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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Just as a comment about relative threats, Drycha is dangerous, but she's by far the most dangerous when buffed and with the initiative.

In terms of danger when Mathilde is the one attacking, I'd expect both the Treemen and the Manticore to be harder targets that are more likely to kill her.
 
Alratan said:
Just as a comment about relative threats, Drycha is dangerous, but she's by far the most dangerous when buffed and with the initiative.

In terms of danger when Mathilde is the one attacking, I'd expect both the Treemen and the Manticore to be harder targets that are more likely to kill her.
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You're missing something.

Drycha gets stronger the more injured she is. The lower her "wounds" the more powerful she becomes.
 
Ok. So fighting while under Illusion is a bust. Second idea:

[X] Use the Dragonflask on the casting Driads and cast Shroud of Invisibility on yourself. Ride into the flames and kill them while the fires obscure you all and you're invisible, keeping your Ulgu use otherwise limited to the Shroud and the Shadowhorse. Hopefully it will keep the other Ulgu user from pinning down your own nature or spotting you.

Hopefully, if the enemy is watching from somewhere on the battlefield, the use of the Dragonflask should mask the Shroud and the Shadowhorse. If Mat can make quick work of them in the flames with minimal Ulgu use, the watcher will know something happened over there, but will hopefully suspect some Bright Wizard knight combination, not a Lady Grey Magister. Though the invisible knight might be a giveaway.
[X] Empty the dragonflask on the spellcasters
-[X] And then charge into the flames like a knight to finish them off.

EDIT:
approval voting the general option too:
[X] Spellcasters
 
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Codex said:
You're missing something.

Drycha gets stronger the more injured she is. The lower her "wounds" the more powerful she becomes.
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Sounds like a good reason to kill her with a single blow from a cannon-sword or dragon flask. I don't think we have tabletop style balancing rules in effect to make that harder.

If she's reduced to a cloud of splinters or ash drifting on the wind by an overwhelming first strike that doesn't seem so much of a problem.
 
Alratan said:
Sounds like a good reason to kill her with a single blow from a cannon-sword or dragon flask. I don't think we have tabletop style balancing rules in effect to make that harder.

If she's reduced to a cloud of splinters or ash drifting on the wind by an overwhelming first strike that doesn't seem so much of a problem.
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That sure is a lot of overconfidence to assume we can do that. Let's see if it pans out.
 
mathymancer said:
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. If Mathlide fights the spellcasters there are many possible forces that might help her at some point - Milica is fighting Dryads right now but as soon as she can break through she might come and help, or Ljiljana might, and if nothing else Johann is sure to come help us if it looks like we're having trouble once he arrives. But Drycha isn't here. She's 'somewhere out there', and Mathilde has to go and find her, and then Mathilde will be completely alone when she faces her, and we can't hope that anyone will come and bail us out because no one will know where we are.
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…"Somewhere out there" kinda necessarily has to be within sight range of the battle. We flush her out of hiding, and people would be just as able to notice as any other battle.

More importantly though, if either fight takes long enough that we need reinforcements, we've already fucked up, and that's much more likely against the three dryads than it is against Drycha, if only because they have numbers. This isn't like the Wastes where we challenged a tanky champion to a duel in the hopes of keeping him occupied, this is an assassination mission from one glass cannon to another. It will be over in seconds, not minutes.
 
Codex said:
That sure is a lot of overconfidence to assume we can do that. Let's see if it pans out.
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I could turn that around and say that it is overconfident to think we can survive an alpha strike from her, but then we would be going in circles. What it comes down to for me and the reason I changed my vote is that I do not think we should give initiative to the hidden enemy we can barely find right now. What happens when the shadows stop resisting?

Do we just pray she goes for Boris and he can survive her first attack? Do we plan to fight over his corpse?
 
Ericwinter said:
…"Somewhere out there" kinda necessarily has to be within sight range of the battle. We flush her out of hiding, and people would be just as able to notice as any other battle.

More importantly though, if either fight takes long enough that we need reinforcements, we've already fucked up, and that's much more likely against the three dryads than it is against Drycha, if only because they have numbers. This isn't like the Wastes where we challenged a tanky champion to a duel in the hopes of keeping him occupied, this is an assassination mission from one glass cannon to another. It will be over in seconds, not minutes.
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We are assuming that Drycha doesn't have some veiled bodyguards at hand... why, exactly?
 
primemountain said:
Ok. So fighting while under Illusion is a bust. Second idea:

[X] Use the Dragonflask on the casting Driads and cast Shroud of Invisibility on yourself. Ride into the flames and kill them while the fires obscure you all and you're invisible, keeping your Ulgu use otherwise limited to the Shroud and the Shadowhorse. Hopefully it will keep the other Ulgu user from pinning down your own nature or spotting you.

Hopefully, if the enemy is watching from somewhere on the battlefield, the use of the Dragonflask should mask the Shroud and the Shadowhorse. If Mat can make quick work of them in the flames with minimal Ulgu use, the watcher will know something happened over there, but will hopefully suspect some Bright Wizard knight combination, not a Lady Grey Magister. Though the invisible knight might be a giveaway.
[X] Empty the dragonflask on the spellcasters
-[X] And then charge into the flames like a knight to finish them off.
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You cant use the flash and shadow magic at the same time like this, that's the problem the thread has been struggling with since we got it.
 
DragonParadox said:
I could turn that around and say that it is overconfident to think we can survive an alpha strike from her, but then we would be going in circles. What it comes down to for me and the reason I changed my vote is that I do not think we should give initiative to the hidden enemy we can barely find right now. What happens when the shadows stop resisting?

Do we just pray she goes for Boris and he can survive her first attack? Do we plan to fight over his corpse?
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I'm saying it's peak overconfidence to think we can kill her in one blow. What's up with the whataboutism going on here. I feel like I'm being engaged in a totally different conversation I never agreed to have.
 
I'm not sure I'm understanding the arguments against hunting Drycha at all.

Either she's super dangerous and deadly, in which case we need to take her out immediately, whilst she's distracted, exposed and battling the forest before she gets the upper hand and single handedly wins the battle, or she's not a threat at all, and we can ignore her without any risk at all—except why would we when she's vulnerable now, making her easy prey.

Scenario 1) She's weak-> easy kill, move on to the next thing.

Scenario 2) She's strong, we ignore her->she ambushes the Kislevian army (or us) at a critical moment, turning the tide

Scenario 3) She's strong, we hunt her->we have an opportunity to ambush and disrupt her plans whilst she's distracted.

Scenario 4) She's strong, we hunt her (but she's not distracted)->See Scenario 2, only she's targeting us instead of a random target of opportunity (which might also be us).
 
Codex said:
I'm saying it's peak overconfidence to think we can kill her in one blow. What's up with the whataboutism going on here. I feel like I'm being engaged in a totally different conversation I never agreed to have.
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And I am saying it is very easy to look at a position you think it is too risky and call it overconfident. It is not whataboutism to call out the other option of two also risky, I am not bringing up another fight we had three years ago when you may have argued for some kind of risk.
 
Ericwinter said:
…"Somewhere out there" kinda necessarily has to be within sight range of the battle. We flush her out of hiding, and people would be just as able to notice as any other battle.

More importantly though, if either fight takes long enough that we need reinforcements, we've already fucked up, and that's much more likely against the three dryads than it is against Drycha, if only because they have numbers. This isn't like the Wastes where we challenged a tanky champion to a duel in the hopes of keeping him occupied, this is an assassination mission from one glass cannon to another. It will be over in seconds, not minutes.
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I don't know why you're so confident in that. She could be some distance away, using scouts or magic to see the battlefield. She could be deep in the forest, casting some sort of spell that will effect the battlefield from a distance. We absolutely do not know that she is within sight range of the battle.
I agree that if we need reinforcements something has gone wrong. That's the point. If something goes wrong fighting the Dryads we can still hope that someone bails us out, and there are a lot of possible someones that could bail us out and the enemies we are fighting aren't legendary lords. If something goes wrong against Drycha we die.
 
DragonParadox said:
And I am saying it is very easy to look at a position you think it is too risky and call it overconfident. It is not whataboutism to call out the other option of two also risky, I am not bringing up another fight we had three years ago when you may have argued for some kind of risk.
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It is whataboutism because you're taking my statement and twisting it to another situation I was never arguing for. I said it was overconfidence for one thing to happen and you barge in to say "but what about the risk entailed with...". I was merely pointing out the sheer hubris that the thread was building itself up for, not arguing one way or the other.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
I'm not sure I'm understanding the arguments against hunting Drycha at all.

Either she's super dangerous and deadly, in which case we need to take her out immediately, whilst she's distracted, exposed and battling the forest before she gets the upper hand and single handedly wins the battle, or she's not a threat at all, and we can ignore her without any risk at all—except why would we when she's vulnerable now, making her easy prey.

Scenario 1) She's weak-> easy kill, move on to the next thing.

Scenario 2) She's strong, we ignore her->she ambushes the Kislevian army (or us) at a critical moment, turning the tide

Scenario 3) She's strong, we hunt her->we have an opportunity to ambush and disrupt her plans whilst she's distracted.

Scenario 4) She's strong, we hunt her (but she's not distracted)->See Scenario 2, only she's targeting us instead of a random target of opportunity (which might also be us).
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Scenario 5) She is strong, attacks and possibility kills one of our allies, but gets engaged and we can mob her. At least that is what I think is the idea.

Well either than or we do enough damage to her army that she just escapes, she is quite capable of that.
 
mathymancer said:
I think this is an example of protagonist syndrome. You are imagining that the only target for Drycha is Mathilde, but that is not at all the case. The description of the choice is going to be something like:

'You reach the clearing - or rather, a patch of forest that has been violently turned into a clearing by the axe wielding human defilers - to find all of your forces facing serious resistance.
The bulk of your force is fighting a bunch of human knights as well as some sort of Winter Witch. She's reaping quite the harvest from your Dryads.
A shadow wizard has come out of hiding and has TP'd to your spellcasters. She is likely going to try and keep them tied up, or worse kill them and move on to the next key ally.
One Winter Witch has frozen the lake, and a large part of your forces is trapped inside it. If you don't intervene they might be out for the rest of the battle, or they may even succumb to Winter and die.
Some sort of giant Ice Bird is beating the crap out of the Treeman you have sent after the Boyar. You have no idea what that's about.
And your target itself, the human noble, is holding off your Manticore with his magical spear, a large guard of strangely competent soldiers assisting him.
What do you do?'

Written like that it's far from obvious that the shadow witch is worse than any of the three Ice Witches, or from the elite commander and his guard whose death or capture would be a serious blow to the enemy.
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That's a fair point but we need to come at this from the perspective that whatever Drycha attacks - except for Mathilde who has the Belt and Seed - will have a very, very rough time.

We kill spellcasters - she kills one of the really powerful Ice Witches
We kill spellcasters - she kills Boris
We kill spellcasters - she casts battle magic spells and wrecks the infantry
We kill spellcasters - she comes after Mathilde with full initiative

Duelling Drycha is horribly dangerous but letting her have a free shot at something means something important gets deleted or Mathilde's layers of defences and backups get whittled down putting us in an even worse position to duel.
 
DragonParadox said:
Because it is unusual/unnatural for Dryads to use Ulgu. It would be like asking why we assume the bodyguard of a fire breathing Chaos Lord is not also fire breathing mutants.
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I don't mean other ulgu using dryads, but rather Drycha using her own powers to hide some backup, just in case, seeing that this is a thing that she can definitely do in-quest, considering that the dryads appear to have been using ulgu to avoid detection until it was go time.
 
Kinda worried about Boris, since I gather this is years before his 'canon' self who's a huge badass, and his Ice Witch is busy tying up a river. We do have the Seed, though, which gives me some comfort.

'Decapitate spellcasters' is our usual MO for a reason, because it's useful and we're good at it.

And ulgu masters are always better on the ambushing side, so it makes sense to for one master ulgu wizard to drop everything to ambush another master ulgu caster when given the opportunity. (By which I mean 'Mathilde should ambush Drycha when given the chance' rather than the idea of Drycha definitely focusing on us, which seems possible but uncertain.)

Any of these options seems valid.
 
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