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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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veekie said:
Medieval-type militaries actually give the section leaders, like Chief Bombardiers, a lot of leeway and initiative. They can do whatever they want as long as its within budget and they're actually competent at artillery.
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Sure. The thing I found notable was not the authority he was wielding, but the reasoning behind it: he doesn't want his dudes to get munched by fell bats or whatever (reasonable), knows that air support can solve this problem (reasonable), but doesn't want to tie down air support in a defensive posture when it could be out doing other things (here's where it gets interesting). This implies that he thought about this, saw an obvious answer, saw a problem with the obvious answer, and set about engineering a solution that avoids those problems... all before this ever came up. It's not like we had a battle where the air support was tied down giving his squad cover and he was ashamed. It's not like he has experience strategizing around the presence of friendly air power, since only the dwarves have that (ok, and elves have dragon riders, sure, but mostly only the dwarf militaries have friendly air power). And it's not like the head of the Air Force and he are pals who meet for skull sessions every other week; we have no reason to believe he and Gotri know each other, and the Undumgi is its own force that mostly has its own command structure, separate from the dwarves. So his thinking about doctrine settled on maximizing the strategic capabilities of an allied force, not his own. That makes me sit up and take notice.

So yeah, I'm aware that the time periods Warhammer draws most of its inspiration from gave a lot of autonomy to what we'd think of as the middle tier of command, the majors and colonels. The thing I find really interesting is not the autonomy he's exercising, but what he's doing with it. He's thinking like an intelligent general.
 
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picklepikkl said:
That being said: obviously, one interaction is not enough for me to batten down the hatches and sail away into the sunset.
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guyfromtheplace1 said:
I'd almost say that Anton makes an equally good partner under these criteria, given Mathilde's lacking diplomacy, and his lacking intrigue.

But honestly I'd say I don't know Oswald well enough for me to form an opinion one way or the other. Though I Iike the summary of his character traits you have here.
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If we ever get a dreadnought/wolfship/flyingfortress he could man our guns...

I'm kinda on board for a Anton/Mathilde/Oswald thriple.
 
picklepikkl said:
Sure. The thing I found notable was not the authority he was wielding, but the reasoning behind it: he doesn't want his dudes to get munched by fell bats or whatever (reasonable), knows that air support can solve this problem (reasonable), but doesn't want to tie down air support in a defensive posture when it could be out doing other things (here's where it gets interesting). This implies that he thought about this, saw an obvious answer, saw a problem with the obvious answer, and set about engineering a solution that avoids those problems... all before this ever came up. It's not like we had a battle where the air support was tied down giving his squad cover and he was ashamed. It's not like he has experience strategizing around the presence of friendly air power, since only the dwarves have that (ok, and elves have dragon riders, sure, but mostly only the dwarf militaries have friendly air power). And it's not like the head of the Air Force and he are pals who meet for skull sessions every other week; we have no reason to believe he and Gotri know each other, and the Undumgi is its own force that mostly has its own command structure, separate from the dwarves. So his thinking about doctrine settled on maximizing the strategic capabilities of an allied force, not his own. That makes me sit up and take notice.

So yeah, I'm aware that the time periods Warhammer draws most of its inspiration from gave a lot of autonomy to what we'd think of as the middle tier of command, the majors and colonels. The thing I find really interesting is not the autonomy he's exercising, but what he's doing with it. He's thinking like an intelligent general.
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He pretty much had to, as I understand it, for a Major-equivalent in the medieval military the situation is usually some variant of:
-The General had some experience in that field, and pre-empted the problem.
-The General did not have experience in the field.
--The Major had the tactical insight to realize the problem.
---The Major had the personal connections to get the General to solve the problem.
---The Major had the personal resources and initiative to solve the problem themselves.
---The Major has neither, and just takes it up the ass, grumbling about incompetent commanders.
--The Major did not realize the problem and takes it up the ass.

Based on his history, I think we got a fairly good picture of things. Oswald is experienced, has never really been the most favored for support and is used to improvising something in the field where support is either nonexistent or may be directed to support someone better connected or more important than he is.

He's not someone to take it lying down, so he learned to prepare some backup ideas.
Short version: Oswald is thinking like a mercenary band commander rather than an army artillerist.

Mopman43 said:
Given that Boney has said the actual process of creating powerstones is safe, if tedious, it probably doesn't involve Battle Magic levels of power. At least, not all at once.
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Might relate to how learning to do it is inherently dangerous but doing it once you have the skill os safe.

Probably because you don't concentrate the magic all at one go, but build it layer by layer around the inert forms of the Wind?
 
silentorphan said:
Didn't the questers turn down Anton's initial offer of marriage? Granted, in a "he doesn't know what he's talking about" kind of way.
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No romantic option is likely to win a vote in Divided Loyalties, because any given pairing has to get through not only everyone who'd prefer Mathilde end up with someone else, but also the notable faction who'd rather have Mathilde married to her job.

You'd note that this faction was the one who ultimately won the initial waifu vote.
 
Shard said:
IIRC we had an option to try and get Anton to marry us, but that option was not voted for.
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Anton straight up asked Mathilde to marry him, on the grounds that any wife was going to wrap him around her finger anyway, so it might as well A. be someone who could do that already and B. hadn't abused that power. No try about it, Baroness Weber was on the table.
 
Alliterate said:
Anton straight up asked Mathilde to marry him, on the grounds that any wife was going to wrap him around her finger anyway, so it might as well A. be someone who could do that already and B. hadn't abused that power. No try about it, Baroness Weber was on the table.
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and we told him to marry for love, now we just have to decide to fall in love with him and vs. versa.

also terrible scene where matty makes a whole version of mindhole so she can try to flirt with him for the first time over and over.
 
If we ever plan to get serious about shipping, we need to move to Barak Varr or Marienburg.
 
NSMS said:
If we ever plan to get serious about shipping, we need to move to Barak Varr or Marienburg.
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Or steal a Black Ark. we would be the boss of shipping then.
Speaking of, in the far flung imaginary future that such a thing ever occured, how thankful do you think Heidi would be if we used it to blockade Marienburg?
 
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Pempelune said:
Mathilde/Heidi, huh? I like the way you think. The Emperor might not, though
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It would be a very Ranaldian thing to do, on both sides of the equation, but I didn't necessarily mean it romantically. I just vaguely remember that she was running some schemes to bring Marienburg back into the fold at some point, and thought we could help out our friend and mother of our godchild a bit.
Besides, it's been pointed out that most of the palace probably thinks we're her lover anyways, and she was pretty obvious about their match being more politics than love.
 
Ericwinter said:
It would be a very Ranaldian thing to do, on both sides of the equation, but I didn't necessarily mean it romantically. I just vaguely remember that she was running some schemes to bring Marienburg back into the fold at some point, and thought we could help out our friend and mother of our godchild a bit.
Besides, it's been pointed out that most of the palace probably thinks we're her lover anyways, and she was pretty obvious about their match being more politics than love.
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Really, I thought they actually rather liked each other. If nothing else, she seemed fond of him.
 
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