As something of a change, neither army made any attempt to rush control of Kama. Instead Vorosh retreated to set up camps around the edges while Kamahl marched his whole force after them for squishing purposes. For a time, Kamahl allowed the camps to be established, at which point Vorosh set about gathering large things to drop on the crater hoping to hit the currently empty Kama. Unfortunately, while out gathering and dropping things, the Coalition chose that time to begin crushing each camp that it came across. Even attempts at flying away were met with tornadoes popping up amongst fleeing units and hailing everything about with hail. At one there was even a dance-battle! It was really very pretty, Phyrexia couldn’t match Kamahl’s rendition of “Earth, Wind, and Fire.”
One by one, Kamahl overwhelmed each Phyrexian camp by forcing the dragons to flee into tornadoes, or land into death. He was able to quite smartly see each force off and claim victory.
It was a very unpleasant day where Shiela still roams. Amongst the decaying ruins of the old forest mushrooms fill the air with decidedly ‘orrible spores and generally things are pretty bleak. But to strike a morale stab for the Coalition Teneb marched, admittedly accidentally, into what he was sure would be his ruin. Ihsan was willing to comply, but to avoid wasting unnecessary forces on a fool’s errand, kept his ‘attack’ relatively minimal.
As the Coalition attempted to slip along the edge of the devastation, they found reapers and dragons rapidly approaching with death on their wings. And so, beneath the mushrooms they darted, using control of airs to ensure that those not adapted to the spores could last longer. To begin, the area was rapidly roasted. For which Teneb was thankful of the moisture rich protection of mushroom cover. Expecting the strafing flame to do the trick Ihsan’s dragons were surprised when gnats rushed out to smother their attackers. Reapers rapidly came to their defence, only to become embroiled in the gnaty mess. With vision obscured this gave Teneb’s wither units the opportunity to follow and heavily wound their foes. Within moments more than the expected number of reapers and dragons were removed from commission. With a glare Ihsan fell back to Sheila’s Lair, making sure to send out a message that the first to give him Teneb’s head would have a nice reward.
The fires of last week were dying down and the skies, once red with flame, were now black with the promise of coming snowfall. Vorinclex knew the dangers of his position, and thus ensured that he had created a set of siege weapons, trebuchets designed to lay once to Vesuva itself, and ballistae to direct against the inevitable counterattack.
Damia was not content to allow her home to be so damaged. But first, she needed to deal with the embarrassingly poor showing her troops made of themselves last time. She was sure to drill in the uncaring nature of Phyrexia in regard to those poor meadowboons. This is war, sacrifices of some must be made for the gain of all, they must continue fighting for the survivors regardless. She had barely finished when chunks of masonry joined snow falling from the sky.
To deal with this threat went dragons, fronted by sphinxes to absorb incoming attacks. The whole squad were sure to conceal themselves as best they could between glaring of lights and snow. Vesuva also needs more paint. In any case, the short distance, combined with speed, and difficulty to make out numbers and positions of the encroaching Coalition made left precious little time for Vorinclex to bring his weapons to bear. A few volleys were fired, but soon the weapons were bathed in flame. These then set Vorinclex’s oily trenches to burning also, instead of breaking up his opponent’s force, his instead became segmented.
As soon as the dragons arrived, they retreated back to Vesuva before systematically advancing upon each other siege emplacement in turn. While there was a difference between the first and last assault from meadowboon regret, there was no longer a sign of a humiliating retreat. This meant that Vorinclex’s plans were thus disrupted, but it was merely a setback! There were plenty of settlements to make more weapons. Each time however, the same thing happened. And each time it became harder for Phyrexia to recover - they had fewer units against increasingly emboldened Coalitioners, but there was also the growing snow. As days wore on many succumbed to the cold - if it wasn’t for the siege bonfires, it could have looked more like an invasion into a Russian winter.
Not to give up, Vorinclex tried one last time, long since out of meadowboons he found the fields increasingly barren of them (as the Coalition were pulling them into the city instead), even then, their effectiveness seems to have waned beyond their initial surprise use. So he resorted to simply building another set of siege emplacements. Yet once more, his constructions were burned to the ground not long after their volleys began. In the end however, the raids wore down morale, left units and plans dead, but were not devastating enough to break the Phyrexian forces. Besides, this land was Phyrexian, Damia simply didn’t know it yet.
Even so, without the resources necessary to maintain the siege, Vorinclex was forced to retreat and try again another day.
NB: Written base description takes precedence over card, so the usual ‘if not mentioned isn’t there’ holds. Again delayed! Know what’s annoying? Having a printer curl down halfway through printing an assignment. What’s also true? Sword beats printer.
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Asmira was aware of how she won previously and trusted that so would her opponent. As such, she pretended to adopt the same tactics while actually going about to make explosives instead to get the most of Blind Seer adopting a less dispersed formation. To a degree this was sort of right, but not quite right enough - unfortunately for Asmira.
High above the sepulchre the Coalition looked down upon the defenders. Just beyond range they lurked, and once there set about having mists combine with the already cloudy sky to further reduce available light. Their success was somewhat questionable due to the area needed to cover and that Asmira had readily available light sources within the sepulchre itself - but it at least made spotting the ethereal foes in the open a touch more difficult. From below angels were sent to deal with these tricks. But alone in the dim light, they were not heard from again that day.
Slowly winds began to pick up, and the darkness grew deeper, expecting it to be little more than natural weather, the defenders held fast; but it proved a precursor to attack. Forms appeared from the clouds that suddenly seemed closer. Asmira launched what explosives she had available and prepared for the onslaught. Many Coalitioners fell in the first exchange, but not enough. They were soon amongst the defenders. The skies lightened as mists descended and Asmira was able to see how dire the situation truly was. And so was everyone else. Coalition morale grew rapidly, while the defenders found theirs declining. Asmira barely managed to avoid a full rout.
This proved a somewhat odd battle all considering and not the most exciting. Glissa decided to adopt a spinning rotation of constant arrow volleys, in return Kaervek used many large tower shields in his march. In this way, the worst of the arrow fire could be avoided, but the downside was that in order to fend off ranged attacks from the very many directions and not allow their fellows to fall the going was very slow. In any case, around and around the Radix they went, Kaervek chasing Glissa.
Glissa however had a trick up her sleeve. As she drew Kaervek along, scouts had slipped behind enemy lines, once there they let loose their call to war. Phyrexians panicked, certain that an attack from the rear would devastate their forces since they could not draw any from the front. Already worn down from the constant hail, morale plummeted, a slight nudge could have sent them packing. But the nudge never came. As time passed, Kaervek felt as though he had his foe on the run and doubled his efforts. Each subsequent misdirection seemed to encourage Phyrexia more.
Meanwhile, Glissa’s units too were growing weary - and quickly running out of arrows. Each circuit left her with fewer to work with and a some overzealous warriors were beginning to collapse from exhaustion. In the end, she felt it better to abandon her position with minimal costs rather than engaging and running the risk of true defeat.
Recently removed from his residence, Ertai was quick to return with vengeance upon his mind. As he stepped back upon the path to the Seat, the smell of oil hang thick in the air. But he wasn’t going to stick around to find out about such matters and began the process of smothering the place with clouds of plague. Eventually the entire structure was blanketed with the deadly gases, but there was no sign of the Coalition.
Within the Seat, things were, if not great, not exactly bad for Arcades. With high numbers of artificial units the required fresh air was minimal, and with the capacity to direct winds he could ensure that little plague reached his position upon the stairs. In a pinch, a suffering unit could take a dip in the knowledge pool. This of course, could not be kept up indefinitely, but the resource cost was lower than Ertai's plague spreading.
Eventually, and with no sign to the contrary, it was assumed that either Arcades was not about, or his units had succumbed to illness. Due to the plague clouds it was necessary to wait a wee while for them to dissipate - but soon enough, Ertai ordered the attack. Through the doors his units charged, anticipating a quick and easy victory. But there the Coalition stood, ready and waiting.
Volleys of crossbows, blasts of wind, and very quickly a swath of fire erupted around Ertai’s units. The shock and devastation of the impact caused them to break within moments. Soon, Ertai was left alone before Arcades to curse his cowardly followers. Unwillingly, he was forced to offer his services and that of the Seat to serve the Coalition upon Mirrodin.
If at any point Animar could close with his foe, be it on land or via boarding, Ixidor would have more than a few problems. As such, the Coalition adopted as much manoeuvrability as possible - and with air elementals and the choice of small boats this was not much of an issue. But they were still facing an awfully large foe with lots of stuff.
Phyrexia surged toward Ixidor’s force. Coalition anti-ship weapons fell amongst the oncoming craft - with the occasional bit of burning fun. Yet such paltry attempts would not slow Animar and Phyrexia continued barrelling forward. Air elementals strove to hasten their own craft beyond the range of the monsters, but their foes came upon them quicker than expected. The rear most boats smashed upon Phyrexia’s rams and beasts were quick to board the now crippled craft.
But Animar forgot one very important thing. The Coalition forces included an aquatic element, and he neglected to watch his boat hulls. Now conveniently tangled with the boats above, Coalition merfolk could make swiss cheese of anything that struck their fancy. More and more boats began to sink, and then the crippled ones began to burst into flame. Animar had sailed straight into destruction, and would have to find a place free of these pesky gnats.
NB: It is safe to assume that ships have some attached siege weapons (just the basic ballistae and catapults, they are military craft and all), so no need for ship cannibalising, huzzah! Less easy access to explosives outside of structures though since days gone by.
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Phyrexia marched upon Biohazard Lab to regain use of the ooze against the planes. Endrek missed and memo and decided that he should have it instead anyway. And thus the nonsensical state was ad hoc not actually justified.
Anyway, Skithiryx went for the swarming tactic. His ground troops easily captured the area beyond the fence while flying units went in to swamp the powerplants where the defenders were hiding with many volleys of bolts. Relatively small size and rapid movements were used to reduce the costs at range, but they soon found themselves at the mercy of guardian beasts. While both the attack and the defence ended up somewhat dispersed as a result, Endrek was nonetheless able to bring more to bear against his aerial foe. Those that did gain access were funnelled to a point were swarming was no longer viable against the defenders. Nothing particularly exciting happened really.
Fist of Krosa 