Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord - A new front

Once again, we find ourselves rebuilding!

It's been a while since we had our butts handed to us, so we find ourselves rebuilding our army again for the first time in many sessions.

Last episode, we managed to break out of prison and run up to our only other city that we own - Lageta... but we did so with an army hot on our heels.

So, just before they set siege, we make a mad break for freedom.

It's a perilous time for our stalwart Bannerlord, one city lost, another under siege, and no high level units in our entire party. We haven't had to be this careful in quite some time.

We return to our cultural homelands, since if we're replacing our army anyhow, we may as well snag some great future cavalry.

While bouncing around, we spot a pair of our armies setting siege to Ortysia, and, I mean... we can't miss a chance to try and re-take this so of course we pitch in.

With such a low garrison as they had (180-ish troops), the city predictably falls back into our hands. This lets me bring in something like 60+ troops that we spared from their dungeon, which is great - and we're able to upgrade 57 of our existing batch. Not bad!

We rest up in Ortysia for a bit, clearing some inventory and such before taking another look at our parties. Varic is still going strong for now, but Boscoric got trounced and needs to be re-created as we're trying to keep 2-3 companions running their own parties now.

We will need experienced generals if we decide to actually make a go of a solo kingdom, and there's only one way to get that to happen.

They have to lead.

We also need to return our scattered companions to our party.

And of course, we have to vote for ourselves as the Re-Re-Re-Owner of Ortysia. Hopefully we can hang onto it this time.

! [Spoiler]

With our city back in our hands (for now at least), we set back out to slap the Western Empire around. If we're going to win this, we need to start taking some of their generals out of the fight.

Starting with this guy. Nemos, you've got brass balls to tell me that your battle prowess is second to none.

Let's test that theory.

Nemos, I'm gonna be honest here. I'm having trouble believing that you're "second to none" when your army only managed to down 8 of my troops.

Perhaps some time as a prisoner will change your tune.

We add a couple more generals to our prisoner ranks as the fighting west of Lageta continues. Our forces are sieging the castle while I mop up stragglers as they work up the courage to scout over this way.

When the castle falls, we move on to continue to harry the enemy and, despite having been at war with them not long ago - we throw our party in with some neutral Battanians fighting the Empire. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?

All of this though is minor and fleeting gains. Enemy armies are still holding the field near Lageta, and I spy an army moving south towards Ortysia... not good news for us.

Sure enough, they do exactly as I expected and head right down to Ortysia. At first, it's just the one army and that's not so bad - I can counter one force with my own army and my city's garrison force.

But then, of course... a second army joins and now things aren't looking so good for us.

We do have an ally army on the way, so that's nice... but we've been at war for so long and many of our generals are in Western Empire prisons or - like me - rebuilding their forces... so even though we have a numerical advantage...

The balance of power still lies with them.

Though we do give it our all!

We manage to take 38 soldiers out before going down ourselves, which is pretty good, honestly.

We simply can't keep taking losses like this though, so it's time for me to suggest peace. We need to recoup, and, we need our generals out of prison.

23 generals sitting in prison is what's killing us, and the only way we're going to survive right now is by getting them out. We need to rebuild, before we can take the Western Empire back on.

And so, we get a reprieve from war, an our generals get a bit of time to... wait.

What's this?!