A picture is worth a thousand words; that well known saying made famous at the battle of Bordygaim where the Puritan Scrabbliers faced off against the Royalist Pictionariheads is as true today as it was back then, when men fought tooth and nail to spell flanking on a triple word score whilst their enemy desperately tried to draw a convincing image of a pincer movement

“What the hell is that supposed to be?!”

“Damnit, man, it’s a crab! See?! And that’s its pincer!”

“Look, just underlining the drawing ten times doesn’t make it any bloody clearer you… grahghhhh, ‘bayonet’… in a single play… on a double word score. Tell Mary… that I love her… urk”

“You love her what? ”

“No, no, tell her that ‘I love her’. Full stop. Then ‘urk’, as in the sound of my death throe”.

“Oh. No wonder we always lose these battles”.

Don’t know what that was all about, sorry. So yes, picture, thousand words, the worthiness thereof; as such a picture of some words must be worth a lot in word currency! So here is one:

.

So what does it mean? Because in all its thousand word descriptiveness, it may still not be clear. Allow me to elucidate.

A small band of valiant guild members had banded together in order (Meh! Order! Because we play on the side of Ord… never mind) to participate in a few scenarios for the evening. In this instance (Meh! Instance! Because it’s an ins… never mind), we were playing Phoenix Gate, a capture the flag affair, with the forces of Order and Destruction locked together in a combat spiral of death and carnage as they desperately try to grab the opposition’s flag and run it back to their own flag. And then touch them together. I can only assume that it’s some sort of bizarre pseudo-sexual ritual, a deflowering of the enemy’s flag-based chastity. Yes folks, as we all know, ‘touching flags’ is an even more devastating war crime than slaughtering village stores, pillaging innocent villagers and molesting their livestock; at least that’s the way it’s done here at kiasa.org, because we like to mix things up a bit: it keeps the enemy on their toes, and gives them something to talk about on those long dark nights as they try to console their cattle.

It was a close battle, the forces of Order had made a quick dash and grab of the enemy’s flag, and they had done likewise, and as is often the way in these battles it seemed as though never the twain would meet, as a few defenders hung around with the flag carrier and the rest of the forces slugged it out in one war camp or the other or somewhere in-between. However, your intrepid reporter, clad in the traditional combat correspondent’s outfit of full plate armour and a large two-handed axe, made his way into the enemy camp and, without bothering to fight, spent time being pummelled by the enemy as he scouted around the place in order to ascertain where the dastardly Khun (a portmanteau of Khainites and Hun, although it does come but a nice cup of Earl Grey away from being an even better description) had hidden their flag carrier. As you can see from the screenshot, I found the fellow, and snuck around the back of the hill he was hiding upon, crept up to him and attacked! Alas, he had company hidden in the nearby trees who I hadn’t spotted, and I was rapidly sent back to the makeshift hospital tent in our own war camp.

I was not finished, however. For I am dwarf. Hear me roar! A quick patch-up by the doctors and I was back at the enemy camp, but this time I had a plan. A plan that involved more than charging in and flailing around with my axe. A plan so cunning that you could put a robe on it and call it a wizard. Ironbreakers have an infamous ability called “Away With Ye!”, it’s a massive knock-back on a fairly long cool-down which costs thirty Grudge. For those who don’t know, Ironbreakers principally build Grudge by being hit, or their Oath Friend (someone who they’ve chosen to protect) being hit. There are other methods for generating Grudge, but that’s the basic one, it’s very similar to a Warrior’s Rage in World of Warcraft. So being fresh back to the enemy’s war camp, I was also fresh out of Grudge, and not wanting to alert the enemy to my presence, I needed a way to build Grudge stealthily. Here’s where the joy of the Oath Friend comes in, because I can select an Order player who is some distance away, say, a tough tank in the middle of combat with the enemy, and as they are hit while fighting, I get to build Grudge.

So suitable Oath Friend selected, I again snuck around the back of the enemy hill and made my way to the top, checked my Grudge was now high enough to power “Away With Ye!” and charged the enemy’s flag carrier. The first mistake he’d made was in standing on the edge of the hill and watching the battle that raged below between the bulk of the Destruction and Order forces. The second mistake he’d made was in thinking that the dwarf charging towards him was going to fall for the old “friends hiding in the trees” trick again.

The third mistake he made was in not realising that the dwarf had rotated his weapon in his hands such that it was the big, flat face of the axe that was facing towards him, and not the edge of the blade.

As he turned to face me with that mocking look on his face, and his friends again dashed out from their hiding places amongst the trees, I swung my axe for all I was worth and hollered “Away With Ye!” The flat face of the axe smote him full-bore in the chest and with my momentum behind the swing I flung him in the most mathematically beautiful parabola ever seen by man, elf or dwarf. He arced through the air with all the grace of stone from a trebuchet and landed smack-bang in the middle of the forces of Order.

Suffice it to say, he wasn’t looking smug for very long after that, or at least it was hard to tell, what with the various parts of his anatomy being spread out over such a large area.

Order promptly capped the flag and were ultimately victorious. And if I never win another scenario again I’ll die a happy dwarf, because I’ll always, always have that moment, the split second after launch, when the enemy realised that I wasn’t trying to defeat him myself, I was, like any good Ironbreaker, merely there to enable my team to do so, by any means necessary.

I am dwarf. Hear me roar!