Tuesday, July 26, 2022

TABS Battle of the Five Armies

Is it bad that a fifty year old man uses his son's computer game to recreate the Battle of five Armies?
TABS is a computer strategy game where you can design units to fight in various landscapes. You start with a basic body to which you can add style options, like clothes and armour. Once you have chosen clothes/equipment, you can colour it. Very useful for black armoured Orcs. You can then select weapons and any special abilities you wish your units to have.

After you have styled and outfitted your warrior, you can then tweak his basic stats to make him tougher or faster etc. You can even change his voice which is a great touch. So in this way you can tailor make units and characters to fit any warrior from history or fantasy. You can even adjust their height which is useful for Trolls and small Goblins.

Well bad or not, I had great fun creating and designing the different troop types. These included Wood Elves, Dwarves and numerous types of Goblin. 
A Dwarf of the Iron hills leaps into combat with his trusty mattock.
Face to face with evil.
Orcs and larger Hobgoblins wade in. A huge Troll roars in the background. My Trolls ended up looking more like Morgoth as the helmet used had a crown on. I'll have to tweak that 

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A Dwarf Captain falls, finally succumbing to his wounds.

King Dain becomes a target for Goblin archers, but fights on.

Dain takes no prisoners in his battle frenzy.
Orcs advance.
Iron hills Dwarves fight to the death.
Small Goblin archers proved to be the death of many a brave soul.

Elven spearman charge the black hordes of Sauron.
An Elven Captain slays many a foe in his rage.
Elves and Dwarves fight back to back as their numbers begin to dwindle.

Men of Dale charge into the Goblin horde.
More Goblins climb down from the mountain after finding secret paths. The Elven flank starts to Buckle under the pressure.

The Elves try to hold out but the numbers are just too much.  I gave them the ability to dodge melee blows, but the arrow fire was relentless.
Hobgoblins and Orcs climb over the slain.
Man, Elf and Dwarf bodies start to pile up with the constant arrow showers. For the forces of Dale I used the Vikings from the actual game.

Where is Beorn? Well, he didn't show up, neither did the Eagles come to that. The day ended very differently without their help.
Mighty Trolls hammered the last of the survivors until non were left alive.

I'm going to need to create some more characters it seems, I had an excellent time with this game, simple graphics but loads of fun. I was surprised just how much detail I could put into the characters with all the styling options.



 

2 comments:

NCC1717 said...

Quite an artistic result. I'm reminded of some of the graphics in the 1977 movie "Wizards":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_(film)

Secundus said...

Haha yes, must be the high contrast between the characters and the brightly coloured background.