Gnome is where the heart is. There's a reason why Riddle and Secrets of the Gnome Lords are recommended for farming - gnomes may look scary, but they're soft, blockless targets that do two things: run and attack. And they do more of the former than the latter, as you're about to find out. Level 1 Enjoy it while it lasts, because this is as easy at it gets. You're up against a beech tree, four cucarachas and a pair of monkeys. If you stay at range 4 of the beech, it'll hit you with a weaker ranged melee attack. If you can stay at range 1, you can hope that you can stay at range 1 (vs movement and the occasional bash), because range 2-3 is the beech tree's death zone. You should be able to scoot a pair of gnomes towards the VP, killing cockroaches as you go, while the third gnome hides in the little corridor behind the top right bush, keeping the beech tree interested but unable to gain LOS. The monkeys aren't really equipped to take on gnomes, one-on-one. Easy peasy. Level 2 The monkey are replaced with spiders; there's an extra beech tree and cockroach, and a fungus warrior, and you have five rounds to kill pretty much everything, bar one spider, which will be guarding a VP on the distant edge of map. Let's not mince words, this is a pig of a level. If the fungus warrior draws a good hand and/or blocks in round one, you will lose. If you don't draw the right movement at the right time, you will lose. If you don't draw and correctly use the right attacks in every round, you will lose. If the beeches catch you at range 2-3, you will lose. And so on. edit: whoa nelly I fell for the hard mode trap. I am so smart. S-M-R-T. I mean, S-M-A-R-T. Hard mode First, you have to take the fungus warrior out in the first round. His poison will decimate your gnomes, and his halts will mean that you spend two rounds fiddling about with cockroaches, only to get nailed by the trees on the bridge. Then, you have to make the berzerker's attacks hit multiple targets - not as easy as it sounds, because the cockroaches like to split up and go for different targets. Then, you have to bait the beeches with your spearman, using his jump backs to (hopefully) avoid attacks. Mercifully, the beeches only get one attack a round here. You did draw jump back, didn't you? Then you need a shredding strike on the trees to remove their double or triple armour, and enough other attacks to take them out by round 4. Finally, you need to hope that the closest spider doesn't decide to camp the closest VP, so you can catch him in the open. Obviously, you could use the wild gnome's reflexive teleport to jump from the bridge to the small corridor running alongside the river, but I was never able to make that work. Either he'd not draw enough movement, or be short of attacks when he reached the far pair of VPs. Much better to leave him on the nearest VP, and sit your surviving character(s) two squares away from the far spider to draw it into committing its weakest attack - a lunging bite. Edit: easy mode There's a goddamn second bridge of stones across the river. Kill fungus dude, kill cockroaches, cross stream, kill spider, camp VPs. Or, you can try the hard mode above, taken from Happenstance's Painful Guide to Brute Forcing Life. Level 3 Significantly easier, but not simple, you face two low level elven wizzes and a trio of fancypants priests. Luckily, because of the doors, you only face a maximum of two enemies at once. If the priests employ their invigorating touches, you'll be in the hurt locker. They also have blocks. You need to keep your wild gnome healthy while you take out the first priest and wiz, and use his reflexive teleport to bypass the doors and jump straight into a jackpot with the female elf wiz. The priest in the corridor outside can't touch you if you stay on the closest of the VP squares. Then, it's a matter of battering down the door to the final VP camping priest, and gathering enough attacks to take him down inside a round.
Nice work @Lord Patches! Your Gnome trilogy is really beautiful but quite hard. Nice use of shadow and 3D effects with the terrain. Level 1 - Gnomeward Bound Run 1: Played a bit carelessly. Lost on round 7. Run 2: Spearman Tripped on round 1 and was quite useless at the start, but at later rounds I was able to bait attacks with double Jump Back. Managed to win on round 7 with 3 HP on my Berserker. Level 2: Spring Cleaning This map was quite big, so I almost missed the two victory squares on the garden. Since 2x2 sized Tall Beech Trees can't reach VPs, you can (and probably should) ignore them completely. Run 1: My Spearman tripped on first round once again. Infected Bites and other poison attacks are really nasty. Didn't count VPs correctly and lost my second character and the battle on round 6. Run 2: Not much to say. Only lost one char this time, but spiders camped on VPs, so I lost on round 4. Run 3: A bit better start. Managed to kill the Fungus Warrior on round 1 and AI didn't take VPs on round 2. Reached the garden VPs on round 5 and killed one of the spiders. Passed for 4 rounds to get my victory. Level 3: Keep Lore Elves Run 1: Almost killed my own Spearman with Berserk Spin. Reached the single VP on round 5. Teleported my Wild Gnome next to female wizard and skipped dealing with the last priest. Wild Gnome didn't draw enough attacks to kill the wizard, but managed to soak the damage and get stars from VPs. Finally won on round 11. *** Got Bossy Command #3, Make Haste #1 and Berserker #2 from the final loot chest.
That last one irritated the hell out of me with bad luck with draws. Several times just ran out of time because my Wild Gnome just wouldn't draw any attacks, grrr
I really like way the maps look in these modules as well as the pre- and post-battle flavour text. Make Haste is also a nice reward, definitely something I'll consider when I want to use a yellow token Human Skill. Level 1 I didn't have too much trouble with the first map. My first try didn't go very well as I took too many risks and spread out my gnomes too much, but once I figured out the tree can only use its strongest attacks at a certain range and not to have one Gnome bolt off too far ahead of the rest the map became a lot more doable and it was mostly a matter of dealing with the tree and cockroaches efficienctly. Drawing chops and armor removal on the right turns can make quick work of the tree and cockroaches and the monkeys can't do too much damage unless they get in a Sneak Attack. Level 2 The second map gave me much more trouble. Using the big wooden bridge is a complete no-no, so the big question becomes how quickly and how well I could deal with the Fungus Warrior and Cockroaches. Getting high-value cards and chops and a Squishy on the Fungus Warrior can make the map smooth sailing as was the case on my first try on the regular server. On the test server I drew low-value, single-targeting attacks and got some spores in my face too, so in the end I barely managed to claw a way to victory with one dead gnome and the others almost dead. Getting past the bridge is really the hardest part for me, beyond there it's trying to not get hit by any long-range branches and hope you have enough HP to survive the Poison Bites. Level 3 They don't call Gethen Deathzap by that name for nothing. When I tried this map on the test server he drew an electric trait and unloaded electric hell on my gnomes from afar while they had trouble getting to him and getting in enough damage. Managing to bring him down without him doing too much damage really helps as having good HP reserves makes the rest of the map much easier. Once I dealt with Deathzap I teleported my Wild Gnome onto the singular victory square by one of the Nargils to prevent a loss by victory squares while my other two Gnomes dealt with the Nargil inside the large room and then battering down the door. The draws you get can make this part much easier or harder, as is whether the Nargils play harmless cards or use powerful attacks. Getting off a succesful Sneak Attack can really make a difference, hard as it can be with the cramped nature of some areas. the lonesome victory square was secured my Gnome Spearman was already dead, so from there I put my Berserker Gnome on the victory square while the Wild Gnome would teleport next to Carolina and deal with her once he had enough attack cards to do so. As this drawing process can take a while, it's good to keep in mind that the Berserker has an Ouch! in his deck, so if he's at low HP and just sitting on the victory square doing nothing else anyway, then discard his attacks so a surprise Ouch! doesn't kill him. This way you don't need to deal with the last Nargil or the other doors. I was surprised to see that on my regular server run I only lost once, and on the first map, but I'm certain that was largely luck of the draw. Drawing only 1 card from the deck per round makes it very easy to get a run with poor cards which can easily screw you over.
First battle: This was the hardest for me, lost a bunch of times for various reasons. Second map: First run - one gnome runs for the shortcut, all gnomes halted by fungus, first gnome also impaled and poisoned. Second round, first gnome at 1 HP and still poisoned, other two gnomes (still on their spawn points) both Trip. Lost two more times, once due to stupidly changing victory squares at the end. Third map: Tried to TP to the elf chick for the win, but she blocked and killed me. So second try I used TP to get to the other VS and stop the clock, then slowly worked through the doors. If you save up on moves, you can put the fairly useless spearman on the VS so the wild one can go wreck stuff.
Hey Guys! I hope that you are all really loving my campaign (or hating it....muhahaha). I am so glad and honored to have made it into Mauve Manticore! I am really excited that you can all try it out, let me know what you think! @CT5 - Watching your video playthrough with commentary was awesome and entertaining haha. You did really well and even managed to beat map two the hard way! Much impressive, very win!
I didn't like the third map, when you teleport next to the wizard you're at the mercy of the luck draw. That's not good design. Also the game felt like being mean to me.
