Vassalizing the strongest faction in the game, just by gifting a settlement to them. I just hoped to get out a peace treaty, but I got a whole unconditional surrender.
I even got to gain more money from Greasus tribute, than if I had kept the Black Fortress.
And 3/4 years since they came to the platform.
It was on chapter 21 of the first book. I was readind the part in which they are in Xak Tsaroth, trying to get into Khisanth's lair. Only to discover that the plan has failed, and Raistlin is trapped under her claws. And just then we get a moment into his mind to see his inner thoughts, and how there is another misterious voice influencing him that appears everytime he is in a near death situation. Enhancing the mystery and appeal of Raistlin as a character, and making you wonder more at what exactly happened to him in his trials to become as powerful yet emaciated as he is.
Only for the anotation just next to said paragraph, to immediately reveal it was the voice of Fistandatilus. An evil archmage from the past mentioned in some passages before, that apparently made a deal with Raistlin to share their life essence. Revealing the mystery of what had happened on the Tower of High Sorcery during his trial, on the worst way possible.
I haven't read much beyond that yet, but this isn't the first instance of the annotations revealing stuff that will happen later on the story. Most of the time it's just small worldbuilding details, so it doesn't really matter, but other times are things almost as egregious as this.
I'm liking it as a light, classic high fantasy story. And I get that special editions like this are made more aimed to already stablished fans familiar with the material. But seriously, I wished Weiss, Hickman and the rest of the team editing these books were more careful on what they talk about on the annotations, and at what point in the story these will be included.
Because I have seen this being discussed a lot, but no precise examples of that happening. The Retcon Punch is basically him altering reality by punching the barriers between dimensions. He has fought people on the level of Dr. Manhattan, but he isn't Dr. Manhattan. He certainly can alter reality and time in some ways, but I haven't seen examples of him that high level of capabilty.
And even on the cases that could be argued, they all happened in the middle of a Crisis event, where reality was already naturally malleable, and there were timelines and dimensions popping in and out all the time outside of his actions.
The firs time it happened, the whole of reality changing was just an unintended side effect of him breaking through the barriers between dimensions. And even when this happened against specific people, it's not like he still has a very clear understanding of how he is capable of doing it or what exactly he is changing.
Heck. Even when he used it against the Darkest Knight and "beat" him, only thing he achieved was debilitating him on a tie-in issue, to give the rest of the heroes a chance to defeat him on the main event. After that clash, Superboy Prime had apparently "died", only to reappear good as new on his own reality.
So I assume the Retcon Punch could work on Sentry. Probably debilitating him. But against an opponent of that level, it will probably have a huge drawback, it's not completely clear it will be enough to beat him given Sentry's own minor reality manipulation abilities, and it isn't even clear he can change anything important enough in Bob's past as to make him win the fight.
Given that my artillery has a range advantage on theirs, I tried to cheese it a little bit. By hiding the rest of my army while I distracted their artillery with my flying units, and took their pieces out one by one with my own artillery.
But I don't do damage fast enough beyond taking 1 Dreadquake Mortar out, before their reinforcements start arriving. So they start advancing on my position. Which forces me to take my army out, while there are still 2 others Dreadquakes actively decimating my lines. Made worse by the fact that those are precisely hidden in that forest at the left of enemy flank (that one south on the map, just in the center), so the trees protect them from my own artillery, while they still fire at me without impeding their own projectiles.
I have a very good defensible position, but that means little when we are talking about Chaos Dwarf artillery. I also tried to rush them, but that didn't work that well either. And I know I probably don't have the best possible units to deal with this, but so far, I had been able to take out several Chaos Dwarf armies (even if I had to manually fight a lot of them) with this and other armies of a very similar composition.
Edit: I finally won this battle. Going around with the Great Moon Bird was useful for a while, but the Dreadquake Mortars didn't get to expend all of their ammunition before the army started advancing on me. It was more useful to have my artillery pounding their infantry, and then move it back when they got up the hill.
The rest of my army, I hid in the 3 forests around my starting position. The tigers with my lord and mage on the ones on the sides, and my crossbows and my halberds on that forest inside the L shape at the end. Beyond a unit of goblin wolf archers and one of the war machines, the rest of the Chaos Dwarf army advanced through the wider entrance of the slop, so I basically had them surrounded.
Lost most of my army on the process. Was only left with my lord, mage, the bird and the crossbowmen. But I won the battle, and destroyed all of their war machines and artillery on the process, since they all had unbreakable. My mage was Lore of Shadows, so it was very useful to have all enemy infantry grouped together while I casted the pendulum and black hole spell on repeat. The artillery still did quite a bit of damage, but not so much as it would had done if it hadn't wasted a good bit of ammunition at the start on my Great Moon Bird.
Beyond that, their most dangerous units was surprisingly the Hobgoblin Archers with those dam flaming arrows. It shows how a low level unit with a very high rank, can't be a pretty good one. So I had to focus more of my spells on them, and thankfully, being goblin archers with no armour, tended to melt and rout very easily.
And the end of the day, what helped me pull to the end, was my lord being so high level compared to the enemy ones. And that my artillery was still active to focus fire the war machines when they were the only enemy units left on the field.
