Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
Derpmind said:
[X] Plan: Skavenslayer



It's the same problem we've always had: Spending extra AP on our job and job-related stuff when we don't strictly need to. This turn, we explicitly don't need to break the bank, but the leading plan is to spend 2 AP on a 'softball' task.

More generally, I don't think yet another doom tower is a good solution. Any anti-dragon tower we build is going to be directly attacked by a dragon, and towers are well known for falling for to dragons. I'd rather go for a more distributed solution, like a bunch of oversized and enchanted bolt throwers. But I don't think that's going to gain much traction by now.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
All we need to do is make it shorter than the Eye, really. Dragon goes for the lightning tower, we turn the shadow filled with divine fire on its ass. Dragon goes for shadow tower, we fill the sky with lightning. Dragon tries casting, Mathilde personally bitch-slaps the spell away, since she's really good at that.
... unless there's some way to build a tower specifically for counter spelling, but I don't think that's conventionally possible.
 
Idea for anti-air: combination of Gold Tower and artilery. Oswald would be pleased.

There is already gunnery school in Nar, below Mathilde's penthouse. It would be easy to cooperate with Oswald and create high-placed gunnery placement. Then metal/magnetic tower capable of affecting cannonbals shot from the prepared cannons.

Those prepared canons would be placed just below the Mathilde penthouse. Since Metal tower would be >up< from them, attractive force would push cannonbals >up< towards the Sky. If it is done well, and focused correctly, it should be able to both, accelerate and direct them, extending both range and strength of strike. Something like 20kg cannonball at high speed straight to the head would affect even a dragon.

Benefits:
- synergy between magic and technology
- Johan can be operator (metal magic)
- cooperation with Oswald - interesting story-wise
- large range
- very focused fire
- effective against more a less any single opponent

Downsides:
- ineffective against swarms

If done very well, I could imagine dozen cannonbals swirling around top of Nar, waiting to be unleashed - a'la Hellsing Rip Van Winkle.
 
Humbaba said:
Can I interest anyone in a version of plan skavenslayer that swaps out the EIC action? Since we don't have an actual spy network in the EIC yet a lot of the expertise we're lending them is the Hochlander themselves.

This was their description:


They're pretty competent yes, but their best skills are all skills I'd expect Roswita's witch hunter friends to be extremely competent in. It feels very much like a token gesture where we meddle for the sake of meddling. Since we don't have a proper spy network or even any encryption set up within it yet either it's also going to be very, very open about what we're doing. Which isn't likely to be too effective and may have repurcussions.

Besides Roswita already has a lot of help:


Dumping our EIC action on this feels very much a twin case of not trusting NPC competency and trying to have our cake and eat it too by dropping a half action from a mostly unprepared EIC so we can say "we're doing something".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I understand your point, but I will submit to you the following: Roswita is trying to wage economic warfare against the vampires. She is therefore trying to track down their networks for gaining funds by selling peat. Even without an active spy network, this is something the EIC is excellently-placed to do: we have tons of totally above-board merchant contacts in the relevant areas. What our Hochlander would be doing, then, is collecting the information from our various branches on things like "who is buying and selling peat" and then tracing that back up the chain to find the suppliers. We don't need to have super-spies in place yet to be good at this action, we just need to be a merchant company which interfaces with the markets at a bunch of places in the relevant area. Which we are!
 
BoneyM said:
There's been larger swings made later in the voting process. If you feel bolt throwers is the way to go, then by all means make a plan for it, or adapt an existing one.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ok.

[X] Plan: Skavenslayer with Artillery
-[X] MAX: Receive dictation.
-[X] JOHANN: Write a paper: Ratling Gun mechanism and countermeasures
-[X] DUCK: Spend time with Hubert to try to ensure a good relationship between him and magic, and between him and his identity as a Wizard.
-[X] EIC: Lend the services of the Hochlander, and the EIC's intelligence and contacts, to Roswita to help track down the Talabeclanders buying peat from the vampires.
-[X] Attempt to create anti-dragon artillery pieces, using whatever combination of engineering, enchanting, and runework you can manage to wrangle together.
--[X] COIN: The Gambler
-[X] Travel to the Grey College and attend lessons there: Staff Turning
-[X] Attempt to interest a prominent and knowledgeable Runesmiths in the interaction between Runes and Vitae. (will start at the top and work your way down)
-[X] Dictate papers:
--[X] Queekish-Reikspiel Dictionary, including spoken Low Queekish
--[X] Insight on Skaven tactics and strategy
-[X] PENTHOUSE: Have a tower built atop Karag Nar
-[X] SERENITY: Write a paper: Brief observations on Eshin Sorcery

[X] Plan: Skavenslayer

[X] Plan: Skavenslayer with Less Vague Artillery
 
Last edited:
[X] Plan: Skavenslayer with Artillery
-[X] MAX: Receive dictation.
-[X] JOHANN: Write a paper: Ratling Gun mechanism and countermeasures
-[X] DUCK: Spend time with Hubert to try to ensure a good relationship between him and magic, and between him and his identity as a Wizard.
-[X] EIC: Lend the services of the Hochlander, and the EIC's intelligence and contacts, to Roswita to help track down the Talabeclanders buying peat from the vampires.
-[X] Attempt to create anti-dragon artillery pieces, using whatever combination of engineering, enchanting, and runework you can manage to wrangle together.
--[X] COIN: The Gambler
-[X] Travel to the Grey College and attend lessons there: Staff Turning
-[X] Attempt to interest a prominent and knowledgeable Runesmiths in the interaction between Runes and Vitae. (will start at the top and work your way down)
-[X] Dictate papers:
--[X] Queekish-Reikspiel Dictionary, including spoken Low Queekish
--[X] Insight on Skaven tactics and strategy
-[X] PENTHOUSE: Have a tower built atop Karag Nar
-[X] SERENITY: Write a paper: Brief observations on Eshin Sorcery

I will support this.
 
Last edited:
[X] Plan: Skavenslayer
[X] Plan: Skavenslayer with Artillery
[X] Plan: Skaven Knowledge Bomb
[X] Plan: Skavenslayer with Less Vague Artillery
[X] Plan Versatile
 
Last edited:
[X] Plan: Skavenslayer with Artillery
It is a little vague about how we're going about it. How about a Trial and Error platform for the crew to stand on?

Then against Tower of Ferment would be hilarious if we could get it to target blood.
 
Last edited:
picklepikkl said:
I had left it deliberately vague about where the artillery would be, but yes, the idea was that there would be an artillery setup in a fixed position(s) ready to serve an AA role in a place where they could be buffed by the Portent. Probably that means "on Karag Nar" but depending on what BoneyM was willing to give us in terms of spell AOE (and dice rolls, I assume), it could have been distributed over the mountain instead of all over the top.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I guess your vague is not vague enough? As in, when I first read it I misconstrued it as specifically being attached to our tower complex. If you could make the vagueness more concretely vague I would feel better about it.
 
picklepikkl said:
I understand your point, but I will submit to you the following: Roswita is trying to wage economic warfare against the vampires. She is therefore trying to track down their networks for gaining funds by selling peat. Even without an active spy network, this is something the EIC is excellently-placed to do: we have tons of totally above-board merchant contacts in the relevant areas. What our Hochlander would be doing, then, is collecting the information from our various branches on things like "who is buying and selling peat" and then tracing that back up the chain to find the suppliers. We don't need to have super-spies in place yet to be good at this action, we just need to be a merchant company which interfaces with the markets at a bunch of places in the relevant area. Which we are!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Could you explain to me again why is this specificaly our problem and why Roswita can't handle it on he own ?
 
Derpmind said:
-[X] Attempt to create anti-dragon artillery pieces, using whatever combination of engineering, enchanting, and runework you can manage to wrangle together.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's really vague. Can't you just copy the existing plans, except as artillery instead of tower+emplacement?

Also, my plan already does something similar, albeit by asking for outside help and spending two actions on it. If you don't like that you could still steal stuff from it.
 
Zaratustra said:
Could you explain to me again why is this specificaly our problem and why Roswita can't handle it on he own ?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The whole point of taking the action to wield the EIC as an intelligence apparatus was to, well, wield it as an intelligence apparatus. We're not spending personal actions, we're explicitly using our specialized tool for its specialty.

Like, I guess we could spend our EIC action on hiring informers and such to make it a better intelligence apparatus, but I would rather just use the damn thing for the purpose for which we developed it: supporting the Empire and weakening the enemies of mankind.
 
picklepikkl said:
[ ] Plan: Skaven Knowledge Bomb
-[ ] MAX: Receive dictation.
-[ ] JOHANN: Write a paper: Ratling Gun mechanism and countermeasures
-[ ] DUCK: Spend time with Hubert to try to ensure a good relationship between him and magic, and between him and his identity as a Wizard.
-[ ] EIC: Lend the services of the Hochlander, and the EIC's intelligence and contacts, to Roswita to help track down the Talabeclanders buying peat from the vampires.
-[ ] Build a new tower with anti-dragon capabilities
--[ ] Capable of the spells Lightning Storm for direct damage, Curse for debuffing hard targets, and Second Portent of Amul to buff gunnery
--[ ] COIN: The Gambler
-[ ] Attempt to interest a prominent and knowledgeable Runesmiths in the interaction between Runes and Vitae. (will start at the top and work your way down)
-[ ] Dictate papers:
--[ ] Queekish-Reikspiel Dictionary, including spoken Low Queekish
--[ ] Insight on Skaven tactics and strategy
-[ ] Record all the entries of the Grand Urbaz vaults and select a good-quality example of each minting to save from the smelters.
-[ ] PENTHOUSE: Have a tower built atop Karag Nar
-[ ] SERENITY: Write a paper: Brief observations on Eshin Sorcery

The goal here is to drop four papers on the skaven on the College in a single turn. Furthermore, we help out Roswita and see if the new guy has what it takes, build a Celestial magic tower to fight off air threats (with the Gambler on it), show AV to a Runelord, get those coins done and out of the way, and help Hubert out with some of his life choices (which I think will have interesting narrative synergy with building a tower full of Celestial magic). Penthousewise, we build another tower, which we can use either for our own stuff or as further air defense.

Questions? Comments? Statements of disgust?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
@picklepikkl I'd like to express a statement of disgust in reaction to the Lightning Storm element of the plan. Lightning Storm is a crap spell to use. First of all, it's not Battle Magic, which automatically disqualifies it from being a useful damaging spell against an Emperor dragon. Secondly, it's an AoE spell, meaning it sacrifices its ability to inflict damage on single targets in order to affect more targets - something that's wholly the opposite of what the anti-dragon tower should be going for. Urannon's Thunderbolt is a much better spell to use against the Ice Dragon.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top