The Approaching Shadow: In Preparation (10th Entry)

[Adrias]

[quote="Devlin"]but the healers are still there in fel, [/quote]

alright didn't know they were still there

[anarchy]

well your missing 3 very important things about the art of war. 1: know they enemy/opponent (+Veritas) knowing full well he can read the forums. 2 misinformation: i would post "fake" strategies to make him think we're planning one place while fortifying another and lastly the advantage of surprise; yes you can use that advantage even in a defensive formation. goes with the fake strategy or misinformation. how about combat engineers? aka crafter to build things like tables etc that can not be moved from a npc to create bottle necks. or ninjas as scouts to inform you of the direction of the main battle camp. lots of things missed that are extremely important. "most wars are won before blades are even met" tsu sun; art of war.

personally i would give misinformation about fortifying area 1 in hopes that +V would split his army (divide and conquer), and i would fortify the area 2 and 3 with your heavy hitters. along the sea border i would place boats or even in area 4. but the misinformation's a big one. good to manipulate your opponent into doing what you want, fight where you want to. :) i would tell you more but remember he can read the forums, pm's and anything in the game related. best to do this type of this with skype or outside emails. :)

[Brotherwolf]

Man I wish some of these would take place in trammel like in the old days when your just hanging around the bank and WHAM buckets of undead just take over Skara or trinsic for weeks at a time. Plus Trammel is more colorful and the chaos would be intense as some logging into a big surprise lol. Fel is just stale to me but I will show up anyway knowing +Veri has a lovely room of death planned for us all :)

Wolf

[Devlin]

yeah, minoc started the raids back in the day.
Anarchy, I'm not too worried about +V knowing my plan. I'm sure he'll throw a curve ball or two and we'll need to be ready for it. There are three situations that could cause my plan to fail:
An invasion from the sewers
A really, really strong boat invasion.
An invasion from the bridge SW of the bank, towards the stables

Should a sewers invasion occur, we have a large amount of units directly next to it.
Should a boat invasion occur, we have units set to deal with this already.
Should an invasion from the SW bridge occur? Ummmmm. RUN AWAY!
No plan survives first contact intact. Ideally, our units will be focused into 2 or 3 groups, holding the GY and at least the healers in brit, if not further. Should we need fall back to the castle, so be it; we'll be united and forcing them into a choke.
"Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected."
I'm hoping to have some volunteers that can patrol, watching for attacks from the SW bridge, boat invasions and the like, so we have fair warnings.

[Devlin]

Wasn't a boast of confidence in myself, saying I'm not worried about his knowing our plans. Just meant I'm sure he's not going to base his attack primarily where we didn't set up defenses, why bother going through the effort then?
Also, I may have just added some new routes for enemies o_O

[Brotherwolf]

Lol all this talk and preparation is definitely adding more excitement and should be good times all around :)

Wolf

[anarchy]

lol. wasn't trying to put people down just warn them it's easier to surprise them more if they don't know where we are. :) hm... at least i don't think he'll throw in some 1 hitter quitters, because he only allows us 2 ankhs and 1 healer (if he doesn't remove it.) do we get fair warning that they are on the move before they hit area 1,2, and 3?

[kenarn]

the defense of castle britian.
im not one of those all out history buffs even tho it is my fav subject. i do have some advice tho. if we are going to defend the castle like what most people seem to be wanting. devlin is right on this matter. we need to kill as many as we can while we can befor they build up into a giant bulk. because there numbers might not matter AS much. but the numbers will still count for alot in a matter like this. sorta like the movie (300) we can ahve 150-200 people from excelsior there and have a thousand umbris units. yet if we let them build up in bulk to much we will succumb. i beleive devlin has a good idea about the parts on where to put the defense camps at. but i also beleave we dont need to be afraid to bring up a siege defense inside the castle walls. if we can just pick as many as we can off while they are marching towards the castle we will be safe. so my advice would be to set up a couple elite units made up of players. call them whatever you want. but have each group party up maybe 5 or so. have them stealth to a enemy position. shoot a couple arrows. do some damage and retreat. and redo it in a diffrent position. this might not seems like a good plan at first. but if we can have those units do alot of damage in a short time and go hit another area and just do it over and over it will make defending alot easier. you just need to keep the pressure on and weaken the units and army as much as you can before they reach castle britian. also set up another stealth unit of melee players who are best in melee and that can take a hit. stealth in the back and when called charge into the left flank. one into the left flank fall back stealth and go into the right flank and from there just keep mixxing it up never keeping the same pattern. this will take a considarable amount from out defense force so we will need to make sure that the people on these stealth units can do alot of damage in a short amount of time. and get out before they are killed or even hit for that matter. if we can do this and pick as many off and weaken them as much as we can then when we do have to defend castle britian it will be a easy defense spot. and another good idea is 2 set up a player made archer unit. i dont know any one spot to put a unit like this. so my advice for a unit like this is dont put them in one spot. put them in a spot where they can move and help another area that is getting to heavy and looks like it will buckle soon for the extra support and damage. and if needed they can be a good distraction as 2 loosing people from running send them in 2 get the aggro off the enemy units and then retreat them back on horseback. sincerely,sobekn my advice might not be the best but yet it is something that can help excelsior

[Devlin]

Ideally, we'll have a group at the GY, mage shop and Inn/Bridges. That covers all planned invasions, including boats. I would definitely love to have about 15-20 players for "roaming" groups. 2-3 for scouting, and two five-seven man groups that are well-coordinated (can get guilds for this) that can either assist in battles with a flank attack and/or move quickly if we get attacked unexpectedly.
I'm sure 1000 units won't rain down upon us as well, a certain number will charge, we'll win a battle and then get overwhelmed and retreat. Just as we start the get the upper hand, more units will spawn and we'll break ranks. This will happen numerous times until we are pushed back to the castle. So I don't think we need to worry too much about picking off guys from invading units, moreso get some formations and attack patterns going; would be nice to pull/pick off some elites or soul hunters, or whatever new baddies we got coming.
So if any guilds want to volunteer for some raiding groups, speak up.

[krothu]

RECON REPORT: Due to the dire nature of this threat I took it upon myself to scout the soon to be battlefield. I struck north of britan and headed to the pass directly north where I soon discovered a dispatch on the ground. It reads as follows ("Dispatch to Legion" Continue organizing the battalions in the mountain corridor. When we have amassed enough to crush the city, we shall attack. -Bael'Nefario) In the pass I viewed the following forces...Mounted Dark Riders, Soul Hunters, Umbris Remnant Elite, Imortals, Juggernauts Acolytes and Hell Knights. As that pass was blocked by the line of invaders I struck toward the east to the desert of compassion to try to get around these forces. North of the desert I found it guarded by many Umbris troops, so riding quickly past them, and heading west toward the north end of the pass I soon discovered a very large force of Shadow Warriors, Shadow Bandits, And shadow Wyrms.They attacked with a fury so I had to make a quick recall that I may be able to get the word out on my findings. I do not know what lies to the far west of the pass but Im sure we will learn soon enough. I hope this information helps in aiding on the defensive planning.

[anarchy]

that would be awesome if they came through the mountain pass. you could have the combat engineers construct tables to put down along that line so it creates more of a bottleneck. then all you need is 1 melee warrior and 2 healer's using both spells and bandies. then behind him and the combat engineer's you would have the alchemists throwing pots or a druid casting trees. if we have access to the druid spells then we wouldn't need the healers. don't know if we will be able to cast druid spells if we can. all you would have to do is put druids inside of house's to create a crossfire effect with volcanic, which will be nice to knock some of the hit points down. good job krothu on the scouting. some of those newer umbris i'm not aware of. proly has mortal strike and bleed attack. in fact really you can only take damage from 8 different directions, not including spell casters. you need the archer's to take out the umbris that like to peacemake us, but that should be easy enough.

[Thorgal]

I would like to take part in this upcoming battle but i fear im might be missing some skills and equipment, what should i be concentrating on skill wise and what are there any essential gear i should be looking for, i dont wanna go down too fast and i wanna be able to help, i have'nt been on this shard for long and might need a bit of guidance!

[Devlin]

Anarchy, I was anticipating the large amount of melee bunched on our troops/ranged sitting there doing massive damage; I'd like to have a group or two that can flank these larger armies and help take out the ranged. They will definitely be coming from the mountain pass, next to despise, dunno if they'll actually travel through the pass or just spawn at the GY, then invade the city.
I'm sure we won't be allowed to use druid spells; if so, awesomesauce. As for the tables idea, I think that would be good, if allowed, along with blocking off the boat attacks with our own boats.

Skills for the battle;
Spirit Speak (Cleric)
Archery
Healing
Chivalry

SS is good for heals, archery so you dont have to go into the midst of battle, healing so you dont have to stop to cast and heal, chiv to boost damage a lot.

[anarchy]

don't forget about the alchemists. even expots will help in all citations because they are an area effected damage. :)

need some peeps with 220 dexers to hold the line. healers behind them. well there aren't really any rules to war (normal wars lol)
i think that switch is gonna open up the gates in the northern area of that pass. they are gonna go around through area 1 and 3, what i would like to see is someone like jack penny and taramra waiting at the forget gate to flank the right area. also, what we need is archer with area effect damage who are light and fast on their feet. hit run-so they can drag units to areas of our choosing. use bracelet of binding zip back and bring another mob. if we have 3-4 people willing to do this we'll be able to chose our field of battle instead of having them chose it. they are only npc remember. :)


oh yeah the mountain pass is 4 tiles wide. 2 tables on the right 1 table on the left and you created another bottleneck which i know i should be able to hold with or without a healer present (rather have a healer with me) :P

[Steve]

who would have thunk it that excelsiors saviours would be carpenters ^_^ why don't we all just walk around with 8 tables, and deploy makeshift pill boxes to shoot from! or better yet, surround britt with them preventing ANYTHING from getting in while we pick em off slowly with bows. ofc they will decay quicker so field engineers will be required ^_^

this is gonna end up being team fortress 2, uo style lol