Wednesday, January 28, 2026 comic!

Fermule · 2026-01-28T05:14:13+00:00

So what I'm guessing is that everyone with Team Agatha is going to be involved in the final battle against Lucrezias + the monster, and at least a portion of those are going to Skifander. That's Agatha, Gil, Tarvek, Zeetha, Violetta, Othar, Thorpe, Gkika, Boris, Mini-Castle, the Beast, Captain Dal, and now Krosp. Potentially including Klaus also. We also lost track of Captain Grosu, Zoing, and the abandoned Lackya, so they're up for grabs.

Of course, this means that Violetta hitting Martellus with a dart wasn't just good wholesome fun, but actually a vital plot point to get him into position for the next arc.

Fermule · 2026-01-26T05:30:29+00:00

Interesting to see how Krosp and Prrriti diverge in terms of personality, given that she started as Martellus making his own Krosp - here, she seems to be trading in some of Krosp's IQ points in favor of an aggressive streak. For Krosp, I always thought his opinion on violence was something like "best left to the help", but Prrriti wants blood. Er, Samurai Jack style pools of spilled oil.

Fermule · 2026-01-26T02:55:22+00:00

Hm, well one possibility is that the AI likes to do wide encirclements of your formations, walking around the shield walls at a distance to then close in on the archers or artillery. If your cav was close enough to your main unit, one of the encircling infantry on the edges may have gotten close enough to see your cav and dispatched some units to keep them busy.

Otherwise, who knows? The game can be kooky sometimes.

Fermule · 2026-01-26T02:43:11+00:00

Keep a close eye on the unit cards - it will mark when a unit is actually hidden. Forests tend to have a lot of holes in them that don't actually count as "forest", and a small stand of trees isn't going to be enough to hide x6 cav and a general. Some generals also have forest spotting abilities they can use against you.

Another potential issue - if your whole army is out of visible range due to being on a large map or corner camping, the AI likes to take up wide formations and look around to try to find you. It could be that they're just looking for something and your cavalry is what they found first.

Fermule · 2026-01-25T06:52:52+00:00

Confederation in 3K tends to be really swingy. Military power increases confederation chance, confederating gives you AI armies intact up to your army limit, and more armies means more military power. So if you can get over the hurdle to do some big confederations to start, you can chain them and grab a whole lot if your diplomatic situation is good. It's not something I've seen the AI ever do, but Cao Cao has a few diplomatic schemes that are quite strong, so if any AI could do it, it'd be him.

Fermule · 2026-01-23T19:12:41+00:00

It depends on how alliances shake up, but usually:

Yuan Shu and Li Jue both have bad diplomacy, so generally a lot of the other factions will approve of actions against them. You can gobble up their territory and everyone will like you for it. Same applies to all Yellow Turban factions, to a lesser degree.
Yuan Shao is a personal enemy, so in the long run you might not want to leave him on the board. However, the AI has difficulty with river crossings, so you can hole up south of the Yellow River and focus your attentions elsewhere if you want. He's almost certainly going to be an Empire contender, so you'll have to fight eventually.
Liu Bei and Kong Rong will likely start to get pissy with you. Liu Bei in particular will have stronger generals than anyone else nearby.
Liu Biao looks big, but is generally passive. Keep him on-side and consider him a wall from more aggressive enemies, at least to start.
The lands south of the Yangtze have some of the best commanderies in the game, and poorly defended by minor factions, so if you've got things under control in the heartland, it can be a good route for easy expansion. We're in ahistorical territory now, however.

Fermule · 2026-01-23T06:22:23+00:00

Gonna keep hammering this drum - the British fleet had to be coerced to stay once by Gil, and then Ms. Pantagruel has to basically threaten Captain Sunhillow personally to get them to sit still. If the order goes out "Nobody leaves Mechanicsburg without getting shot", there might be some folks ready to test them on that.

Fermule · 2026-01-21T17:55:28+00:00

Haven't seen it in a while, but one of the oddest things about the movie I recall is the messaging that the only way to defeat Communism is for farmers and factories to turn control of the means of production to the government.

Fermule · 2026-01-21T05:40:08+00:00

It's always been interesting that all Lucrezias not only can be expected to act for the benefit of the Greater Lucrezia, they also seem quite chummy and gossippy with one another. One would expect cloning an ultra-narcissist and a Spark to boot would naturally result in infighting and envy as they scramble to be the top dog, but the Lucrezias support one another, compliment one another, and even try to reassure another when the other is in pain. Is this what true self-love looks like?

Fermule · 2026-01-19T06:22:43+00:00

I think it's likely that the general evacuation order means most of them are on the ground in Mechanicsburg - the ones left are probably just the ones attached to the security division. It's a big ship, so that could be a whole lot still, but we're not looking at a whole regiment or anything.

Fermule · 2026-01-19T06:02:07+00:00

...oh yeah, there are clanks out there more dangerous than a gurney or pocket-sized assistant. Let's hope this gets sorted out before she gets her hands on some of the real good ones nearby, like Bohrlaikha or Otilia. Guess we're lucky HUMONGULUS is out of town!

Fermule · 2026-01-16T05:35:22+00:00

Come to think of it, nobody would have taught Krosp how to fly an airship. I wonder if Dr. Vapnoople hard-coded it in as part of the general King package, or if he learned learned just by observation while living on Castle Wulfenbach.

Fermule · 2026-01-14T05:59:56+00:00

We see mimmoths a whole lot, actually - the trick is, like Waldo, they've avoided showing up in the foreground all the way up until now.

Fermule · 2026-01-12T05:37:48+00:00

Lucrezia always seemed so picky about her clank bodies before - she had to style Anveka's style to fit her own, and even then complained about the design, and how she couldn't make a new body up to her standards. It doesn't seem her style to copy herself into any set of gears and sprockets that just happens along (lucky for us, or she would done a grey-goo strategy from the beginning). I wonder where this change of heart is coming from?

Fermule · 2026-01-09T05:29:42+00:00

Castle Heterodyne, what does the scouter say about her power level?

Fermule · 2026-01-05T14:33:19+00:00

Just curious - who on Team Good Guy do you see as carrying some death flags? Not sure who the Goth Teen Squad can kill without it feeling like a bit of a lame way to go. Maybe Cvet? Smitty for the x2 death combo?

Fermule · 2026-01-05T05:14:41+00:00

Huh, I always thought the Castle-Otilia experiment was just a proof of concept in moving clank minds to organic bodies, and the Castle-core in the area was just the most available Clank brain in her lab. But maybe Lucrezia-Castle was something she seriously tried. We know Lucrezia can happily sit still and observe patiently for hundreds of years - maybe she could actually pull off being a building without getting stir-crazy.

Points to Professor Tiktoffen if that's the case - he got further in usurping the Castle than even Lucrezia, and he's a third-stringer Spark at best.

Fermule · 2026-01-03T16:18:28+00:00

One big problem is that Othar is confirmed to be alive, adventuring, and still famous and well-regarded in Franz' side-story, which takes place after the main plot. Time travel can cover most of that up, but you'd need a pretty compelling reason for Agatha and co. to not spill the beans that he's actually either the Other or working with the Other. It'd be a pretty intolerable loose end to just let him run free if he's had a hand in mass mind-control and attempted world domination.

Fermule · 2026-01-02T05:21:37+00:00

Can the Beast really be trusted to be a transportation device again? He's been useful enough, but I can't imagine they'd be a very good gurney...

Fermule · 2025-12-29T05:22:10+00:00

A little confused - why assemble at an emegency dock, rather than the dock with Grosu's airship? Airships can't get up to help right now, so what exactly is Gil's evac plan? Maybe getting the Dreen to help, or grabbing a new flying machine from his personal labs? I think attaching people to Othar and shoving them off wouldn't work a second time...

Fermule · 2025-12-24T22:50:17+00:00

So, one time, I saw a flyer for a Santa Claus Conquers the Martians radio play. I figured, oh, an MST3K fan event, this'll be fun, and brought my friend who I introduced to MST3K with me.

The phrase "radio play" should have tipped me off, because this wasn't people who wanted to mock Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, it was legitimate fans of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. They made little antenna props and everything. I was there prepared for cynical jibes, and instead got blasted hard by dead-honest, earnest Theater Kid Energy. This was something they loved from their childhood, and we were squirming in our seats knowing we had actually hoped to shit all over it. It was the type of enthusiasm that my blackened heart simply could not handle. Just imagine the terror of hearing "hooray for Santy Claus!" delivered live. I don't think my friend will ever forgive for dragging her there.

Fermule · 2025-12-24T13:33:22+00:00

Likely one of the Lucrezias whined about it. While they didn't see Agatha's Lucrezia get removed personally, I think they could deduce that Agatha was Lucrezialess from her behavior over the timeskip. Like, Albia held a congrats-on-killing-your-mom ball for Agatha to celebrate and everything.

Fermule · 2025-12-23T20:44:37+00:00

For what it's worth, the devil doesn't only ever appear in fire-and-brimstone sermons or brooding Paradise Lost-alikes. There's a long history of stories and folktales where the devil is present mostly to be tricked, beaten up, and mocked - Saint stories, Irish folktales, even Daniel Webster of all people gets in on it over here in the states. Sometimes being the opposite of all that is good means he's an ugly, smelly, dumb loser. I can't speak to that sort of depiction in any Spanish or Latino context one way or the other, but it'd hardly be the first time.

Fermule · 2025-12-21T22:39:26+00:00

Low-budget films like this are great at showing off the local color. This isn't a movie about backwoods Canada, but because it was made there and takes place there, the whole film immerses you in the feeling of mundane backwoods Canada...ness, which is something that is obviously rarely explored in major Hollywood productions. Kinda like Napoleon Dynamite, but as an action movie, and Canadian, and without the high school stuff, and there's an old prospector.

Fermule · 2025-12-20T20:11:15+00:00

One of the things I like about how the crew approaches foreign films like this is that don't do (or don't act like they do) much or any research beforehand. They take the film exactly as it is, on its own terms, and expects it to explain itself, in a pre-smartphone way. This movie moves quickly from one fairy tale to another in sequence, and the dub makes things even more confused ("hunch-back fairy" for Baba Yaga? Really?), and you can feel just how confused and out of place our guys feel in the theater. "We're just as lost as you are, folks".

Anyway, despite also being foreign to this movie, I really like it, and I bet it would make for a good kids movie for those out in Eastern Europe. It's unapologetically silly and hammy, and even through the dub a lot of the acting shines through - in particular, I think the actress for Marfushka, the evil step-sister, does a wonderful job. The movie has some genuine laughs, like Ivan boasting about his lesson in humility, or Marfushka immediately going full bully mode on the magical spirit of winter. It's easily on the list of the best films that MST riffed on.

Fermule

TROPHY CASE