Seminar For Low-Level Gangs

“Is this microphone working? Ah, excellent. My name is Professor S. Claw and I would like to thank you all for attending my seminar on Tactical Planning to Prevent Heroic Incursion and Subsequent Incarceration. In this workshop we shall be covering the things you, as low level enemy types, should be doing every time you set up a base of operations, whether it is in a chic office building or a network of caves.

“The first thing you will want to do is ensure the front door is guarded, both externally and internally at all times. An unguarded entrance is to a hero what a girl with no curfew is to her prom date. I would also strongly advise setting up an alarm system that triggers the moment the door is opened. Surely, all of you can see how foolish it would be to not only leave the front door unguarded, but to actually give the heroes a fifty or sixty yard cushion in which to organize, buff and summon pets.

“Gentlemen, if you’re going to do something like that you may as well put all your glowies just outside the door.

“Speaking of which; I strongly advise doing something about the placement and detection of your loot. The watch word I want you all to memorize is camouflage! People, if your hideout is in a cave a desk with a computer on it is likely to be noticed. Likewise, your average office building with computers and desks will not often sport an ancient stone altar covered in magical runes. Camouflage people! The moment you put your Liquid Computer, Oxygen Destroyer, Vault Buster or what-have-you into a container that container is going to glow and make that annoying Waa-waa sound.

“Camouflage! You want to confuse the heck out of those heroes?! Get a sound system or even just a boombox; put one in EVERY room of your base! Don’t have it playing music, though… You hear me Hellions?! NO MUSIC! Instead… have every blessed one of ‘em looping that Waa-waa noise. If your invading heroes aren’t petitioning within the first ten minutes of the mission, I’ll eat my hat. As for the glowing aspect of your new containment spot; no worries… I suggest replacing every normal lightbulb in your base with strobe lights.

“Between the lights and the sounds you MAY experience some minor headache discomfort. In such event I strongly advise Advil Ibuprofin products; a company which I have recently purchased stock.

“Ahem, moving right along…

“I am aware that some of you use the methods of patrols and pre-determined ambushes to get a tactical advantage over incursions. These practices are archaic and out-dated. You may get some heroes with them but overall you will find they do nothing more than give more xp to the ones you’re trying to kill. And the last thing you need is some hero level dinging while in your mission. No, instead I suggest using a two pronged method to hero elimination; Stacking and Macking.

“Stacking is simply assuming that every hero that enters your mission is on an eight man team. Macking takes it one step further and assumes that team wants enemies at +4 their normal level. What’s that? You claim that’s cheating? You’re freaking villains! Start acting like it! You don’t seem to mind if a -4 level hero wanders into the wrong part of town when you’re out on the streets… so why should this bother you?

“And if you REALLY want to make a hero feel loved, make sure that every one of your men has a communicator. I don’t care if they’re walkie-talkies or Bluetooth headsets. When one of your men sees a hero he immediately sounds an alarm and gives his coordinates. None of this ‘no worries, guys… I got this one’ bull pucky. This isn’t about scoring rep cred by being the one to take down Captain Frankfurter the first level beef-bean burrito blaster. This is about protecting your base! I don’t care how well slotted he is; a low level tank WILL go down if an entire mission map attacks him at once.

“If you can’t afford a communication system then do the next best thing… put all your men in one room; preferably the room with the thing they’re in there for in the first place. Speaking of resource allocation, try not to be completely bone-headed (no offense to you Skulls) about how you set up your teams. It’s all well and good to put out a large team of minions together but if every last one of them is blind as a bat and dumb as a pile of bricks, yes Vahzilok I’m looking at you, then you MAY just want to seed a few actual LIVING minions in with every spawn. Oh, and another thing, Vahzilok, so long as we’re on the subject, how about strapping those explosive devices to an ENTRANCE DOOR or an ELEVATOR instead of ONE OF YOUR OWN FREAKING MEN!?

“Just sayin’…

“Now, on to the subject of kidnap victims… If you are kidnapping a person for the purposes of killing them… Then… Just…. KILL THEM! Don’t invite them up for tea and a nice spot of conversation pip-pip cheerio and all that rot. Oh, Reginald, we ARE going to kill you old chap, but there’s no need to be beastly about all this spot of bad business. Please, tell us all about the wife and family first, has Reggie Jr. got that scholarship to Princeton yet?

“Kill them. KILL THEM! Don’t even bother bringing them back to your base; slaughter ‘em in the street! If you’re bringing them in for interrogation then get on with it! Answer this… have any of you… any of you at all… ever had a hero burst in on you with your victim strapped to a chair with most of his fingers missing and/or broken? How about doped up on sodium pentathol? No? Tied up or bound in any way at all? Have any of your victims ever suffered so much as a nasty paper cut?

“Sad. It’s plain grade-A sad that you call yourselves villains. I’ve got news for you people; kidnap victims generally won’t give you the information you want if the worst threat you can level at them is to stop asking politely. But hey, it’s a teen rated game so the worst language they can expect is an occasional ‘darn it all’…

“But say the heroes aren’t there to rescue someone or to find a glowing piece of something Azuria, let’s face it, really should have been guarding better. What if they’re there to take down your leader? I have one small suggestion… simple really… I’m surprised you haven’t thought of it yourself. Have every leader… every last one… be Arch-Villain level. That’s it… Every Bone Daddy, every Darned… excuse me… Damned… be a full-out AV. Why not? Why be just a boss or, even worse, a measly Lieutenant? Wait, you say that the difficulty settings the heroes choose determine how strong your leaders are?

“Let me get this straight… you’re going to have a weak leader because the heroes ASKED you to?

“Ahem… Villain… a noun… A cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel. Nope, I don’t see ‘pansy’ anywhere in that description.

“Finally, my last piece of advice for the evening. If you can’t afford a communication system… If you can’t bring yourself to torture your abductees, hide your loot more effectively or even front load all your men into the entry room… If you don’t listen to a single other thing I have suggested tonight… then please… for the love of evil… listen to this…

“Buy a police radio.

“They sell them cheap at Radio Shack, people! You can KNOW when the heroes are likely to show up on your doorstep! If you hear your names mentioned on the police band you know you have a one in three shot of having a visitor sometime in the near future. You don’t want to fight the heroes? You don’t want to cheat to win over them? Leave! You’ll have advance warning they’re on their way! Just evacuate the whole map! Go next door and laugh your collective hineys off when the heroes come out of the warehouse you were just in scratching their heads and hoping to get the Bug Hunter badge.

“I would like to thank you all for your time. It has been a pleasure speaking here tonight and it is my firmly held belief that if you adhere to the guidelines I have suggested we won’t see another single hero reach 10th level for the remaining existence of the game. Thank you and good night.”

Professor S. Claw leaves the podium to stony silence, looking a bit put-out at the lack of response from the crowd. The silence continues for a few minutes until one Skull reaches up to pull the IPod earpiece from his ear.

“Is he done?” he asks, looking around. “I wasn’t listening… anyone got some notes I can copy down for my boss?”

A Vahzilok blinks and pulls out his ear piece as well. “Nope, I didn’t… I was listening to my Christian Rock collection.”

One by one the others all confirm that they were all listening to their music and/or texting friends during the entire presentation.

“Didn’t ANYONE think to take notes?”

A Troll raises his hand, forgetting to pull it back down once he was speaking. “Me tell Gronk to take notes. Me tell Gronk to not listen to music.”

Gronk stands up. “Gronk no listen to music. Gronk listen to man. Man not good to listen to. Gronk’s head hurt now.”

The original Skull rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, sucks being you. Did you write down everything he said?”

“Gronk write it all.”

“Great!” Several of them clap Gronk on the back with wide smiles. “So what do your notes say?”

“Me no know,” Gronk says, holding up the paper to peer at it. “Gronk no can read.”

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My mind wanders so often you've probably seen its picture on milk cartons. - Me... the first person version of the third person Steelclaw

First after Steelclaw!

(But seriously, quite funny as always!!)

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I would advise most gangs to "quit standing around and lock the door."



"Guys, it's locked, what do we do?"

"Petition it, lets do a diff mish"



Success.

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A+ for the christian rock.

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~union4lyfe~

I lol'd
And damnit all, you've given me ideas for AE now XD

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