ATaleOfTwoBrothers

This is an easy campaign that is mainly intended to introduce new players to the mechanics of the game.

Rooting Out a Mage

• Objectives: Defeat Mordak (L2 Dark Sorcerer)
• Lose if: Arvith dies or turns run out
• Turns: 18/18 (Easy/Hard)
• Starting Gold: 40/25 (Easy/Hard)
• Starting units: Arvith and lots of loyal units

This is a plain vanilla scenario, with no surprise occurrences: Just you and the enemy leader and both your recruits. You start with a sizable advantage, though, in the form of a good number of loyal units: 4 Spearmen, 3 Horsemen, a Footpad and a Bowman (in addition to Arvith). If you level them up and recall them later, they will save you a lot of gold and enable recruiting more units throughout the game.

A fundamental rule of any scenario is to pay attention to the time-of-day. All the enemy units are chaotic, and your spearmen, bowmen, and horsemen are lawful, while your footpads are chaotic. You will have the advantage during the day in general, and footpads can protect your other units at night.

It pays to read each unit's description, especially their resistances. Some of them are obvious, like skeletons being resistant to piercing and weak to impact (it's hard to stab a bone!). But the resistances on other units, like ghouls and bats, are not so intuitive, and knowing each unit's strengths and weaknesses will let you use your units to the greatest advantage. In addition to being your only chaotic units, footpads are also your only source of impact damage, so every attack counts!

On Easy difficulty, you should be able to win this first scenario with just your initial loyal contingent and no recruiting. Hang back enough that the Undead can't reach you the first night, then attack at dawn:

Consider attacking the...	Mostly with...
Dark Adepts	Spearmen
Bats	Bowmen, Footpads
Skeletons	Footpads

... and you can use your Horsemen on already-wounded units, when a single hit can finish them off.

Alternatively, if you send 3 Horsemen North to lure the Undead, and the rest of your force Northwest along the river, you may be able to ambush Mordak in his castle.

Also note that there is a keep with 3 castle tiles between your starting keep and the enemy keep. For a very aggressive strategy, you can move Arvith to that position early and recruit your reinforcements there instead of at your starting keep, so they can get into combat sooner.

On Hard difficulty, you're probably going to need reinforcements: A few expendable Spearmen to place in harm's way, protecting the loyal troops you start out with; their loyalty will prove helpful later, especially when they level up. Don't recruit more than a few units, however: You can let loyal Spearmen soak up a few attacks, as long as you've assured a safe retreat for them one their HP dips a little low.

You might have an opportunity to send in your Horsemen and take out Mordak around halfway through the scenario - if the Undead focus on a certain path of attack. But it is probably wiser to spend the extra turns gather XP towards leveling-up units with blade attacks (Horsemen to Knights, Spearmen to Swordsmen). A leveled-up Footpad or two by the third scenario would also prove useful.

Mordak is very passive, unlike the leaders in some other scenarios. He will never attack or move. This makes it easy to give the kill to the exact unit that you want.

The Chase

• Objectives: Get through the woods to the kidnappers, then defeat the Dark Adept
• Lose if: Arvith dies or turns run out
• Turns: 28/24 (easy/hard)
• Starting units: Arvith and a horseman
• Other: Remember the passwords

Time of day is less important in this scenario, since the elves are neutral and they will attack you so early that you won't really be able to choose when to engage with them. Here, managing terrain and maneuverability is more important. The elvish riders have much more movement than your units, and they are not slowed down by forests. They also get very high defense in forests, unlike your own horsemen. Use zone of control to block the riders' movement, and try to lure them onto open terrain so you can take them down quickly.

Knowing each unit's resistances is again very important. You are only facing one wose, but he will give you an extremely hard time if you haven't yet leveled any spearmen or horsemen to get bladed weapons.

The elves are too aggressive for their own good. Keep your units in line- or V-shaped formations with one or both ends anchored on a village; Elvish Scouts/Riders will charge in by ones or twos and you should be able to swarm them with foot units.

Again, avoid fighting the undead at the north map edge at night. Let your main body catch up with your cavalry and surround them. When you prevail, make a note of the passwords.

On hard, a good strategy is to recruit lots of Spearmen and Bowmen to wound the Elvish Riders, and finish them off with your leader or another Knight. Ideally, you'll have a Paladin by the time you hit the undead in the next scenario. Paladins are your only possible source of arcane damage, which is very useful against undead.

It might be a good idea to sacrifice some units as a distraction, but make sure you move enough troops north to take out the undead leader, which will be guarded by two skeletons (easy mode) or two revenants (hard mode).

At the start of the scenario, the top half of the map is covered by shroud. After you move a unit far enough north, it reveals a dark adept and his bodyguards, and then they will start advancing toward you. Killing the dark adept ends the scenario, but he hides behind the skeletons as much as possible so you will probably need to take them out too.

Keep in mind that Arvith can recruit at the elf leader's keep, so if you've managed your income well, you can recruit some last minute footpads before you face the skeletons. Recalling loyal units at the start of this scenario helps save up enough gold to get those new recruits 10-20 turns later.

Make sure to write down the passwords at the end of the scenario! They change every time you play through, and being able to remember them is significant for the next scenario.

On easy, an Iron Mauler named Brena will show up at the end of the scenario and ask to join your party. Iron Maulers are powerful level-3 units with a very strong melee attack and good physical defense, but they lack a ranged attack, and are slow (base movement of 4). Whether it's best to accept him or not depends on your playing style, but if you think you can live with his very limited speed, letting Brena join up is probably for the best. If you do accept him, he will be available in the next scenario as a loyal unit. If you refuse his offer, he will give you 70 pieces of gold. Regardless of the choice you make, you will be given the ability to recruit Heavy Infantryman units.

Guarded Castle

• Objectives: Defeat the L2 Dark Sorcerer to get the key, then have Arvith unlock Baran's cell
• Lose if: Arvith dies or turns run out
• Turns: 30/24 (Easy/Hard)
• Starting Gold: 170/120 (Easy/Hard)
• Starting units: Arvith

You start outside an enlarged castle - not 7 hexes, but half the map.

Castle exterior

The outside is just countryside with villages and nothing of interest... except for stealthy patrols. Those will accost you on two occasions, demanding a password. If you give the correct passwords, you will be left alone to prepare your troops undisturbed. However, if you're up to the challenge, and want to earn some extra experience for your units, you can deliberately give the wrong passwords, and then you'll fight the guards that asked you for them. On Hard, these are:

• First patrol: Assassin (L3), 3 Bandits (L2).
• Second patrol: Rogue (L2), 2 Bandits, 1 Thug.

If you decide to fight the first group of guards, you will be visited by the second group on turn 6, otherwise the second group will come at turn 3. Also, these fights will afford the enemy leader enough gold for a few additional recruits.

Castle interior

Inside the castle inside you have Orcish guard at the entrance: 2 Orc Warriors, 3 Orcish Grunts (on Hard), and Mordak's mournful brother, an L2 Dark Sorcerer, is deeper inside, with 100 gold to recruit Undead. Nothing you can't handle!

The castle inside is Dark, meaning that units fight as if it were night at all times of day. Fortunately, though, the position of most of the guards is still lit, and so are the castle hexes just below from which you will be attacking.

At the Northeastern edge you have a chamber with a treasure chest (50 gold); at the Northwestern edge is the cell holding Baran.

Note that the undead units will come out and attack you normally, but each orc unit will stay still until you put a unit within its movement range. This lets you take your time and lure them out into the open during daytime to take them out more easily.

Strategy

On _Easy difficulty_, one castleful of recruits should be enough to complete the scenario. Experiment with Heavy Infantry - they do well against both Orcs and Undead.

Inside the castle, you can get to Baran's cell without fighting the enemy leader, but you have to kill the leader for the key anyway. After killing the enemy leader, you're given a few extra turns, which should be enough time to move Arvith west to Baran's cell, and a fast unit east to get the treasure chest.

On _Hard difficulty_, you don't have any Heavy Infantry to hide behind. Footpads / Outlaws, are somewhat of a replacement - dealing impact damage, positively effected by the dim castle atmosphere, and even with high defense. However - they have a knack for succumbing to a sequence of several hits, dying faster than you would expect. So - if you're recruiting mostly, you'll need some cannon fodder.

Whether you've recruited or recalled - better have a Footpad or Outlaw. You can send it as a feint to one side of the castle, keeping some Undead busy chasing it, while moving Knights up along the other side (the Sorcerer's chamber has two entrances); and if you manage to level your Footpad up, you will enjoy its defensive capabilities in the final scenario.

There are several villages outside of the castle, so if you still have many loyal units you can actually accumulate some gold while you fight the orcs, and then Arvith can quickly return to his keep to recruit reinforcements for taking out the leader. One effective strategy is recruiting bowmen at first for the orcs, and then footpads later for the undead.

Return to the Village

• Objectives: Find out what is happening in the village then defeat the Orcish Warlord
• Lose if: Arvith or Baran die or turns run out
• Turns: 26/24 (easy/hard)
• Starting units: Arvith and Baran

There is no need to conserve gold in the last scenario, so recall all of your veterans. Run a small group northeastward over the mountains where two houses cluster; this will distract the orcs while you take most of your forces straight north up the road to the village, circle eastward, and then hit their from the north.

Pick off as many stragglers as you can before the main assault. Goblin riders, which have more movement than the grunts, can often be lured into attacking a forward unit of yours in such a way that your Spearmen and cavalry can swarm them.

On hard, you're faced with a small map, an endless stream of enemies, and a mostly worthless ally. As it's the last scenario, bring out your best units and as many expendable troops as you can afford (Spearmen work well, as do Bowmen if you can protect them) then head north in tight formation. Don't worry too much about holding the villages; your troops are better utilized fighting through to the enemy leader than chasing Wolf Riders across the map. You should easily overwhelm the enemy's scouts and join up with your ally.

Break a wave or two of enemy troops by concentrating your attacks and maintaining a defensive formation (and relying on your ally to send random units out to die distracting the enemy). Once the enemy is only able to field two units a turn, take the offensive. Forge south in the daytime, defend overnight outside the fort, then attack the enemy leader at daybreak. You might lose some units in an all-out assault so it's wise to keep your "key" units at the edge of the fray until victory is assured.