Shattered Throne Death Knight

https://www.reddit.com/r/Advance_Wars/comments/5cy3sx/shattered_thrones_death_knight_and_how_it_stops/

Shattered Throne's Death Knight and how it stops FTA rushes


For those who don't understand, one abuse of First Turn Advantage that occurs in Advance Wars is the Recon rush. This problem spits out balance problems to the point where AWBW maps decided to balance against it, despite how Recons can't even do anything to Light Tanks, simply because Recons themselves are impossible to catch AND scratch well with a low enough cost unit, so Recons have ridiculously foolproof disrupting ability if not kept under control by the map. Even without the FTA problems, Recon rushes have the same God awful degenerate gameplay that any speedster likes to exploit: if you have chosen a character who can't stop them from being able to attack first, you have lost because you WILL be hopelessly sieged for no good reason.

Now Shattered Throne does take measures to stop the early game from being mauled like this by balancing around its Combo Points system making early game damage low, having the sense to use subtraction defense, and also having units' capturing not be affected by their HP, but even then, I need to bring up the Flanker units, because these guys are arguably faster than Recons ever were and actually can deal damage to important armors including Holy Empire's Knights. Thankfully, however, you can hurt Flanker units too, and value units don't cost too much, allowing for setting up decent stuff before the Flanker units can even do anything.

Of course, given the chance, Flanker units can still cause enough devastation. The map Breathless Sound, which I have consistently used for checking balance, allows 1P to deploy 2 Flanker units at the get-go. 2P has to figure out how to stave this within a 100G budget within the first 2 Days. This is actually easy for Fae Courts because they can reach their extended settlements to set up countermeasures. However, Dark Cabal is much slower and ends up needing a way to weather the storm.

Enter the Death Knight. It was until recently that Death Knight was a Shock unit that was finnicky to balance by being too comparable to Holy Empire's Knight and coming across as arguably and unfittingly better, but now he is a Support unit, and his balance is much cleaner. His current base stats are as follows: 10 HP/2 DEF, 4 ATK Melee, Horse/9 Movement Power, Traits are Restless (Zombie is spawned as death reaction), Power Aura (surrounding allies get +1 ATK), and Drain Life (heals self and surrounding allies by damage done in an attack). Death Knight costs 40G, the same as Holy Empire's Squire, which is their Flanker unit.

A mobile defensive power unit that doesn't ridiculously strain the budget is just what Dark Cabal needs. A well deployed Death Knight can get to a key property quickly enough, survive multiple attacks, and then proceed to soften up a target to let a supporting Ghoul destroy them. This makes answering Fae Courts's Glade Riders much easier, because the Ghoul won't have any harder of a time surviving the Poison potshots. Here's the math that showcases how easy it is to destroy at least one of the Glade Riders if they attack actively enough:

* Glade Rider on Forest: 8 HP/1 DEF, Withdraw halves non-Combo Point damage if attacked from an adjacent space opposite to an empty one
* Death Knight: 4 ATK
* Ghoul: 3 ATK + 2 per Combo Point
* Death Knight attacks: (4 - 1)/2 = 3/2, round up to 2
* Ghoul attacks: 3 + 2 (Vicious) + 1 (Combo Point) = 6

You can argue that I removed the Forest reduction and Withdraw halving for the Ghoul's damage, but that shouldn't be unreasonable to do if a Glade Rider overextends at all. More importantly, if the kill happens, that's a 35G unit down the drain. That's another thing: Flanker units cost plenty. Not so much that you couldn't purchase them, sure, but losing a unit that valuable early on will sting. With that in mind, here's the build order I have on Breathless Sound to respond to 2 Glade Riders on Day 1:

* Day 1: Ghoul on West Castle, Death Knight on East Castle
* Day 2: Skeleton on West Castle, Ghoul on East Castle (this is primarily to discourage aggro)

I know the one safe position for the Glade Riders to attack from at all with just the Day 1 purchases, but the position in question becomes acceptable when all I would need to do is stall. Of course, you might have noticed I included Day 2 purchases when they're barely needed to discourage Glade Riders from bothering to sacrifice even more settlement grabbing in favor of better disruption ability. Well, the reason is to stop them from losing more economy than they would since they'd have center control to begin with.

That isn't so much a problem with Fae, of course, but it is with Holy Empire. Holy Empire's Flanker unit, is the Squire, who has better durability clocking in at 10 HP/1 DEF compared the Glade Rider's 8 HP/0 DEF, as well as having Skirmish in place of Withdraw to both provide unconditional damage halving against one attack and not end up being used against the Squire to root him off of terrain like Forests. The clincher, however, is that Squires also hit harder, and with few units available, it becomes devastating if a unit is lost.

I will clarify that I'm assuming Squire will be buffed to 4 base ATK as they should be, which would end up making sure this is the big deal I'm making it out to be by allowing them key 2HKOs. But of course, it should happen because Squires have problems come mid-game where 6 total ATK needs something supporting it needs something special to cut it, so under that rebalance idea, Ghoul and Death Knight would both get 2HKOed on terrain. Dark Cabal would have to be more creative as a result.

Fortunately, the general answer is quiet play, where the focus would be on giving the opponent no favorable targets to work with. On Breathless Sound, here's my build order with Dark Cabal:

* Day 1: Death Knight on west Castle, Ghoul on east Castle
* Day 2: Skeleton on west Castle, Ghoul on east Castle

The answer is still not that simple, since a blind rush can allow the Squires to divide and conquer, but I have come up with the Day 3 formation that answers all this:

https://s25.postimg.org/90gmjcl33/Shattered_Throne_Dark_Cabal_VSRush_V2.png

The result is that the only unit that can be flanked is the Death Knight, whose Restless trait will make sure that he will survive to his next phase and secure the Village, while the Squires will be positioned where one of them can be taken out easily and leave the other one unable to take out anything. If the Death Knight is left alone instead, he can then proceed to ensure the capture of another Village on the following phase--which one is optimal depends on how Holy Empire moves.

And wow, as I write that, I realize there's interactivity in the capture phase. I'm actually shocked. Pleasantly shocked, but still shocked.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the Death Knight allows Dark Cabal counteroffensive momentum simply by being much harder to zone, which buys time to build up enough Zombies and Ghouls to swamp aggressors, thus the FTA against Dark Cabal is neutralized.

Of course, there's still the potential issue that Death Knights may not have Affinity Play, and may instead cause their own FTA, because they have immense durability for their mobility and cost. What, then, keeps Dark Cabal from pulling their own rush? Simple: a lack of solo offense. Death Knight has only 4 ATK with his melee-lock, which isn't going to deal much damage to anything on terrain. It works when Death Knight has supporting allies to make his flanking ability useful with Combo Points that particularly benefit his Ghoul allies, but when he's attacking something, there's little reason why that something would fail to survive long enough for reinforcements to arrive and suffocate the Death Knight.

Additionally, if you want actively offensive traits, look elsewhere, because Death Knight doesn't have them. Power Aura needs allies to work with to see any use, Drain Life only heals the Death Knight and any surrounding allies when it also won't even work on enemy phase, and Restless is just a survival safety net. There are even further factors that discourage rushing outside the Dark Cabal mirror as well: Holy Empire's Priestess has Silence to stop Restless from working, reducing the Death Knight to a mere Knight-wannabe that isn't going to be so much of a problem in light of the Squire. Fae Courts also sets up too fast and consequently can use forward Castle Sprites to not even care about Restless when the resulting Zombie is just plain gimped. As for Dark Cabal, 4 ATK doesn't even 2HKO ANYTHING they have on the front lines, so everything will live to feast on guaranteed free Mana.

All in all, the Death Knight, while not perfectly balanced, is a well-handled horse rider that wouldn't have the most knowledgeable of Fire Emblem metagamers run screaming in the other direction about mounted unit brokenness. Of course, I have no doubt people would ignore this because talk about the gameplay of a game inspired by Advance Wars in a subreddit about Advance Wars is off-topic while cheap ad hominems aren't.