Bethany Plays: AW:DoR Chapter 6: Creepy Flowers

Our next mission appears to be a redux of our last- a selection of property, a single factory (almost certainly in our territory), and a relatively open field. Don't let that fool you- this mission will be a blast of cold water to the face.

And that chapter title is certainly not inspiring the most pleasant of mental images.

...Near what now? Dr. Morris will take his sweet time explaining that, admittedly.

We are going to be spending some time talking about the dinosaurs.

I love Will's idolisation of Brenner extending to trivia knowledge, and Brenner being open about not being that kind of learned. Fortunately, Lin is here to cover our asses.

..."Many" possible explanations? ...Ah, right. Science has marched on for Days of Ruin- two years after this game came out, the Alvarez hypothesis was promoted to scientific consensus, and eight years later, there was some proper drilling into Chixculub that answered enough questions to confirm the meteor strike. It was fairly popular social consensus at the time, and Will and Brenner not being familiar with it does raise an eyebrow, but we know a lot more about dinosaur extinction now than the writers did back then.

By the way, if you want an idea about how far science has come in the last century, take a read of the theories about the cause of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event before 1980 (when the Alvarez family discovered the crater).

A singular meteor, with a size believed to exceed that of Mount Everest. It was a biggun.

He's correct about the tsunamis (and you can consider us lucky they only got that high- if the meteor struck the ocean, they would've been even higher), but the earthquakes... well, the Richter scale isn't really designed to deal with earth movement caused by things other than tectonic shifts, and the logarithmic scale means it's kind of shaky even as you start to pass 6.5. Earthquakes did happen, but that's a more emotive way of expressing it than a useful one.

What is more likely to have caused the actual extinctions were not these things- on a cosmic scale, these disasters would have lasted days- but the changes in environment. As science has marched on, we have devised more and more ways the dinosaurs, and the 75% of all life that was wiped out, would have struggled to adapt.

Although I am fond of Dr. Morris's theory. Probably one of Morris's better jokes.

She jokes, but given the size and speed of the meteor, it's rather likely that the time between "business as usual" and "total annihilation" would be measured in seconds.

Which is clearly not something we can say about this event, clearly.

I am flattered to be described in the same breath as the cockroach. Smaller meteors is right- that, and presumably a lower speed. We got the "expel dust and sediment into the atmosphere", but without the ferocious disasters like the aforementioned tsunamis and earthquakes.

Brenner would like to know what this conversation has to do with anything.

Dr. Morris actually has to rack his brains to try and remember what it was. Wonderful divergence there.

Dr. Morris is going to bring up this topic in-game, despite standing in front of a field of grass. Our protagonists are generally lucky enough to find some way to eat and continue being alive.

Although they are concerned about the possibility that this might stop in the future.

Specifically, the ability to can food and conserve it for emergencies. This is certainly an emergency.

...You guys have a what now?

...I'm going to pretend that makes sense, and also how did it survive the meteors? Seems to me like one unlucky pebble would puncture that environmental system.

Brenner would rather we focused on the What To Do rather than How It's Done. There was an implied task in here.

Get food systems online. That sounds admirable, but it does sound like a you problem rather than an us problem. I mean, Lin is the only person here who understood a word you said about what it did, and even then, she understood the words individually, not in order.

So what's the part we can help you with?

...OK, apparently Morris is just going to be doing some philosphy.

People are, generally, inclined to assume that most human beings want something positive. Whether that is for themselves or for a social group, most humans, even those that commit society's worst crimes, at least believe they're helping somebody. Morris's question here appears to be "do you believe there are some people that are so committed to evil that they don't even have that going for them?"

There are only two reasons to ask that question: You've gone senile, or you genuinely believe such a person exists and is likely to be a problem for us?

And this is a particularly poor attempt at pretending to be the first option. We already had the Mayor, Morris. I'd rather not have another villainous civilian.

Speaking of people that have no higher purpose than destruction, our opponent for this mission will not be The Beast. Whoever it is is in no hurry to announce their name and intentions, though.

They are, however, happy to open proceedings. Well, we can see at least some of who they are from the top screen.

OK, admittedly, just seeing the eyes isn't enough to get too much of an impression, although those eyes do look a little young...

Wait, hold on. We're playing as Will today? I'll be honest, I didn't think we got a Will map for a long time, and I don't really feel like Will's character is ready to be commanding an army yet. On the plus side, Will's action theme We Will Prevail is very nice to begin hearing now.

Here is our mission. Our forces appear to be strangely precisely evenly matched- the only difference between us is a single unit- we have an arty, they have a second recon. Well, we also start with a cache of properties, including a factory, right next to us while our opponent has two cities pre-captured, but we'll need to establish a foothold first before we can make that matter.

So, Brenner, any ideas about that foothold thing?

Before Brenner can lend a hand, he has a bit of a moment where he fumbles his organisational skills.

Lin can do a lot for an army, but she can't do everything. Some things have to be Brenner's job, and apparently that can be a tall ask at times.

Captain Brenner of the 12th Battalion, ladies and gents.

Is there a problem with that, Will? Having Lin come up with good ideas and then having Brenner follow them is a sound command structure- it relives Brenner of stresses and responsibilities while not giving Lin undue grounds for bias and favouritism.

Besides, being a good strategist and being a good commander are different skillsets, and it's in the interests of an army to make sure both positions are filled by the person most skilled at those jobs, rather than making sure both positions are filled by the same person.

Yes, we've got that part...

Natural.

Hm, interesting. The cities and wasteland tiles in this area do seem pretty promising for that purpose. I like it.

...Have him build a what for the enemy's what? This line in the War Room is technically a spoiler for a later scene, and it actually kind of makes Lin come off as hypocritical in the story proper. How do you know about either of these units, Lin? I don't see any such thing right now.

So, care to reveal how the story concludes too? Or-

...Lin trying to wingwoman "being a confident commander" to let Will keep his delusions of Brenner's infallibility.

Let no one say she doesn't care about Will in her own way.

For our opening, I inspect the most forward-placed high-move units, and notice that all the properties except that forward one are out of range of enemy fire. We should be able to build up a solid Funding pipeline pretty easily before the opening volley even arrives.

Checking the Terms. Nothing unusual here.

Let's Capture some property!

And I believe Lin mentioned something about this being the point where we spearhead our formation? Might as well keep it as secure as possible.

Wish this guy could get closer.

A new insignia for a new opponent. They will go unnamed for the duration of this mission, but in the interest of sharing her personal theme Mr. Bear, I will tell you it's Penny.

...Also so I can address her tactics by name too, that helps.

Penny appears to be a literal child, and her father is... well, clearly not the greatest of paternal influences.

Also, rather strangely, Penny's portrait differs in a distinct way from her CO portrait on the top screen. I would say that this is something they do in this first mission for the same reason they don't share her name, but no, looking ahead, they're actually surprisingly consistent about giving her two separate portraits. And yet Isabella was drawn with Will's jacket before she even woke up.

The only thing Dad does to give his daughter direction is tell her to take notes. Yeah, good luck with that, buddy, I'm not sure this girl is old enough to write.

We also get a cameo appearance from the son. He looks like the white sheep of the family.

...So, when Morris was talking about believing in the human capacity to be evil, one gets the impression it was meant to juxtapose with this lovely fellow. Although the idea of a villain who thinks nothing of the loss of life in an Advance Wars game has some amusing implications when juxtaposed with the series' traditional gameplay.

If nothing else, we at least know who failed to teach Penny a few key lessons.

Penny takes her own time making some Captures for repair purposes. The time where an enemy Capturing for production is not yet upon us.

We did wind up taking a tank to the chin, but that's what the recon is for. And it's nice and exposed on some road right about now...

These guys aren't going to be so lucky. At least the Wasteland will slow down the big guns.

The Funds are going to be a bit more important than the infantry.

The north side is going much more splendidly.

Enough so that this tank is going to go interrupt that capture. We have the time to do it.

The recon is a smidge more valuable to me intact, so I pull it out of range of the enemy. I don't move it back onto a city, because I have designs on repairing it and I don't want to do any complicated shuffles next turn.

The infantry I didn't attack went for the other city. Free target practice.

Saw that coming. I think sacrificing that infantry helped avoid further casualties later, but he will be missed. By somebody, anyway.

The other infantry moves back and starts capturing the other property.

I consider producing a unit, but without a cache of starting properties, I don't have the Funds already outstanding to purchase a unit I want. We'll be saving up.

That Mech is positioned such that our tanks will need to move wisely.

But it doesn't impede us enough to avoid taking a free KO.

I'd like to do something about that tank, but he's protected by the Mech.

The Bike will start another Capture, and the enemy can come to me.

(I do appreciate hitting the tank without the level.)

Those dents were a bit more unfortunate, but I can deal with them. The artillery has HP enough and that Mech can only do so much- Mechs tend to be better at defence than attack.

Recon doing some recovery, just in case I need an extra set of machine guns.

And we get some property, to recoup our costs!

...OK, that dent to the artillery hurt a bit more than I counted on. Still, it's up against a 7 HP tank, not a full health one.

And my levelled-up tank can account for the recon.

...These are some unfortunate numbers. I feel like this is probably the turn that hurt me most on the scoreboard. There was probably some more efficient (or luckier) way to handle this particular turn. Or at least the last.

Mech comes in to protect the artillery's top side.

And I do have the spare shot to KO the tank.

We have the funds to afford any unit, and I feel the unit to buy is an artillery. The dented one is good reason why.

The interrupted capture finally concludes, since I didn't have the spare firepower to finish it off. Perhaps I should've and let the Mech try and pick up where the inf left off.

Oi, mine, hands off!

Recon ran off, Mech did a number on my arty, and Bike decided to harass the new one. That recon will be annoying, but at least it's not my current problem.

Get off my property.

...Heh. Might get used to that one.

Recon's not in range still. Too much wasteland instead of roads. Honestly, that's just as annoying as the other one.

Nice opportunity to cut this Mech down to size.

...Or it would be if I didn't roll some spectacularly bad luck rolls somewhere.

Getting a solid rank often requires landing the good luck rolls. I don't go for that sort of thing.

At least I have one unit available to deal with the Bike.

...Should probably Join these two. That other Arty won't be good for much in a hurry.

And glad I can take that one.

No buying things. I have plenty to deal with the rest of these units.

As annoying as it is to take a chip to this Mech.

The recon can handle it.

I'm taking this one back, I hope you know.

I join my two Mechs to speed up the Capture time on this property. Here, we can also see a neat property that the Mech's Veteran status- even when it's the one joining, the Veteran status stays. I believe Joining gives you the best level, rather than adding the levels if both units have one.

Tank goes right in to begin the shooting at the recon. Perhaps I could've made it come to me, but either way it's going to be annoying, and over there it won't be annoying to my footsoldiers.

This tank is going to be going for the other recon, while my remaining units begin to condense.

Kinda wish that recon shot at me, but I am finishing off the other one. This does feel kinda slow, honestly, but at least it's safe.

Infantry making a bid for that property.

Finishing the capture next turn with that 5 + 9.

Bike making a bid for the other property.

And recon returning for repairs.

Oh, you are irritating.

Go boom boom.

Dad comes back to find that his daughter has lost and is ready to take her side.

Well, points to her, she actually does say please.

But she's definitely a spoiled child. And given what kind of a personality this guy has, I'm not sure I'm happy to hear that.

Imagine giving your six year old a tank because she's crying.

Penny actually gets three new units as Fire Emblem-style reinforcements. Advance Wars typically shies away from this- new units are normally produced only at factories. It does make for a neat narrative moment, but don't worry about this being a normal thing. Although I think it does come up again later.

For once, even Brenner and Lin are unaware of exactly what kind of unit it is we're up against.

Isabella, on the other hand, does have an idea of what it is Penny has just thrown at us.

She's quite correct on that one. The War Tank is absolutely devastating, and most of the units we've had access to thus far have a weakness to it by sheer dint of the power of its cannons.

Even Isabella doesn't know how we're dealing with it. ~~And then Lin does, somehow.~~

Right, here's a better look at our reinforcements now that the dialogue windows aren't in the way.

And here's the stat windows for these guys. The Medium Tank is the strongest tank in the original Advance Wars, and the War Tank is a mixture of AW2's Neotank and AWDS's Megatank to be the strongest variety of tank in this game. In production maps, you can expect them to be balanced by high price tags, but once they're on the field, you should be investing a great deal of your strategy into figuring out a way to destroy them.

I love how you can see how much armour that War Tank has by the fact the plane unit has been downgraded in threat from red to yellow compared to Medium.

Thanks to a great deal of luck, my Veteran Tank is out of range of the War Tank, but in range of the Middie. It'll be able to take that hit.

Everything else abandons their plans on capturing Penny's cities and running away to that defensive point near the factory.

Well, the Mech finishes its Capture, it has time.

Something's telling me I'm going to be wanting some indirects.

...Wow. 2 HP off the Middie as a counterattack? That tank is throwing hands. And the War Tank has also not advanced nearly as far as it could've, too. That tank's positioning was better than it looked.

At the start of the first Will Phase after the big tanks appear, Isabella will bring up the real counterstrategy.

Somebody has hot-patched it to add a new unit to our production capabilities!

Anti-tanks are new to DoR, and this map seems to be custom-designed to encourage the player to fall in love with them.

Lin then proceeds to get suspicious of Isabella for knowing about her encyclopedic knowledge. Despite knowing about this exact situation before the War Room and giving Brenner notes about it.

...Maybe Isabella knows how to mimic Lin's handwriting or something.

This line also makes it feel like they thought Brenner was the CO.

Right, first thing's first, I want my Veteran Tank in good shape again. Joining up with the other guy.

Right, the Anti-tank. 4 Move on Tires, this thing won't be getting around in a hurry. In exchange, it is a powerful indirect attacker that can shred right through tanks of various sizes, that can shoot at 1 range (unusual for indirects), and even more unusual, can counterattack when attacked by a tank. These things have a reputation for being broken in high-level play, but to my understanding, it's more of a skill-gate unit than a real game-breaker. That high price tag, poor movement, and somewhat low range are its main drawbacks.

Everyone files into this defensive position, but not yet in a defensive formation.

Penny moves closer. Now is the time to construct a defensive formation.

Something like this will do. I took pains to ensure that every unit that is not the anti-tank can only get shot at once, and that the arties can shoot at as many positions as possible.

...In hindsight, bike should be west one square.

I also build a second anti-tank, because I had the Funds. I had a lot left over thanks to not buying any units for the rest of the map.

Both Mid Tanks shoot at the anti-tank, while the War Tank gets closer. Perhaps slightly unfortunate, but we can get a look at the power of an Anti-Tank.

6 HP of damage total to the two Middies, with 6 damage taken in return fire. Having your armour fight an anti-tank is not cost-effective.

Neat, lucky blow. Pity the other arty doesn't have anything to shoot at, though.

Damaged anti-tank finishes the job, and manages to oneshot it, too. I deserved a lucky hit.

The Veteran Tank also manages to KO its target. We now just have the War Tank to destroy- it's still at full HP, yeah, but I have a full HP anti-tank.

A formation like this seems the way to go. I hope it doesn't go for the veteran tank (it'll actually be pretty safe from my own attacks there), but nothing I could really do about that. Pretty much every other attack it can do puts it on a road in range of my full HP anti-tank.

It shot the full HP anti tank. And did four damage, suffering three in return. Do not shoot at anti-tanks with war tanks. It does not end well for you.

I leave the job of finishing off the war tank to my arties. Feels better to do the shooting with full HP units.

And yes, we did win this time. No more new toys for Penny.

Will always happy to heap praise on Isabella. Puppy crush kicked in fast for these two.

I think she might've been literal on that one, Dr. Morris. All she did was tell us the anti-tanks are installed, and it doesn't sound like that was her doing. Although I do wonder who did...

Anyway, time to see the scoreboard...

This is a pretty tricky map to get an S-Rank on. Power kind of takes a categorical hit, because of how hard it is to attack that War Tank with high damage, and your Technique tends to go poorly when you're using your units as meatshields for your indirects. I only lost one unit and built four, and despite my awkward turn loss to chasing the recons, apparently got a very good Speed score. And it's not like my Power is that bad. Getting an S Rank on the first try here is very heartening.

The crop-producing factory, not the anti-tank producing one.

Scoreboards. Just look at how high Penny's Loss Value is compared to my Spent. War Tanks are pricy compared to anti-tanks.

Right, back where we were...

Dr. Morris, the words "bad news" when it comes to food supplies are very concerning.

Yup. That is some very bad news indeed.

...Wait, what was the good news here? The punchline of your joke?

Yeah, I'm with Brenner on this one. I fail to see how a joke would pass for good news in this situation.

Brenner's mind jumps immediately to repair when it comes to a broken system.

Complicated both in materials and labour, I'm assuming. Morris may have been able to cover labour, but materials, well...

Materials are at a premium, and while this is a really good investment, well... it's not an option at all.

Both the situation and the attempted joke.

You mean there is worse news? I thought it was bad enough...

...Yeah. OK, I think I can see where this whole "genuine evil" thing is coming from.

There's nothing to gain from destroying the factory. Seizing it for yourself, yes. Denying it to us in general, yes. But destroying it for destruction's sake? The kind of mind that thinks to do that is not the kind of mind you want to have around at a time like this.

Anyway, on a completely unrelated topic, there are some flowers nearby for us to marvel at.

No, seriously, this plot point seems to have been dropped in here. It's going to be important later, but they didn't seem to have a great way to segue into its introduction.

Dr. Morris is clearly aware of them, and it's very fortunate for us that he's on hand. I imagine the best way to segue would be to have him mention off hand "hey, don't go over that direction", but it seems to have slipped his mind.

To note: if a doctor panics, and then asks you a question about your biology, you answer it. A panicking doctor is second only to an ordinance technician at a dead run in rank.

Sounds like a good excuse to have Lin on the defensive. Sighs. Lin never struck me as the sort of character to be vain enough to actually put herself on this defensive for the sake of doing so.

Game, when it comes to making Dr. Morris a bad joker, this might not've been the time. Of course, getting into this mess was hardly the time either, but...

At any rate, the reason he asked is that there is a danger to people in a specific age group, and Lin straddles the line between being above and below the risk threshold.

Before he asked the question, there was no indication of which side of the line was the safe side except perhaps the fact he stopped Will. Then again, thus far there's no indication whether Brenner's here.

...So, uh, what exactly is the danger?

(Endo- "from inside", florescens- "flowering", terribilis- "frightful".)

No, no I haven't. I don't think it's a virus that had much of an impact before the meteors. Then again, it has been weeks since they landed.

...Also, uh, did you name it, or is it widely known outside of New Wolfington?

We get some demonstration photographs, although they somewhat downplay the situation. Although it took me a few minutes to figure out how that hand is supposed to be proportioned.

Unlike Lin, Will is quick to catch on to the gist of what is going here- if Dr. Morris is raising the alarm and showing us a picture of this boy, it's probably not because he's happy with where he is.

Nothing goes together quite as well as a post-apocalyptic setting and the threat of a virus. DoR took a different direction and decided to make them unrelated to one another, but the paranoia creeps up either way.

The picture does not make this clear at all. In part to facilitate Lin's confusion, mainly, but that's not the main observation.

We've seen a few vague, hand-wavy lines of dialogue to try and cover for how the game will be justifying its narrative convention, but here's a vague, hand-wavy line of dialogue to cover for the science of the story. This is not how viruses work. To be fair, the plot does make it clear that Creeping Derangea is not a virus, but the plot has declared that the biological angle is none of its concern. Where Creeping Derangea becomes important will be from the social angle, and it works better for the plot if it uses the same spreading mechanisms as viruses.

An off-hand line, but it bears mentioning- this is a virus that has only been observed post-meteors. It's not something that existed beforehand in a world that wasn't our reality.

Lin then proceeds to start describing the virus in terms that aren't reflected in the image, but which make the whole thing a whole lot scarier. The idea of "flowers that bloom from your body" isn't that scary.

The idea of those flowers having roots on the inside of your body, on the other hand...

Dr. Morris takes on the voice of reason and asks Lin to not talk about it like she's interested in it.

Now, does Dr. Morris know why the Creeping Derangea only affects those people under 20? As it happens, no he does not. But until he does, he's going to make sure everyone is on their guard around it.