I know from the stats that not too many are reading these posts, and from the lack of comments that there’s not much interest in talking about this series.  But I have to assume a chunk of you are still watching Kingdom, because really – why drop it now?  It’s certainly very much the same series – it does the same things well, and if anything the production quality has ticked up a level or two.  I guess there’s a certain fatigue factor with a show like this, one which is a series of narrative marathons with almost no sprints.

How do you take out an elephant brigade without an elf on on your side?  Well, the elephants are really all about the shock and awe factor here.  And as always, the play is to go after the passengers, not the beasts themselves.  But they’re really just a distraction, meant to allow Wa Lin to move her massive army into a position surrounding Teng’s own.  He retreats into a turtle shell of a defensive formation, leaving his forward armies hanging out to dry, but realizes that’s at best a delaying tactic.  Desperate times call for boldness, and Teng makes a bold move in promoting a couple of youngsters (albeit with the ultimate in Qin military bloodlines) to command his flanks.

That episode title didn’t refer to Xin then, but his two great rivals Wang Ben and Meng Tian.  And great minds think alike here, literally – they adopt the same strategy with their cavalry, looping around to hit the Wa Lin armies from the rear.  Qin isn’t going to win this without taking some big risks, and Teng has always seemed anything but a conservative general.  His quick thinking and the way the kids rewarded his faith buys some time on the battlefield, but at the Hangu Pass itself things are taking a turn for the worse.

The early biological warfare is just starting to impact the defenders as Wu Feng Ming brings out his big guns – literally.  His ballista brigade is all about giving his army a handhold on the walls, which it does – and his siege tower soon follows.  Everything is in the hands of the bandit king, Huan Yi – still much loathed by the old guard, but seemingly the only one on the walls with the kind of boldness and fearlessness that’s going to be needed to defeat odds as long as the ones Qin is facing.