One day in the GBG
It was a hot day out here in the deserts. I decided rather than work out trade agreements using goods three eras head of my Modern Era. We would go and sharpen the troops up a bit. I had been collecting a lot of dead wood lately. We now had twenty drummers and five of the Color Guard. I use them as my drum majors with seven drummers and I have an effective Marching Band. Well, the bands are colorful, and we all love the drum music, but they do make poor fighters.
My second in command had this bright idea of why don’t we take advantage of the new guild war rules and help our supporting guild out and maybe lose a few battles with the marching bands. He thought it would make us look good that we were down there supporting the guild. He also thought it best we lose all those hungry mouths to feed. I had to really think about this. I am not hot on the idea of killing off parts of my growing Army. As it stands, I get one unit a day from my Governor’s villa. (He is bribing me with a recruit a day.) Some days, owning your own city has its advantages. Next, I get one troop from my Egyptian Bath House per day. Last is my Alcatraz, it is generating seven new reformed prisoners per day.
With all of this going on, it gets interesting managing an Army this size. I am grateful for all the buildings we have won in the Guild Expedition. Life is calling me to go down and try this new challenge out. We make it to the island and this is some battleground. Having never been here before, I am wondering to myself what on God’s green earth have I got myself into this time? Well, the Battle Master of the guild says we need to make a path to the center of the island if we want to win first place. I think to myself, “Right! Yea, I am starting to wonder about this Battle Master. I mean, come on! You want me to march my troops into the center of an active volcano. I mean, really, just how stupid do I look?”
Well, it must be pretty stupid because I am doing it. We started in at the first section. I decided rather than risk my best seasoned troops, I would send in the Marching Band, hoping these guys have a sense of humor about this. It was a short battle and only one drummer escaped with his life. Well, so much for a sense of humor idea. This had a reverse effect on my troops, instead of running for the docks looking for a way home. They were all fighting mad. No one, but no one, kills off our Marching Band without paying for it. I didn’t even ask, and my unit slots were full and in they went. This time the jungle was red with dead and my troops were all still living, I only had one unit that needed healing.
But I also saw we had to do 58 fights to take this piece of land. It was the next battle I learned of a thing called attrition. It means the more we fight, the stronger the enemy is that opposes us. Then the Battle Master came to our rescue, he built siege buildings in the square next to the one we were fighting in. Now, it stopped the attrition, and we were off to the races. Battle after battle, death after death, pools of blood everywhere and wrecked equipment until we won the square. By that time, my whole army was in the hospital. All I had left to fight with was one single Marching Band. I knew with the attrition we had, they didn’t stand a chance. They wanted in the last fight. They didn’t even wait for the countdown, in they went. Well, it was pretty funny watching them march through the battlefield that had once been a lush jungle. They went right up the wall of jungle of the next section and began cutting it down to the beat of the drums. They timed their machetes to the drum beat, and in they went.
We could hear screaming and shooting and drumming, this went on for a while, then silence. Out marched the Drum Major, and two serious wounded drummers. The drum major was carrying them both on a makeshift drag. I ran over and was joined by the rest of my staff, and we help him and them into the convoy back to the hospital. We were done. The next day we received 150 FPs for the fights, thirty new troops, and sixteen pieces of a statute of honor. We could use the FPs in our GBS to make the army stronger. None of us had any idea what to do with the statue pieces. The guild Battle Master came over and told us what that statue did when completed, and it would be our salvation. You see it generates FPs, goods, supplies, and will make us money. It looks like this new thing is going to be our salvation. The troops are all healed up and ready to go again. They still want revenge on the Marching Band killers.
Our new fighting cry is, “For the Band!”
I work late into the evening in my job, and I would look forward to playing FoE very late at night. The guild leader kept similar odd hours as a result of caring for his ill mother who was often up late. For months, we would chat as we played and I would always insist on aging up "way too soon" yet I would always make a point of doing 64 encounters in the guild expedition and could always defend my city against attackers. Every time I aged up he thought I would need so much help from him, and I never did. Ultimately I outranked him, despite him having played longer than me and leading what was then a top 10 guild. When Birka opened up, we stayed up extra late to build new cities there - for a few minutes, I was the number one player before being overtaken and that was fun to see. We ran a guild together for a few months before we both gave up play in that world.
