A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"Luck is against you this morning, Professor," Oliver said.

"I suppose so," Volguard said, regaining his calm. "But such is the nature of the battlefield. Superior strategy prevails in the end. Now, once more, you have a chance at reinforcing your position. You might create an outpost if you so—"

But Oliver had already rolled the dice on shooting down the cavalry unit. It was a mere 1-in-2 chance, when only a single archer unit was in range for the attack. It was ill-advised, and went against the fundamentals. As Volguard had said, it would have been a far better option to begin to create an outpost in the centre of the board, given that he had already managed to survive a turn.

"Hoh…" Oliver said. Even he was surprised by now. The die favoured him. He was awarded the slaying of the cavalry unit, and his archers remained where it was, untouched.

"…This is," Volguard searched for the right word.

"A beautiful game?" Oliver said, grinning. It was an old phrase of Volguard's, whenever Oliver would complain, the professor enjoyed firing that phrase back at him.

"Currently, no. It is ugly," Volguard said. "But there is only so far that luck can take you. I will show you instead how proper fundamentals will see you sorted."

Oliver knew that the man wasn't bluffing. When Volguard chose to lock in, it didn't matter how unfavourable the dice were, the strategy would always end up pointing towards a win in his favour.

The man carefully developed his position. He brought his spearmen a few squares forward, and then he set his archers behind them, warning against any direct attacks. His cavalry unit was off to the left, spelling a threat. It was classic, water tight Volguard manoeuvring.

And in response, Oliver stayed practically still. He took his single archer unit, and then added to it a cavalry unit, and it was as if those two were the only pieces in his whole arm that existed. He took the unit of archers off to the left, and sent the cavalry unit scuttling off to the right.

Volguard frowned, and sent an infantry unit to chase the cavalry unit, but it soon enough went sprinting away.

There was a moment during it all that Volguard took a long pause. He looked at the central development of his army, and the lagging line that Oliver had created, at the complete other end of the board, and then he saw the two units that had been chasing, and one could practically see the gears turning in his head as he weighed everything up against each other.

Oliver couldn't help grinning. It was the first time he had seen such an expression of thought from the Professor. Normally, the Professor would deal with him with only half of his attention, spending the other half instructing Oliver in some way or another. It was a frustrating thing to play again.

Of course, Oliver wasn't foolish enough to mistake it for excessive competence on his part. He'd intended to be irritating, and he was succeeding, that was about it. It wasn't a mastery of strategy, it wasn't that he'd improved; he was just being stupid, and he fully intended to do it.

The warmth that Nila had given him earlier in the day wasn't something that he was in such a hurry to place with his usual amount of excessive seriousness.

The Professor came to his decision. He seemed to decide that the two pieces that he'd been set on chasing weren't worth paying too much attention to. Of course, he recognized their threats. The strategist that was the Professor was far too cunning to let that go amiss. He ran through the various tactics in his head, and then committed to a watertight plan.

The Volguard arm was set to advancing again, all of it at once. The archers were as threatening as it could be imagined, it was if their range was double Oliver's. No matter where Oliver stood, it was as his piece was in danger from their relentless harassment.

With a few tiles forward, Volguard was beginning to roll dice, and pepper Oliver's infantry with the imaginary missiles, picking them off, one by one.

Oliver had his own archers in range by now. He ought to have gone purely for a defensive battle, and sent the dice rolling, getting the volley's that the archers offered off one by one.

That would have been the sensible thing to do, but Oliver was far from being in a sensible move. His fingers played over the archers, until, with a sudden motion, they sped towards the very out of position cavalry piece that had, and he sent it all the way to the other side of the battlefield.

On the next turn, he did the same thing with his misplaced archer unit, all but ignoring the charge that Volguard was performing on him.

The Professor, however, was made to pause. He dug his way in through Oliver's ranks, but it wasn't as if he wasn't losing pieces. There was a smaller chance of a defender taking a piece than an attacker, but that chance wasn't zero.

Committing to as many attacks as Volguard had, it was only natural that he had lost one or two pieces – and in exchange, had been given many more, especially with the relentless bombardment of Oliver's archers.

However, he just couldn't seem to ignore Oliver's two misplaced pieces. Especially with their threatening nearness towards his rear. The cavalry unit might have seemed more threatening, but in the last turn, Oliver had sent his archer stepping into range of Volguard's General. A single bad roll of the dice, and the Professor would lose his most important piece.

He was forced to retreat that General, moving him towards the protection of the other pieces.

Now Oliver's cavalry unit stepped forward threateningly. It could quite well have charged the sword infantry that Volguard had at the rear, but Oliver paused it, just a single tile away. By all accounts, it was a wasted turn.

His moves, after all, were simply being made to irritate, not to win. Oliver knew winning was an impossibility. No one could beat Volguard – at least, no one in Solgrim. Not even Skullic. So why try? Why not enjoy infuriating him instead?