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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Letting Orcs inside the mountains means long and bloody operations on cleaning them up again. Resets the whole years of progress.
OTOH they won't be settled in, and they'll be thoroughly bled by...everything. Clean-up is not going to be that hard.

Ohhh!
Look. Orcs' issue with "how many can pass through Gate per second" applies to mountain entrances too. They won't be able to all enter all that fast, they'll still mill around the doors and such, all under fire.

Yeah, withdraw's good enough then.

[X] FIRST LINE: Caldera
[X] SECOND LINE: Withdraw
[X] THIRD LINE: Eastern Valley
 
Now that I think about it Mors will probably put up a better fight than you'd expect for their number.
I mean they're literally cornered rats.
 
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BoneyM said:
They know they're cut off, but probably don't realize they're the last remaining bastion of Clan Mors in the Karak.
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NavySeel said:
I hope clan Mors crits because that would be hilarious.
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Sovereign Hunt said:
[X] FIRST LINE: Caldera
[X] SECOND LINE: Hold
[X] THIRD LINE: Eastern Valley
Die well, Mors. Die well.
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That pocket of Mors must have a very good commander.

Might actually be interesting to see Mors hold long enough that the Orks break at the same time as the Orks in the Caldera, and this pocket of Mors gets out and vanishes into the Underway.
And no one knows if they survived or not.
 
BoneyM said:
yawning and grumbling your way down the great stairs of Karag Nar.
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I don't know if anyone has noted this sign of the infection progressing further yet, what with all that's going on.

BoneyM said:
If Soizic wanted a horse she would have a horse.
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Clearly she's holding out for a wolf mount. :V

veekie said:
*Salute*
Die well Mors
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It was really thoughtful of Thorgrim to send Mors that missive.
 
LightLan said:
The tower easily reaches all of the eastern valley.

what it can't reach is the eastern part of the caldera, because it's blocked by the citadel and the citadel/lhune and citadel/sentinels mountain range.
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Lupercal said:
Third Line Eastern Valley will expose the greenskins to our tower. It is in the treadmark.

Edit: Ninja'd
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Fair enough, but then why is that even considered a front? Bring them there basically just says the orcs are dead. We don't even have to fight there anymore. Any large numbers in the eastern valley will just die like they did in the Caldera.
 
Never mind the morale drop amidst all dwarves not having embraced ranger tactics seeing Karags abandonded - there's another consideration; Belegar's fancy crown he connected with all 8 gems. What might that do, should not all locales remain under control? Fisher King trope could potentially work both ways.

[X] FIRST LINE: Caldera
[X] SECOND LINE: Hold
[X] THIRD LINE: Eastern Valley
 
[X] FIRST LINE: Caldera
[X] SECOND LINE: Withdraw
[X] THIRD LINE: Eastern Valley

I feel like people are overestimating how many troops we lose to a greenskin infested mountain

We have a responsibility both as a general and as a ranaldite to preserve our troop's lives and green skin infestation of a karak is much easier to deal with when we can start civil wars by killing a peak's Boss, which we will be able to do if they hunker down and try to actually stay.

What's the worst they can do; come into the Caldera and burn from either conventional artillery (When did I start including runelords and anvils under this?) or the eye?
 
thisisinsane said:
We have a responsibility both as a general and as a ranaldite to preserve our troop's lives and green skin infestation of a karak is much easier to deal with when we can start civil wars by killing a peak's Boss, which we will be able to do if they hunker down and try to actually stay.
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I'm pretty sure our responsibilities as a Ranaldite are to rob people blind, lie shamelessly, take huge risks and enact vigilante justice. This thread loves to whitewash Ranald for understandable reasons, but still there is a reason he is frowned upon throughout most of the civilized world and it's not because everyone is just unenlightened about the benevolence of the god of thieves.
 
Ericwinter said:
I'm, uh, not sure if you're disagreeing with me, but to compare and contrast, even really amazing rolls are again flipped. Hold ends with a full-stop, no holds barred victory. Withdraw makes it as good as, but you still need to attack and retake the mountains.it's... Hard to put into words, but it really isn't just bigger risks, bigger rewards. It's more of a sliding scale. One option has a not so terrible defeat but really big victory state, while the other has a not so big victory state, but a really bad defeat state. What makes it balanced is that the numbers need to be equally bad or good on either side to earn these extremes, while being much more average for the opposite extreme.
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I don't think you understand just how bad a defeat state the hold option can have.
Like, sure, victory state is amazing.
But the worst case scenario is huge losses with almost zero gains.
Withdraval is designed to minimize those losses, with understanding that we also make less gains in the process.

Like, nobody here knows the exact numbers being rolled, so any real analysis is going to be very vague at best.
But the vote options are pretty clear in that if the Hold option breaks, we will be taking lot more casualties than we would with the withdraval option.
And the second line is almost certain to break, the question just is if people feel risking the lives is worth the potential gains, or if they want to play conservatively until the last line where we can bring as much to bear as we can.
 
Withdraw is a terrible idea because trap based defences are worthless against an enemy that has almost a million disposable snotlings to gum them up. Holding means its orcs vs walls instead snotlings vs foldable defence lines.

As snotlings wont be able to break emplaced fortresses.
 
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Valmond said:
I don't think you understand just how bad a defeat state the hold option can have.
Like, sure, victory state is amazing.
But the worst case scenario is huge losses with almost zero gains.
Withdraval is designed to minimize those losses, with understanding that we also make less gains in the process.

Like, nobody here knows the exact numbers being rolled, so any real analysis is going to be very vague at best.
But the vote options are pretty clear in that if the Hold option breaks, we will be taking lot more casualties than we would with the withdraval option.
And the second line is almost certain to break, the question just is if people feel risking the lives is worth the potential gains, or if they want to play conservatively until the last line where we can bring as much to bear as we can.
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There are two big problems with this. The first is you stating that getting defeated while holding will gain us almost nothing. Just as it's stated us winning would cost. Us, it's also stated that even the orcs winning would cost them. On the other hand, bad rolls for Withdraw really will gain us almost nothing for the loss of a lot of territory.
Your second is outright assuming the second line will break. Yes, Belegar said when, not if. But last I checked, he was neither god nor a master tactician who can dictate the flow of battles perfectly, and that's working under the assumption. That he's not just speaking in worst case hypothetical because that's what you do when you're planning things. Taking one word as gospel is a little ridiculous, especially when the actual vote uses if, not when.
And if I wanted to be really thorough, a third point would be that you seem fairly certain losing on Hold will cost us an extreme amount when it says we will still be able to withdraw if and when they start to break through. Yeah, we'll lose more than we would with a fighting retreat, but it's also in a position where the dwarves are fighting with almost every advantage they could possibly have.
 
@BoneyM would Wolf be able to operate the Eye, using the standard controls? (I'm pretty sure we need the specific familiar trait to have Mathilde cast through him.)

I'm thinking we fire the Eye once, have our no-holds-barred magical cage match with the shamans who'd really rather we didn't thanks, and then grab a gyrocopter to the Citadel to cast Burning Shadows there manually.
 
SuperSonicSound said:
Withdraw is a terible idea because trap based defences are wothless against an enemy that has almost a million disposable snotlings to gum them up. Holding means its orcs vs walls instead snotlings vs foldable defence lines.

As snotlings wont be able to break emplaced fortresses.
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Ok, one, not trap based, chokepoints, also traps, but largely chokepoints, and secondary defense lines.
Second, that still delays the orcs, they can't run into the tunnels all at once, giving artillery and thopters time to shoot the orcs.
Third, if it was a terrible idea, it would not be in the voting options, unless you assume Belegar and every dwarf in the council is a moron.
 
DragonParadox said:
I'm pretty sure our responsibilities as a Ranaldite are to rob people blind, lie shamelessly, take huge risks and enact vigilante justice. This thread loves to whitewash Ranald for understandable reasons, but still there is a reason he is frowned upon throughout most of the civilized world and it's not because everyone is just unenlightened about the benevolence of the god of thieves.
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And Mathilde is a very good Ranaldite.

She robs Skaven where ever she can.
She lies so convincingly Qrech believes the Grey Order already has Queekish.
She takes risks regularly via assassinating Orc Leaders and recently a Skaven Sorcerer, which is only not vigilante justice because she has the authority to dispense a death sentence :V
 
And Ranald is also Ranald the Protector.
I'm pretty sure the orc warboss would be pretty unjust and tyrannical/despotic ruler.
So we should totally defend all these innocent dwarves and mercenaries from him.
 
Valmond said:
Ok, one, not trap based, chokepoints, also traps, but largely chokepoints, and secondary defense lines.
Second, that still delays the orcs, they can't run into the tunnels all at once, giving artillery and thopters time to shoot the orcs.
Third, if it was a terrible idea, it would not be in the voting options, unless you assume Belegar and every dwarf in the council is a moron.
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Your saying this like both options give the same amount of time of artillery hitting the orcs. The option that has the orcs being unable to advance into the mountain because the orcs in front of them are fighting will clearly give us the most amount of time to hit them with artillery. No one is saying we won't hit them with artillery with withdraw. For me it's about maximizing the amount of time the orcs are getting hit by artillery.

Valmond said:
And Ranald is also Ranald the Protector.
I'm pretty sure the orc warboss would be pretty unjust and tyrannical/despotic ruler.
So we should totally defend all these innocent dwarves and mercenaries from him.
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This is a really silly argument. This is twisting what Ranald the protector is pretty badly. Ranald the Protector doesn't care about war which this is. He cares about protecting the common man. None of whom will be here on the front lines. Very often it's the soldiers that Ranald the Protector gets killed.
 
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Deathbybunnies said:
@BoneyM would Wolf be able to operate the Eye, using the standard controls? (I'm pretty sure we need the specific familiar trait to have Mathilde cast through him.)

I'm thinking we fire the Eye once, have our no-holds-barred magical cage match with the shamans who'd really rather we didn't thanks, and then grab a gyrocopter to the Citadel to cast Burning Shadows there manually.
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I mean, why? Literally any non-combatant can do it.
 
Neshuakadal said:
Your saying this like both options give the same amount of time of artillery hitting the orcs. The option that has the orcs being unable to advance into the mountain because the orcs in front of them are fighting will clearly give us the most amount of time to hit them with artillery. No one is saying we won't hit them with artillery with withdraw. For me it's about maximizing the amount of time the orcs are getting hit by artillery.
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Not the same amount of time, but it takes sometime to move 400.000 orcs inside, especially if they are shoving 800.000 snotlings inside first.
The entries will be fortified, just not as heavily, and the tunnels will have more fortifications inside with the defenders constantly withdrawing before being over run.

Not sure why people keep talking about traps, i'm picturing more of a series of firing lanes the enemy has to move through, withfortified chokepoints protected by spear and pike barriers making it harder to just go over them.
Sure, there will be traps almost certainly, but they will not be what the plan hinges on.
 
[X] FIRST LINE: Caldera
[X] SECOND LINE: Withdraw
[X] THIRD LINE: Eastern Valley

Let's have an Orc Barbeque
 
Valmond said:
Not the same amount of time, but it takes sometime to move 400.000 orcs inside, especially if they are shoving 800.000 snotlings inside first.
The entries will be fortified, just not as heavily, and the tunnels will have more fortifications inside with the defenders constantly withdrawing before being over run.

Not sure why people keep talking about traps, i'm picturing more of a series of firing lanes the enemy has to move through, withfortified chokepoints protected by spear and pike barriers making it harder to just go over them.
Sure, there will be traps almost certainly, but they will not be what the plan hinges on.
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Because that's generally how the plan was described. But, I have noticed another big misconception you seem to have. We're not pinning four hundred thousand orcs and twice that number of snotlings, we're pinning whatever's left after we kill most of that number with the Tower. The highest general estimate I saw for what would survive that was something like fourty or fifty thousand, maybe? At absolute worst, I would say a hundred thousand. That puts us at a two to one disadvantage, even before you factor in all the artillery and runelords.
 
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