The Defence of Angfrost – A Frisky Business™ siege

Angfrost siege report

Last night our intrepid members of Frisky Business (our temporary clan whilst we wait to decide whether Lux Arcana will return to Darkfall) joined up with various clans in the defence of our former home of Angfrost against the vile, backstabbing and traitorous forces of Galfurion Pendragon’s Immortals clan and their zerg.

We arrived at Angfrost to find the south-eastern and south-western wall sections in ruins, with only one cannon tower on the north-eastern corner left standing. The bank was up (just about) and all 4 zap towers were quickly brought back into fully working order. The enemy had placed their siegestones behind the giant tree-stump on the hill immediately to the north-east of the city and just before the siegestones went live, the enemy turned up in force – outnumbering the defenders by at least 50%.

All of a sudden a raging snowstorm descended on the area, reducing visibility down to a few metres in any direction. Buildings within the city disappeared into veils of driving white and it actually became difficult to move around meaningfully without constantly referring back to the mini-map to know where you were. As for seeing beyond the city’s walls? Forget it – nothing could be seen after the first few steps – it was epic!

Our leadership called for a push on the siegestones and we were ordered to move out from the north wall and push on into the driving storm, heading north-east and then turning south-east, up the hill to the enemy. Sadly no one (other than our group of former Luxies and friends) thought to remain silent as we moved – so even though the enemy could not see us until we were right on top of them they certainly could hear our side’s approach from afar as 90% of our force cast their buffs and transfers.

As a result, our uphill push into a force half as large as we were went exactly as one would expect.

GG, WP.

Routed, we retreated back to the city walls and decided to turtle up under the relative safety of the zap towers.

Time ticked on and the enemy started its own first push, coming at the city from its weakened south-eastern corner. However, the valiant defenders were able to use the chokepoint created by the attackers’ earlier breaching of the walls to rain down focussed AOE spells and attacks. The enemy (who were in the main bound to the hamlet north of Angfrost) started to lose numbers and the defenders (having the bindstone home advantage) were able to press their defence and push the attackers back.

Sadly our leaders did not take advantage of this initial victory to send a force onto the siegestones, instead allowing the enemy to regroup and spawn cannons on top of the hill, attacking the city’s bank area zap towers. Happily, defending primalists were able to cast their walls of righteous force to prevent some of the cannon shots from hitting their targets, allowing the defending owners time to hand out repair shards and have their members out-repair the damage being caused by the two enemy cannons. The enemy cannons eventually died from overuse, as impotent in their attack as their owners were.

Running battles then ensued for a period around various points of the city but the enemy made no concerted focussed attempt to gain access, spreading their numbers too thinly and allowing the defenders to target individual enemy groups relatively easily.

The enemy then switched tactics and attacked the city from the south-west, initially setting up one cannon almost outside of the city walls to attack the zap tower there, but were easily pushed back. Finally showing some sense, the enemy set up 2 further cannons at a much greater range (and in a more defensible location) to the west of the city and started to pound the south-western zap tower hard. They also started making forays onto the walls north of the zap tower in an effort to split the focus of the defending forces. Again, though, the enemy missed real opportunities to make good on their superior numbers and after some initially hard fighting within the south-western city corner, they were pushed back and eventually routed – allowing the defenders time (finally) to send a team with battlespikes to attack the siege stones.

The enemy were able to return to their siegestones in time to wipe the small group of our side’s forces there – mostly because many defenders decided to tunnel-vision, with groups of 5-10 chasing single enemies at various points around the city in the usual “Arrgggh lootz!!!???!!” way.  But by then it seemed that the attackers had lost their vim and verve, even though there was still an hour left of the siege.

Bizarrely the attackers decided to abandon the siege stones and instead launch a Junk to start firing at the city from the south. This was an entirely ineffective move (not least because we put 2 Launches into the water and your intrepid reporter once again showed his ninja Launch skills, sinking the junk without the enemy appearing to realise they were under attack…), that left the enemy siegestones fully undefended. The stones were destroyed within seconds of the enemy Junk sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

And that was the end of the Immortals’ failed siege of Angfrost.

Victory!

Siege thoughts

From a gameplay point of view this siege was great fun – neither side having a complete advantage (the attackers had about 50% greater numbers but the defenders had the bindstone and zap tower advantage).  As always with multi-clan battles, leadership was not ideal (it is, after all, very hard to lead a many-headed monster anywhere) and both sides missed real opportunities to push through for a win.  The attackers should have used 4 cannons (instead of 2) on their first attempt to take out the zap towers guarding the bank, and at no time did they use their numbers advantage to try and split the defending forces onto opposite sides of the city.

From a performance point of view this siege was perfectly smooth.  Gone were the major lags every 4 seconds that made sieging unplayable for me and others – I ran the game at a very smooth 45FPS even at the height of AOE sieging spam.  With AV having said they have updates in the coming weeks that will mean particle effects have little or no impact on FPS, sieging performance will only get better (not that it needs to for me!).

A lot of fun all evening – would do it again!