seki108

And FMW stage 53 complete.  This was a strange stage with a rushed start that required using a majority of my collective SP for spell to take down the first boss  followed by a much easier second boss who's mooks almost caused more trouble than her.  Please look at next stage preview at the very bottom.  It took me quite a while to find the trailer again, since the FMW team took down their Youtube channel.

The first boss was Satori, a mind reading yokai with 2 spell cards.  This is a stage where the skill point shows up immediately: activate her first spell card in 5 turns.   With wall of mooks with fields in the way, it was shaping up to be like other stages.

  I tried something different though, using Sanae and Alice as bait while using Yukari's gap abilities to teleport the ship with everyone in it around the mooks;  it works (though Alice bit the dust quickly because I overestimated her dodging without Marisa's friendship bonus).  Sanae survived and massacred most of the mooks because of her high friendship with her teammate (jacked up higher because of a personal skill.)

Fighting Satori was hell and I was scared I wouldn't be able to beat the stage because of how quick I was bleeding through SP.  She has the unique skill Mind Reader at level 9 (basically adds 36% - 40% ??  accuracy and mobility to her, as well as giving her one guaranteed dodge per turn) plus two levels of Predict (+30% accuracy and mobility at 130 morale),  making her near impossible to hit without the Strike spell (100% accuracy for one turn).....or save scumming your >10% hit rate.   It would have been easier if I had Reimu this stage or if Sanae wasn't soloing most of the mooks.   I did manage to defeat her by turn 5 and enter into the next stage of Hell.   I also didn't bring either of the units that can increase my damage inflicted by 10% for a turn..........would have really come in handy here.

One thing about Satori's canon fight in Touhou 11 is that she copies spell cards from a list of 10 that either you or the other playable character's teams faced/used at some point, and every fight they are random.  While they do something similar here, I found out after the stage that the two spell cards she uses are locked to which Protagonist you chose.     

Since I chose Marisa, I had to face Nitori's spell card from the second game (making everything around Satori water, summoning 4 generic Kappa, and copying Nitori's attack-----and actually dealing good damage).  I just had to waste the one bomb I had to destroy the field and take her out in one turn.  When I tried to fight her, my units would get slaughtered because they have a B rank or lower in Water----which also carries over to the weapons----- and the Kappa similarly can tear through my units on the enemy phase.  I completely lucked out that Mokou was right beside Satori or that Kappa would have been support defending Satori twice a turn.

Speaking of Hell, they decided to bring this kind of spell back again.  This time we didn't have to run around the stage for 6 turns trying to follow the safe zones, Satori just made it where she can only be attacked from that zone (and she can MAP everyone not in it). I almost considered just timing this spell card out (missing the item, and the last bit of exp and money), but I had enough resources to deal the damage (mostly because I brought the Prismriver sisters----probably best unit in the game despite the deployment cost of all three sisters.

And the second boss of the stage shows up afterward.  It's Orin.........again.  She was the boss of stage 45 that I covered about a month ago.  She has two spell cards this time, but she isn't that much better.  A complete pushover compared to Satori. 

I barely even took screenshots from this point forward, aside from two things.    Right at the start, the bosses from the last two stages come as welcomed reinforcements, for one reason or another:

I also wanted to make note of this mook which I imagine will only be around for this stage and maybe the next one: the Zombie Fairy (below).  They honestly aren't that tough, though they almost killed the near death Mokou with their field effect (which inflicts 750 damage onto any of my units in it--Mokou was at 850).   It's funny because canonically, these are just normal faries that are cosplaying as Zombies; they seem to imply otherwise in FMW, but that isn't important.  Still cute though, right @Wolfox

And that was the stage, with the theme of "poor communication can lead to deep trouble" coming back again......wonder if this theme will continue???   

Normally I don't talk about the story too much, but I have to note one of the first significant lines from the mysterious main antagonist.  So far, we've just had them provide hints about solving incidents, up until we came back from the moon (after ignoring their 'suggestion' of not going).  Yuuka did provide secondhand knowledge to us, but this is first she will provide herself (aside from a vague closing epilogue for the first game which more vague mentioned 'protecting this paradise')

Next chapter preview

Oh, the results of the 14th Touhou popularity poll are in.........not much change from last year.    At least Marisa didn't lose to Koishi, even if she missed the #1 spot again.  And my votes for Patchi, Meiling, and Yuuka didn't get wasted---hanging on to the top 25.  Mokou also got 10th, so I'm happy.  No Okku though  

Here's one you might like......maybe.  Just saw this got added earlier, so I haven't watched it yet.

Oh great, more mass spam.

I'm not sure if you watched any of the other 'Sylveon Trolls' videos aside from the Yokai Watch one, but there is a new one out:

Fantasy Maiden Wars update.  By God stage 52 was some Hell.  After some resistance from the mooks (with the most effective group trying to gang up on one unit----I knew to be cautious of MAP attacks this time), their came the main task of taking down the two bosses for the stage. 

Like the last stage which I did more than a week ago, this stage paired two bosses with complementary gimmicks.  First there was Parsee, the more dodgy/accurate one with her initial field lowering the evasion rates of any of my units that got caught in the field:

Then, Yuugi, a straight up tank meant to last withstand a constant assault (helped along with her mostly unique skill) and become more dangerous the lower her HP got.  Her initial field had a straightforward buff to all melee attacks---which brought up her attack enough to oneshot most units who got hit without Defending.

To make matters more complicated, the skill point for this stage wanted me to take down the final HP bar of both on the same turn without using any bombs (item that destroys danmaku fields).  This wouldn't be so hard if they separated, but I couldn't get them more than 4 spaces apart.  Any bait I used to lure one away failed, with Parsee usually coming close to Yuugi again next turn........I would just have to deal with their overlapping fields.

With Yuugi having two spell cards to Parsee's one, I had to focus on her first while also taking shots at Parsee.  Yuugi's first spell card buffed up her field's effect to add 700 damage to all enemy attacks (including Parsee's ranged attacks) while also reducing the damage of all of my ranged attacks if a unit was in the field.

After taking down most of this spell card's HP bar, I decided to activated Parsee's spell......which produced probably the most annoying effect of any spell card so far.  Basically, the more I've upgraded a unit that attacked her, the less damage it did to her and the more damage it took in return (with Parsee also getting a similar accuracy boost).  This made killing her one spell card Health bar almost as annoying as all of Yuugi's.  It also gave her a MAP attack that reflects still goes by this effect.

 -----------Apparently, this Parsee is after a substantial nerf that the FMW gave her early on----she apparently completely stonewalled most player's units in the initial release and first few patches.

Activating Yuugi's last spell also meant trouble.  For this one, she auto-cast both Strke (100% accuarcy---except if you cast the 100% dodge spell) and Fury  (bypasses all barriers, skills, and Support Defend).  This allowed her to effectively oneshot any single unit.

I didn't have the heart to try going though everything again, so I kept going back a little to the backup saves I kept making until I finally found a way to beat them on the same turn.  I can't even appreciate the added character depth of the chapter right now because of how frustrated this made me.  At least I got the skill point........just 3 stages left for this game.

As irritated as I am at Parsee, I do have to say she probably has the best attack cut-in of any character so far (top) and one of the best themes (bottom).  I guess these are two things she doesn't have to be jealous of (.......that's her main character trait, btw)