Battle Brothers: Spear Wall

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

With the string of recent victories, morale is high as a banner for the Spears is created. The Nord Craizee is recruited as the company goes to hunt the rampant dire wolf packs roaming the forests.

The large white flags means their morale is breaking.

These critters are fast, but are easy prey as they keep lunging against the front line spearwall. The same tactic works well on zombies encountered at some random ruins, the only difference is - they get back up, making for a marathon battle but one still won by caution.

The company eventually arrives at Wiesendorf who not only have hauntings at the graveyard, but also a fort of bandits raiding their supply lines. With a quick scouting run it turns out the "hauntings" are also bandits, so the Spears set out to rout both locations.

These bandits are wise to the spear wall method, and counter with delays or ranged attacks forcing the Spears to charge. Ultimately this leads to the death of S***A who is piked while spear walling (pikes out range spears), and Moaning Knight (one of the original three) who takes an arrow to the knee... and another to the face.

Coppertopper the messenger and He-Alve the strange, scaled one are recruited as replacements, but Faltran and Bloodfire know they'll never be able to replace their fallen comrade.

Battle Brothers: Matters of Morale

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

With the company finding their footing once more, refilling the ranks became the first ambition the companions agreed on. To this end they sailed to the busy port of Holnisland to recruit: S***A, DogHow and Lapp the rat catchers, Paleshade of Londor and Arpalan the student and "Sid" Sidorivich the manic peddler - who quickly attempts to sell Lapp a rat!

Big Mike is careful to choose the easy pay contracts of courier work and on the one occasion they run into bandits, he times it that another merc group called the Cold Hands are there to assist.

He knew they couldn't evade the danger for too long though, and sure enough the next contract - to retrieve the Elderstone from a burial site in the mountains leads to problems when the skeletons there awake and chant "the false king must die".

Followed by "Trick or Treat"?

It is a scary battle, and Arpalan not yet finding his feet in combat is stabbed fatally by a spear wielding skellie. The rest of the company is injured but victorious. Big Mike decides to get their mind off their fallen comrade by immediately attacking a small bandit hideout and decimating it easily.

This trick works, which results in the original three Spears having a greater respect for the man.

Dark Souls III: Physics Breaker

Tales from Dark Souls - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Beyond the Church I arrived at the chamber of the sleeping princess, who wasn't so much sleeping and more long dead. Poking her destroyed the illusion that is the Ringed City (much like I heard that if you poke Gwynevere you reveal the true "dark" Anor Londo in the first Dark Souls) and left me standing in a massive desert of ash and ruin. Apart from one of the Princess' Knights who I put down, the only other one here is Gael... having grown to a massive size by cannibalizing the "people" here. He then turns to me with murderous intent.

The boss fight against Gael is certainly one of the "prettiest" in the series, with the physics defying knight flying in unexpected angles as he attacks. I only attempt two practice runs to read his basic set before summoning sunbro DogHow and S***A to assist. They are clearly experts at the fight and we have no problems as Gael switches to his even more beautiful phase 2 and phase 3 sequences, ultimately slaying the old slave knight with no friendly casualties. Thanks guys!

A picture cannot capture how awesome this fight is.

This just leaves one mysterious boss fog I found in an earlier secret passage which I couldn't enter. At first I thought it to be a bug, but it turns out there was a pre-requisite to open it first... defeat the dragon on the bridge.