sprue

Quick update. Played some games with the mosquitos to see how the tactic faired against my friend's Guild. It was a 20 ss match. He drew treasure hunt and I drew assassinate. His list: Sonia Executioner Samael witchling stalker my list: Jones 2 mosquitos 3 bayou gremlins hog whisperer The first turn was very uneventful. I was able to draw my hand but couldn't kill anything due to distance and I couldn't harm anyone with the mosquito because they stayed within range of sonia's ability to counter spells. The second turn was more interesting, I launched a gremlin turned pig at him and he cam forward with the stalker. This time he decided to see what I could do with the mosquitos so his crew left the safety of Sonia's aura. The mosquitos made quick work of Samael and the Executioner but couldn't kill the stalker because of the low casting score they have. It was just bad luck he didn't get fend off the first two attacks. 16 isn't hard to beat. Turn three I got the mosquitos wiped out. Since they all have to stay in close proximity to each other for their trick to work Sonia blasted them away with liberal use of cheating fate plus soulstones. There was no way I could have fended her off even with the joker and all four of the 13's in my hand. She then started pounding away at my gremlins with her remaining spells. Turn four we exchanged blows and I was left with one gremlin, jones, and the hog whisperer, all severely damaged. By turn 5 he had the treasure and was making his way back to his deployment zone, but on turn 6 I finally won the initiative and was able to shoot her dead before he could create a wall of flame and make his escape. My final conclusion is that mosquitos are no where near as deadly as everyone fears. If my opponent had not made the error of leaving sonia's protective aura then he would have made it to my crew in tact and would have started killing my gremlins off. Where I once believed Sonia was the weakest of all the Guild masters I was surprised to see her effectively destroy most of the gremlin crew on her own. The game came down to who won the initiative on the last turn and if I had lost then I would probably have lost the game as well. If I had not gone after the Guild crew with the mosquitos they'd still be alive and able to help put severe damage on his crew but severe damage for a Gremlin or a pig is only 3 and I'd have to deal with an samael and the executioner, one of which would most likely survive and kill them. I'll play another larger game soon and see how it goes then. We had a good time and it was a very close game. I'd like to see some reports from other games involving mosquitos.

what I'd give for one of those, I don't think I'd be able to get them into the country though. Australia is pretty tight on importing animals, even dead ones. I'll just have to frankenstein one.

When doing a demo game it's always better to let the new guy win! Nothing gets someone interested in a game easier than letting them feel like they have a good grasp of the mechanics and game strategies. Once they start playing a little harder you can increase the complexity and competitiveness of your list. It's like training wheels for gamers, you don't want to scare them off before they're confident.

So the selection out here is dismal. It's still very cold and insects are very hard to come by. I did however come across a centipede and a spider. On that subject I'd like to warn any intrepid bug hunters out there to be careful. I am not too knowledgeable on the various poisonous insects of Australia, but my wife was shocked to find I'd brought a white tail into the house! I or my bug sniffing dog could have been hurt so I'd suggest only capturing things you can identify.

I like it. It's a great way to deal with something that you really don't want to get up close and personal with.

He'd be pretty useful in a res or neverborn crew.

Well, you wouldn't make an initial flip because you can't, you'd have to go straight to the cheating fate part. I don't mind your sass werecat but it doesn't do you any favours. I think I've said my piece and I'll leave it at that. You're either willing to take on a challenge or you want to bring the game down to a level you're comfortable with. People say that I won't have opponents who will want to play me, but on the other hand, I enjoy challenges so if someone doesn't want to provide that, then I won't enjoy the game much either. Maybe I won't want to play them because they lack the willingness to find solutions in what's meant to be a strategic game. Having fun is all about your attitude. You can have fun if you want to.

Start making terrain with multi level surfaces. Buildings, train platforms, ravines, large hills, bridges, etc. This will give you safe zones that will make it impossible for mosquitos to get everywhere on a battlefield with summoning. Then of course you have Hamelin the rat catcher. He's mosquito proof and can cast obey

I'm sure most tournament organisers will have a problem with stalling. If you're going to put time limits on things then there has to be a rule for that as you can stall without infinite activations since time limits aren't part of the rules in the first place. That's just bad form. I've never been to any tournament or friendly gathering and had someone say they don't want to play me. If you look at the opposite side of the coin, people who are willing to accept a defeatist's mentality are not rising to a challenge and their not bettering themselves. You can't increase your skill to the point where you can beat a skilled opponent if you're not willing to play that opponent in the first place. I'm not pointing any fingers I'm just trying to put forth the idea. It's always better to challenge yourself, to see if you can get out of a difficult situation. You may loose a few times but we all do when we're learning. If don't try, you can't learn. If I had never mentioned the mosquito tactic in the forum, we'd never have the opportunity to try to figure out how to beat it.

Cain, I'm not trying to be rude, but I can't understand why you'd throw in the towel or refuse to even attempt to try and beat this list. What would your opinion of Rocky be if he refused to train and fight Apollo? What would have happened if Frodo never left the Shire or George Washington said "I've lost too many battles, I don't want to be a general any more" Please try for the sake of trying, and do your best.

I'm interested in seeing you're most creative interpretation of a mosquito totem. Get out there and harvest some body parts, stick em together and take some pics. Clever use of arthropods should include splicing various body parts from assorted insects to create the ultimate blood sucking horror!

Glad you like it. My new plan is to start splicing parts from different insects together. My shopping list is looking like this: head: fly abdomen: bee Thorax: wasp (the skinny ones) legs: mosquito hawk or daddy long legs Now there's a thread idea "McMourning's bug butchery"

Cain if you try to use parasitic infection on a master it's going to fail. The best result a mosquito can muster is 18 (ca2 + 14 from joker + 2 from reckless abandon) most likely it will be a 16 as the mosquito won't be in range of the reckless abandon aura. A master's average df is around 4 + they can cheat fate so lets say 10 + use soulstones. So the mosquito will probably fail and that ends the infinite activation. Additionally, there are lots of models with a df of 6 or 7 so they will have an easy time beating a 16 as well. Guild players can use Perdita as well. I seriously spent over an hour the other night typing up a list of tactics each faction can use to kill the mosquitos and I eventually got fed up with it because after an hour I'd only finished with the Guild, Res, and Arcanists. Every faction has plenty of tricks. I'd like to see what your thoughts are after you've tried playing against a gremlin army that uses this tactic. Play a few games and see how it goes. Real games are going to be much more telling than a hypothetical scenario.

Fair enough. I'll report back on how Teeth does this weekend. Leveticus starts with 6 cards, goes to 8 with alyce. gets two more for casting spells (hopefully he's created some abom's) rearranges his deck and then goes out in a blaze of glory by taking 12 wd from the desolation engine. He's dead now but who cares, he's already activated and he'll be back next round. You now have 22 cards in your hand. Good times

Try it out. See how many cards you can draw before your opponent kills one of the mosquitos. With bete noire your opponent will be able to summon only one mosquito. With other factions, any master will be able to use a soul stone to spray the landscape with mozzie guts. It seems woefully overpowered when you think about it but when you get down to it it's not hard for a good player to handle. A lot of people have already come up with a contingency plan to handle this.