After the last few updates I was about to write off Erfworld again, but this one was awesomer than ever. He just has to keep Jack on stage at all times and it'll be gold.
Jack and Wanda, preferably. She's his best straight man (ironically).
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I was thinking that, even with a "victory", with all the lost units, the tower collapsed and the capital downgraded, it will take a lot of turns for Jetstone, to recover from the economical disaster.
And some of the neighborhoods aren't exactly friendly...
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I was thinking that, even with a "victory", with all the lost units, the tower collapsed and the capital downgraded
It wouldn't be much of a downgrade--Spacerock is only a level 2 anyway! And I'm sure they could carry out the plan to revert the capital back to Jetstone and abandon Spacerock entirely without suffering greatly, so long as either the King or his heir survive.
The Atlas is also goofy but it has that whole "Stay Puft Marshmallow Man" menacing smile thing going for it. The guy who drew that one up was obviously taken to the Nutcracker when he was a child... and he was screaming in terror the entire time.
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Originally Posted by Enterti, Cogidubnus
Glyphstone, out of all the playground I think you scare me the most...
My guess is that Cubbins knew he wouldn't be of use in the fighting, so Duty compelled him to save some archers instead.
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My guess is that Cubbins knew he wouldn't be of use in the fighting, so Duty compelled him to save some archers instead.
Well, he wasn't included in the stacks defending Expository Bridge, so maybe he doesn't really have that much direct combat utility. He may be of more worth to the side in the long run, but if Jetstone is going to have a long run, Slately or his heir must survive, and perhaps a few more archers would allow that in this instance.
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Eh? Could have sworn it said somewhere that Spacerock was a level 2, and that King Slately had made it his capital just because it was a really nice place rather than anywhere particularly defensible...
The Atlas is also goofy but it has that whole "Stay Puft Marshmallow Man" menacing smile thing going for it. The guy who drew that one up was obviously taken to the Nutcracker when he was a child... and he was screaming in terror the entire time.
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Originally Posted by Enterti, Cogidubnus
Glyphstone, out of all the playground I think you scare me the most...
Sorry, not the current one, the one linked to by Thalnawr. "Spacerock the City, capital of Spacerock the Side, led by Spacerock the King, defeated in Spacerock the Battle'.
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The Atlas is also goofy but it has that whole "Stay Puft Marshmallow Man" menacing smile thing going for it. The guy who drew that one up was obviously taken to the Nutcracker when he was a child... and he was screaming in terror the entire time.
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Originally Posted by Enterti, Cogidubnus
Glyphstone, out of all the playground I think you scare me the most...
Sorry, not the current one, the one linked to by Thalnawr. "Spacerock the City, capital of Spacerock the Side, led by Spacerock the King, defeated in Spacerock the Battle'.
Erm, that was Fjolnir who posted that link, not me.
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Whoops. I knew I had clicked on a link, scrolled back to see you had posted a link, and didn't bother double-checking they were the same links.
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Originally Posted by GungHo, on Battletech
The Atlas is also goofy but it has that whole "Stay Puft Marshmallow Man" menacing smile thing going for it. The guy who drew that one up was obviously taken to the Nutcracker when he was a child... and he was screaming in terror the entire time.
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Originally Posted by Enterti, Cogidubnus
Glyphstone, out of all the playground I think you scare me the most...
Actually, I think I may have figured out where my confusion comes from--the capital of Transylvito is a lower level than other capitals, albeit it's still a level 4. No idea where I got level 2 from!
It's occurred to me that, if Parson was paying attention, he really ought to have known that tower was coming down. He can read the Signamancy of calling it "the Tower of Jenga" as well as we can.
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Well, at least one of those Archons managed to get a shot off. I wonder what she'll hit.
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And just because I've been meaning to say it . . . I am beyond surprised that Ossomer was the first/only Decrypted to defect.
Even if there is some kind of initial "Set loyalty to max" effect going on . . . It's been proven by Ossomer that she still has to do something, anything, to engender continued loyalty from her subjects. Him being treated pretty poorly from the moment of his decryption certainly didn't help.
Well, at least one of those Archons managed to get a shot off. I wonder what she'll hit.
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And just because I've been meaning to say it . . . I am beyond surprised that Ossomer was the first/only Decrypted to defect.
Even if there is some kind of initial "Set loyalty to max" effect going on . . . It's been proven by Ossomer that she still has to do something, anything, to engender continued loyalty from her subjects. Him being treated pretty poorly from the moment of his decryption certainly didn't help.
Wanda is a terrible, terrible leader.
Agreed. It's possible that decrypted units can't turn as long as Wanda with within a certain distance. Entering the Magic Kingdom could easily be far enough away to lose that.
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Perhaps one point of this arc is to teach Wanda that the decrypted aren't her b*tches. She could learn a lot more than just strategy and tactics from Lord Hamster.
I honestly don't even care any more. I'll probably still tune into Erfworld every few months just because I appreciate the art style...but they update so sporadically, that I just cannot stay invested in their plot.
Yep. I think the current storyline lacks the appeal of the first one, as it was previously about a master strategist fighting against ridiculous odds in a desperate last stand, along with oodles of character and rather hilarious references, while now? One battle. One ludicrously long battle with little to no tension, as Wanda is now powerful enough to steamroller basically everything. One battle which has been dragged out endlessly, and padded with unforgivable amounts of filler. Those text updates where we see a short snippet of events played out from the view of a character we've never before seen? As cool as it was the first time we got to see Erfworld from the eyes of a it's inhabitants, that gimmick wore old when I realized they were just using it as a stalling tactic.
The text updates in general are a bad thing, really. A picture is worth a thousand words, and Erfworld is much better conveyed in a visual medium. As text, it lacks the wonderful artwork, visual dissonance of cutesy characters in a brutally war-like world, and the clever references fall flat. Also, they drag on far longer than they should, and usually contain less relevance than two panels worth of comic.
I also preferred the old art style. The pastel colors, the over-the-top character designs... The new style is good, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it fits the story as well. Before, it had a more distinct visual style, one that conveyed perfectly the nature of Erf. Now it's pretty easy to not notice that the Erfworlders are meant to be bizarre, big-headed midgets when Parson isn't on-screen.
But the update rate is the real killer. I never know when it's going to update, if it's going to update, whether it'll actually be a comic or yet another wall of text... At least if they just said "a comic every other week", I'd know when to check. But nowadays I only bother checking if I remember, on the off chance that maybe something interesting happened.
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What I find insulting is they are blaming this on Xin's mother's health. He explicitly says this has been going on for this summer, not for the last year or two. So while this could have feasibly been an excuse for the last few months, fact is Erfworld has been bad about updating for a long time and this is just more excuses. Like if it had been just this last summer that updates had been slow I could see this being something acceptable, but it hasn't been, so yeah.
On the upside, there is the news of bringing in an inker and colorist, and Rob quitting his Music gig to focus on this. So when Xin is ready to come back they should be able to hunker down and get things going at a decent clip. If things still don't improve at that point though, I'm going to have to give up on the comic, because seriously the pacing has been so terrible for the last few years I really find it hard to care. When the traditionally bad schedule comics (OOTS and Goblins) are producing more material per year than you, you have a serious problem.
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The guy has been having real-life problems of one kind or another for years (though usually the details aren't shared). If you go back and read the news archives, it's just one thing after another keeping him from updating or keeping people's book orders from shipping. I'm not thrilled about the latest news myself. While I'm sad that the artist is dealing with a family crisis, I don't know that the solution he came up with (to pretty much hand it over to new artists again) is the best idea.
Really, he's been dropping more and more projects over the past few years, like Partially Clips, and more recently the music. I hope the dude is okay, but he doesn't seem to have a good handle on this whole "running a webcomic" thing. Consistency is key. Even OOTS, with sometimes lengthy stretches between updates, has been consistent in style and presentation throughout its history, and not full of, "Okay, I'm going to do alternate text updates and now I'm going to cut back on them and now I'm going to change the art style and now I'm going to change it again."
Averaged out over the lifespan of the comic (250-ish pages in a little over 5 years), he's been completing about 1 page per week, which isn't that bad considering the amount of time and effort that goes into it. Getting an inker and a colorer is a great idea and it's something he should've done a lot sooner. But yeah, I agree that for him to pin the problem on Xin's mom's illness is classless when there have been many slowdowns and changes to compensate over the years.
However, Erfworld isn't actually a webcomic, it's a comic book/graphic novel that the creator happens to post 1 page at a time to the web to market his books and merch and membership plan. In that light it doesn't really matter what his update schedule or non-schedule happens to be, as long as people are buying his stuff.
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