Deraldin

If you count both the Thrashers and the Flames. Thrashers were 12 years, Flames had 8.

Last time around it took 24 years. Still 4 more years than Atlanta has had a team.

It's official. Thrashers are moving to Winnipeg.

3:30am. I can totally stop playing Frozen Synapse. I don't need to play one more mission before bed. I can quit whenever I want. *one more level*

I've been looking at that. It sounds a little like Laser Squad Nemesis, which was a play by email game the Gallop brothers developed. I haven't played Laser Squad Nemesis so I can't really say how similar or dissimilar they are. You can play by email though. And it has a pretty kickass soundtrack, which I apparently already mentioned. >_>

I picked up a copy of Frozen Synapse on Steam a couple hours ago and I'm having a blast with it so far. I've only played the first operation and nearly got my butt kicked on the very first level. You start with 4 shotgunners against 4 machine gunners. At close range the shotgunners will absolutely destroy the machine gunners. I moved all my guys, but then left them just peeking around corners. The enemy took the chance and shot two of them on the first turn so I had to outmaneuver 4 guys with my 2 for the rest of the map. I managed it with one guy remaining. in the end. Pro-Tip: If you don't have a shot, get back behind cover! Soundtrack is pretty awesome as well. And before I forget, the game is only sold in 2 packs, so you get a copy to give away whenever you buy it.

I feel kinda bad about how I beat that fight since all I did was exploit a scripting bug to take the Battle Horror's out of the picture. If I had remembered the charged Wand of Frost in my inventory I might have been able to use that on the Battle Horrors to better effect than just about everything else I could throw at them. The whole fight was one big cluster**** that was made worse by my party composition. I have basically nothing in the way of actual damage dealing spells as up till this point I haven't needed them. Sleep takes care of mooks. Command works on tougher single targets. Hold Person and Horror to disable higher level foes. Silence for casters. The list goes on. I think the only actual damage spell I have access to is Melf's Acid Arrow and most of my level 2 spell slots are taken up with invisibility spells to keep Xan from being one shotted by any enemy that so much as looks at him funny. Installing the improved end of chapter fights was a mistake I think. Especially when I have auto buffing for enemy spell casters turned on. With a level six caster, I don't have any chance of dispelling any of Davaeorn's protections which leaves me with the one option of waiting until they wear off. And having those battle horrors run away every time Davaeorn teleports back is so very frustrating as it means it's almost impossible to split them up. Jerk has 4 fireballs memorized. I'm curious, how much experience did you have after Cloakwood? I'm only just closing in on 47,000 XP right now and I can't imagine how it would be possible to triple that between now and the end of the game to get close to the TotSC XP cap.

I managed to get past Davaeorn, but I majorly exploited the SCS AI to do it. The battle horrors are designed to follow Davaeorn around the level no matter where he goes, but if you can lure them close to the door then transition to the area above their scripting breaks and they will just stand there while you nail them with everything you have. I managed to weaken one of them beforehand and wasted most of Davaeorn's spells with repeated castings of animate dead. He doesn't seem to recognize that skeletons are immune to cold damage and doesn't care where the battle horrors are when targetting enemies so he'll happily hit the entire group with a cone of cold which will severely hurt the battle horrors. By the time my skeletons were all gone he was down to a couple castings of Horror while I had several remove fear scrolls available. A mage with a quarterstaff is no match for anything else in melee. Sadly he used all his healing potions so he didn't drop any of those sweet, sweet extra healing potions. Currently wandering around Baldur's Gate after having wiped out the Ankheg population south of the city. Need to find someone to buy all my ankheg shells. Preferably someone that doesn't attempt to take the whole stack for the price of one.

Gotta root for that Vancouver-Tampa final. That way if Vancouver doesn't take it, at least it's not Boston. To hell with Boston.

*Davaeorn casts Death Spell* *Party dies* Just about. Jerk seems to have protection from fire active so he's fond of using dimension door to teleport right into the middle of my group and unloading a fireball which does 3 damage to him and kills the rest of us.

Well I managed to get through it this time. I flanked the room this time with Xan on one side and my PC/Imoen on the other. Xan kicked things off with a Web which managed to catch just about everyone in the room while the others hide in shadows in the opposite doorway. A fireball from Xan started the barrage which was finished with a potion of explosions and oil of fiery burning. A few extra people failed their saving throws this time and took the full damage. There was a single Black Talon Elite and the Mage left alive after the three fireballs, both of which were trapped in the web. PC and Imoen took them both down with arrows before they could get unstuck. The two normal guards from the next room got caught in the web trying to cross the room so they were also turned into human pincushions. The key this time through was web. The first time I tried this I didn't bother with a disabling spell and right after the fireball went through all 12 guards downed a healing potion of varying strengths. After that I tried a stinking cloud which worked moderately well, but only caught about 50% of the guards and didn't touch the mage. Web was much more effective. It would have been a much more difficult fight if Xan couldn't bypass school restrictions with scrolls. 3rd floor is a cakewalk so far. Waiting for Davaeorn to massacre me. Oh and the mage on the 3rd floor managed to TPK me with on lightning bolt.

Okay, so I'm working my way through the mines right now and I've hit a bit of a wall it seems. I didn't have much trouble with any of the guys on the outside as I managed to lure them away one by one in order to focus them down. I had to use the boots of speed to run my main away from a Chaos spell or two so that she wouldn't proceed to kill everyone else in the group while I don't have any control, but things worked out in the end. First level of the mines was pathetically easy. There were only a few guards sitting around, mostly alone. They all fell without any trouble. Hitting the second level of the mine started out with a decent sized fight against half a dozen guards and some black talon elites which I still hate with a passion thanks to those damn cheating ice arrows. 1d3 cold damage my ass, that's not what the chat log is saying. Took a bit of damage in that fight. Now where I'm hitting a wall is the fight just outside the prison, past the trapped hallway. There is about a dozen guards of various types from the puny leather armoured troops to the better equipped version and even some Black Talons along with a mage. Now I think I could take the guards if the mage would just stay out of it, but she always shows up at the worst possible moment. I even tried tossing a fireball followed by an oil of fiery burning and a potion of explosions into the room. The combination managed to killed about 75% of the guards, but I can't angle it through the door well enough to hit the mage who starts the fight invisible. Chaos is a pain in the ass. No one has yet made a save against it and it's got a damn good spread radius that usually allows it to hit multiple characters if not all of them in the tight quarters inside the mines.

Imprisonment disagrees. No loot says you're wrong.

CONE OF COLD! Worst damage spell ever. Anything that involves a touch attack is by definition much worse than cone of cold.

CONE OF COLD!

Haven't found a Ring of Animal Control. I do have a Wand of Paralysis, but it's only got one charge at the moment. I could probably do just fine without him. Maybe I'll ditch him and grab Yeslick on my way through the Mines. Branwen has access to Dispel Magic anyway. The issue with the animals is more of priorities. The druids are much more dangerous enemies with their spells. I could charm the animals with my ranger, but the casting time on that is horrible and I lose 2.5 arrow shots with my best THAC0 at the druid that can be used to disrupt those spells. The group that was really giving me trouble was the one inside the tree house because there just isn't enough room to properly set up a defensive wall to keep the summons away from my archers. Next time I'll have to try luring them outside and see what can be done there. ... I thought you were referring to Matthias for a second. That's his own fault for always jumping in front of my shotgun. Versus needs a FF statistic. Not that it would help much considering I can't seem to get through more than one level without crashing.

Shadow Druids in Cloakwood are being really annoying. The normal auto-buffing really isn't that bad, but the shadow druids have summons included as part of their auto buff. The Wolves and War Dogs are easy enough to take care of, but the Dread Wolves and Cave Bears don't go down with a sleep spell. I think after Cloakwood I'll be swapping out Khalid and Jaheira. Xan is kind of disappointing right now as I'm mainly only using him for sleep spells and invisible map scouting. Sadly sleep spells are starting to lose their effectiveness with the exception of maybe attempting Firewine, but I'm thinking that Fireball would be SO much more useful in that situation... And Xan needs to stop being one shotted by every enemy in the game. Damn smart AI targetting.

Yeah, yeah, can't be any worse than what Thief did to me. Stupid Hammer Haunts. If you thought the Hammerites were scary try the Shalebridge Cradle from Thief 3. Scarier than Amnesia? I've been through the Cradle, but it didn't get me to quite the same extent as the Cathedral did. I think it was partly the environment I was playing in and partly the lack of fear for the doors. First time I tried to enter the Cathedral I hesitated in the doorway and it killed me. I kept waiting for all the other doors in the place to try the same thing.

Yeah, that bridge is a pain on insane and I've even got the toned down elemental arrows. I think the crappiest hit I took from one of them was 28 damage. (16 normal, 12 fire) It doesn't help that I can't bring myself to put a helmet on my PC or Imoen. It would ruin the hooded thief avatars. I skipped the western portion of that level after trying it twice and ending up surrounded as Kobolds just poured out of every tunnel on that side of the map. At least with the bridge it's easier to funnel them through one opening. That damn shaman and the chieftan were a pain in the ass. I could always take one of them out, but the other would kill me till I got fed up and used the oil which roasted everyone except the chief who only took a couple arrows to finish off. I didn't have Kivan in my party. If you don't have Kivan in your party then you can avoid a confrontation with Tazok when the bandit recruiter in Peldvale/Larswood takes you to the camp. You have to say the right things when speaking with Tazok otherwise he'll attack you anyway, but if you get through it without pissing him off he'll give you leave to roam the camp until he returns from his errands. Then you can wander around a non-hostile camp. Of course, everyone will still trigger after going into his tent, but it's too late for them by that point since you have what you came for. I'm not sure how I would classify the difficulty of this run. Tazok's tent was definitely one of the more difficult fights in the game so far and in fact was a major spike in difficulty mainly because the mooks in attendance were high enough level to not be affected by sleep. Black Talon Elites can go die in a fire. Battles have tended to be either relatively easy or total party wipes because when one character goes down it starts a chain reaction that takes everyone else down with them.

Yeah, that's SCS. The moment anyone on that map goes hostile, the whole map empties onto your position including the guys from the tent. Unfortunately my only mage is Xan and both Web and Fireball are Evocation so he doesn't get access to either of those spells. Not that it would matter in the case of Fireball as I don't have level 3 spells yet anyway! Thankfully I didn't have to take on the whole group because I'm sure there is no way that I would have been able to take them all on with my current group. It's interesting that you mention never sneaking in, because I don't think I've ever actually taken on the entire group before. I always end up walking in as one of them and making a mad dash for the exit after repainting the tent red. Also, the bow you're talking about is the Longbow of Marksmanship unless that's one of the pieces of loot that has been switched up with Hard Times. It's +2 to damage and THAC0 I believe. My main is now using that and Bassilus warhammer +2 for melee.

Hurray! I managed to beat the group chilling out in Tazok's tent, but it took a fair bit of cheese to kill them all. I snuck into the tent with my entire party invisible (thank you 24 hour duration!) and then set my cleric up in a blind spot where she could cast spells without triggering the "Kill them!" dialogue. With SCS I installed the tougher end of chapter battles so there were a few extra elite mooks in the room and those bastards will murder you if you let them use their bows. The cleric summoned a bunch of skeletons, and buffed the whole group with strength of one before silencing the enemy mage. The skeletons were moved into the middle of the enemy group set to go when the turned hostile. Khalid and my PC used oils of speed and the kickoff was a provided with a flamestrike scroll used on the mage. With three ranged guys, the mage died before the flamestrike animation finished. Khalid chunked a hobgoblin elite and the skeletons attacked all the black talon elites and the hobgoblin elites in melee so they would switch to melee weapons and not murder me at range. Khalid charged into the fray from the back while the cleric cast several hold person spells which managed to get the main boss character and two black talons. After that it was mostly a mop up operation with 2 bows, 2 slings focusing one enemy down at a time before they could finish chewing through my skeletons as Khalid chopped guys up. Even with the cheese, this was a pretty difficult fight that took a couple reloads to get it right. The first couple times I didn't use my potions which meant my PC and Khalid weren't dishing out the damage fast enough to get through the archers before my skeletons were gone. Now my party is visible again and I still have to make my way back out of the bandit camp which is going to swarm me the moment I leave the tent. Thankfully Xan is still invisible so his 12 HP butt will be able to make it without being one shotted. And the adventure (hopefully) continues! EDIT: Managed to get out of the camp, but I lost Jaheira and Khalid. Would have been fine if I hadn't turned the AI on for some stupid reason so that Jaheira attacked on of the black talon while waiting for someone to catch up. Khalid was dead either way. Even with haste he can't outrun arrows.

I can confirm that the selection process was completely fair and unbiased in every way. I think getting Amnesia is more like losing anyway Enjoy the nightmares! Yeah, yeah, can't be any worse than what Thief did to me. Stupid Hammer Haunts.

Still working through my BG1 Insane SCS Hard Times run. I'm not as hard core as Tigranes is, so I've been doing a fair bit of reloading when things don't go well. I have to say that I have a new appreciation for kobolds since clearing out the mines. I was absolutely destroying the groups on the first couple levels. On the final level just as I hit the trapped bridge I encountered a couple kobolds. No problem, I'll just have my PC and Imoen take care of them and oh wait, there's a few more of them. Hmm, no matter, I can still do this. Imoen is taking a few hits so I'll bring up Branwen and have her heal Imoen while we keep picking off kobolds. Speaking of which, I could have sworn I'd killed a bunch of them already, so why are there so many still shooting at me?! Damn those Commandos and their fire arrows hurt! Glad I picked up several levels before I came down here. Edwin, get your butt down here and put some of these guys to sleep! Jeez! They keep coming! How many are there?! We can do this. We can do this! Final count for that one battle was 30 kobolds from my check in the text log. Small groups aren't much challenge anymore, but if you get enough of them, they can still hurt before you get a chance to put them all down when you have to pick them off one by one. Then the Chieftan and his Shaman repeatedly kicked my butt because none of my guys knew how to resist a sleep spell. Finally got past that one when I remembered my oil of fiery burning which roasted both them and their mooks. Currently roaming the countryside hunting bandits while I prepare to take on their camp. Party is: PC Ranger 4 Imoen Thief 5 Branwen Cleric 5 Xan Enchanter 4 Khalid Fighter 5 Jaheria Fighter/Druid 4/4

I can confirm that the selection process was completely fair and unbiased in every way. On a completely unrelated note:

1. I'm game for free DLC! 2. Everyone's favourite pit fiend, Koraboros! 3. PM sent. Hurray!