Advance Wars map Bean Island comparison - Shattered Throne
1This is, of course, the Shattered Throne version of the Bean Island playout. Bean Island is, of course, copied 1:1, this time with the game difference that the HQ is made into a lynchpin Banner unit on an upgraded Town, and also that the setting of disallowing village upgrades is used to maintain map authenticity, though it turns out to be unnecessary with how fast and tense the map plays out. ...wait a minute. I could do that? I should do a comparison between Shattered Throne's map maker and Wargroove's own at some point in the near future.
This time, I did indeed go for CO choices I figured to be underpowered in general for myself, and Morghast, who has an OP D2D in that he provides each newly spawned unit +50% mobility until the phase after they spawn, as the enemy CO in BOTH matches. Yes, both, because that's how fast the replays went by requiring only about 10-12 Days apiece. Admittedly, the matches did expend their share of time when actually being played out, but that has more to do with the CO mismatching than anything.
I think what allows the matches to get going is a mix of welcome factors. First, units are mobile, not just by crossing mountains but also having a high enough standard of Movement Power in mix with solid mobility options, all while maintaining combat ability. Holy Empire, who I didn't display here, make up for fewer mobility options with AoE and utility attacks instead. Second, melee units have a clearer sense of competence that allows them to shake off attacks and also cause their definite share of devastation, and range units instead rely on Combo Point application and other utility features to get going, hence why freaking Bean Island doesn't have me spam range units. Of course, what completes this is the third point: healing is consistently around. Not only do controlled Villages/Towns restore 5 HPs per player turn, but the Support unit of each faction also has a healing effect involved as well while still having combat ability to work off of. The end result is that momentum becomes easier to maintain, especially once you win convincingly enough.
Also, it helps that range units rely in moving and attacking on the same turn instead of having inflated range. There aren't too many units that even manage 5 Range to begin with, so good luck sieging the opponent's deployment points without convincing control of the map.
The Death Knight, besides being more reason I don't show Holy Empire due to Priestess being able to set up the Zombie phase skip, is an absolute show of payoff with my efforts to help balance the game. You might notice with the Fae Courts match (the first one) that I'm barely denting the Death Knight until I have the Unicorn attack him and that suddenly deals 9 damage. That absolute jump in damage is because of Unicorn's Vicious trait, which triples the Combo Point damage, or simply doubles against an enemy with a damage halving trait. The only other Castle unit from Fae capable of coming close against a 2 DEF unit is Bladedancer, who relies on double attacking, so higher attack boosts become a must to avoid having the DEF buffer too much of the damage output, and Bladedancer has the added problem of being susceptible to range attacks and Combo Point damage. Considering that I'd want the Death Knight's first phase dealt with in a minimized number of attacks to have hits left over for the pesky Zombie phase, the end result is the same: that I'm wanting to consider tech units for the tempo.
You see why the matches manage to be fast but still satisfying. Dark Cabal especially wants to make use of EVERY Castle unit type.