Introduction

Welcome back to another Turbo_Noob report. The game this time, is Shiny's Sacrifice. A unique RTS game set in a mythological world ruled by five gods: Pyro god of fire, Stratos god of air, Persephone god of nature, James god of earth, and Charnel god of death. These make up the "races" of the game, deciding which spells and troops you work with to crush your enemies. And while the single player campaign allows you to mix and match these traits (I.E taking some Stratos and some Pyro units with you), in multiplayer you are only allowed to choose one patron god.

Sacrifice is one of those games that had spunk and style but just didn't make it in the gaming world. But that's not to say it isn't awesome, because this is easily one of my top 5 games ever, and it's a refreshing change of pace from the bread and butter top-down RTS games. Better yet, since you can't find it in stores anymore, it's legally downloadable from Home of the Underdogs' website. But unfortunately it doesn't come with a CD-key for online play. But unless you're planning on downloading it and playing the tutorial before you read the rest of the report, it's going to take some hand holding to know what's going on during the report.

Game Rules

In Sacrifice you control your armies via a commander-avatar called a mystic, whom you walk around with GTA-style in the third person. Your mystic is your barracks, warmill, caster, hero, and peon all at the same time. How does he accomplish this? Magic. You're mystic has spells for summoning your army, collecting resources, fighting, enchanting, and constructing buildings. As you cast these your character will gain levels, opening up new spells types for you to play with much like Warcraft 3's hero system.

Your mystic's spells are divided into three tabs: creature, magic, and structure to accomplish anything you desire. The creature genre spawns units for souls and mana (more on that later), the magic spells are your average ability-for-mana tradeoffs, and structure spells allow you to build up your base, also for mana. Mana comes in plain old gauge form, but unlike other games it doesn't refill automatically. You must build manaliths ontop of mana nodes in the fashion of vespene geysers and be in proximity to them to recharge your mana, but you can also summon creatures called manahoars to siphon the mana to you from long range, as long as they're alive you'll keep getting mana.

The notorious Manahoar

Souls are the other resource in sacrifice, and are gained by killing villagers and your opponent's creatures. Every time something dies it gives up how ever many souls it cost to make, and if it was your creature you can just grab them off the ground, but if it was an enemy or neutral creature, you must convert it first. Converting a soul spawns a little sac-doctor that will tediously carry the soul back to your base to convert it into a soul for yourself, a slow process which can be interrupted at any time by attacking the doctor, making the gathering of new souls for your army some risky business. But outnumbering your opponent is the easiest way to victory, and so you have to fight hard to keep your souls out of the enemy's hands while stealing his/her own.

Bases in Sacrifice are small and spread out, consisting only of your altar, manaliths, and possibly a shrine (which you build over a destroyed enemy altar) making the game more about trying to control the map then getting a perfect build order or countering your opponent's soldiers. Mananodes are basically expansions for mana, but you can link creatures to any of your manaliths/altars via the guardian spell, which also beefs that creature up and forces it to stay in a radius around the guarded structure. But guardians rarely win fights by themselves, so they really serve only to stall the enemy until you get to the base by walking, or the teleport spell which works exactly like the Archmage's ultimate in Warcraft 3.

Structure Spells: (Every race has these)

Manalith: Summons a manalith on top of an empty mana node.

Guardian: Links a creature to a manalith or altar, also gives it stat boosts.

Convert: Summons a sac-doctor to carry an enemy soul off to your altar to turn it to your side.

Desecrate: Sacrifices one of your units at an enemy altar, spawns a lightning wisp that deals constant damage to the mystic while the ritual is held. If mystic dies during ritual he/she loses. Killing a sac-doctor interrupts the ritual.

Teleport: Teleports you and all your surrounding units to designated allied/controlled structure.

Shrine: Builds another altar on a desecrated enemy altar, serves same purposes as an altar.

And finally, to win Sacrifice you must desecrate your opponent's altar. This is done by running your forces up to the altar and sacrificing one of your creatures, a ritual then begins at the altar where sac-doctors dance around the sacrifice causing damage to the enemy mystic over time. If the enemy mystic dies while the ritual is going on then they lose, but it only takes killing one sac-doctor to interrupt the ritual. Dying while no desecration is taking place at your altar will just turn you into a ghost, forcing you to run to the nearest manalith or altar to regenerate.

And that's all you need to know to play Sacrifice. Now I'd like to introduce to you someone, or something, I love very much. His name is Snappy Mcgiggles.

Introducing The Mystical Snappy Mcgiggles

As you examine the creature above you might be wondering what the hell Shiny was smoking. But nay, no mere herbal hallucinate was the cause of this wonder, for the genesis of Snappy Mcgiggles was none other then an orgy. This orgy took place in the well-known land of Middle Earth, because after the 9-hour trilogy the entire population got so excited they decided to experiment with group sex. There, one of the giant eagles, a hobbit, and a walrus impregnated a wizard in a sweaty gridlock of feathers and mass-confusion. Nine months later, out came Snappy.

But the people of Middle Earth shunned Snappy for his bizzare visage, and wouldn't let him sit at any of their lunch tables. So he took his wand, donned his neon green shirt, and decided to move to a place with creatures so stupid-looking he would be considered a super model next to them. That land, was Sacrifice.

Now, several years later, Snappy is casting and summoning with the best of mystics, finding himself in new deathmatches everyday. Sometimes it's a 1v1, sometimes it's an FFA, whatever the case Snappy is always ready to give it his best shot. And some nights, if you listen closely, you can hear him hopping towards his next skirmish.

Game One: Showdowns and Centaurs

The map High Noon. Blue funnels represent mananodes.

For the first game I will be introducing the 1 on 1, on the map High Noon. Unfortunately I can't get online, and even if I could I doubt anyone still plays so I'm forced to test my mettle against the A.I. It is between me (Snappy) leading the armies of Pyro (fire/destruction, or as he likes to call it "progress") against Mortekai with the legions of Charnel (Death/Slaughter). Mortekai, by the way, is a centaur, and not to mention the last of them. So after I banish him from this realm I will effectively have run a species into exctinction. The game hasn't even started yet and the score is already Turbo_Noob 1 Green Peace 0, damn I'm good.

Anyways, here is my spell list as a level 1 Pyro mystic:

Creatures: (Every race has three level 1 creatures: melee, ranged, and air)

Cog: A living mechanical cog with two hammers attatched to its head. It spins into enemies, dicing them apart. Once killed it will explode in a shower of steam.

Flame Minion: My basic ranged unit, uses a flamethrower. It also has the ability to speed up for a short period of time but I've seldom used it.

Spitfire: Pyro's base flying creature that does area effect damage, meaning it attacks areas not individual targets.

Spells: (Everyone also starts off with haste and heal spells)

Fireball: Pyro's base damage spell, does heavy damage to a single target.

At the start of the game I was given six souls and the [2] position, nearby was my natural mananode and three villagers. I summoned two manahoars then two cogs and started laying into the nearby villagers. I had to get a majority of souls and map control fast, as Sacrifice is more like Command and Conquer then Starcraft where you have to get a good headstart or the rest of the game is hell.

My two cogs smash a helpless villager to the right while his friend cowers to the left. Rightmost villager is blocked by cogs but you can still see the tell-tale brown triangle.

The massacre continued over the three petrified locals as I took the mananode in the center of this village/altar/mananode hybrid, slowly raising the manalith as the cogs continued hammering peasents in the background. After securing the manalith I summoned two Flame Minions for support, using up the last of my original souls. And as the sac-doctors went to work converting the dead villagers I could see two rush-preventing taurocks in the distance, waiting idly for me to try to get past them. And confident with the odds of 5-on-2, I did.

At first I attempted to reach back into my brief MMORPG phase for insight on how to pull MOBs, but I'd been away too long from the halls of Everquest and quickly found myself enganging two taurocks at once. It turns out 5-on-2 odds aren't that great if the 2 are bulls made out of rock and the 5 need to rely on two evil dradles as tanks. Instead of the shower of fireballs I was accustomed to throwing I was forced to constantly heal my Cogs, but the Taurocks still managed to break one and severely damage the other before going down.

Two Taurocks beat on my Cogs while offscreen Flame Minions try to burn them longrange.

After the brief skirmish I collected the soul of the dead Cog and found that my sac-doctors had converted two of the villagers during the fight, bringing my total to 3. I used two on Cogs, one to replace the fallen and one for a better frontline, and the third was opted for a Spitfire. If you're keeping score at home this leaves me with 3 Cogs, 2 Flame Minions, and 1 Spitfire. Also, The Taurocks each had 2 souls, and after the conversion of the remaining villager as well as the Taurocks I would find myself with 7 fresh souls to spend.

But I had more important matters then counting my ethereal booty to attend to, for as I neared the center mananode I found Mortekai there waiting for me with a host of Charnel units at his side. He manarushed me, and unless I could break his hold on the middle node he would soon backtrack and take his own nodes/villagers, and that my friends spells trouble. With a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for maP control.

Battle Map 2k5.
Red x= Taurock fight | Red O= Village Slaughter
Red Arrow= Plan of Attack | Green X= Mortekai's Position
Green Arrow= Mortekai's Suspected Rush Line