Erfworld 128 The Battle for Gobwin Knob, Page 116

[DevilDan]

We also don't know at what point in time Stanley found out that Ansom had the pliers.

(I do love the intricate scenarios that people build behind the single mention of Stanley croaking a few Jetstone units. Unbelievable.)

[Welf]

You might just as well ask "why didn't we bomb Japan at the start of the war? Why did we waste all that time island hopping in the Pacific?" The aswer of course is that we first needed those islands as forward bases from which to carry out the bombing. Similarly even Stanley's dwagons do not have unlimited range. We saw that clearly when Parson was forced to hold them at the Donut/Lake rather then attack and withdraw all the way to GK in a single move.

Two words: Pearl Harbor. (Or three: shock and awe.) I meant that Stanley could send his dwagons to an place near Ansoms location and waits till he leaves a town and has relatively few troops with him. And then attack him with 50+ dwagons and warlords a la transylvito. With his eyemancers he knows where other troops are and can move his own troops. And in Erfworld he can wait one turn or twenty, food poops automatically.

[QUOTE=ChowGuy;5236342]Further, we don't know what the limits of the Trimancers were; your theory seems to assume that they can instantaneously see all hexes in the world map, and home in on something as small as the Arkenpliers simply by asking "where is it?" I doubt that's the case given the much smaller "window on the world" view we actually see displayed on the table. Even if, as the Stupid Meal points out there are "oinly four known Arkentools" thus implying their general location is known, that's not the same as actually locating them to a specific hex at a given point in time[QUOTE=ChowGuy;5236342]

Stanley doesn't need to look for the Arkenpliers, only for the high level chief warlord of Jetstone. With a little bit of espionage he can find out where he is. (Of course assuming he already knows that Ansom has the pliers.)

[Kish]

Stanley has also proclaimed his (equally biased) judgment that his is a holy and thus morally correct mission.

Nope. THIS one of we sees a clear and unambiguous statement there that (so far as Stanley is concerned) there is no such thing as "moral superiority."

You seem to have shifted your position--in an unfortunate way, I would say, since I think you were much more correct the first way, though the purpose of either seems to be to shield Stanley from moral condemnation. I freely admit I don't understand what makes people try to defend Stanley, just as I don't understand what makes people argue that Belkar Bitterleaf isn't evil, that Redcloak is the real hero of the Order of the Stick comic, or that Severus Snape is a good teacher in the Harry Potter books.

[WoodStock_PV]

Like Xykon onde said, Parson now has a "big frickin' army". If Sizemore can raise more golems and the Tool returns to the city we'll have the tunnels, the walls, and skies of Gobwin Knob really well guarded.

But I think it's likely that Stanley will get in trouble before he can get to the city hex.

[Aquillion]

Two words: Pearl Harbor. (Or three: shock and awe.) I meant that Stanley could send his dwagons to an place near Ansoms location and waits till he leaves a town and has relatively few troops with him. And then attack him with 50+ dwagons and warlords a la transylvito. With his eyemancers he knows where other troops are and can move his own troops. And in Erfworld he can wait one turn or twenty, food poops automatically.

Further, we don't know what the limits of the Trimancers were; your theory seems to assume that they can instantaneously see all hexes in the world map, and home in on something as small as the Arkenpliers simply by asking "where is it?" I doubt that's the case given the much smaller "window on the world" view we actually see displayed on the table. Even if, as the Stupid Meal points out there are "oinly four known Arkentools" thus implying their general location is known, that's not the same as actually locating them to a specific hex at a given point in time

Stanley doesn't need to look for the Arkenpliers, only for the high level chief warlord of Jetstone. With a little bit of espionage he can find out where he is. (Of course assuming he already knows that Ansom has the pliers.)

Stanley does know that Ansom has the Arkenpliers ("he's bringing them to me"). In fact, it's possible that the whole point of all this war is that Stanley was deliberately trying to provoke Ansom in order to get the Arkenpliers out of whatever safe city Ansom was in originally. I don't know if Stanley's smart enough for that, though... could be Wanda's idea or whatever.

But anyway, in addition to not having enough range, Stanley might not have enough power to beat Ansom while on the offensive (assuming Ansom stays someplace safe and doesn't pull something stupid like he did against the donut.) Due to the definitely limited range of his dwagons and the possibly limited range of the table, he couldn't just strike Ansom whenever he goes anywhere with a light escort (assuming that even happens) -- he needed to engineer a good situation himself.

He might also have been simply trying to build up power. In many Erfworld-style wargames, it's quite possible to build up power quickly by seizing cities and churning out more units; Stanley could've been trying to blitzkrieg his way to the Jetstone's capital, capturing everything in his path. It didn't work, though.

(And finally -- we're talking Stanley here. It's not that odd that, if given the choice between using espionage and using brute force, he'd go for brute force.)

[DevilDan]

Aquillion, you have a great imagination.

We don't know, however, when Stanley found out that the arkenpliers were in Ansom's possession. Our knowledge of the recent history of Erf is quite incomplete.

However, I think that when Vinny questions Jetstone's motivation in leading the RCC it is because Stanley has done very little to merit Jetstone's attention. If anything that Stanley was doing could have been construed as a threat to Jetstone, Vinny wouldn't have questioned Ansom's role in the RCC or Ansom would have had a more plausible answer than vague statements about how Stanley came to power.