He moved his finger to a sketch of a chainmail-clad knight. “The Templar. Cost: 40 gold. Armour: a staggering 5. He can take an arrow to the chest and barely grunt. But look here—” he tapped a footnote, “—his attack speed is glacial. One swing per 48 frames of combat.”
Al-Rashid pointed to a column of tiny numbers beside a drawing of a hooded figure. “The Assassin. Speed: 18. Attack power: 40. Hit points: 50. The Lord’s Swordman, by comparison, has a speed of only 12, attack power of 35, but a robust 120 hit points.”
He unrolled a second, blood-stained sheet. “Maceman. Cost: 20 gold. Attack: 25 (crushing type, ignores 2 points of armour). Speed: 14. He’s weak against arrows. But against a slow, armoured Templar? He lands three hits for every one of the knight’s. It’s not power that wins. It’s frames .”
The Emir chuckled. “So? My Hashishin will stab him in the back before he raises his sword.”
And that night, the siege began not with a horn, but with a multiplication table.
Al-Rashid shook his head. “No, my lord. It is won by a scribe who knows that a Horse Archer has a range of 8, a speed of 22, and the hit-and-run logic of a wasp. It is won by remembering that a Slave has only 20 hit points but costs a mere 2 gold—meaning a wave of 100 slaves is mathematically superior to 10 Swordsmen, even if every single slave dies.”