Rillik watched as the dense pack of mercs floated over the water on a shield toward land. He shook his head.
“Do you think they’ll be alright?” Elly asked, uncharacteristically soft-spoken.
“No,” the golgari said, his voice flat.
“I find their tactic questionable,” Lacos noted, a hint of curiosity in his tone. “If they did not find success yesterday when attacking in numbers, why try again with an even larger group?”
The leader of the crew unclenched his hands from the railing at the edge of the the deck and rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension there.
“Let’s head down into the boat. We can talk on the way.”
The other two nodded, and together they checked their gear before climbing down the rope ladder into the waiting dinghy. Once they settled in their seats, Rillik picked up the oars, pushed off the ship and resumed his speech.
“There’s two schools of thought when it comes to tackling weak monsters in large numbers. One way is to split wide and pick at them from the edges. If they try to swarm you, there’s space to just pull back to prevent getting surrounded. It’s slower, but much, much safer.”
“And the other way?”
Rillik grunted.
“Go all in. Ball up in numbers and dive into the middle. The theory goes that the number of enemies doesn’t really matter beyond a certain point. With enough people, you can layer shields, support and firepower to the point where the weak monsters can’t touch you. It can work well enough under normal circumstances.”
“Normal circumstances?” Lacos asked.
into intelligent swarm monsters before, but I’ve
“They obviously disagree.”
kills yesterday
He shook his head.
is so huge they aren’t thinking about what it costs
tactics. A smaller number had been more reckless, diving in headfirst against the
of death amongst mercs, Rillik
said quietly, “unless they retreat early. The moment they
but he tried to let it go. He’d said his piece in the morning,
they got
—----------------------
lively there, lad!” a voice
blade and sent another slash streaking
across the terrain. He grit his
“Damn monsters,” he grated.
were huge. Heavily armoured beasts, the frontline insects were durable beyond the mercenaries’ expectations, shrugging off a lot of punishment and
“Ball up, stay
using their Skills and magic to push
of our numbers. Notice that we haven’t been surrounded yet? If they get in front of us, they know
Drake asked, a hint of
Hartos grinned savagely.
smash them to bits
leader turned to roar over the
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