Against our better judgment, we follow the crazed mage Caladon to a lich’s lair to retrieve the flaming sword…
Leucosine, I hope you’re whispering really softly, because Caladon is
right behind you!
Never mind, I think we’re safe. Caladon's too busy screaming like a maniac.
This is one of the more difficult scenarios.
It’s almost guaranteed to end in disaster on a first playthrough because you have to be a lot more passive than you think on the first night due to certain undead recruits.
But if you know what’s coming and stay far enough back during the first night, this scenario becomes as easy as any other.
We’ve got 120 + 30 carryover gold.
Mal-Govon’s 800 starting gold and +47 income look pretty intimidating, but you’ll be surprised at how fast his army will disappear if we hide during the first night and attack all out during the second day.
The third team just refers to one friendly outlaw unit in the middle of the map whom we’ll meet later, and as if we didn’t get an obvious enough hint earlier that Caladon’s going to turn on us, we see he’s got his very own side.
Turn 1, Dawn
This is a huge map with a ton of villages; we start in the southwest corner and Mal-Govon's in the northeast.
The main battle will take place in the center, where there's a tiny one hex keep to recruit in.
We recruit two citizens for grabbing villages in the east and recall some good anti-undead veterans, and start moving immediately with Krellis toward the central keep.
Turn 2, Morning
When we approach the keep in the center of the map, we meet a friendly outlaw:
Please don’t lump us in with the likes of Caladon. He’s just following us around.
We also meet our old friend Siddry (the poacher from Scenario 4 Slavers), who is just as useless as before.
He brings some
fodder friends with him, who will help us nab villages. They won’t come with us after this scenario though, so you know what that means for how we’re going to be using them. (We also get the ability to recruit outlaws, but it’s pointless since they won’t come with us later.)
Turn 3, Afternoon
The rest of our army catches up, Krellis recalls a diviner from the center keep, and Siddry and his friends continue to village grab.
Turn 4, Dusk
We destroy a bat near the villages and continue to recall anti-undead reinforcements.
The rest of our units stay put. We don’t see any undead around so we should be safe for now! …right?
Turn 5, First watch
AGH what is that thing?!
Chocobones, in addition to looking downright creepy, have a massive 9 movement points and a charging attack that can pretty much kill any unit.
Our thug on the village got demolished so quickly you wonder why Siddry even bothered to bring him along.
We suspect that the undead placed those 3 central villages there as a trap to lure unwary Chocobone victims.
Well, we’re not going to fall for their trap. We run for our lives from those central villages and form a tight line in the swamp backed by diviners.
Every one of our units that can be charged by chocobones does impact melee damage, so if they charge us they’ll take massive retaliation.
Turn 6, Second watch
In the northwest our footpad is being harassed by a couple of weak undead.
Too bad everyone’s too far away to help…at least, that’s what the undead think!
Silver mages are one of the most fun units to use in Wesnoth. Caladon teleports across the map…
And bam! No more bat.
In the center, the chocobones have killed our outlaw ally and we’re going to be next.
We put all our expendable units in the front swamp and the important ones in the back. (This is definitely not an army where everyone gets treated equally.)
Turn 7, Dawn
Siddry and his thug friend died alarmingly quickly, but the good news is one of the chocobones decided to charge our brawler and nearly got whacked to death on the counterattack.
We clean out the two chocobones with the experienced hunter leveling to netcaster in the process, and also get rid of the two wraiths and the dread bat.
Turn 8, Morning
It seems like a lot of undead, but the situation couldn't be better. It's day, we've got powerful veterans, and the undead have conveniently lined up at the edge of our swamp.
It’s pretty straightforward to kill the 7 nearby units (the 5 in the north, plus the ghost and spectre in the south) which we can reach from the water hexes, and slow the chocobone in the water.
All of our units here except the netcaster are already maximum level so there’s no need to manage experience.
We’ve done some nice work cleaning up!
I made the mistake of moving a brawler onto flatland to finish a ghost which just refused to die; I should have just left the ghost alone as it is not a dangerous unit.
Turn 9, Afternoon
First we have some more fun with Caladon. Last turn two ghosts and a shadow killed the citizen on this village in the southeast corner, but the village is still ours so bad news for the undead!
We can’t see through the fog, but we can still teleport there.
Surprise! This has to be one of the most satisfying things to do in Wesnoth.
Meanwhile in the center, the brawler’s predictably died, but everyone else is doing pretty well.
Another pretty straightforward cleanup operation.
As usual, we first attack everything we can using the swamp hexes. Cylanna finishes the bone shooter, and the brawler next to Krellis softens the banebow for the netcaster.
We’re up to 727 gold in kills now- that’s most of the undead army!
Turn 10, Dusk
The main battle is over now and the easy cleanup begins; our siren on the far right destroyed a deathblade, and we set up a kill to level our netcaster.
The rest of our units clear the dying chocobone and begin retaking the villages. There’s a shadow lurking in the north, but with no friends around to help it backstab it can’t harm us.
Turn 11, First watch
The siren destroys the shadow, and we continue to advance northeast.
Turn 12, Second watch
Nothing complicated here – we easily get rid of the 4 nearby units (Cylanna kills the necrophage, the siren and Krellis kill the bats and the other diviner kills the wraith) and then slow the chocobone.
Maybe the undead would have better luck if they didn’t only send out a couple units at a time?
Turn 13, Dawn
The chocobone runs off to heal, but he didn’t run far enough because our siren can still reach him.
We push forward and finally catch a glimpse of Mal-Govon, who has the magical flaming sword!
We forgot to move our poisoned 35 HP entangler out of the spectre’s range, but he’s on 60% and the spectre would have to hit 4 out of 4. Surely he’ll live?
Nope, it’s just not his lucky day.
That had a 2.5% chance of happening, though we can’t fault the RNG as we easily could have moved him out of the way last turn.
We’ll miss poor Oceanus, as he has been with us ever since the very first scenario and now he’ll never get to see us retake our home.
Turn 14, Morning
Our diviner gets revenge for Oceanus and we move ever closer to the lich’s keep.
Turn 15, Afternoon
Time to begin the attack! We start whittling down Mal Govon’s health.
Down to 18 HP! We’re almost there.
Turn 16, Dusk
Zzzzap! Finally, we've got the sword! Now let’s go and-
I KNEW IT
Caladon gives us a turn to leave before attacking but we’re impatient so we’re going to attack now. Give us that sword back!
Caladon summons a bunch of fire elementals around him if we attack him, so we filled the hexes around him before attacking.
Our southwest siren takes full retaliation (9-4) from Caladon – why is everyone getting full hits on us today?
What I completely forgot is that we also need to pick up the sword after killing Caladon, and didn’t leave a unit to do so.
Unfortunately, this means we'll lose the wounded siren to the banebow next turn.
Turn 17, First watch
On the bright side, Cylanna gets the flaming sword and becomes our deadliest anti-undead unit!
We did a good job village grabbing and finishing early, so we get a very high carryover.
We got some slightly extra damage taken, losing two level 3 veterans due to unusually bad luck
and bad play.
RIP: level 3 Siren, level 3 entangler, brawler, citizen, all 4 of our
fodder outlaw friends
The rest of our recall list is 3 entanglers, a diviner, and the triton with the holy water, so we've still got a healthy number of veterans despite the fact that they keep dying on us.
Scenario 11 (Cutscene): Getting help
Yes! A loyal diviner and priestess recruits! Almost made this whole trip worth it. Almost.
We get an extra 100 gold too, so we’ll start the final scenario with +336 carryover (a lot!).