Decline 28: Medieeevvaallll Times

[BING XI LAO]

So what WERE the memeblesses in this game? suicide bomber spam flyers or something?

 

[Infinitum]

Nah. Quickness, +8 Strength, Thunder Weapons, Fire Resistance +10 with literally every scale as tanked as tanked can be. Mictlan has cheap recruit-anywhere erzats flyers, and Nazca has a scaling sacred Condor summon that gets 20 of them for 9 gems at Air 7, and with that bless every single one strikes 4 times at high speed for 21+ damage per turn, typically paralyzing non-lighning resistant survivors (with additional sacred Freespawn flying ghosts should the game drag on). It's scary tactically because most defensive buffs outside of Luck/Ethereal just don't matter and most (early to midgame) offensive/utility spells don't have enough time to work since non-deathball battles are mostly concluded in a few turns. Strategically, Condors have enough map move and siege bonuses to jump over intervening enemy provinces and typically break forts instantaneously which makes it very punishing to play against without being able to match that mobility.

Worst part is it might not even be the strongest possible bless for that combination since it doesn't take advantage of Mictlans bless bonus (and Nazca getting a A9W2 Frost Father disciple summoning 24 Condors per turn instead), and it being relatively weak versus chaff and ranged attacks in general; eg Mictlan can drop 3 earth points and fit Twist Fate onto an Oracle chassi, or even drop the Thunder Weapons altogether for Wind Walker/Air Shield and go for something like Heat Aura instead.

 

[sqeecoo]

Yeah, pretty brutal. Don't forget that Mictlan has an air gem income that they can feed into the condors - that's how Phaecia fell so fast, I had 40 condors landing on his cap in year 1 thanks to alchemy and Mictlan's air gems. And they have a siege bonus, negating the typical weakness of memebless that they have trouble sieging things down.

There could definitely be a better bless (Sy actually suggests fateweaving, which would make SR5 insufficient to defend against the thunder weapons), but the idea here was to have a immobile pretender spamming condors for Nazca and an awake SC for Mictlan; having two awake immobiles seems like a wasted opportunity. Mic's expansion was brutal with the big Jaguar, which is a great awake monster.

Anyway, I'm fine with ending it here if people are not very motivated to play

 

[Dayyālu]

After planning to Throne Rush by forcing turns, I realized that with both Marignon and Abysia AI and the llamaserver being laggy as fuck, it is not simply worth my time.

Thus, let's end this here. Victory for the Birds!

Good game everyone, was fun. Croatian brains and Italian muscle carried the day, talk about subverting cliches.