Live Blogs Fight It Out! Let's Play Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen

Ghilz2011-04-26 23:41:35

It occurs to me that last time, Deneb mentioned Romeo And Juliet. Does Shakespeare exist in Zenobia? How does that even work?

Anyway, as I said before, from now on, the game takes the kiddy gloves off and actually show effort. So with no more delay, we head for the slums of Zenobia.

---

Scene 7: Days Long Gone

• Music: Wall of Defense

As you can see◊, this map is bigger than any we've seen so far. Not counting the bases, this map boasts 11 settlements. Since we can only deploy 10 units, the old strategy of keeping a garrison on every town flies out the window.

The other big factor is the wall around Zenobia. This wall prevents land units from crossing, in both direction. This means that for the first part of the stage, enemy units will all be Low Sky and High Sky. This means no town is out of reach. Most will make a beeline for our base, but many will try to reach un-garded towns amongst the southern towns on the coast, west of the base. When the wall is destroyed (more on that later) ground units will be added to the air units. It's thus important to destroy ALL air units before taking down the wall so we are not overwhelmed.

But that's not all! No. On top of that, we have other things to worry about. There's not one, but two special characters to recruit in our army.

First order of business is liberating the town southeast of the base. Followed by the towns and hidden temple east. Obviously, flying units go to the hidden temple, to play interception with units attempting to cross the sea.

Post Ina is freed first by my main man Lans, netting us VII: Chariot.

Pruzen is freed and gives us XIX: Sun. Enemy squads being closing in on our base.

The hidden temple nets us V: Hierophant. There a moon meets us.

So we learn two important lessons: All walls are made out of wood. And Termites in Zenobia are badass, capable of making entire fortifications vanish in seconds! As a note, Termites can be found on some defeated units, and work on all walls, even those of future stages. Using termites will destroy all the walls on a map. Here, it will do both Zenobia and By Roit's.

Destin frees the southern temple, netting us O: Fool and another Sword of Euros. I dunno who this Euros is, but he had alot of sword. Not complaining though!

Alot of units head past the base to Post Ina. And therein lies an opportunity for what I like to call "Douchebag Ping Pong Maneuver". I deploy my vampyre unit and move them directly south of the base, just a bit, after the units have past it. Lans engages them in combat, wins, causing them to be bounced back... next to the vampyre. He further beats them, and the survivors are bounced back... Next to Lans again. You can ping pong a few units this way for quick deaths.

Destin frees Fillia, netting XII: Hanged Man.

Palma Nova is freed by Cube the Samurai, netting me another XII: Hanged Man.

As the number of air units plummet, I use the calm to free more towns. Kal Robst nets me X: Fortune.

Liberating Anberg gets me VI: Lovers, and we meet Lyon.

We could hire him now, but it's cheaper to wait till the stage is over, as he lowers his asking prize.

Elrangen is freed for a XVIII: Moon card.

The last Roshian temple gets us XVII: Star. I send a flying unit to the walled city of By Roit. Better to do this before using the termites. I also move my units around Zenobia, in preparation for the walls falling. There we get another Moon and meet Ashe.

Of course

I need to deploy Ashe, but first I need to deal with his unit. He has three knights in the back row, and a golem in the front. Ewww. I move his knights to the front row, scrap the golem, and give him some Dollmaster and Cleric action. Ashe also gets my spare sword of Euros.

Before taking down the wall, I go after the many, many hidden treasures. First is a Peridat Sword, +11 Str, Cold element, Lightning Bow, +7 str, electric element. Another Dragon's claw. A Sigmund sword, +19 str, electric, an orb bolt (+15 shock resist, +7 physical) and lastly an earth charm, +3 to fire/cold/lighting.

I use the termite, the wall goes down... and it's a torrent. A dozen units pop out of Zenobia and begin moving south. Since they move south, and there's no point to kill em all because that would affect my unit's alignment, I move Ash in from the east to cut a line to Debonair. Lans is used to defeat a few units Ashe could encounter, so he's not softened up when he meets Debonair. As it turns out... Debonair and Ashe know each other.

Debonair is the first serious bosses. He's a general, a class you can't even make units into (We will have two generals in the game, both of them special characters). He can attack twice from the back row, once using Sonic wave, a weaker version Iainuki, followed by a melee attack. And he has HP worthy of a Paladin. On top of that, he has two red dragons tanking for him. Woohoo. First, time to use a Justice card to soften everyone up. Debonair doesn't hit that hard, but man can can he take punishment.

I takes 4 rounds, and a fool and hermit cards to finally bring Debonair to his knees.

Defeating Debonair nets us 59475 goths.

I'll save on the details of the revisit for next time, when we go to Avalon, and find someone other than king Arthur.

Comments

Add Reply

Cancel Post Reply