Bethany Plays: AWDoR Chapter 8: Dirty Dealings

Our next map has five factories. It looks like our luck on our enemy never having access to production is due to run out.

So then, what opponent is next, after Penny and Tasha?

Why, it's The Beast, back for another round! I'd joke about him being off sick the last two maps, but it sounds like that's no joke.

The Beast, of course, is the kind of person who makes his own illness everybody else's problem.

Oh hey, they finally gave the Beast someone to talk to! Weird that his minions are basically the same as ours in a different colour, though.

Somehow, I get the feeling that the threat of dying is not the harsh environment, but the Beast's fists.

Shame we missed your head.

If nothing else, I'd rather believe you were dying a quick death instead of a slow, lingering one to infection.

Oh... well, hello there. We've seen this man before, back in Chapter 6 (he's Penny's father), but it seems the plot has decided to share his name. And a very concerning theme.

I'm fairly sure The Beast and Caulder are not yet acquainted, but Caulder is not one to allow such trivialities to concern him.

Caulder is the only character to comment on The Beast's decision not to go by name in his new environment. He also specifies that The Beast is not only a former soldier, but a Sergeant.

As a fun fact, Sergeant is too low a military rank to earn the title of CO. Worth pointing at.

The Beast is one of the people that character assessments weeded out, and it seems he's been taking it poorly even before the meteors.

The Beast, like most people, is unnerved by how well Caulder's done his research.

Caulder ignores him and continues his exposition. He better be going somewhere with this or The Beast might start asking questions with his fists.

The ability to shoot anyone and everyone and have no one yell at him? Absolutely wonderful! Now, what he needed was mindfulness guidance, but nobody seemed willing to help someone as murderous as him. Not exactly a job most people jump for.

At last, the consequences of his actions! What a break in the promise he had made himself!

The Beast's confusion over Caulder has been redirected to Brenner. Little chance that Caulder will be the one ripped and torn.

Unless The Beast gets aggravated and starts the ripping and tearing early.

Caulder decides the best way to keep himself safe is to give The Beast what he wants and send him on his way to commit violence.

Now to head back on over to our side.

While the map implies every mission takes place in a straight line, this line implies we're moving across the countryside in a more haphazard fashion, crossing back over ourselves. Geography was always Advance Wars' worst quality, especially given how each game in the original Advance Wars trilogy takes place on a different continent, yet somehow has the same four countries staffed by the same set of COs. It's probably for the best that the game makes no effort to describe where exactly Rubinelle and Lazuria are on the map.

Are you really sure you want to do that? I feel like you're putting your own troops at risk there.

Lin expresses a similar thought, but more along the lines of "your dignity matters more than their wellbeing". Which is also a fair reaction, but a less defensible one.

Like, seriously, you're not giving yourself much to work with to defend yourself with.

Neither could I, but that's not going to stop me from at least checking.

We'll worry about that later, at any rate.

Apparently, they've decided to come to us.

It looks like the decision on whether to speak to the people of Freehaven is out of our hands. They are the ones who have come to us.

And all of a sudden, without his perfectly secured ecosystem in place, the Mayor comes crawling back to Brenner.

Good question. I feel like you well and truly burned that bridge, don't you?

Honestly, I don't know what surprises me more- how insincere this apology is, or the fact he opened by trying it.

Brenner gives him the benefit of the doubt without even waiting to see the Mayor put his ankle in his mouth on that apology.

And immediately you get the feeling that Brenner is somehow failing on opsec, even if the guy he is talking to is not the sort of opsec risk you'd expect.

I feel like Morris will give him a realistic expectation, but that might also come with him claiming exclusive rights because scarcity.

I dunno, boss, I don't trust this guy.

Brenner learning the hard way about the saying of teaching a man to fish.

What do you reckon the odds are on him accepting his share philosophically?

...According to Lin, lower than it looks at first blush.

That is the response of a woman who has done her research and knows exactly what's going on. I'm beginning to doubt the story that Freehaven was even destroyed in the first place.

The mayor resorts right to hiding desperately behind bluster and his opponent's sense of shame.

Lin has none of the latter.

And of course, the natural conclusion for someone trying to pretend his word is worth anything is sexism. Because why would it be anything else...

The mayor is bailed out by some enemies to distract us from our quarrel. So long as we manage to return to the topic, at any rate.

The thing about Fire Emblem bandits is that you never fight the same one more than once unless they have reason for surviving. You'd think The Beast would be out of resources by now. Well, if you hadn't seen Caulder doing some supplying.

Lin comes to the same conclusion with no external help.

Of course, it's a Fog of War map, so we'll be getting more Supreme Logician as Lin takes command.

This mission will introduce us to a few intricacies of Fog of War, many of which are new to DoR compared to the Advance Wars trilogy. With that said, a fire tile that illuminates its surroundings for both sides was a feature that existed in Radiant Dawn. Unlike the FE sconces, we cannot tactically illuminate or extinguish it depending on which is more advantageous to us. Pity.

On a similar note, one can notice that those properties on the other side are not illuminated, despite the fact they are in range of the torch. This is because property tiles that are not captured to your side- both enemy and neutral- are considered hiding spots in this game.

Well, OK, those properties were out of range of the torch. I meant the cities, but that top factory is actually just out of range of the torch regardless. The tile next to the bottom factory is currently being illuminated by one of our own units.

This mission will also introduce us to a mechanic of Advance Wars that I'm surprised took this long to be tutorialised: Transports. Similar to the Rescue mechanic of Fire Emblem, certain units may pick up and carry units somewhere else. Unlike in Fire Emblem, there are no illusions that doing so is for the safety of the carried unit: Transport units themselves are helpless left to their own devices, and usually the units you want protected. Unlike in Fire Emblem, a destroyed transport will take its cargo with it.

I have no idea why the tutorial unit shows off every transport-capable unit. One of those is actually brand new to DoR. Also, the rules of how the naval units work differs to the land ones.

Here is our first transport unit- in a break from Advance Wars tradition, it is the Transport Copter and not its land-bound relative. A transport copter may load, carry, and drop a single footsoldier, and in exchange for being able to fly, has no other abilities. The dedicated transport units are unable to shoot at enemies, not even with machine guns. You have one of these, you are carrying infantry around.

While we're here, this is what the terrain window tells us about Fire tiles. They are completely impassable, even to air units- Advance Wars has some ideas about how to justify these sorts of terrain options, and DoR does better than most. You seen how big these pillars of fire are?

Here is our map, for how informative the ability to see the entire map is in Fog. We can also see from the top screen that The Beast currently has nine units, but I only count four right now. Wherever the other five are, we can't assume they aren't dreadfully inconvenient.

Anyway, checking in on what Lin's got in mind for tactics, and she's decided to begin by instilling the fear of her into Will, in the absence of the ability to do the same for the Mayor.

You can tell Lin's smart because she doesn't have the muscular build from this training. She simply got every question right the first time.

Ah yes, vacation to a world where 90% of all life has been wiped out.

And Will's first reaction, after the shock wears off, is to thank Lin for the mercy. At least he knows what Lin's probably planning.

I think that's normal for basic training. Will probably knows half of those swears.

Will: "Do you have a point, or am I just going to sit here stewing this whole time?"

Lin deciding to jump right into tactics. I'll be quite honest, I'm a little iffy on this advice- I'm not sure what about it is wrong, but it doesn't really feel like it helped me.

The transport copters are the easy part. Planning out a capture route is probably my best skill in AW. The hard part comes when I have to start shooting.

I suspect my biggest flaw with this map was not doing enough of that "building tanks" bit. That narrow chokepoint lulled me into a false sense of security on where the real fighting was.

We will have to do that, since there's a base on The Beast's side.

...I thought you said that was for when the subordinate screwed up?

Will is equally surprised, but philosophically accepts that Lin did give him ample warning this was coming and jumps right to it.

Will might be too used to her deadpan and not used enough to her snarker.

You're not fooling anyone.

I think he'll drop and give you 20 no matter what the two of you are doing. Anyway, time for your time in battle.

For some reason, there's like three tutorials about Transports. Feels a bit excessive, but also I'm used to transports.

Unlike Fire Emblem Rescue, Loading a unit onto a transport is an action performed by the unit to be transported- in this case, our infantry. If you're familiar with how Rescue works in Fire Emblem, you might have noticed something this allows in the Advance Wars system.

And there's that third transport tutorial.

So yeah, a transport may be Loaded, Moved, and Dropped in all the same move. A Fire Emblem Rescue chain requires either two turns or three units to perform all of these component actions. There is little reason one way or the other for you to have a unit loaded or unloaded unless you are genuinely worried for either unit's safety if you're doing a long trip, but if a transport is otherwise twiddling its thumbs, it is not wasting its time to make an infantry move slightly further. About the only downside is that a transported infantry can't start Capturing as soon as it lands, but frankly, at that point you're just being greedy.

I have unloaded my infantry on a property, and as previously stated, that means it is concealed from the enemy infantry's vision. That doesn't mean I don't want that infantry able to shoot at it and interrupt its Capture later.

It also tells us that near property is unoccupied.

Our other infantry can freely go over it, then.

(I think you can get Ambushed if you try to unload into an occupied tile, but I forget what the punishment is.)

The footsoldiers that weren't transported begin to Capture the nearby properties. We need things built, we'll need plenty of income to do so.

Our armour goes to set up that chokepoint on the bridge we need to have built.

No buying anything. The things we need are armoured, so we're saving.

Back to The Beast in both opening sallies and theme. And just when I was getting used to some new faces, too...

So, uh, in the Dark Conflict script, it's more explicit that one of the things Caulder supplied The Beast was some medicine for his wound, which seems to have had properties other than leg-healing. In DoR, the implication that Caulder drugged The Beast almost comes out of nowhere.

Unfortunately for us, it's the performance-enhancing kind of drug. He'll probably be fine for the week or two this map will take, and not a minute longer.

Movements are afoot on the far side. From what I've gathered of how The Beast behaves, I think he doesn't have the Factory over there pre-Captured, and he has to spend a turn taking it with that visible infantry.

This took me two attempts, and on my first attempt, I got a screenshot of The Beast's hidden second infantry being ambushed.

On this run, the ambushing infantry exposed mine and allowed the other one to take a point of HP off. It was KOed in response, but that's going to be unfortunate.

At least the one destined for capturing the Factories is OK.

But still, I'd rather you didn't shoot at me again. I don't think it could've made a difference after the B-Copter's shot, but if my inf got to 7 HP, that would be enough to be seriously inconveniencing.

When I got this message, I was a smidge confused. What about having friendly properties is relevant to be tutorialised? We've been Capturing properties for three maps now.

Ah. This is new to DoR. In the Advance Wars trilogy, you had visibility on your owned properties, but in DoR, it seems that the light pollution has a greater effect with no competing cities to take into account. Visibility, of course, for your side and yours alone.

You may notice it's a little trickier to get a sneaky HQ capture in if the HQ itself has vision on what's going on around it. It may also be worth mentioning now that air units can't hide in hiding places.

I move one of my T-Copters around to pick up that Mech. I haven't decided where it's going yet, but I want it airborne.

In the Advance Wars trilogy, I think a Mech could've walked over that river, but that isn't an option available here.

I build an artillery. If I'm playing a chokepoint game, I kinda want a chokepoint unit.

The range on that recon. I can't exactly get that close anyway, because of that artillery, but you know...

There's not a lot of moving you can see going on during an enemy turn in fog. Kind of obvious, that.

Factory on this side of the river acquired. Now I can build some kind of armour here.

The dented infantry is going to get started on capturing. It'll take him three days, but once he does, he'll be repaired and can start doing the other cities at a normal rate again. It sucks, but at least he can get to work in a timely manner.

The B Copter is wanted on the south.

I load the Mech into the T-Copter, and take a moment to showcase something important of transports: In order to Unload a unit, your transport must be on a tile that the unloaded unit can also walk on. I can't deposit the Mech if the Copter is over the river, even if I want to place it on solid ground.

Bikes cannot be loaded on T-Copters. They can find their own way to their destinations.

Ugh, occupying the space you wanted to move to by accident. No matter, it's not like this armour column won't be moving slowly.

Look at this. Narrow chokepoints turn up from map to map, but this is ridiculous. Especially without air support.

I build a Mech, to load in one of my T-Copters for the south force. The other T-Copter will make do with the units on its side of the river already.

This day is interesting, not because of what we see...

But what we hear. Did you hear that? Well, no, you wouldn't. But if you had, you would have heard a weird drill-like noise at the end of The Beast's turn.

He has produced his first unit. That factory is now online.

Just as well, it's time for us to get our own new factories up here.

I decide what this front needs is a Flare. There's some places I don't want to explore hastily around here.

Mech starts capturing a city while I find my footing, infantry continues its own. They'll both be done on the same day.

The B Copter is wanted over here, a bit more carefully than one might expect.

It occurs to me I don't have a unit capturing this, and consider that a bit of a mistake. I send the bike back to go deal with that.

I move my T-Copter forward, and stop at this particular space. Yes, this means exactly what you think it means- there's a Missile unit in those fogged squares behind the artillery.

A recon moves up in front of us, in precisely the most annoying spot. That artillery is really placed in the most annoying spot here.

The B. Copter also moves to stay out of range of the Missile. In hindsight, I wonder if I couldn't have it harass enemies further up, but I know B. Copters can be worn down by ground units.

Four Captures up here- factory, bike, mech, and dented infantry.

Flare moves forward, preparing to find a spot to illuminate.

And I build a recon to capitalise on whatever I find.

I wish I could find a good place to park my artillery and shoot at things, but that is clearly not going to be what they have in mind.

...Although the recon's gone and run away. Odd.

Leaves me free to open fire on this.

And the Missile is revealed. Look at all these places I can't put my Copters. And with that fire in the way, I can't shoot at it from the side.

Leaves me unable to meaningfully advance, honestly, especially with the Mech around. Probably should've had a bike damage it to save the tank, but that would leave the bike a sitting duck for the recons.

Now strikes me as the time to build rockets. The ability to pack more firepower in a narrow chokepoint is never to be underestimated.

Loading an infantry to move ahead, and capturing this last property now that the other infantry is available to do so.

First Flare. There's nothing on those properties, but that infantry looks like it has plans on changing that.

Fortunately, it seems to be the vanguard, so we can rush to establish a foothold here.

That's what these units will be doing.

My poor tank is dogpiled and destroyed. I feel like I definitely had the power to fix this. I can be a bit too afraid of indirects for my own good sometimes.

Ah well. The rockets will take revenge- wait, where did that tank come from?

I set up my units to start taking properties and damaging the enemy. Although that infantry should really have been behind the armour.

There's something about writing up these Advance Wars missions that more acutely reveals my mistakes than any other game I've done thus far. I wonder if that'll translate to actually better play in later missions.

Most of The Beast's units go for the recon. It doesn't end well for them.

Counterattack goes much better for me, though.

The T-Copter is going to be more useful here, using its surprisingly decent defence against machine guns to be an annoying roadblock for The Beast.

Now I shoot the Mech.

And I start getting to work with setting up my chokepoint here.

These will take their time catching up. Supply lines are just as awkward here as they are in real warfare.

These guys will probably never get to anywhere impactful.

Ow! My rockets! They don't seem to have anything else coming my way, though.

Still, though, take this.

Getting rid of you before you get any ideas.

And remember to exploit DoR's way of peeking hiding places to reveal this Missile before the B-Copter flies in to shoot it.

I need this thing not threatening me and I needed it done two days ago.

Bike will be running indirect defence as best it can.

And my T-Copter prepares for its main gambit.

In the north, there is a general advancing on our enemy and destroying what's in front of us.

I think I had time to send the T-Copter back for an infantry, but it probably wasn't a big deal.

Anti-air for dealing with the supply of infantry I'm familiar with enemy CPUs building near the end of maps. I'm not sure if DoR does this, but it can't hurt to have at hand.

Lost that guy.

And that was just as unfortunate. Just as much the arrival of the new units, too. A tank up here... what am I supposed to do with that?

Better to be safe than sorry.

Copter is now free to deal with this guy.

The main reason for this manouevre is less to blow up the unit and more to pass by all those hidden tiles on the way. Actually getting rid of it is a bonus.

T-Copter unloads its cargo. Next turn is the turn.

My bike starts capturing a property. I don't care about this, but I know The Beast will and will send units over to attack it rather than doing something sensible.

And I notice a shenanigan I can do at this exact moment. If I place my T-Copter here, the recon and tank are now cut off from all my real units! The T-Copter and Mech are going to feel sore, but it's better than the units that are doing things.

And to that end, my other infs back up. Maybe I should've baited the tank over, but I've still got more turns to go.

Ow. But it's better than the alternatives. Those rockets aren't exactly great for the current objective.

There is a general sense of shooting at my units and causing severe damage, but crucially, none of the units I actually need are the ones being shot at.

Check.

Recon prepares for a blocking movement, spending some extra movement to scout what unit The Beast has just produced. An AA. That's probably the worst unit I could've seen.

T-Copter and B-Copter fly in to finish the blocking. It is now impossible for The Beast to interrupt my capture- the only unit that could have hit my Mech was that new AA, and it must spend its next turn shooting down one of my Copters to even try.

Still, best to get some extra Power score by shooting at these.

And trying to minimise losses.

Well, if you're not going to interrupt, I'm just going to take it. I have no use for it, but I'll take it.

Blocking T-Copter and mech run and hide. Their job is done, those units can't stop me, and I'd rather them not be destroyed and cost me technique.

It's better to be safe than sorry. Checking that the units I think are safe are actually safe.

Yeah, not happening.

That Copter will be missed. That recon, on the other hand... maybe it could have shot my Mech if it moved second. Idiot.

Some final shots fired, but in hindsight, I'm not entirely certain these would be upping my Power Score. Look more like the kind of shots that would've cost me, actually.

Victory achieved. So what if I don't have a plan for those units? HQ Capture is a wincon!

A taste of victory? Sure. But it was also a taste of an enemy with access to production. We'll need real plans for that in future.

Probably not the kind of thing you gloat about, but not exactly something we can deal with.

...It is kind of funny that The Beast getting Caulder on his side is accompanied by him getting the ability to build units mid-mission.

If you capture an enemy HQ in a mission with more than one side, all the units owned by the losing faction blow up. Times like this, I wish they also did this at the end of campaign missions, so the backdrop of Lin saying "there are no more enemies" isn't accompanied by the sight of me being surrounded by full HP Level 1 enemies I have no firepower for dealing with.

He said he has a new weapons supplier. Were we listening to his parting taunts or did we learn to tune those out? Not unreasonable, but does seem to have bitten us in the butt...

As absolutely hilarious as this is, we killed enough people to make a pile of corpses? Or were these people already dead because of the meteors?

It's a question of when, and what we'll be doing when he turns up. The worst kinds of unknowns.

But that thing we were doing was setting up a strong position. Let's focus on that and hope we can achieve it before he comes back.

Ugh. The worst ranking- high enough that this would have been considered an S in the Advance Wars trilogy (300 max with 280 being the lowest-scoring S Rank), and the game has made it clear it's penalising me on all three categories. Too much dawdling by the missile, too many poor attacks, and I lost too many units. I'll give them Technique, that was pretty sloppy, and I can see where Power came in, but I thought I was pretty swift...

I'll take you at your word.

Statistics. A few of those numbers do make me think about the weaknesses of that strategy. Particularly the lack of tanks. That chokepoint and war room conversation made me think indirects were more important than they really were- indirects would be loads better if The Beast was actually pressuring me while I was in the chokepoint. His factory just came too late and too far away.

Anyway, with that mission complete, it's apparently time to check in on Isabella.

And from the looks of things, just in time. Oh dear, what have you caught...?

Great news. She knows everything but biology.

Will starting to get particularly concerned, but no more helpful.

This conversation is mostly going in circles with these two, but Isabella takes the time to share some new information. Now granted, 9693872914 is not exactly the most useful thing to know, but I'm sure that, if it's the thing on the top of Isabella's head while she's sick, it's worth knowing.

I tried reading the number as goroawase. Yeah, good luck with "Ko mu ko mi ya na fu ko hi yo". I feel like a goroawase reading will make more sense once we see it in context, but even then, it proved a little tricky.

Will finally manages to break the stalemate, by remembering a key piece of information.

There is a virus currently active that, while Will does not yet know the symptoms, does know he, personally, is acutely vulnerable to.

Unfortunately, this only comes as bad news to him.

Will finally does the sensible thing, and goes to fetch Dr. Morris. If anyone knows what to do, it's him.

Brenner shows up at the last moment and only succeeds in accomplishing the same thing Will did. Significantly faster, admittedly, but really selling the idea that Will is good at his job, aren't we?

Anyway, time to see what Dr. Morris has to say about Isabella's condition.

Will's terrified thought was right on the money. We're dealing with Creeping Derangea outright now.

Brenner calling it "the plant virus" is going to be the start of long-running tradition of characters who aren't Dr. Morris calling it "the plant virus" as shorthand. As a reminder, Dr. Morris and the game are both clear that, whatever Creeping Derangea is, it is not a virus, but it's easier for everyone else if we call it a virus and generally treat it like one.

And as part of that "treating it like a virus", we are also going to be establishing a proper quarantine. As best we can while on the move, but Isabella is under no circumstances permitted to get close to anyone else under twenty.

We also need to start thinking about what we're going to do to cure it.

Dr. Morris's prognosis is not good. I'm not sure whether or not he's ever managed to cure Creeping Derangea before, but it's clear that what he's got is insufficient to pull off the feat now.

Brenner tells him that there aren't any ifs or buts here. What we have is what we have, and Dr. Morris either needs to work up a miracle or a eulogy.

Hopefully a positive one, I don't think there's much worse we can get right now.

...Well, so far, we've only thought about this shelter as a source of food and continued existence material.

Dr. Morris takes this observation to its logical conclusion, reasoning that "continued existence" must be accompanied by medical facilities. Well, OK, perhaps must is an overreach- only a fool would establish a bunker like this without one. Which means either there is a facility there, or we're disappointed with our governing power on multiple levels.

Brenner proceeds to point out that our objective hasn't changed, only our urgency.

Before we set off, it seems Brenner needs to have a word with Will.

The kid clearly has some issues we need to address, although it'd help if he told us what they were.

Brenner tries the hammer again.

Turns out it was not the solution to the problem. It did, at least, point us in the direction of the problem itself, though.

Now just to figure out what shape that problem took.

...OK, we may be setting an unrealistic standard of heroism for this kid.

When Brenner told Will that looking after Isabella was his responsibility, he really did just take that personally and base his entire self-worth on it.

Brenner gets started on helping to let this kid down gently. As nice as it would be to look after Isabella's mental state, her physical state- and that of the entire cohort- is more important. Will is better off not infected with Creeping Derangea.

Will seems to have noticed Brenner actually lending a hand to Isabella, and confused "I'm immune to Creeping Derangea for being over the age of 20" for "I am a better man".

Brenner decides the correct way to get Will to stop pedestaling Brenner is to take an axe to it himself.

There have been people Brenner was unable to save for better reasons, and Brenner is asking himself the same question Will is now- how could I have done better the last time?

And all it's doing is wearing him down. As nice as it would have been if we didn't lose those people, coming up with a way of saving their lives weeks later isn't going to bring them back.

And you did a bang-up job of it. Too good in the end, though. There comes a time in every boy's life when he has to realise he's not the only one who's not in way over their head.

Brenner gives him something a bit more constructive to work with: Coming up with something uplifting to do later will have an impact on Isabella's mental state in the end, and there's no reason not to wait until later when there's no risk of infection.