Battle Phase 0000:
At least for the time being, the battlefield remains an endless slate of grey granite. No sun hangs in the sky, and for that matter, there is no sky, really.
This is not a world. This is a battlefield. Fortunately, your constructs have sight beyond light, or else you'd all be fighting blind.
Pawns still make up the bulk of each faction's forces. The simple, fragile spear-wielding constructs are easily destroyed, and not the most effective, but come in great enough numbers to make up for that.
Forces clash.
Knights roam, sprinting to crash into the sides of the
Pawn formations.
Now here is something interesting. Since constructs do not heal, a sufficiently damaged construct will not bother to retreat - its existence is better spent in a final assault, buying space for its more functional fellows to return.
Pawns in particular are too slow to bother retreating.
At least, that's how it is for the
Blue faction.
This battlefield sports no masterful generals, no brilliant tacticians, but the
Rooks of the
Blue faction and the
Bishops of the
Red faction do their part.
See, the
Red constructs do retreat, and far more often than their
Blue counterparts. And when they return from their retreat, it seems indeed that they've been repaired. The
Bishop wields no weapon, but it has the coordination capabilities of a
Rook, and it projects an aura. Within the immediate presence of a
Bishop, the
Red constructs are mended. It's not a quick process, but the mere availability of this repair means that the damaged forces of
Red can afford to retreat, when possible.
Pawns often don't bother.
Knights do, however, as do the very few
Rooks that
Red still use.
This poses something of a problem for
Blue, as unless they actually
destroy the constructs they fight, they may find that their efforts will be undone. Fortunately for them...
A sphere of energy hurls in from above, slams into the latest
Knight raid, and detonates. The
Knight's durable metacrystal armor plates don't help too much, and several of them go shatter from the explosion. Behind row after row of
Pawns, and a special bodyguard, the
Bulwark, the
Wizard stands. The
Wizard is built of fragile metacrystal, and wears a robe of purple-colored metacrystal
cloth, which allows it to channel and concentrate energy into a sphere, shaped above the tip of its cyan-colored stave. This task requires a substantial amount of focus, and would likely be easily disrupted. The
Wizard takes some time to compress each sphere, but they inflict comparatively devastating damage, and have the highest range of any attack on the battlefield. Of course, it's just medium-range, but the only other ranged attack is the
Rook's precision beam, which is only short-ranged.
The
Wizard moves at the aggravatingly slow pace of a mere
Pawn, and would be so easy to destroy if
Red could just
reach it. But in the path of any aggressors, is row after row of
Pawns, and far more effectively, the
Bulwark. Undoubtedly it would have been cheaper if it weren't made purely of durable metacrystal. Each
Wizard only has a single
Bulwark bodyguard attached,
Blue can hardly afford anything more. Against the twin tower shields (also durable metacrystal) wielded by the
Bulwark, and its brisk movements and coordination,
Red's constructs simply struggle to do any damage whatsoever.
So the
Wizards, sparse as they may be, cannot be stopped, and what they blast, tends to be irreparable. While it cannot manage to one-shot a
Bishop, the second or third shot will typically get the job done, assuming no other
Bishop moves in to repair it, or the original manages to hide behind enough
Pawns.
So the
Red faction does the sensible thing and retreats behind their walls. The
Tophat, a roving four-legged disk of fragile metacrystal, can extrude blocks of grey construction metacrystal, and with some guidance, construct simple structures. There are more than enough
Tophats to ensure that, behind the
Red lines, walls and towers are built. No gates, sadly, but a passage can be closed once passed through, and that is good enough when pursuit is so difficult (only the
Knight can sprint, and
Wizards move at
Pawn-pace).
As it turns out, the construction metacrystal is less durable than durable metacrystal, but substantially more so than fragile metacrystal. If it could be repaired, no doubt
Blue would never breach it, but it doesn't seem to benefit from the presence of a
Bishop.
So the siege begins. Any construct that approaches the walls gets bricks of construction metacrystal thrown at them by the
Red forces (
Pawns are not up to the challenge, and
Tophats are not strong enough, but the remainder can make an attempt at it), so on pain of brick-smashing, only the medium-ranged and rather rare
Wizard can really make attacks against the walls.
It looks like that'll be taking a while.
During the first two Battle Phases, Progress shall not change. Progress remains at 50% to 50%.
Terrain Table: 4.
The battlefield begins to morph and change, fluctuating. The next
Battle Phase's terrain will be a rocky expanse of many small mountains.
It is now the Shift Phase.Soft deadline for
Shift Phase 0001 is Friday, February 23rd at 8 PM Central time. Each team that gets their Shift selected before the soft deadline will get a +1 roll bonus to their first Design of
Design Phase 0001.
Hard deadline for
Shift Phase 0001 is Saturday, February 24th at 8 PM Central time.
