#to their defense tutorial WAS spelled backwards

[incorrect-undertronic-quotes]

Cider, playing video games: What is "Jairotut"? Chronos: .... Tutorial?

[dragonswordmaster]

Gamers of Destiny - Day 2

“Nightshade, on your left!” Yang shouted as she punched the minotaur monster and then roasted it with a bout of flame magic. Seeing its health points drain over time, she smirked lightly when it gained the burn status and went to join her sister in taking down her monster as well. The three of them had become a great unit over the years since they had been trapped in this death game by that bitch named Salem.

“Wind Tunnel!” Ruby exclaimed from the air, shooting down a column of wind at the Earth-based monster and saw its health quickly drop down into the red yet didn’t kill it. The only reason she was flying was due to the passive buff that the wind element granted her. She had thought that with the elemental weakness bonus she would have been able to kill it but apparently not.

“Firebolt!” Yang shouted as she punched the air in front of her, a dart of flame coming into fruition before heading towards the enemy that Petal, her sister Ruby, had attacked. With the wind tunnel spell still in effect, her flame spell gained a small buff as well. “How…many are left?” she asked, looking at the quest counter in the upper left of her hull.

“I think at least ten, Dragon!” Nightshade commented with a scowl on her face as she stared down two minotaurs in front of her and readied her melee weapon before disappearing, using the passive for being a curse element user to sink into shadows and then reappeared behind her foes, quickly stabbing both of them in the back of the neck to deal massive damage and causing the two to become pixels before fading from view.

Flashback – 2 years ago

Yang Xiao Long entered her username and password information before seeing the screen zoom pass her and bring her towards the character creation screen. Once her feet touch the ‘ground’ she notices seven silhouettes: one for each of the seven elements that can be used within the MMO. Ruby had told her that she was going to pick wind, so she did the natural thing and picked the avatar that had red hair done up in a ponytail and wearing leather trousers and a red shirt with two crosses going from the left shoulder to the right waist. On the arms of the baseless avatar were two metallic wrist protectors that were colored a rustic red.

“Elemental Mastery over the power of Flame, the element of passion. Is this the element you wish to choose?” a voice asked, chiming around her. Yang rolled her eyes at the voice of the administrator and hit the Yes button as the other six choices went back into the darkness and the base for the avatar of a student of the fire element moved to the center. “Scanning Player’s physical body” the voice said as it hummed lightly for a second as the avatar’s hair turned from red to blonde. “Scanning Complete for User: YXLong. Please make weapon choice,” it stated as a display panel showed up in front of her with a set of weapons. Making her way to the panel, she pressed on one of the arrows as she scrolled through the various weapons before smirking lightly as a picture of a fist showed up. Stopping there, she hit the confirm button as it faded back into the darkness.

“Um…is that it? I’d really like to get through the tutorial and meet up with my sister…” Yang commented before seeing another panel almost smack her in the face. Reeling back from it, she saw that it was a name generator. She remembered hearing about the user had to name it something similar to the element that you chose, but they were pretty much free after naming it from that, with the max being ten characters. Quickly typing Dragon, she saw that screen fade away as well before feeling the ground give out from underneath her and she started plummeting…to wherever it was that she was going. Closing her eyes, she didn’t realize the world around her materialize until she felt a hand on her shoulder and slowly opened her lilac eyes, noticing that she was no longer in the inky blackness but on a dirt path just outside a pristine academy with seven towering spires.

“Ah…an inspiring Mage of Fire I see, young Dragon. Good choice though you would be wise to stay away from water,” the NPC commented as it pointed her in the direction that she needed to go in, as well as to which tower she would need to use to start her training and master a few spells. Thanking the NPC, Yang raced off to where she needed to go, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to start any quests until she got her Practioneer’s license.

If only she knew about the horrible statement that would come at the end of the day there…

End Flashback

“Dragon, watch out!” Nightshade stated as she used the shadows emanating from the crystal lights on the ceiling and moved towards the blonde warrior via the Shadow Teleport, knowing that the blonde wouldn’t have enough time to dodge the attack. Grunting in pain as she was thrown backwards from the swung club and was knocked against the cavern wall.

“NS!” Dragon shouted as she rushed towards her friend, seeing the blood coming from the wound. Even with concentrated healing from the both of them, that would leave a nasty, jagged scar… “Why did you do that, you silly Shadow Cat…” she said softly before turning to her sister. “Petal, defense spell!” she requested as her sister said a few words rapidly before a wall of dense wind appear in front of the blonde and blocked other attempts to get at both Petal and Dragon as the blonde started uttering several magic words at once before a gentle flame came from her hand and slowly started healing the feline shadow user.

‘Just another thing that Salem has to answer to…though I do wish that I knew who she was…’ Dragon thought as she healed the wound. She really thought that she knew the girl in the Outside World and hoped that she would be able to get the girl to reveal her true name in time…

[thelongestdamnreviews]

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

HAHAHA YES I DID IT I FINALLY BEAT THE GAME THE CURSE IS BR--

Uh. 

I finally finished the game this time, clocking in a time of just over 58 hours for Neutral route cleared and not really many sidequests done.  While I played this run with a mod (if you’ve played the game, you’ll notice in the pictures some differences), I'll talk about that another time.  I should note that I've given this game at least five prior attempts each clocking in at over 20 hours over the several years I've owned it, so this is a pretty significant victory in my eyes. 

The Valerian Isles have been in turmoil ever since the untimely death of her king, Dorgalua.  He passed with no heir, and a regent installed himself into rule, although his influence only really extended through the northern part of the isles.  The Hierophant Balbatos has enacted a regime of ethnic cleansing in the south against the Walister, your people, and your leader has already been captured.  Worse, the knights who torched your town years ago are headed your way and the only help you have are your sister and best friend...

Five versus three against your favor, and they’re all veterans versus you all never having taken the field.  What’s the worst that can happen? 

I'll be making a few comparisons to Tactics Ogre's sibling series, Final Fantasy Tactics, during this review and I apologize for making so many.  Tactics Ogre originally was a Super Famicom game and it was ported to the PlayStation 1 and Sega Saturn before getting remade on the PSP quite a while later.  I've never played any of the old versions prior so this is mostly new experiences for me. 

Tactics Ogre is a turn-based tactics RPG.  Field a small team of characters in a variety of classes and fight it out through a number of battles as you clear a swath through everyone standing in your way.  Warriors use big swords, Archers snipe with bows, Clerics heal, Canopus wins entire maps, Wizards damage and rebuff with spells, and so on.  Objectives vary between "kill all enemies" and "kill the enemy leader" with very few deviations.  Instead of the almost constant limit of five troops that Final Fantasy Tactics imposes on you, you can field a maximum of 12, but the limit increases or decreases based on the map, and even maps near the end of the game won't let you take everyone along.  Enemy troops will almost always outnumber yours, but you have the advantage of human intellect, grinding, and the ability to revive your troops to counter them. 

I’m apparently really bad at taking screenshots of actual gameplay, but the anti-aliasing on the text broke on the enemy’s numbers for some reason, thus the picture. 

Though this is a modern-day remake, the game still uses sprites for characters and the battlegrounds, but instead of having the ability to freely rotate the map, you can instead tilt the map overhead for a bird's eye view to plan your next move.  And in the process, it looks like the maps actually are 3D models textured to look like sprites.  One of the final maps in the story is a translucent bridge situated over a glowing pit, and you can actually adjust the camera to look into the pit for no reason other than it looks cool.  Spells also have been given a visual overhaul as have the weather effects in battle. 

It might be a little jarring to have such advanced effects shown alongside sprites and pixel artwork, but they at least put the PSP’s hardware to work with these. 

The biggest difference this version has to its prior incarnations or its siblings is how different the class system is.  Instead of individual characters having their own character level and class level, the classes themselves level up and characters no longer have a personal level.  If you have Warrior at 22 and change Denam from a level 5 Wizard to one, his level jumps to 22.  More characters of one class fielded at the same time level faster, as do people of a lower level than the average. 

It's an interesting system on paper, but it's got more than a few issues.  While you can take a new character and stuff them into a leveled class to use immediately, you'll have to babysit anyone who switches to a new class since they'll be stuck using weaker gear until they get back up to speed, due to everything having a minimum level to use.  Classes don't unlock too often so you'll have to decide if what new things the class can bring to the group are worth the trouble of grinding the characters back to effectiveness.  EXP and SP are rewarded once the battle is won and it doesn't seem to matter what anyone on your side does to affect the final number, so you're not penalized for someone being dead weight.  Battles where you have to kill the enemy leader can be useful for quick EXP/SP, but random battles never have these conditions. 

Characters have personal reserves of SP used to unlock new skills and up to ten slots to stick into them.  Skills either boost stats, like boosting defense or max HP or boosting ranged evasion, or they grant passive bonuses like weapon skills or racial skills boosting the damage done with said weapon/against said race, or they enable the use of certain spells like Fire Magic or Dark Magic, or they give your unit class-specific actions like Fearful Impact or Speedstar.  New skills unlock slowly as that class levels, but not all of them can be transferred to other classes. 

Some skills slowly rank up as you use them and weapon skills are no different.  You’re encouraged to get at least one weapon skill up to 2 for every character to unlock heavily-damaging Finishers, so you can burst down tanky targets or other dangerous foes. 

Unlike in FFT where you can reasonably allow your characters to access the skills of prior jobs so you could have a Knight with Black Magick abilities, here skills and spells and equipment is a lot more rigid.  A Knight and a Cleric can both use Divine Magic to heal allies, but only the Cleric can use resurrection magic.  A Knight can use Axes and 1H Swords, while the Cleric can't.  They both can use Hammers, but only female Clerics get the sole Hammer the class can use.  You kinda need to plan out your characters to minimize wasted SP.  While it's not in short supply, it can be frustrating to want to try something new with an old character and then have several of their skills not apply to the new class.  There is one special class that can use almost everything any other one class can use, but only one character can use it and it comes at a heavy cost, as well as said class learning nothing naturally.  Think Freelancer or Onion Knight from Final Fantasy proper. 

Combat is speed-based like in FFT.  Each class has a base Recovery Time as well as how much RT is added per panel of move.  Then this is all factored against the weight of the equipment you have on and the RT of the weapon.  Unique characters (either fully unique or named generics) almost always have lower base RT than generics, on top of some having unique classes and dialog opportunities in some battles.  Every class has HP for living and TP to fuel special abilities and weapon finishers that unlock once the related weapon skill is at least rank 2, but some have MP which start at 0 to prevent anyone from using their strongest spells on turn one, the same way FFTA2 does it.  You're given a turn order on the bottom of the screen so you can try to manipulate the battlefield to your advantage, such as seeing if a character might be within range to kill a healer before they can act. 

But if things wind up not going your way, another new feature to the game is the Chariot Tarot, an in-game turn rewinding feature.  This unlocks in your first non-tutorial battle and allows you to rewind up to 50 turns backwards, and it even saves the 'alternate timelines' you created in that battle so if your original plan turned out better, you can jump back to it.  The game records your use of this but you can do a same-turn Chariot free of charge, to perhaps try to aim a projectile spell another way or if an attack you needed to hit got dodged.  The game points out that repeating the same actions the same way will only bear the same results, so if an Archer is having trouble landing an arrow for example, it might be worth it to same-turn Chariot by firing from every different tile in range until you make your mark. 

I didn’t test to see how many alternate timelines you could make, but having the ability to rewind at all is pretty handy. 

There are three story routes across four chapters, but they branch off instead of being three full stories from beginning to end.  There is one Chapter 1, there are two Chapter 2s, three Chapter 3s, and one Chapter 4 where they all converge again.  Law route has no branches, but Chaos can branch into Neutral at the end of Chapter 2.  Each branch has its own story sequences, but the roles characters play in them might change.  Someone who is an ally on one route might be an enemy on another, someone may live or die or even be recruitable depending on how you go.

  Once you finish the game, you gain access to the World Tarot, which allows you to travel time forward and backward, jumping to Anchor Points while you keep your gear and roster.  There are several Anchor Points sprinkled through each route's chapters, but you can't merely jump to a specific story battle at-will.  Don't go back to the start of the game and expect to zero-effort everyone you find though, as enemies will now scale to your level and their gear will too.  The World Tarot gives you an opportunity to replay story battles or to tackle another route too.  Beating the game also unlocks the CODA section of the game, four short but new chapters made originally as DLC for this version of the game, baked into the release we got here.  Progress through CODA requires certain characters to be considered alive by the timeline used to access it, so you may need to replay a good portion of the game to make the new timeline 'canon'. 

You still experience the routes as if you were playing them the first time, so Denam won’t try to change history even further.  Though one chapter in CODA does meddle with history to save a friend...

When not fighting on the battlefield, you can buy new wares in shops, recruit new people in shops, or craft new items if you have the recipes and materials.  Crafting can make very powerful equipment even early on, but the biggest caveat is that the process is very tedious.  You need to make advanced versions of materials one step at a time, and it's entirely possible that something will fail and you'll lose the materials in the process.  I believe one piece of Wootz Steel takes over 30 steps and again, there's the failure risk to consider.  You will be save-scumming quite a bit when it comes to crafting. 

You can also auction off recruited monsters for money that you can then turn around and use to buy the meat and other items processed from their bodies!  Somehow it’s even worse than FFT’s Poach/Secret Hunt because you’re doing this to members of your own team...

The last option accessed on the map is the Warren Report.  This is like the Brave Story of FFT, but it allows you to replay cutscenes as well as see an overall timeline of when events happen, and it has bios of damn near everyone you meet and fight and kill.  And they're not one-liners either--some enemies are nth generation knights or one pirate is actually pregnant (and you killed her, you monster), and so on.  The Warren Report also holds all of the Titles you earn naturally by playing or by doing specific side goals (so Achievements basically), as well as tracking the number of battles fought, Chariot Tarot uses, number of escapes, number of allied KOs, number of allied deaths, and how many people you've killed as well as to which clan they were affiliated.  And finally, it functions as a music player. 

War is hell.  All of those people you kill aren’t just faceless goons.  Just...the ones with names are the only people who show up here as opposed to every generic person having a bio. 

The music in this version has been given a full orchestral overhaul, given the 70-some names used in the credits for all the instruments, and several songs have been lengthened and given new parts.  The Warren Report also lists composer notes about the tracks, saying what kind of mood they were going for or talking about how difficult it was to get specific instruments to meld together.  The game has a percentage unlocked stat for the songs and I want to believe that most of them unlock by hearing them and winning the battles where they play, but at least one is unlocked by the Titles you earn. 

Okay, so that's Tactics Ogre.  Move your troops around the battlefield killing people until you win, then move onto the next map.  Buy or make new gear and spells and buy skills to keep your team in top shape, and experience the story across three different routes. 

It’s been a while since I last went through FFT, but it didn’t show you dead civilians a few times, did it?

What's good?  There's a lot of content here.  You can be sated with a one-and-done like I've done, but if you want to do everything in this game, you might want to set aside a couple hundred hours.  There's a bunch of side quests and extra dungeons, and one of them is even 115 battles long.  And you need to do that one in one go or you have to start over, but at least you can save between the fights this time.  And to get the most out of it, you need to do it more than once.  Yeah.  There is a lot to do here, to the point where I'd say that no other FFT can come close.  I hope you like grid-based turn-based RPG tactical goodness because this game is full of it. 

And variety too.  There are a bunch of different weapons for each type, a bunch of spells for each element, a bunch of skills for each class, and a bunch of classes for each race.  Even monsters have classes!  Though Golems and Dragons really only get to change, but demihumans like Reptiles and Orcs get access to some classes Humans can use, while they also get classes only they can use too.  And then you have Hawkmen who scoff at terrain differences and can fly everywhere, but they can only use a handful of classes. 

I'm a fan of the music.  I now wake to the Warren Report theme as opposed to E.S. Battle from Xenosaga Episode II like I have for the past forever.  And speaking of sound, the death cries are pretty lacking, especially compared to the PS1 FFT's anguished screams, but that can be ignored...even if you hear them quite a bit. 

If you're into customizing your troops, then this game will definitely scratch that itch, even with the restrictions on the skills I mentioned above.  There is actually a strategy revolving around recruiting enemies off the field in order to get their gear and to get their skills.  When enemies die in this game, they leave either a bag of loot containing some of their gear or valuable coins, or they leave a tarot card that increases stats of whoever picks it up and said card becomes a usable item in combat.  Instead of crystals you pick up to learn skills, you instead intentionally kill these recruits and then Scavenge their skills onto someone compatible.  And this doesn't get into the ridiculousness of Snapdragons or Cursed Weapons either, of which I didn't touch at all. 

There is some good scriptwork here too, though it has the same quasi semi-Elizabethan/Medieval bent the way War of the Lions did. 

What's bad?  Strangely, I felt like at least Chapter 4 dragged on a little too long, and that doesn't even count the multi-stage final dungeon.  This wasn't the first time my interest flagged since at least two other runs have gotten to the final dungeon and I just...stopped.  I imagine part of it was due to me somewhat rushing through the game (at a snail's pace?) and just wanting to finally be done with it this time, but I kinda dreaded the final part of the game since I knew it'd take a while--but I was wrong there. 

There are several fights where you're unable to leave, sort of like Riovanes in FFT.  You assault the castle's gates, then you enter the courtyard, then you break into the throne room, etc.  You can always save into another slot in case things go south, but then you have nothing to show for your efforts other than a little bit of knowledge for the next try and a need to get levels/gear/skills up to snuff.  The final dungeon is also set up this way, with maybe 12 fights if you don't take any shortcuts, and that many more you have to plow through if your team can't take on the last enemies.  At least it's a nice touch that there are sometimes alternate routes to the same goal, and yes the Warren Report tracks each of these different approaches if you’re a completionist. 

I mentioned crafting's tediousness, but that's at least optional.  A major gripe I had with the shop was the inability to compare the stats between the gear my people had on with what the store was offering.  So I'd save, buy a few things, go to the Party menu, compare, maybe reload the save and buy less or different things...  I get that it's a remake, but a Fitting Room option really would not have hurt this game one bit.  Because each tier of gear gives boosts to different stats, it's hard to tell how effective something would be until it's in your hands, and I found money tight enough that I couldn't just keep a copy of every weapon and armor on hand just for this reason.  You can use the page feature to see if whichever class is leveled enough to use the item in question, but there's no stat comparison and stats are kind of important here. 

It would have been amusing for people you kicked out to get revenge, but this never happens. 

I didn’t like how you still couldn’t see your starting position and the enemy before you commit to battle, the same way that FFT did it but not either FFTA.  Being able to change your gear or classes or skills or so on this way would’ve been a nice quality of life change, if to just make things a little less tedious.  Like knowing if you should keep your regular gear on or swap to Baldur while diving into the Palace of the Dead, to exploit Baldur doing heavy damage to the undead. 

So yeah.  Tactics Ogre is pretty good.  I think I still prefer the FFTs more but this isn't bad.  It still plays like its sibling games, just the differences can trip you up a bit if you don't adjust to how TO works its classes and all.  I think FFT and all are more accessible and more flexible, but if you've interest in other games like them, then Tactics Ogre is definitely worth a try.  It'll keep you busy for a while, especially if you decide to dive into all of the content here. 

Final stats. 

[whois-this]

long overdue update. Two game nights and a D&D I believe

D&D: Myself and Ranger in attendance. We’re back in the starting temple after dimensional portal travel and are now exploring the lower reaches filled with insects. Last we left ranger and NPC were dying from poison. I check the NPC’s body and sure enough there’s a few health potions so that’s fixed easily. After, the party engages a few more Spiders (tactically this time) and then checks the room out. Why were the spiders excavating the walls? They’re scraping against metal, I wonder aloud if they’re being directed by the green wizards they seem to be aligned with. Some investigation reveals a hole beneath the crystal which birthed us, which seems precarious and ominous. Searching the room reveals a few valuable skeletons beneath rublble. There’s two stairs down from here, we take the left one and end up down a cobwebbed passage to a seeming dead end. Investigation reveals this dead end is an illusion and there’s a massive ant hive on the other side, which now swarms us. I cast an invisibillity scroll on the party and we flee asap. Checking the other upper stairwell reveals it goes down to the same anthill without the illusionary wall. I still have my levitate spell in effect and float across the hive and distract the ants with noises while the invisible party sneaks along. Down stairs we reach a corridor with everburning torches, a weird painting (is that a fetus birthing increasingly complex forms? The Dm drew something for us), and a door to a treasure room. The chest in the room however shows the exact room we’re in with us all in miniature. “examination” involving the crushing of the evil NPC tagalong we have by a finger press proves we can interact with the world. I say to hell with it and jump into the chest, only to transform to stone (origin of the upper statues?). After this the party checks behind the painting which leads to another trap room of sorts which traps the ranger. DM realizes all his players are dead however so ranger gets teleported to the upper area. His first move is to try and fight his way back down without invisibillity. Those ants nearly kill him, it is that close of a near run thing. My statue’s up on the upper floor now however so the ranger finally gets the bringht idea of using the STONE TO FLESH spell from earlier he picked up in a box up there. Damn! Bright guy. After this we use a teleport spell also found there to get out, rest of party can fend for themselves. Time as again jumped ahead now and the city we were protecting is it’s own sealed off citadel where factions are trying to kill each other apparently. We find the friendly npc and he’s old and odd, I don’t entirely trust him. He shows us around and we navigate some corrupt guard checkpoints. Sounds like coalition Iraq and wouldn’t surprise me if that’s how it plays. We’re headed for the mage faction now which might be risky.

Games Nighht 1

We’re playing the star wars knockoff of descent now (forget the name). Anyways, J. is the empire and me and M. are the rebels. We play a tutorial mission, which is an easy wipeout for the rebs. Then it’s S1 which isn’t. I’m playing the wookie, M. Is playing the Fem solo knockoff. Objective is to rush an imperial outpost and destroy all it’s beacons as fast as possible. We didn’t quite understand just how tight the turn limit is and got fucked by misunderstanding the legendary rules (which gives us each two activation and x2 hitpoints, in effect an additional two characters each) but still were quite close. There’s a short skimerish out front with some garrison troops and a droid, I grab a supply crate and we destroy a beacon. The door holds us up considerably and then I have to rush a MG position headon (practically suicide) which wounds my character. The femsolo was staying back for most of this so I"m soaking all the damage. At this point we’re aware of the turn limit and just how dire the situation is (empire wins by wounding us both or our failure to destroy the beacons). We have to fumble to destroy the second beacon and then suicide rush past the imperial troop contingent in the barracks corridor in the hopes of destroying the other two beacons. IT’s a very near run thing, but the imperials kill the femsolo in the end. In retrospect, this mission was already lost in advance by our incomplete understanding of the rules (fair counterpoint is the imperials also didn’t understand threat activations). But we did make a few strategic mistakes, including lax placement in the opening phases, inadequate support from the solo during my door rush. But that was it.

Games Night 2

Was it called imperial assault? I can’t remember, but the same descent clone. I didn’t really feel like I was using the wookie to full potential so I take a Jedi instead. We purchase some stuff (I get a staff pierce modifier and an attack reroll abillity)and then it’s mission 2. Because we lost, we’re defending a reb complex against IMPERIAL ASSAULT. Objective is to prevent imperial seizure of 4 capture points. The layout is critical for understanding the mission, so it’s as follows: southern and eastern jungle entrys with a SE tunnel connector, south entry is short with some ruins. The rebel base runs two corridors from both entrys, there’s a short room isolated room by the east entry with one capture point. The intercsection of both south and east halls is a capture point, and each hall continues to additional rooms. The west room (from east hall) connects to another short room with a capture point, and north of this (also the north room connected to by the south hall) is a larger room with a capture point. In effect, the rebels have the strategic question of defending the east hall capture point (exposed and in advance of the rest), or holding the central hall axis and each approach tothe further rooms. It didn’t make much sense to hold a position front of our main defense line, so I deployed central hall and the femsolo did as well. Imperial firsh wav was a storntrooper contingent with MG and officer (standard imperial unit). Officer indendently atatcks east hall door while MG and ST’s mass against the south hall door. Our opponent wants to split us or gain pointgs beacuse we fail to break one assault. I don’t want to be baited and south head south with the femsolo. The ST’s take a few casualities and fire is massed against the MG. Things are going well so the femsolo takes east against the officer and I head south to destroy the MG and ST with melee. This turns to be a sort of ambush as the imperials deploy a massive contingent south (including darth vader, elite ST’s, an imperial red guard) close to my proximity. An imperial AT-AT (I think that’s the designation) is deployed east as well which is big. I choose to finish off the MG and trooper before fleeing with an overtime card, the east corridor is basically a lost cause now given the AT-AT is so powerful. This effectively makes the hall intersection undefendable as it’s in the walker’s fire zone. Here, I’m kind of pissed as the femsolo was busy getting goodie crates in isolated areas (useless items In practice as they’re medikits) while I’m taking the imperial main effort and having to flee back from lack of support. Here I lose a lot of health fleeing, although I keep pace away from vader. I make some withdrawal attacks and flee backwards while the femsolo makes a fleeting attack sortie before fleeing to the west hall (again I’m sort of pissed, since he was choosing to abandon me for a crate!). I soon follow suit, while the imperial takes vader against us and his troopers north. we cede ground and make a stand in the objective. My staff stunning abillity proves to be very effective against vader, and some damage is dealt although his defense is too high for it to be substantial. We would have lost this game strategically as the troopers breach north to take the objective, but a surprise change of luck to our favor happens. The north door explodes killing the trooper contingent. Now we’re in a better position and potentially about to win, but I fuck it up by asking femsolo to help be subdue vader. I’m aware the empire will try and steal a march on our northern VP, but do now believe he has the speed to do it in one turn. I"m wrong! We narrowly lose the scenario.

the various players draw different conclusions from this game. The empire player says we should have collected crates while ignoring a defense of the gates, and says it was a mistake to charge out as I did. He would have held the two VP points despite the odds. Him and the femsolo argue it would have been best to make a defense of the juncture. I disagree about my attack being a mistake, as an early lead defense to reduce imperial size would allow me to maximize damage against the empire and ween down their forces. Reflecting now, I believe the critical point in the battle where I should have commited a stand was right after my first fleeing into the southern hall. Any futrther retreat woulkd lead to the indefensible hall juncture (walker fire sweeping here), and my damage output is insufficient with the jedi to halt an imperial over-run as the enemy suggests. If I had made a stand and had the femsolo back me up, it is possible that the lead elements of the imperials could have been badly damaged in their overrun attempt and the game won thereby. Anyways, as it was we were very close to winning by the dumb luck of that door explosion. It was only a sloppy mistake that prevented us from victory