Battle Brothers

[Kaptin Keen]

Game 1: Took over broken mercenary company. Killed Roggart. Went south to shop, then northeast to find missions. Cleansed a cemetary. Was given the task to transport a sealed chest to a town in the west. Was assaulted by a large band of bandits, lost half my crew. Minutes later, another, larger band of bandits wiped us out.

Morale: Don't trust nobles. Don't trust chests.

Game 2: Took over broken mercenary company. Got killed by Roggart.

Game 3: Took over broken mercenary company. Got killed by Roggart.

Game 4: Have taken over broken mercenary company. Killed Roggart. Overcommitted, I believe, hired too many cheap guys who are basically worthless in a fight. Must consider.

[Rodin]

Generally speaking, you want to focus on gear over bodies. One of the main ways the game scales difficulty is how big your company is, while gear is not tracked at all. Additionally, the combat mechanics favor quality over quantity pretty much across the board - a couple of well armored knights can effortlessly cut their way through a horde of peasants.

While I did only play on Beginner difficulty for my playthroughs, the ideal number for the early game seems to be around 5-6 people. That's enough to form a decent shieldwall and protect an archer or 2. Once you've gotten yourself well established and financially stable you can start trying to expand out to around 12 people, which is the max number you can field at a time. Going beyond that number is basically your subs bench - people you stick in for a specific fight or when one of your A team is injured.

[nightwyrm]

What Rodin said. Gear over dudes. Get up to 5-6 dudes and outfit the frontline bros with spears and shield and backline bros with pitchforks. Get used to fighting in formation, dudes by themselves get killed real quick.

Trying to loot armor off enemies are a pain. Whether something drops depends on how damaged the item is and you often have to destroy the armor before you're able to do real hp damage. Daggers and puncture (2nd attack option) allows you to bypass armor to deal hp damage so once a fight is pretty much won, try to swap to daggers and shank enemies for their armor.

Good luck.

[Kaptin Keen]

Generally speaking, you want to focus on gear over bodies. One of the main ways the game scales difficulty is how big your company is, while gear is not tracked at all. Additionally, the combat mechanics favor quality over quantity pretty much across the board - a couple of well armored knights can effortlessly cut their way through a horde of peasants.

While I did only play on Beginner difficulty for my playthroughs, the ideal number for the early game seems to be around 5-6 people. That's enough to form a decent shieldwall and protect an archer or 2. Once you've gotten yourself well established and financially stable you can start trying to expand out to around 12 people, which is the max number you can field at a time. Going beyond that number is basically your subs bench - people you stick in for a specific fight or when one of your A team is injured.

What Rodin said. Gear over dudes. Get up to 5-6 dudes and outfit the frontline bros with spears and shield and backline bros with pitchforks. Get used to fighting in formation, dudes by themselves get killed real quick.

Trying to loot armor off enemies are a pain. Whether something drops depends on how damaged the item is and you often have to destroy the armor before you're able to do real hp damage. Daggers and puncture (2nd attack option) allows you to bypass armor to deal hp damage so once a fight is pretty much won, try to swap to daggers and shank enemies for their armor.

Good luck.

Thanks for the input. Hiring a bunch of dudes was a test, and not a succesful one. Now I'm testing the next thing: Gear and tankiness for most.

Game 4, part 2: Many cheap hirelings died quickly. Went south, guarding a caravan. Got paid. On our way back, we ran into a great throng of bandits, and were cut down to the last man.

Game 5: Started a new Company: Uriels 1st Heavy Infantry. Sure, we're not actually very heavy, but on the other hand, we're decidedly infantry - not a horse in sight. We've taken a job to escort a caravan to the neighboring town, and one to recover the Lord Mayors favourite stick - his staff of office. Now this hamlet is out of jobs for us, so we'll try and travel to a larger town.

[Kaptin Keen]

Game 5, Uriels 1st Heavy Infantry: So the larger town is called Lorrested. From there, we went south with a caravan, then spent all our earnings on new gear. I was rather worried for a while - having barely enough gold on hand to pay the men, and no one offering anything but low-pay gopher jobs. Then, of course, we get another caravan escort, a long way west for mediocre pay. I reluctantly agree, and soon regret it, as 23 ruffians assault us. We're dead, I know it.

Steady, men! Show these filthy, craven dogs what real soldiering looks like! I bellowed - and to my undivided surprise, then men held. Shoulders squared, weapons ready, hard steel in their gazes, they face down an enemy all but four times their number, and slaughter them to the last man. We lose not a single soldier.

And so we're back in the game. We sell their gear, receive our pay, and write the bottom line of our finances in black ink again.

Next, it's direwolves. Then, the undead. Sigmund has grown into a legendary fighter, able to shrug off blows like there was a bloody mountain somewhere in his ancestry.

After that, we fought a necromancer and the low-brow moron goons he'd hired to help him. I saw the panic in their eyes - as we cut them down, and he reanimated them as the walking dead. Good luck to you, clowns. We killed them twice, and the necromancer once.

[Starwulf]

Thanks for posting this thread, I checked the game out and was impressed enough to stick it on my wishlist so I can hopefully grab it when it eventually goes on sale during the winter sale(I have no chance at getting it before then, with it being summer-time my kids are out of school so have to spend almost all our extra money on food since they aren't getting free lunch).

Love the way you're writing this up, I'll be keeping an eye on the thread for further posts, love the journal like style you're using to talk about your encounters in the game :).

[Kaptin Keen]

Thanks for posting this thread, I checked the game out and was impressed enough to stick it on my wishlist so I can hopefully grab it when it eventually goes on sale during the winter sale(I have no chance at getting it before then, with it being summer-time my kids are out of school so have to spend almost all our extra money on food since they aren't getting free lunch).

Love the way you're writing this up, I'll be keeping an eye on the thread for further posts, love the journal like style you're using to talk about your encounters in the game :).

Just go ahead and buy it, it's bloody brilliant. Literally, heads go flying and the bodies pile up.

Game 5, Uriels 1st Heavy Infantry: Can we call outselves Heavy Infantry yet? Propably not. I just paid the armorer well over a thousand golden crowns to outfit the last men who still weren't, in lamellar leather. We look a proper unit now, all in well made armor, all with our aketons. Wiedekind is still wielding that pitchfork his papa gave him, he clings to that thing like it was his firstborn. I'll get him a pike or something, first chance I get.

It seems to me the lowest paying jobs are generally the most deadly. So it was with tremendous trepidation that I took a contract to carry a sealed envelope to the next town over, for a meagre 130 coins. And yet mysteriously, nothing happened, and we arrived hale and hearty, without incident. I don't know what scares me the most.

Now we're off on another fetch quest. Some 'man of import' lost his precious tome of arcane knowledge, and we've been hired to bring it back. If an actual wizard stole this book, we could be in for a rough ride.

[houlio]

I need to get back to my current campaign eventually. Got to the end game crisis, mostly through sheer luck (got an early event where you get a free long sword) and being able to afford really heavy armor for some of my frontliners.

[Grif]

Just go ahead and buy it, it's bloody brilliant. Literally, heads go flying and the bodies pile up.

Game 5, Uriels 1st Heavy Infantry: Can we call outselves Heavy Infantry yet? Propably not. I just paid the armorer well over a thousand golden crowns to outfit the last men who still weren't, in lamellar leather. We look a proper unit now, all in well made armor, all with our aketons. Wiedekind is still wielding that pitchfork his papa gave him, he clings to that thing like it was his firstborn. I'll get him a pike or something, first chance I get.

It seems to me the lowest paying jobs are generally the most deadly. So it was with tremendous trepidation that I took a contract to carry a sealed envelope to the next town over, for a meagre 130 coins. And yet mysteriously, nothing happened, and we arrived hale and hearty, without incident. I don't know what scares me the most.

Now we're off on another fetch quest. Some 'man of import' lost his precious tome of arcane knowledge, and we've been hired to bring it back. If an actual wizard stole this book, we could be in for a rough ride.

I been eyeing the game for some time, and I'll probably snag it once I gotten my fill of FFXIV.

[Kaptin Keen]

Game 5, Uriels 1st Heavy Infantry: The tome of arcane knowledge wasn't a problem. It was what came after that nearly killed us. So one thing led to another - we found the thieves, killed them, returned the tome to it's owner. Who by the by is a fairly charmless bastard, a woman of profound rotundness and piggy eyes. By that as it may, and my dislike for her aside, our next quest led us to a ruined temple to some old, forgotten power. The centerpiece of the place was a statue, some ancient and terrible lord or king, half dark, stern monarch, half tentacly monstrosity from beyond the realms of sanity.

Well, the statue held a fine and fancy sword. Possibly I should have just grabbed the staff the charmless sorceress had tasked me to fetch, but ... well, it was a very fine sword.

We I grabbed it, the dead arose. The usual walking dead, but accompanied by some ghostly apparitions I'd never before seen. Impossible to hit with missile fire, and impossible to close with due to the screen of the walking dead. And to make matters worse, they called the fallen back to unlife as quickly as we could cut them down. And there were three of them.

We ran.

Usually I'd tell anyone who'd care to listen that Uriels 1st doesn't run, not from man nor beast. Well, we ran from these undead. We managed to hold on to our weapons - but we dropped everything else in our haste to get out alive; pride, courage, that faith we'd built in ourselves. On the bright side, we lived to tell the tale.

Our next mission took us from Grafenhaven to Eisenstein. Interesting little bit of a tale, that. Grafenhaven is the only port in our little barony, a dirty little town but important none the less. We were given a sealed scroll there, by a man who gave us no name but a large sack of gold, to deliver it to Eisenstein - the main city of the neighboring barony.

Well, our local noble rulers are called Eisenstein. It's all history these days, but some past strife means that today, the Eisensteins rule out of Lundirsholm, while the illustrious Krieger's sit proud in the city of Eisenstein.

So when suspicious messages are exchanged between someone from across the waters, and the House of Krieger, that surely cannot bode well for our realm. But it's the promise of good money for competent mercenaries.

[Kaptin Keen]

Game 5, Uriels 1st Heavy Infantry: The posturing goes on, but no one seems willing to strike the first blow. I had a mission to deliver yet another carefully sealed note to the stronghold of the third faction in these lands, House Hedin. These days, I feel more like a spy than a mercenary.

It would be interesting - and also profitable - to know who's with who, so I paid a skilled forger to open the seal, and close it again after. The contents, unsurprisingly, were encoded and unintelligible. 50 crowns down and none the wiser.

We had a run-in with another grouper of direwolves, larger and more dangerous. This batch was dangerous. You'd be so close to striking them you could all but feel the impact - then they'd dodge out of the way faster than the eye could follow. We killed them, alright, steel is stronger than fur and fang - but not before they ruined Willibrand's knee.

Leaves me at a bit of a conundrum. Willi is a friend, and one of my most experienced fighters. He's been with me since the start, 23 battles, and scores of enemies killed. He has stood shoulder to shoulder with me against insurmountable odds. But on the other hand, his broken knee makes him slow. It's just a matter of time before it get's him killed.

I agonized over it awhile, but in the end it was a foregone conclusion. I paid Willi what he was due - 500 golden crowns, enough to begin anew somewhere. He handed in his arms and armor, and .. I think he was pleased. He get's to walk away, alive. Most do not.

I've hired two new men in his stead. That's the cynic in me - I'm hoping one of them will live.

[Kaptin Keen]

So .. some general comments on the game.

I have an 'ambition'. I need to go into the wilderness, find a camp, and destroy it. I've wandered off into the wild many times now, and never found anything. I've tried looking this stuff up on the internet, but found nothing. It's a new game, and not a huge title, so info is slightly sparse. So I wonder how to do that, and what it even means when I succeed?!

I also want to comment on the seemingly random difficulty spikes. Missions have skulls, skulls determine difficulty. Generally, I will be challenged by three skull missions, but not hugely so. Willibrand went down in a three skull mission, but survivied - only to get the grey slip. Meh.

But then I took a two skull mission, caravan duty, and wound up in an unwinnable fight.

Usually, it's many, poorly geared dudes, or few levelled and well geared dudes. This fight, it's 9 levelled knights in full armor, with pikemen in the rear, plus two normal archers and a marksman. And I cannot win. So I reloaded, and I'll try again.

And I'm slightly baffled by what exactly it is that made the game decide to kill me. I've upgraded a lot of gear - but this seems somewhat over the top. Especially for a two skull mission.

It's not the first, btw, there was that fight against the undead. That camp is still out there, a dozen zombies and three geists. The geists are universally 5% chance to hit, so .. I dunno what to do about that. Hire my own necromancer would be preferable.

[Rodin]

So .. some general comments on the game.

I have an 'ambition'. I need to go into the wilderness, find a camp, and destroy it. I've wandered off into the wild many times now, and never found anything. I've tried looking this stuff up on the internet, but found nothing. It's a new game, and not a huge title, so info is slightly sparse. So I wonder how to do that, and what it even means when I succeed?!

I also want to comment on the seemingly random difficulty spikes. Missions have skulls, skulls determine difficulty. Generally, I will be challenged by three skull missions, but not hugely so. Willibrand went down in a three skull mission, but survivied - only to get the grey slip. Meh.

But then I took a two skull mission, caravan duty, and wound up in an unwinnable fight.

Usually, it's many, poorly geared dudes, or few levelled and well geared dudes. This fight, it's 9 levelled knights in full armor, with pikemen in the rear, plus two normal archers and a marksman. And I cannot win. So I reloaded, and I'll try again.

And I'm slightly baffled by what exactly it is that made the game decide to kill me. I've upgraded a lot of gear - but this seems somewhat over the top. Especially for a two skull mission.

It's not the first, btw, there was that fight against the undead. That camp is still out there, a dozen zombies and three geists. The geists are universally 5% chance to hit, so .. I dunno what to do about that. Hire my own necromancer would be preferable.

The find a camp and destroy it is just any camp other than ones specifically generated by a quest. You generally need to be a fair distance from a town. I typically found them by going off-road between distant towns. The surest way to find one is to go to the uninhabited side of the map - either East or West depending on your seed - and strike out. You should find one within a day or two. That's dangerous though, as camp difficulty scales with distance from civilization. The safest way to do it would be to find a town with a Tavern and liquor up the locals. You should eventually hear a rumor about a camp.

Edit: Succeeding ambitions has two main benefits. The first is an increase in Renown, which is how well known your company is. The better known you are, the better the missions you get. Once you hit a certain renown, you become reputable enough for the noble houses to hire you. The second is a major morale boost, meaning your guys will fight better for a while after completing one. There are also sometimes other benefits, like the one to craft a warbanner giving you both the warbanner itself and a sash that boosts Resolve.

On your unwinnable mission - are you at odds with any of the noble houses? Because you shouldn't be running into knights on a caravan mission. The worst you should be getting from human opponents is Brigand Raiders, who are typically in rusty chain mail. They can still be rough though. Especially so if they bring archers.

From what I recall, difficulty is mainly scaled three ways - number of bros, number of days, and price of the mission. That last is important - the skulls represent how difficult the game thinks the mission is compared to your squad, but the monetary value is a static valuation of how dangerous it is. More money = more enemies. Caravan missions are also infamous for variable difficulty - sometimes you'll take the trip and the bandit groups along the way get chased off by militia or wander off chasing peasants. Other times, you'll meet not just the bandits the game expects you to run into but an entire additional warband that was naturally spawned on the map. It's possible that's what happened here.

On geists:

Geists have a ridiculously high Ranged Evade stat. Your archers are generally better off firing at something else unless you have overwhelming superiority over the Weidergangers. Even so, if there are a lot of Geists (3+), you may still be best off just spam firing at them hoping to get lucky. Bring bowmen rather than crossbowmen for the extra attacks per round, and equip extra quivers so you can burn through ammo. Other than that, it's melee all the way. An archer will have a 5% chance to hit, while a melee dude will have around 30-40%. In a fight with both zombies and ghosts, the ghosts are THE main target. They will break your formation in two seconds flat. You hold guys in reserve and then charge the ghosts, trying to remove them all before your men break. A single hit will always kill, so bring high accuracy weapons like spears.

If there's more than one or two Geists, I also wouldn't recommend even bothering with the fight unless you have a Sergeant. This is a dude carrying your warbanner, which gives a big boost to Resolve. He'll need to have a high Resolve score himself (preferably 50+), and should have the Rally ability. He leads the charge on the ghosts, and spams Rally to counter the ghostly wails.

Also of note: Geists cannot be Resurrected, even by a Necromancer. You drop them, they stay down. Another reason to prioritize them.

[houlio]

I also want to comment on the seemingly random difficulty spikes. Missions have skulls, skulls determine difficulty. Generally, I will be challenged by three skull missions, but not hugely so. Willibrand went down in a three skull mission, but survivied - only to get the grey slip. Meh.

But then I took a two skull mission, caravan duty, and wound up in an unwinnable fight.

Usually, it's many, poorly geared dudes, or few levelled and well geared dudes. This fight, it's 9 levelled knights in full armor, with pikemen in the rear, plus two normal archers and a marksman. And I cannot win. So I reloaded, and I'll try again.

And I'm slightly baffled by what exactly it is that made the game decide to kill me. I've upgraded a lot of gear - but this seems somewhat over the top. Especially for a two skull mission.

It might have been another mercenary company intervening, which I've had happen one time. Fortunately we were also simultaneously attacked by a third group so the big tough enemy mercenaries ended up splitting their forces.

This also sounds to me like a situation where you probably just have to run away, which will happen to you from time to time. You'll probably lose the contract, which really sucks, but that's also just in the nature of the game.

One quick question: when you say you've upgraded a lot of gear, to what level are you talking about? With the way there are "tiers" of armor and weapons, fighting an opponent using better stuff feels massively difficult while fighting hordes of poorly equipped enemies often feels like a breeze in comparison.

[Kaptin Keen]

It might have been another mercenary company intervening, which I've had happen one time. Fortunately we were also simultaneously attacked by a third group so the big tough enemy mercenaries ended up splitting their forces.

This also sounds to me like a situation where you probably just have to run away, which will happen to you from time to time. You'll probably lose the contract, which really sucks, but that's also just in the nature of the game.

One quick question: when you say you've upgraded a lot of gear, to what level are you talking about? With the way there are "tiers" of armor and weapons, fighting an opponent using better stuff feels massively difficult while fighting hordes of poorly equipped enemies often feels like a breeze in comparison.

I've had a random mercenary company turn up at a battle once before - on my side. Being the mercenary I am, I stayed back, and let them clean up the fight. Which they did with admirable speed and determination. I didn't get either loot or experience, but it was still an easy 1400 crowns.

I was totally mystified at first, when a bunch of heavies showed up and started kicking hindside without delay. Good fun =)

Since gear is clearly tiered, but not labelled as such, what can I say? Hmm - I picked up my first great axe, kite shields and real helmets (the name escapes me).

[Kaptin Keen]

Game 5, Uriels 1st Heavy Infantry: We finally managed to track down a brigand camp, and wipe them it. It was most satisfying. We laid in ambush, Hjalmar on the high ground with his deadly crossbow, the rest of us hiding in the dark among some shrubbery or other. There's a certain comedy to it all - I think we've finally earned our name, every man clad in quality mail, and thus hardly suited for stealth.

Regardless, the gods must favor us, for the bandits were drunk, not watching their perimeter, and when we rushed them with the rising sun at our back, they hardly offered resistance. We cut them down like so much wheat ripe for harvest, and brought home rich spoils.

Oh, and there has been ... an incident. As part of the ongoing posturing between the three noble houses, I was sent from Grafenhaven to Eisenstein with some cargo. Along the way, I was confronted by some House Eisenstein men-at-arms (remember, the family that holds Eisenstein is not the House Eisenstein, they were ousted decades ago - needlessly complicated, I know) who claimed my cargo was in fact stolen from them.

So ... I killed them. Sure, sure, I couldn't have our loyalty called into question - but let's be honest; we're mercenaries. No, really, it was the gall of the man. He talked down to me. That little sneer, calling us sellswords. And he had the most obnoxious little mustache. So I had Hjalmar put a bolt in his eye.

And thus, I now ply my trade far to the south. We've commissioned a local artist to create a suitable Battle Standard for us. Our symbol is a black raven on a white field. Leif, our cultist recruit, recommended the artist, a woman by the name of Galde Snogsøje, in whatever absurd gibberish the tribesfolk talk. The resulting bird is weirdly .. tentacular. One may hope it strikes fear into the hearts of our enemies, but it is not quite what I had in mind.

[Kaptin Keen]

Spoiler: Tips - read at own risk! You cannot unsee this brilliance once you have :p

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Oh - a simple tip, btw: If, like me, you pick the ambition to find and crush a wilderness camp, finding one is simple. You just spot tracks, and follow them back to their source. I'm embarassed how long it took me to figure that out.

Also, another tip: Orcs charge. It's advisable to not let them.

[The Hellbug]

Spoiler

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Orcs charge

This is actually one of the things that I really like about this game: each of the enemy types is brutal in their own particular way so it feels super good when you play around them and pull victory from the jaws of defeat. Once those crises start rolling around or different factions start teaming up, though, you start seeing just how mean the game can be.

[Kaptin Keen]

You should spoiler that, though. It's by no means unlikely I'm the last to discover it - but regardless, I spoilered it for a reason.

[Kaptin Keen]

Spoiler: Avert thine eyes, unbeliever, for it is time for more TIPS!!

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Nachtzehrers eat the fallen. In general, I believe in not letting my guys die, but they eat their own too. To avoid this annoyance, step forward to stand on their mangled corpses. This breaks the general rule of always fighting in formation, and it's certainly not without risk, but it is preferable to having them eat. Once fed, they grow. And as far as I can tell, once they've grown twice, they start gobbling up your guys - the living ones.

Also, an untip: Zombies. I don't know how to fight them. Oh, it's easy-peasy if they're alone. But if they have a necromancer or geist with them, I cannot cut them down fast enough. So it just become a long, painful slog that I eventually lose. I need some way to come up with a flanking tactic, but ... how?! It can't be done. Curse this game =)

Game 5, Uriels Heavy Infantry: I am now at risk when I travel in House Eisenstein lands (the noble house, not the town). Allying myself with their rivals means they've decided I'm some sort of threat, and while I've yet to come into open conflict with their armsmen, the open hostility is palpable.

In better news, I helped my new friends in Eisenstein (the town, not the noble house) stave off a major orcish assault. Three waves of the brutes. I don't even know why they attacked, they just came on and on, wave after wave, charge after charge. Our countercharges took them off-guard, and our rugged shields turned their massive weapons. I was clever: I had stocked up on spare arms and armor, so I could swap gear between engagements. Superior intellect, you green skinned hooligans. Take that.

We've realised many of our ambitions for the Company. We found and destroyed a hostile camp, we allied ourselves to one of the Houses, we bought an impressive battle standard, we amassed a giant pile of gold. One of my personal ambitions was to improve our rations. These days we usually have two types of meat or fish, bread, cheese, and two types of drink. My men live like royalty (only without a proper roof over their heads most days), and frankly I have to march them around the country looking for battle just to keep them from growing obese and useless.

[Kaptin Keen]

Oh - also: Hi Rodin. I managed to completely miss your post, sorry, that's just so embarassing. Thanks for the input =D

[The Hellbug]

Spoiler: Tips

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Concerning the zombies: how many of them are we talking here? I ask because I found they were the enemy I needed to adapt my tactics the least. What I did was form the shield wall as usual but with special care to look for good terrain (zombies care not for tactics) and then just do a good, paced slaughter of them as they hit my lines. Eventually a hole usually opens up and that's when I send a pair or three guys who have some good stamina left to charge the necromancer. My extra tips are two: one, all it takes it one guy making it to melee with the necromancer and he can't cast spells anymore, and two, be careful when advancing your shield wall against these guys, their resurrecting pushes whoever was standing on top of them out of the way so if you walk forward onto their corpses, be sure to have a plan to rescue anyone who gets pushed out of the safety of the wall. Oh, and one more: if you can, prioritize the zombie that the necromancer has possessed--they are much more offensively endowed than their brothers.

[Rodin]

Oh - also: Hi Rodin. I managed to completely miss your post, sorry, that's just so embarassing. Thanks for the input =D

No worries, I've been enjoying reading your exploits.

Spoiler: More tips!

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A fun thing to do with Nachtzehrers is to kill a couple of them, and then stand your guys behind the corpses with Spearwall up. The Nachtzehrers will hurl themselves at your pointy sticks trying to eat the corpse and get shish-kebabed.

On zombies, there's a couple of things. Firstly, unless there is a Necromancer about any given zombie can only resurrect once. If there is a Necro, they only rez a second (or more) time if the Necro is specifically spending his action raising them. They also keep any armor damage you did. This makes focusing your attacks on a particular body part especially effective. I quite like using flails against them for this reason - a lot of zombies have sub-par headgear to begin with, and flails can target the head to make dropping them go faster. The even better option is mixing your flails with a few cleavers. A decapitated zombie cannot be resurrected by any means, so knock the hats off with your flails then choppy choppy with decapitation weapons. Try and keep track of which zombies have already rezzed as that can tell you where it's safe to stand.

Zombies are also really dumb, which can make spearwall handy. You can often keep a good number of the zombies out of the fight by anchoring one end of your line with a couple of high fatigue guys with Spearwall. They'll get through eventually, but by then your boppers and choppers will have made a good start.

Another trick you can do if you're having trouble is to disarm the zombies. Kill them, then immediately step into their square with either a new Bro or someone who has the perk that lets you use your inventory for free. When you go into your inventory, the weapon will be on the ground and you can stick it in your backpack. This gives you a backup weapon to swap to when yours gets damaged,
but more importantly it means that the resurrecting zombie is weaponless. It will still have a bite attack, but that is far less dangerous than whatever other cutlery it may have been swinging around.
For necros, you can either try and shoot them to death or charge them. Dogs can work quite well here, although they do tend to keep a couple of zombies back to protect themselves.

[Kaptin Keen]

Spoiler: Tips?

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@Hellbug: The fight I'm currently losing has ... 28, I think. And a necro, of course. I could carve my way through 28 zombies no sweat. It's 58/86 that's giving me grief.

@Rodin: The corpse-trap for Nachtzehrers is brilliant. Currently I've sold my spears, however - I'm only now learning that I should propably keep a decent stock of different weapons. I've just gone for higher damage, I've never used a flail or cleaver - or the arming swords I have, or maces, or ....

Didn't know you could target body parts. Also, do dogs not just target whatever is closest?

[The Hellbug]

Spoiler: Tips

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Well, what worked for me may not work for you--different warbands and all. Also, for body part targeting: you can't for the most part (sort of). Flails do have a special attack that always aims for he head, at the cost of accuracy and always have 10% increased head strike chance. Cleavers have a special attack that guarantees a decapitate if it kills. Additionally, two-handed axes have a weird special quality on their main attack that makes them sort of target the head and body simultaneously.

[Rodin]

Spoiler: Tips

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Well, what worked for me may not work for you--different warbands and all. Also, for body part targeting: you can't for the most part (sort of). Flails do have a special attack that always aims for he head, at the cost of accuracy and always have 10% increased head strike chance. Cleavers have a special attack that guarantees a decapitate if it kills. Additionally, two-handed axes have a weird special quality on their main attack that makes them sort of target the head and body simultaneously.

Spoiler

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Lash isn't actually less accurate, it just costs a lot more fatigue. The regular attack is 10% more likely to hit the head than the body, but I believe the overall accuracy for the attack remains the same.

Wardogs do tend to go for the nearest target, but you can manipulate that by choosing when and where to release them. A Necro will generally only keep a few zombies back to defend them, meaning that you can use the dogs quick movement (and surprise introduction to the field) to screw up their zones of control and either slip a dog through to target the necro or hold a zombie in place while a bro goes around it.

[Kaptin Keen]

Game 5, Uriels 1st Heavy Infantry: Every other time I speak with my House Krieger liason, he mopes about greenskins assaulting Seestadt.

I hate fighting greenskins. It's like, no matter how stupid and predictable their 'tactics' are, they almost win regardless. They have literally just one idea in their heads: Run at them and shout like maniacs. Some are poorly armored, others barely even clothed. It's frankly embarassing how effective it is to wield oversized weapons and charge madly.

So I couldn't tell you how many orcs I've killed around Seestadt. I swear if it's not hundreds, it must be even more. One might guess they have some sort of stronghold in the region, but I'm not going out looking for it. Not for free, and certainly not while I'm earning so well saving the town over and over again.

War still looms on the horizon, like thunder that refuses to break. Just a wall of black, ominous clouds, hanging there, occasional flashes of lightning to remind you it means business, it's just contemplating when to strike.

Recently, I had a mission to Grafenhaven, the only port city of the House Eisenstein, and only when we had to run from the 2nd Grafenhaven Guards Regiment did our contact divulge that he'd been sent there to try and raise the populace into open rebellion against their Eisenstein Lords and Masters. I love being the last to know. My mother wanted me to become a carpenter. And in retrospect, I can see it so clearly: I could travel from place to place, and repair all the things that mercenaries ruin.

Sure, I might make slightly less gold. But I'd fight decidedly less greenskins too, and I wouldn't be nursing a broken leg right now. So ... it's a trade-off.

[Kaptin Keen]

Game 5, Uriels 1st Heavy Infantry:

Half a year - more than six months - the nobles have been gearing up for war. Spying, raiding, getting bolder, trying to subvert each others towns and cities. I've lost count of the number of secret missives I've hauled back and forth across the land.

And then .. War!

And it's not the nobles. I guess with all their scheming against each other, they made it easy. The orcs and goblins swarmed down from the mountains, and in from the untamed borderlands, seemingly without number. Now suddenly the nobles are talking of a united front, of fighting a common enemy. it would be almost cute, if it wasn't so god's damned ironic.

Theudobald von Krieger burst into my tent yesterday. It was quite a show - he hadn't slept much, and kept nervously wringing his hands, while at the same time trying to act all high and mighty, 'commanding' me, talking about my 'duty'. When he'd talking himself dry - I didn't offer a word of reply until he shut the hell up - I reminded him that I'm a mercenary. That coin is the measure of my duty. That I would help him. But it would cost him.

He was silent a long time. Then he sat down, and we started talking price.

[DodgerH2O]

Thank you so much for writing these. The emergent stories you get from this type of game are one of the best parts and I quite enjoy the narrative.

[Kaptin Keen]

Thank you so much for writing these. The emergent stories you get from this type of game are one of the best parts and I quite enjoy the narrative.

Thanks - I'm just glad anyone reads along =)

Game 5, Uriels 1st Heavy Infantry:

Since this is my own journal, I'll be honest here: I never liked Wiedekampf. Sure, I made him sergeant, but that was mostly because he's undeniably courageous - and he has the loudest shouting voice in the company.

But despite my personal dislike for the man, losing him was a blow. It truly wasn't ideal. Having the guy meant to keep the company fighting when a battle goes sour fall first is bad - having to run because he fell, leaving my standard behind is .. nothing short of catastrophic. Bloody orcs. Dammit!

I met Walter's Company at the inn last time. Old Walter is as resoundlingly spiteful an old bastard as you could ever hope to meet - or, you know, hope to see first and avoid meeting. So he comes up and asks me: 'Hey, where's that useless sergeant of your - Weissman, or something? Didn't he carry that standard you're so fond of waving around?'

I would have let it go, truly. If he hadn't then gone on to add, in his most patronizing voice: 'Hey, I thought I should warn you - orcs and goblins are just swarming out there!'

So it wasn't the best tavern brawl ever - there was that one time in Eisenstein - but it's definitely in my top five favorite fights of my life. I broke Walters nose on my first blow, and with the men good and angry already, we sent both Walter and his Company packing with their tails between their legs. It did wonders to restore morals. Now, however, I'll need to look for a new sergeant.

And he'll want a raise too. Dammit!