Battle Mastery: 20 enemies defeated within 4 turns
All three surviving Inspectors plan to sortie here. If they don't win here, they're completely screwed, so I suppose there's some logic to it. The same goes for the Shadow Mirrors, but they aren't ready to fight just now.
Gilliam, Kyosuke, Lamia, Lune, and Masaki are automatically deployed here. It's an indoor map, with a twisty corridor holding quite a few enemies. They're all the mechs I've seen the Inspectors use before, from Bugs and Gunsects to R-Eins (two of them with 35K HP) and Landgriths. The Landgriths are closest, but they'll defend for at least the first turn. I might as well whack them to start building Will.
By turn three, I've cleared out a little under half of the initial enemies and Captain Lefina has earned her ace star (command +5%; I assume it means the bonus granted to other units). When seven enemies are left, twelve Barrelion Vs form a barricade across the northern end of the map, a double line with plenty of support defenses available. I wouldn't be surprised if they just sat there like a wall instead of allowing me to counterattack them for relatively easy damage.
Ok, I was wrong. They're stupid enough to try shooting the Aussenseiter and Ashsaber despite having 0% chance to hit. Ratsel and Viletta clear a path (just a couple open squares) while I move up to take out the oversize R-Eins. I have the BM now, so I can slow down and let everyone catch up. The last Barrelion goes down on turn 5, and I move a unit past their position. This triggers Axel's arrival, with a squad of Ashsabers beside him. Even if Vindel's willing to jump without Helios, Axel would rather not take the risk. So he's here to defeat Beowulf and capture Gilliam.
Axel charges right into the teeth of my combination attacks and big guns, so he goes down pretty quickly. 120K HP (or thereabouts) means very little when I have multiple units capable of throwing out 30K a hit. He's just lucky the SRX and R-Gun Powered are out of range. Nice as Axel's theme music is, Trombe still overrides it. I have Ryusei burn a Zeal to get in range and give Axel a faceful of HTB before Kyosuke finishes it all with Rampage Ghost to claim a Thruster and a pile of cash.
Lamia asks Axel to eject, to not leave Lemon behind all sad and lonely. He says he never felt anything for her and goes out with a big boom.
Once Axel's gone, Aguija and Sikalog warp in at the end of the northern corridor on some regeneration terrain. They don't move, so I sit Viletta outside their range to pick off the enemy Ashsabers while everyone regerates SP. After a few turns, I move in and hit Aguija with a few combination attacks. She goes down very quickly and drops a Custom HUD (insert bonus).
Sikalog gains Valor, Strike, and Guard when Aguija dies, so someone casts Alert for a throwaway attack. His mech has Beam Absorb and a lot of HP, but the bald silent guy goes down after I beat on him enough. He drops a Medal, which will be useful.
Just as Tetsuya gives the order to attack the teleporter, a new mech appears: It's Wendolo's Dikastis (Greek for “Judge”). No one's willing to negotiate with him after the shit he's pulled, and he just takes it as an excuse to extermiate the barabarians. Guess it's time to wipe that smile off his smug fucking face.
The Dikastis has some weapons with VERY long range, enough to hit something outside the giant chamber he's in. I take several turns to resupply, Rouse, and regenerate SP. There's a little bottleneck at the door to his chamber and it roughly marks the limit of his MAP attack. I move a few units with Alert into that area to make him waste the MAP attacks before I move in for real. I also move the battleships up as decoys. With Support Defense and E-Fields, Wendolo can barely scratch them and I have Russel and Radha in the back repairing them.
I would estimate Wendolo's HP at 300K; three HTB shots at 36K each knocked off about a third of his health bar. He has HP Regen (S), so I suppose I could let him live an extra turn once I get him into the 60Ks and calculate his health from how much he regenerates. Or just kill the bastard. Anyway, I'd recommend leading off with the big guns that don't have combination attacks so they can do full damage before Wendolo's G Territory can activate. This doesn't help much since combination attacks do so much damage naturally
At half HP (or a little more), Wendolo considers retreating and demonstrates that he thinks of subordinates only as disposable pawns. As he orders the teleporter to power up, Mekibos appears and shoots him. The teleporter's disabled now, so Wendolo has to fight. After taking a little more damage, Mekibos tries to attack him, but the treacherous little weasel had installed a some sort of remote shutdown command in the Graterkin. Mekibos goes down in one shot and Irm's a bit pissed.
I'm very glad Wendolo doesn't do that thing SRW Alpha Gaiden bosses did where they cast huge chains of SP commands when they hit certain HP thresholds. Like Guts + Valor + Alert + Strike, at 75, 50, and 25%. Fortunately, my troops do just enough damage in one turn to finish off Wendolo for good, landing 70K cash with Bless and a ZO Armor. And then that gravitational anomaly everyone's been talking about starts shaking the White Star.
Anyway, I distribute the parts and put some more money into improving the Rampage Ghost. I have just enough to max it out, so I do. This stage took me about 30 turns, though I probably could've done it faster.
