Pandemic diary: July

Everyone is acting like the pandemic is over, and I'm not one bit okay with it.

I mean yes, case counts in Finland are way down, so almost all of the official restrictions have been lifted. Restaurants and bars and so on are operating at lower capacity, but to be honest, I'm seeing people flocking to night clubs and karaoke bars and whatnot on the social mediums, and it looks like a recipe for complete disaster. One person in that karaoke bar has the virus, and in about a week or so you've got a lot of contact tracing to do. I just think we're being reckless with this. We've had such a strange trajectory with this: first the official powers told us we'll be fine and the virus won't affect us; then we shut down everything, including an entire province; and now it's like we're pretending the whole thing never happened.

This affects me personally in that I'm due to resume teaching, well, next week! At this time we're cleared to hold public functions with up to 50 people. Given what we now know about how the virus spreads, I'm going to do what I can to make sure we have good air circulation, and I intend to continue wearing a mask on public transport, even though no-one else is. In September, I'll be restarting some of my lectures that usually get an older audience. I'm not qualified to judge if it's safe for them. I hope it is.

Anyway, this is the thing, isn't it; I'm not so much worried about myself, as I feel like I can take precautions and maintain social distancing and so forth. It's other people I'm worried about: not just myself having the virus asymptomatically or something like that, but someone in my audience having it and giving it to others. Obviously there's nothing I can really do to stop this from happening, but it doesn't mean I'm not worried about it.

We're scheduled to start returning to more or less business as usual in August in general. I just hope it isn't too soon, or we'll have a second wave in the fall.

Gladius: How to Chaos Space Marines

So far, I've thoroughly enjoyed playing Gladius: Relics of War with all factions, and although the Imperial Guard remains my favorite, Chaos has probably been the most fun so far. Since there isn't a lot of documentation out there on Chaos in Gladius, I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts and go through the various units.

Chaos Basics

To be very brief, Chaos plays like a more mêlée-oriented and expansionist Space Marines, with less vehicles but more special rules.

You start the game with two kinds of units: Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Cultists. The Chaos Marines are effectively the same as loyalist Tactical Marines, but like most of your infantry, they have the Champion of Chaos trait. This means that whenever they destroy an enemy unit, they can gain a Boon. These are unlocked in the research tree: they're temporary bonuses to the unit, or at higher levels, permanent bonuses. There's also a very small chance that the unit will turn into a Daemon Prince - or a Chaos Spawn! You can also give most infantry Marks of Chaos once you research them; they're small permanent bonuses that can later be augmented by Icons.

The Cultists are the same unit as the neutrals you'll have encountered a million times if you've played any other faction. As a player unit, they're about as useful as Guardsmen and their flashlights, but with one key difference: they found new cities. Because they're cheap and available from Turn 1, this means you can expand obscenely quickly. If you've ever listened to any heavy metal at all, you can also easily come up with an infinite variety of city names. I don't think you can do Civ-style infinite urban sprawl in Gladius (although I've never tried it!), but building a second city fairly quickly seems like good practice. It's worth noting that whereas loyalist Marines simplify the game's economy quite a bit, Chaos uses all the various resources, so new cities are also very attractive if they can offset a resource shortage in your capital. Because Chaos has lots of high-quality infantry, food is important. Just remember to watch your cities' loyalty!

A final point regarding cities is rituals. They can be triggered in the city view, and involve sacrificing a unit of population to gain production bonuses. Always do this when a city hits its population cap! The quest will walk you through researching and using these.

The faction quest, by the way, is all right. Be aware that completing the bit that tells you to move a Daemon Prince to a certain hex locks you into the quest finale.

Cast of Characters

Like the other factions, Chaos gets three hero units, and they're all quite good.

The Chaos Lord is apparently based on the guy from Blackstone Fortress, seeing as how he has a thunder hammer and everything. The Chaos Lord doesn't have a lot of hit points to start with, but their close combat attack is devastating; once they get kitted out at a Jokaero outpost and get some levels in their damage reduction ability, they can start performing a similar function to the loyalists' Terminator Chaplain: tanking ridiculous amounts of damage and simply destroying the enemy in close combat. An invaluable unit that I think you should build as fast as possible; if you take a little care to get them leveled up, they are amazing.

The Master of Possession is like a Chaos Librarian, I guess? I'm not familiar with all these innovations. What they do in the game is buff your other units, and their special ability summons a random demonic unit for a couple of turns. A pack of throwaway Warp Talons always comes in handy!

The third character is the Warpsmith, who repairs units and boosts your economy. They have a special attack that's called Mechadendrites, but is confusingly a ranged melta attack? But it's very good against vehicles.

Oh, and then there are Daemon Princes, who I haven't really used. I built the one required for the faction quest, and the abilities looked kinda weird.

Infantry

Chaos has an embarassment of riches when it comes to infantry. I already mentioned the Chaos Space Marines you can build from the start; they're excellent basic infantry in the early game, and with stuff like melta bombs, Marks and so on, they can still be useful later on. However, you'll quickly get access to specialist infantry, namely Berzerkers and Havocs. Berzerkers are obviously close combat specialists, and while they will absolutely destroy non-mêlée infantry, they can also be surprisingly vulnerable. Havocs are basically the same as loyalist Devastator Marines: they pack a hell of a punch at range, but need to be protected from enemy assault troops and vehicles. As with Imperial Guard heavy weapon teams and loyalist Devastators, if you level them up succesfully, they are superb.

The other infantry units are Warp Talons and Obliterators. The first I've only used as disposable summoned units courtesy of my Master of Possession, and I wasn't that thrilled with them; they're basically Assault Marines. Like a lot of other people, I was quite disappointed that we didn't get Chaos Terminators (especially since they featured so prominently in the art!), but I suppose I have to admit that Obliterators fill their role. They're tough, they have power fists, and their shooting cycles between assault cannons and heavy flamers, which can be a little bit annoying at times, but given that their role is to get in the enemy's face and punch it, they make good use of both. Excellent frontline troops for the later game.

Also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention everyone's favorite gribblies: the Chaos Spawn! They're Chaos's fast recon unit, and you never have to build them: you get a free unit from the faction quest, and your Master of Possession gets an ability where they can turn enemy units they kill into Spawn. Like comparable units in other factions, they're useful in the early game, but struggle to hold their own against more advanced units. Then again, you got them for free, so who cares?

Vehicles

I have to admit straight up that I haven't used some of the vehicles at all, starting with the Rhino. Rhinos full of Berzerkers is an honorable tradition, to be sure, and you can research Dirge Casters which let them nullify Overwatch, but I haven't tried it. The same goes for the Venomcrawler, which is an innovation I disapprove of anyway. It also seems very similar to the Maulerfiend, which you can research earlier. I built a few and my Master of Possession summoned one; they didn't get a lot done and felt a bit fragile.

Luckily you can get Helbrütes Chaos Dreadnoughts fairly early on, and they're worth it, too. The Reaper autocannon isn't great, but the dread can take some damage and get stuff done in close combat as well. The problem is that if it takes enough damage, it goes into Fire Frenzy where frankly, its shooting is still kinda useless, but it also won't move. I feel like they could have done better with this mechanic, as it usually just leads to the dread being destroyed. It's still a decent unit in the sort of of early-mid game.

Ideally, you want to replace it with the enemy crab, our good friend the Defiler. Another weird loadout, as it has a battlecannon and lascannon which are Range 3, and power fist equivalents for close combat. It's the closest thing Chaos has to a proper tank, though, unless you buy the Assault Pack to get Land Raiders (I did). Deffy is the opposite of the Dreadnought in that it has proper shooting and a bonus close combat ability, and I've found them very useful.

Finally, the Chaos flyer is the Heldrake, which is surprisingly tough and quite strong against enemy flyers. Delightfully, your Master of Possession will sometimes summon one; because it's actually quite resilient, a temporary Heldrake makes for a great blocking unit to annoy and slow down your opponent. I'm still mystified there isn't a Chaos bomber.

**

That's it, I guess! I've found playing Chaos to be great fun, so I highly recommend getting the DLC. Remember to give everyone Marks and Icons, trigger the city rituals when they reach their population caps and look after your Lords and Havocs. I've beaten the game with Chaos several times now, so I'm going to up the difficulty level and see what I can get done. I may also need to get myself a Defiler...

I should say that I'm absolutely delighted that the Assault Pack added the Land Raider for Chaos. I hope there are more DLCs coming, because I'd definitely like to see some demons! Still, though, I feel like I need to repeat myself: Gladius is just a tremendously good game in general, and one of the best Warhammer video games ever.

Let's Read Tolkien 70: The Houses of Healing

A mist was in Merry's eyes of tears and weariness when they drew near the ruined Gate of Minas Tirith.

Merry staggers into the city with Théoden's bier, but gets lost and collapses somewhere. Luckily Pippin finds him and gets word to the Houses of Healing, and Gandalf comes down to find them. Merry is taken to Minas Tirith's lazaret, where he, Faramir and Éowyn are struggling to recover from the Nazgûl. Ioreth, oldest of the healers, complains that if only there was a king, maybe he could heal them: Gandalf immediately fetches Aragorn.

Strider has decided to make camp outside the city, and has declined to claim the throne; Faramir is still officially Steward. He comes to the Houses of Healing, and after an altercation with an overly learned but useless herb-master, some athelas is finally found, and he gets to work reviving the wraith-casualties. Once they're done, he heads out into the city with the sons of Elrond, healing people as best they can.

**

This is a great little chapter. Everybody gets some really good character stuff, especially Aragorn, who has some of the best lines in the whole book here.

The postmortem on Edoras is very good as well. When Aragorn is treating Éowyn, he and Gandalf very patiently explain to Éomer how she, too, suffered terribly from Saruman's corruption of Théoden's court, but because of patriarchy, she suffered far more.

"My friend," said Gandalf, "you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on."

But go on, do tell me more about how Tolkien hated women.

The delightful episode with the herbalist harks back to Aragorn's first conversation with Éomer, where one of Éomer's Riders scoffed at fairy-tales. Both Gandalf and Aragorn praise Ioreth and name her wise-woman, because she remembers the old lore, while the useless herb-master has a great memory for names and rhymes, but understands nothing of them. Seeing as how Tolkien was an academic and a philologist, it seems impossible to not read this as a commentary on his own discipline at its worst: minutely cataloguing words and their appearances, while completely losing touch with the tradition they lived in, and in the end being completely useless.

The great theme of this chapter is, of course, Aragorn's kingship. He did the thing with the athelas at Weathertop already, and here he effectively uses it to prove to the people of Gondor that he's really the king. It's never entirely clear if the herb actually has special powers when used by him, though, or if he's just putting ranger herb-lore into action. I referred earlier to the History of Middle-earth books, which tell us that Tolkien at one point planned for Aragorn and Boromir to contest the rule of Gondor. It would have been interesting to see how Tolkien would have contrasted the two as prospective rulers. Certainly it's difficult to see Boromir going around the city at night healing people.

One of the points that Tolkien made with his analogy of Beowulf as a tower and in Aragorn's destruction of the herb-master was that language and stories are living things, not incomprehensible dead monuments. With that in mind, enjoy this outstanding quote from Ioreth, wise-woman of Gondor.

"Well now! Who would have believed it?" said Ioreth to a woman that stood beside her. "The weed is better than I thought. It reminds me of the roses of Imloth Melui when I was a lass, and no king could ask for better."

Weed fit for a king, indeed.

**

Next time: a board meeting.