson hasn't lost any warlords and he's lost 6 dwagons thats closer to twelve percent of them not somewhere around half. Plus we were told that Ansom lost 40% of the siege not that the has 40% left.

[Girl Wonder]

Alright, those Archons seem overpowered.

Surely a force like them in the world would be deeply un-balancing from the point of view of armies and world ruling intentions?

I don't see this at all. First of all, for all we have been shown, (and to follow the pop culture reference of Charlie's Angels), there are only three of them.

Secondly, what have we now seen them do? Each one engaged a badly-wounded Dwagon in single combat and defeated it (I don't believe Jillian is disobeying orders and attacking unwounded dwagons for reasons stated in prior posts). I should HOPE that is within their capabilities, or they're not really very powerful at all (each one roughly equivalent to a wounded dwagon? NOT really a good justification for the hinted at large price Jetstone paid for their services.) Ansom himself defeated an unwounded Dwagon on his own, as did a gump, as did Tarfu and a stack of woodsy elves. Does this make Ansom, 1 Gump, and a handful of woodsy elves deeply unbalancing from a 'ruling the world' standpoint?

Finally, I don't see how many are seeing this as unexpected? We were already told that Jillian, the Archons, and a few gwiffons had a better-than-average chance of completely wiping out the wounded dwagon force. I would have thought -then- would have been the time to say 'Eek! The Archons are too powerful!' Having the Archons kill three wounded dwagons in very flashy ways hardly makes them godlike, it just makes them powerful and very impressive-looking, which seems to me should not have been much of a surprise.

[SteveMB]

Is it just me, or do the Dwagons look surprisingly unharmed?

You know... aside from getting totally blown away.

I mean, the third Dwagon looks like the only damage it took was the shredding attack and the second the vapourization.

Are they rescuing the prince?

Nah. While I think Rob and Jamie carefully left the door just a crack open to that interpretation, it doesn't really fit:

1. Jillian says, "let me at the warlord". There aren't any warlords in the ring dwagon stacks. Nor could "the warlord" (singular) be a reference to Ansom. Even setting aside the fact that Jillian's pose indicates clear intent to make a warlord shish kebab, there are three friendly warlords in Ansom's hex, and Jillian specifically referred to rescuing all three of them when she first declared her intent to stop searching for the wounded dwagons.

2. Also, why would she need anybody to "open the front door" when she could just come in through the cleared hex? The theory that she's attacking the ring requires that she knows about the strong hex and the weaker hexes of the ring, but not about the gap... the route through which Ansom got himself into this trap in the first place.

3. The attacked dwagons are airborne. The wounded dwagons over the lake are airborne. All of the healthy ring dwagons we've seen are in the trees, where they belong in order to take advantage of the terrain.

I repeat for the record -- given what we've seen to date this theory only makes sense if you think "Occam's Razor" is the name of one of the tools in Wanda's interrogation kit.

(Not that I'd be utterly shocked if the next couple pages show that I'm wrong, but in a way makes sense of it after all. )

Ansom himself defeated an unwounded Dwagon on his own, as did a gump, as did Tarfu and a stack of woodsy elves. Does this make Ansom, 1 Gump, and a handful of woodsy elves deeply unbalancing from a 'ruling the world' standpoint?

I mostly agree with your reasoning, but who says the dwagons were unwounded at that point? I sort of assumed that Rob and Jamie skipped over some relatively boring battle-of-attrition stuff and showed us the final strikes on the dwagons.

[BRC]

I think alot of people are thinking that 1 dwagon=superunit, not 1 stack of dwagons=heavy unit
I tend too think of units as Worker<Basic<Medium<Heavy<super.
The difference is that a heavy unit is just a powerful addition to your force, a super unit can turn the tide of a battle just by being there. in any game with a Hero system, hero's are almsot always superunits, and the only thing that's supposed to stand a chance against a superunit in 1-on-1 is another superunit. Jillian, ansom, the archons, and proably many warlords are definetally powerful superunits.

[Girl Wonder]

I mostly agree with your reasoning, but who says the dwagons were unwounded at that point? I sort of assumed that Rob and Jamie skipped over some relatively boring battle-of-attrition stuff and showed us the final strikes on the dwagons.

Well, there is certainly enough debate going on about what Rob and Jamie show us without even beginning to wade into the murky waters of conjecture about what they are not. Still, I shall attempt to give another bit of support to my thoughts.

Jillian (and her mount) can solo a dwagon (however tough a 'blue' is... my assumption was 'fairly tough' since Jillian seems to prefer the path of most resistance in battles, but there's no real evidence one way or the other, so, we shall assume it is a fairly 'typical' Dwagon. So, one fairly talented Warlord is a bit more powerful the one Dwagon, at least. Ansom is probably slightly more powerful than Jillian (his bonus, at least, is higher, and he has an (admittedly unattuned) artifact-type weapon to help him out. Still, we can assume that he is roughly equivalent as a combat unit to Jillian, and so we can assume he is capable of taking out a Dwagon on his own. Even if Vinnie and Tarfu are less combat-capable warlords, I do not think it is too much of a stretch to assume they two of them together are the equal of a dwagon, and it does not seem Jetstone lacks for warlords, given all the various tribes (of elves alone!) that show up at Ansom's staff meetings.

If a couple of warlords (or 1 quality warlord) are the equal of 1 Dwagon, and if Jetstone has plenty of Warlords (and enough gwiffons to let most of them zip around, if need be), and if the ability to zap a wounded dwagon makes the archons 'overpowered', it would seem people were expecting each archon to be no more powerful than a warlord, possibly less so. If that were the case, why would Jetstone have paid such a large sum for their services? One could argue for their Thinkagrams ability (though these seem like they may be tacked onto Charlie's base rates), but Ansom seems to see them first and foremost as combat units, a sort of heavy aerial cavalry to help bolster his forces in an area where they are weak (And to help save Jillian's endagered skin). And, if we assume Charlie only has his three Archons, that doesn't make him much of a player in world affairs if each Archon is only equivalent to a lesser warlord in combat.

Actually, I think perhaps a lot of the concern about the Archons power comes not from underestimating what they could do, but rather in overestimating a dwagon's power. Dwagon's seem fast and tough, but I do not think we are talking Smaug or Godzilla here, for each one. I'm guessing if a stack of Marbit archers is a '1', the Dwagons are a '10' (to use just random-how-it-seems-to-me-to-be numbers), not a '100'. And on that same scale, I'd hope that each of the Archons is something like a '20', the equal of a couple of healthy Dwagons or half-a-dozen badly hurt ones.

[darkgolem]

Stupidest. Comic. Ever.

A Deus Ex Machina solution! Wow, great!!! If 3 girls do that, why even bother bring an army?

While I feel I have seen possibilities of this very sort of manipulation in the comic, I am not sure it is fair to describe this as such.

My reasoning as follows:

• It's not fair to say it's a "magic plot stick" solution, mainly because the reader is gradually being introduced to rules of the game that all these characters are a part of. For example, the cloaking could be a "deus ex machine" ending, except it never actually was used, so didn't magically resolve the plot outside of what already was building.
• The archons were known for a bit to be powerful, at least by implication, making it less of a magic wand ending (if this in fact a resolution of this particular plot).
• We didn't actually see a resolution of this battle, since in fact, the warlords are not dead. Stanley has more dragons, and the loss of a stack is worth the seige being destroyed. The annihilation of the warlords will be the end of this, not the dragons.

Personally, while I understand most other readers feel differently, I just want to get to the end of the "dragon/seige... will they survive!!!!!" part of this story and move on one way or the other. I respect that others feel differently, and frankly feel poorly to express that, since I don't want to step on the author's work on such an (otherwise) excellent and creative story.

[Emo Samurai]

Spoiler

Show

The dwagons are going to die, Parson's going to be sent into battle as Stanley had originally planned, he's going to get captured, and then he's going to bond the Arkenpliers.

BOOYAH!!!!

[Girl Wonder]

Spoiler

Show

The dwagons are going to die, Parson's going to be sent into battle as Stanley had originally planned, he's going to get captured, and then he's going to bond the Arkenpliers.

BOOYAH!!!!

If you turn out to be right, you're going to wish you'd put that in spoiler tags

[Emo Samurai]

You think I'm right, or at least probably right, don't you? :) And I'll edit in the spoiler tags.