The One Game Week 7: Back To Square One

I’m dedicating time to one game in order to try and master it. I’ve chosen The Banner Saga to be that “One Game”. Each week I’ll be reporting on my progress within the game, as well as things I’ve learned outside of it. You can follow my progress via this tag.

Week 7.
Total time played (according to Steam): 8 hours.
Matches Played / Won: 5 / 0
Achievements unlocked: 0.
Rank: N/A.
Rating: N/A.
Team Power: 1.
Renown: 30.

Logging in this week, I notice some new notifications. One tells me about a weekly tournament, and another that someone “has emerged victorious in the tournament”. I take this to mean the tournament is now over.

With only 30 renown available to me, I’m not in put of a position to assemble a team. I am therefore left with the default (following the tutorial) line-up:

  1. Shieldbanger
  2. Archer
  3. Raider
  4. Warrior
  5. Archer
  6. Thrasher

The first thing I do is change the order to:

  1. Raider
  2. Warrior
  3. Thrasher
  4. Archer
  5. Shieldbanger
  6. Archer

The reason I’ve done this is because nothing really happens in the first few turns. In the event that I get rushed, I’ve got offensive classes for the first few turns to try and intercept, and if not, I can at least try to get them into good positions. The archers are last, because by then the positions of enemies on the board might have moved enough to make them useful, and I’ve ensured that I won’t ever have two archers in a row by sticking the shieldbanger between them (so to speak).

The good news, is that with such a low team power, I might have a chance at winning a battle, assuming the matchmaking is up to snuff. Let’s find out, shall we? To battle!

Ninja Foodstuff vs. cjkalisky

Well it doesn’t appear that the matchmaking system is working. Clearly cjkalisky has a tougher team than I do. Well, nothing for it but to keep calm and carry on, as they apparently say.

I start off by creating a “shield wall” with my offensive types, and focus on breaking armour to the enemy Varl. In this respect I do pretty well, and get my archers to finish one of them off and leave the other very weak. One of my Varl goes down, which unfortunately opens up a gap to let the enemy Raider close in on one of my archers. My other Varl is then weakened significantly, so I use him to block the enemy’s movement. My priority now is to disable the raiders, but with only 3 members of my team left, it seems unlikely.

I’m then down to a raider and an archer, against two archers, a raider and a warrior. The good thing is I have turn advantage, but then my weakened archer is killed off and it’s pillage time. Somewhat astonishingly, I’m able to last a fair amount of time, tapping the horn to take two of them with me, and with both archers seemingly unable to kill my remaining raider, I last much longer than I’d expect. But finally one of the archers scores a hit, and my remaining team member goes town. I net 10 renown, unlock my first achievement (which doesn’t seem to show in Steam), and most importantly feel like I’ve had some degree of control this time.

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