The Transcredible Exploits of four Malifaux Newbies

[Vaiuri]

So after a thorough trouncing by Suvalas last week I'm determined to up my game on Friday.  I used Sonnia, and was up against the Viks plus Vanessa and Lazarus.  I realised that trying to stay away from Lazarus doesn't work, particularly when Vanessa is ordering him around!  It was a tough game and I admit to getting quite disheartened early on - I felt that I didn't really have an answer to anything on the other side of the table.  Crew selection and first turn movement let me down and my deck was definately in legue with the Outcasts!  Next time I need to be a bit more careful about how I use Sonnia and who I take to back her up.

 

Swig and Shadow played a game last night, Swig using Nicodem, Shadow plumped for Mr Lynch.  The game was a draw and very close throughout!

[Shadowfane]

I have to say, that was the most enjoyable game of malifaux I've had so far, mainly, I think, because despite making some errors that probably cost me a shot at winning, this was the first time the idea of how malifaux should be played properly clicked for me

[Swiglitz]

It was my second game with Nicodem and thoroughly enjoyable it was too. A very tense Turf War between myself and Shadowfane's Lynch crew with pretty much every activation of every turn proving to be either a VP scored or denied. Very much like Shadowfane I know there were a couple of moments I took my eye off the ball and it cost me a win, although the draw felt like a better result. I also need to control my urge to constantly summon things and focus on summoning the right things instead. Oh yeah, and not letting Terror Tots just run around dropping scheme markers willy-nilly. Overall an ace game, looking forward to the next one.

 

Next time Lynch...Next time...

[Swiglitz]

Vaiuri and I played our first stab at 50ss on Sunday and it was great. Strat was Reckoning with a scheme pool of LitS, Distract, Bodyguard, Vendetta and Spring the trap. I was determined to keep playing as Nicodem as I still haven't quite found my feet with him yet. I made a couple of key errors that pretty much cost me the game. Given the scheme pool and the strat I went with a small, very elite crew, thinking I would summon in reinforcements as and when I needed them.

 

I took:

Nicodem w/ Love thy Master, Necrotic King & Undertaker

Mortimer w/ Corpse Bloat & My Favorite Shovel

Izamu w/ Decaying Aura

Vulture

2 x Punk Zombies

 

In retrospect I think this was mistake. My original idea was take a good mix of tanky and killy models and earn all my VP's from Reckoning, Vendetta (on a punk zombie and Vaiuri's Witchling Handler) and Bodyguard (on Mortimer), about two or three turns in I realized this was a bad plan.

Vaiuri took Sonnia and a much larger, less elite crew than me (I can't remember the exact make up of her crew but I'm sure she'll chime in with her thoughts in due time), including Samael, a couple of witchlings, a handler and an austringer. She also took the same schemes as me, with bodyguard on Samael and Vendetta on the Austringer and one of my Punk Zombies.

The board was a terraclips streets and buildings layout I'd made up earlier in the week, quite labyrinthine streets with four or five multi-level buildings to spice it up with some interesting verticality. We flipped Flanking deployment and I deployed first in a slightly more open part of the board, thinking it would serve my crew better to not get bogged down in terrain and bottlenecks, the opposite corner was quite closely packed with walls and a raised platform. Vai deployed the bulk of her crew in the narrow streets between the platform and the central building but very cleverly put both Sonnia and Samael on the platform where they had  good lines of sight down the main street.

I spent most of the game trapped exactly where I didn't want to be, with my crew hemmed in by buildings, Sonnia's fire wall and my own large base models while Vai rained down burning on to my models and withered them away to nothing. The Austringer proved to be a perfect fit for Vendetta, hiding up on balcony well out of harm's way while his death-pigeon tore my Punk Zombie to ribbons. I managed to claw a few VP's back in the later turns with a summoned Shikome and a summoned Student of Viscera killing off Vaiuri's Witchlings, Austringer and the handler but it was too little too late and Vai walked away with a very respectable 7-5 win.

If I could play it again knowing what I do now I think I'd change pretty much every part of my crew and plans. The terrain and Vaiuri's crew very much supported a Turtle strategy of find a safe place and blast while thwarting my movement to engage her, so I would have been better served taking a larger, squishier crew with a couple of fast scheme runners (I'm looking at you Necropunks) and going all out for Line in the Sand and Spring the trap. I also shouldn't have allowed Vaiuri to hem me in with fire wall as much as  she did, half my crew should have headed into the buildings to try to outflank her, forcing her either confront them or let me push Izamu through the bottle neck. Still, it was a great game and I learned a lot about Nicodem's strengths and weaknesses and I think my summoning was a lot better this game too. All I need to do now is remember I can draw a card every time something of mine dies close to Nico thanks to Undertaker. I don't think I did it once the entire game...Whoops.

Anyway, on to the next game!

[Vaiuri]

This is the first time I felt like I knew what I was doing with Sonnia.  I took Reincarnate, Cherufe's Shackle and The Mask, although I didn't once cast Everburning it was nice to know it was there!  Sam had his upgrade (so useful when he hits with it!), then I took:

 

2x Witchling Stalkers

Witchling Handler

Watcher

Wastrel

Austringer

 

The Austringer popped the target of his Vendetta pretty easily, I'm beginning to see why these guys are so well regarded amongst Guild players

 

I put Bodyguard on Sam and kept him with Sonnia - together they just acted as a fire turret for anything that got close, and were in turn buffed by the Handlers 'Burn Them All' to further add to the Burning.  The Wastrel was there to hang out with Sam and heal him if needed, plus, once he made a run to get outside of his deployment zone I felt better having another model around that could intercept any raised nasties!

 

The Watcher didn't really do very much, anything he could see was generally on fire by the time I activated Sonnia so he was fairly redundent - I think he would be really nice with Perdita though and was glad to give him a spin!

 

MVP for me was definately Sonnia, despite one turn of flubbing all her casts bar Flame Wall (yes, even with Quick Study on +2 Ca!), the sheer amount of damage she threw out kept Swig on the back foot, at a distance, and constantly having to summon to stay in the game.

[Smokey616]

Good memoirs guys! Keep up the good work

[Vaiuri]

Tonight, Ressers vs Outcasts!

[Swiglitz]

Another weekend gone, another awesome game played. This week's installment comes to you courtesy of myself playing Nicodem and Suvulas playing The Viks.

 

It was another great game with a lot happening I hadn't fully planned for. We flipped Reconnoiter for the Strat and LitS, Distract, Breakthrough, Entourage and Make them Suffer as our scheme pool. Following my bruising encounter with Vaiuri the previous week I endeavored to play a little smarter this time, but knowing I was going up against the massive destructive potential of the The Viks it was a daunting prospect.

Knowing the strat required me to spread out across the board, and keep away from both the center line and the 6" circle around the middle of the board I chose Breakthrough and Entourage as my scheme's. I figured I could just leg it across the board with something fast to start dropping scheme markers for Breakthrough while still counting towards Reconnoiter and do a slightly more sedate advance with Nicodem for Entourage. With this is in mind I chose the following crew:

 

Nicodem w/ Love thy Master, Necrotic King, Undertaker

Mortimer w/ Corpse Bloat, My Favorite Shovel

Vulture

2 x Punk Zombies

Rotten Belle

Necropunk

Night Terror

 

The necropunk would serve as my Breakthrough scheme runner and the Night Terror was a cheap model to help with scoring Reconnoiter and getting me activation advantage.

 

The board was set up using some of the lovely Wild West buildings we have at Suvulas' house, with most of the buildings forming something of a market square in the middle of the board and a smattering of trees and low level walls around the outside. I know Vaiuri snapped off a couple of photos during the game and I'll try to get her to upload some later in the week. Looking at the terrain my plan was to spread out across the two table quarters in my half of the board and start scoring, while the Necropunk ran up of the edge of the board, protected by the buildings and Nicodem, supported by Mortimer and a punk Zombie would follow. I also knew I wanted to prevent Suvulas from scoring each turn so I committed the second Punk Zombie and the Rotten belle to advancing into the no-score area in the center of the board to try to lure in his models and kill them off, meanwhile the Night Terror and a summon would hold the second table quarter.

More or less, the plan worked. I got some good cards for summoning during the game managing to get a third Punk Zombie and two Hanged during the 5 turns we played. As the game progressed it became apparent that Suvulas had taken LitS  and determined to learn from my errors against Shadowfane I spent a couple of activations hunting his schemey models and removing his markers. This, coupled with the success of my Rotten Belle and a summoned Hanged, helped me control where Suvulas was moving his crew and stopped him scoring Reconnoiter for two turns.

It wasn't all sunshine rainbows though, turns three and four in particular were very hairy. The Vik of Blood earned her name by wiping out a punk Zombie, the Night terror, a Hanged and the Rotten Belle in just two activations. Admittedly the punk zombie and the belle were already wounded but watching one model massacre a sizable portion of my crew was disconcerting to say the least. Suvulas had also taken Make them Suffer, so those casualties really stung when he started racking up the VP's.

In the end though, I think my movement shenanigans and ability to keep bringing in more models to help out with quarter control swung it for me with the final score being 9-7 in my favour.

In terms of what I learned I think I'm definitely getting  better at using my control hand more effectively and determining when and where I need to succeed at actions. My summoning tactics are very much improved thanks to some judicious cards at the right time and it really pays to start messing with your opponent's plans once you figure out what scheme's he's taken. I've also taken Necrotic King for two games now and am yet to use it, Nico seems to be moving, summoning and buffing as his three AP's with me choosing Rigor Mortis more often than not. Any suggestions on how better to use this upgrade? Or should I just bin it and spend the 2ss somewhere else.

I feel I'm getting a handle on Nicodem and will probably switch out to either Yan Lo or Seamus after a couple more games.

Speaking of which...

I know horror. I've had a morbid fascination with the macabre, the grotesque and the weird most of my life. I count HP Lovecraft as my inspiration for getting into writing and will always hold a special place in my heart for the shudder a good horror story can evoke. However, this last weekend I discovered a new terror that makes all others flee shrieking into the night, their pseudopods flailing in abject fear. To those of you who share my passion for the monstrous and the loathsome I say this:

You do not know fear, you do not know terror and you do not know pure stomach churning, bowel loosening horror until you have glued Madame Sybelle's rotting boobs onto her swollen and pustular body ... Once performed, some things never leave you, they haunt you with their image, forever returning behind your eyes, leaving you cold and shivering with dread, knowing you can never un-see what you have seen   ... Suffice it say, she's a bit grim.

Anyway, I've prattled enough for one day. Hopefully Suvulas will write up his thoughts on the game over the next few days and I should get some time to write up the narrative campaign I've wittering on about for the past few weeks.

Until next time

[Suvalas]

Apologies for the slow reply, and as such probably the much diluted musings on the battle.

 

As ever, the fight was a fun one, with more opportunities to learn something new. I can admit now to having thoroughly jumped in the deep end with such a mobile crew. My gaming experience to date usually revolves around stalwart hard to kill models. Thinking Warriors of Chaos and Dwarves, and more recently Trollbloods. As such, the glass cannon approach that the Viks use can be quite punishing. Fortunately, our gaming group are always on hand to advise, and re-enforce learning once the battle has finished. I do feel like I'm getting better at controlling the Viks but it's been tough. I don't really want to model rep anothe rmaster, so I'm eagerly awaiting the release of the next Outcasts masters. Fingers crossed that any of Von Schill, Leveticus or Jack Daw aren't too far off.

 

On to the battle, the list I picked consisted of;

 

Viktoria of Ashes - Sisters in Fury and Syncronised Slaying

Viktoria of Blood - Mark of She'zuul and Oathkeeper

Student of Conflict

Vanessa - Oathkeeper

Taelor

Hodgepodge Effigy

Desperate Mercenary

Ronin

 

Plus stones enough for a cache of 7.

 

This was my first foray at 50ss and first time facing a Summoner master. I kept my core similar to previous games, although with a couple of extra upgrades, and also chose some cheaper minions, which I figured would keep me close to Swig's number of activations and help in dropping scheme markers.

I picked 'Make them Suffer' and 'Line in the Sand' as my Schemes. I feel like I got good mileage out of Make them Suffer, especially against all the resses, but Line in the sand wasn't the optimal choice. I did get the points for it in the end, but it ended up being far more work than I anticipated to get the points. I'd also missed the link with Recconoitre until the later turns, punishing me the last few points.

 

Otherwise, the game panned out exactly as Swiglitz described. Things that I learned from the game...

 

The Hanged are a right royal pain! Tough horror duels at every turn really did sap the power out of my models and more noticably, my hand. At one point I was chuffed to have finally killed it, using all but one of my control hand, only to shortly after realise that, Vik of Blood ignored Incorporeal, (the whole reason I'd charged her in...) which would have saved me a card or two, which really cost my crew for the rest of the round. Think Taelor took the brunt of that. To then see the Hanged reappear a turn or two later was very demoralising. The Vik of Blood had to charge in again, only to fail her initial horror duel. The only card I had to prevent paralysis was the Red Joker... seemed a waste at the time, but it was totally worth it, as she then proceeded in killing the Hanged again (much more quickly this time), along with the Rotten Belle from Whirlwind triggers.

I also learnt to be more mindful of schemes. I knew that Swig had breakthrough, and that there was little I could do to prevent the swift Necropunk from scoring. I failed to see the mad dash of Nicodem in the last two turns to score points on Entourage? which again proved that you don't need to always kill things to score points. I have trouble seeing this with such a Fighty crew, especially when the mantra 'if it's dead it can't score' first pops into my head.

 

Onwards and upwards I guess, having fun whilst learning along the way!

[Swiglitz]

If it's any consolation I never felt confident in my victory at any point, I was constantly looking at my VP's compared to yours and praying you wouldn't spot Nicodem sneaking into your deployment zone at the end of the game.

The massive amount of damage The Viks can dish out is really intimidating and watching Blood more or less annihilate my crew in two turns was very demoralising. I knew I could replace the losses with Nicodem, but at that point I'd committed him into legging it and he was too far away from the action to be much use. I would say that moving up to 50ss really made a difference to facing you. Our last meeting at 35ss with me using McMourning felt a lot safer and there weren't many times I was especially worried. Friday's game was the complete opposite, I was desperately trying to avoid facing down either Vik or Taelor in a fair fight while still filling out two table quarters and moving my, normally quite stationary, master down field. Admittedly we've both played a lot more games since then and learned a great deal more about how the game plays, model synergies and so on, so it should feel closer and more hard fought, but yeah, the VP's don't really reflect how close the game was from my perspective. I'm really looking forward to playing against you again.

We get to spectate this week and critique our fellow Transcredible Newbies as Vaiuri and Shadowfane face off. We might even have some more exciting terrain

[asrian]

From an observer reading this, good job and keep it up as it's quite entertaining.

[Vaiuri]

Thanks Asrian!  It's good to know people are enjoying our adventures ^^

 

Hopefully we should be in a position to start the campaign Swig has been designing in a couple of weeks (fingers crossed!).

[Swiglitz]

I'm writing it out as I type this. Assuming I don't have any more re-writes to do I should be able to get a working copy out to everyone this weekend. Doubtless it will require a lot of tweaking and explanation before I think it's fit for general consumption but we can run a closed Beta, so to speak, and post our thoughts on here.

Quite looking forward to it actually

[Vaiuri]

yay!

[Swiglitz]

A couple of highlights from the game.

 

I apologize in advance for my (still) unpainted miniatures. In my defense ... erm ... Look! Pretty pictures!

 

The  board set up.

 

Nicodem starting position.

 

The crews converge (Lacking a plastic Hanged I proxied with Chiaki)

 

This didn't end well for the Ronin.

 

The closing stages. (Note the large number of Corpse markers surrounding the Viktoria of Blood)

[Vaiuri]

Damn we need to paint more things!

[asrian]

Don't feel bad. I just keep buying and assembling/basecoating Neverborn (now at 5 masters and 50+ models all primed black). After 3 months I JUST finished painting my Pandora crew box finally)

[Shadowfane]

So, on to fridays game...

The unfortunate victims..... Vaiuri (playing as Guild) and me (playing as Neverborn)

The strategy: Reckoning

The schemes: Vendetta, LITS, Bodyguard, and some others that weren't taken.

 

Vai went with Perdita and her gun-toting nutjobs, a crew I've never faced before, so I wasn't really sure what they wer capable of, so I went with Lilith, who out of the 3 Masters I currently play, seems the most able to react to changing circumstances.

I made a mistake with my crew selection, starting off by picking up a bunch of beaters/tanks in order to avoid giving up multiple points on Reckoning, and then making the mistake of taking some Tots to run LITS

My crew was:

Lilith (Living blade, beckon malifaux, wicked mistress)

Barbaros (Obsidian Talons)

Cherub

Teddy

Mature Nephilim

2 Terror Tots.

 

Vai used

Perdita (some upgrades I can't remember)

Fransisco (Diestro?)

Santiago

Enslaved Nephilim

Some old bint in a wheelchair

Sam? (Sonnia Cred's henchman)

Guild Austringer.

 

Hihglights of the game included Perdita killing Teddy in a single activation, and a turn later me finally working out how to use Lilith when she executed both the enslaved Nephilim and Perdita in a single activation and left herself almost immune to reprisals

 

Sadly, I lost the game something like 9-4, due to forgetting I had to be a distance away from my deployment zone in order to actually score for Bodyguard on barbaros...

 

So, I think I've got the hang of the game and the crews I'm using, but next to learn is picking complementing schemes for the strategy and building crews appropriately.  I spent 11 points on weak little monion scheme runners that gave Vai easy kills for the strategy and didn't really accomplish anything, where in this case either sticking to the original plan and replacing the tots/cherub with a doppleganger plus something else, or a grow list might have been more useful (although I didn't reliase that every single ortega is an enforcer or better till after the game!)

 

Ah well, lessons learned

Good game though

[Swiglitz]

I managed to grab some photo's during the game. I'll upload them when I get back to B'ham and have an internet speed that isn't single digit kbps...

 

My thoughts as an observer were very similar to Shadowfane's. I think the combination of a difficult scheme and squishy models is what caused the most problems for him. The Terror Tots and cherub spent the whole game dropping three scheme markers and gave Vaiuri some very easy kills early on allowing her to gain a quick lead. The Austringer once again proved to be a complete badass when given Vendetta as a scheme earning Vai 2 VP's (he wasn't able to get the killing blow on Shadowfane's Mature Nephilim) and Diestro seems to be an almost auto-include upgrade once you see it in action.

 

Once Shadowfane got a handle on how best to use Lillith she looked to be very dangerous, dropping dense terrain and pushing models around all over the place, and as Shadowfane qutie rightly pointed out, murdering two models in one activation thanks to her upgrades and some good positioning.

 

We also saw some very sneaky movement tricks from Perdita and her family which allowed her to avoid early reprisals after taking out the Mature Nephilim. These were largely down to Abuela's "Listen up young 'un" action and the various push and place actions the Family have access to.

 

Overall, I think Shadowfane was let down by his choice of scheme and crew. Vaiuri didn't do all that much wrong, especially given her total VP's at the end, but I think maybe swapping out Samael (whose whole contribution to the game was setting Barbaros on fire in turn 4) for Nino and couple more soulstones in the Cache would have served Vaiuri better.

 

Suvalas is otherwise engaged for the next couple of weeks, so next weekend's game will probably be Shadowfane vs. me. If that is indeed the case I'm torn between forging on for another game with Nicodem or starting out fresh with either Seamus or Yan Lo. Any and all advice should be packaged with your £20 contribution to the Swiglitz Benevolent Fund (just cash please, no cheques) and posted to my home address.

 

See y'all next week

[knghtpiper]

How do you like the large Micro arts building? 

[Vaiuri]

It's fab!  We're casting around for scatter terrain now and have picked up some more Microarts stuff and some lovely bits from Sarissa too.  I think the large building is good because I can put an Austringer on the walkway and birdstrike pretty much what he pleases, with the added bonus that he can dodge inside if he needs to!  Seriously though, as gamers I think we're just getting used to the idea of moving in and out of buildings again, so having these large multi-level buildings is really good and helps us think more about movement and LOS.  I'm liking the look of the Sarissa oriental buildings and scatter stuff - thinking they would make a lovely board for 10T type crews! 

 

Swig is really into his boards having a story/theme, so I think a lot of our setups end up looking like film set, I don't think it's a problem, but I am curious how other people view our boards?

 

Seriously though, I am a massive fan of the Microarts terrain.  We're in two minds about picking up the walkways set - while it would add more height and levels to the board, we're not sure if it fits the asthetic - time will tell.

 

 

My game with Shadowfane was a blast - although when Lilith lost her temper, wow, did that hurt!

 

This was my first game with Perdita et al.  I'd been reading their cards for about a week beforehand to try and help me remember what each of them can do - we find our games REALLY slow down when any of us use new models, a lot of pondering and card reading occurs!

 

Initial thoughts, I can really see the potential with this crew.  My plan was to marry Sam in and hve him pushing Abuela around and act as her bodyguard, although when they faced up against a Tot it was Perdita who nailed it to the wall before it could leap away from Abuela and the somewhat slow Sam.  Sam was actually a bit disappointing - looking back I agree with Swig that I probably should have taken a cheaper Family model and kept the change in soulstones - that would have saved Perdita from Lilith based annihilation!

 

More thoughts to follow!

[Swiglitz]

I'd like to echo Vai's thoughts on the Microart terrain. I love it. A couple of building packs doesn't break the bank and gets us a fantastic board that looks great and plays great too. If I had one quibble it would be; the instructions could be a little better. A couple of times, building some the larger kits, it's difficult to tell what bit you're supposed to be working with as many of the posts, floors and steps all look very similar with only very minor differences to tell them apart. Can be annoying when you have to pull apart 20 minutes work because you used the wrong bit. Otherwise, they're lovely. The Sarissa stuff looks lovely too, we played with the gallows model this week just gone and it was great centerpiece for the table.

 

Back to Terraclips for the next couple of games as Suvalas is otherwise engaged.

[knghtpiper]

Yeah I have a fair bit of the Sarissa wild west stuff and some micro art stuff, mainly the market stalls and the cottages, I have been thinking about getting a large building sometime this fall.  I would agree with your assessment about the directions for micro arts, the warehouse while a little expensive is a great building as center piece for a table.  If you want some good scatter terrain, 4ground another British company that you can find on ebay pretty regularly has a lot of cheap carts and wagons.   

[Swiglitz]

Time for another Transcredible update.

 

This weekend I had the extreme pleasure of playing two games. Both of which were excellent, but for different reasons. I also learned that just because some terrain looks ace and fits a cool narrative theme does not mean it's actually fun to play on.

 

First up I played against Vaiuri on Friday night. I have been itching to try out Yan Lo and Vai wanted to have a go with Marcus, mainly for giggles as we don't really have anything approaching a viable crew for him. Given that we were both trying out new masters we elected to play a very relaxed and open game, where we would discuss what are intentions were with each other, and just see how the crews acted on the board rather than trying to win the game.

 

The Strat was Squatters Rights and I chose Distract and Breakthrough for my schemes. (I can't remember what the pool was, sorry)

 

With that in mind I took:

 

Yan Lo w/ Brutal Khakkhara, Fortify the Spirit & Reliquary

Soul Porter

Toshiro w/ Command the Graves & Corpse Bloat

Chiaki w/ Pull of the Grave

Yin w/ Unnerving Aura

2 x Ashigaru

Canine Remains

 

My plan was to capture and hold two squat markers with the Ashigaru, supported by Toshiro. Attack and capture Vaiuri's squat markers with Yin and Yan Lo. Leg it up field with the Canine Remains for Breakthrough, and have Chiaki loiter at the back providing support wherever she was needed most. I figured, once I'd captured enough markers, I'd keep using distract on Vai to force her to either give up VP's or take back a squat marker.

 

The board had been set up to resemble an entrance to the city. We had a fairly substantial wall, complete with gateway and attending towers run the length of the board. This was positioned about two thirds of the way across the board, with buildings and statuary on one side and woods and a little guard hut on the other. The squat markers were positioned on the gate, and either side of the wall, making for two separate scoring zones and a hotly contested central marker. It was going to be bloody.

 

In the interest of a fun learning experience, we had both announced our schemes (even though we didn't need to), Vai had taken LitS and Breakthrough. Overall, my plan worked, although it got very desperate in the centre of the board when Vaiuri committed the Rogue Necromancy to driving off Yin and Yan Lo. For those of you who have yet to face one, take it from me those things are deadly. Vai will tell you that she felt the game was a bit of a whitewash and that I dominated for most of it, but the I think it was quite a close run thing.

 

My Canine remains was slaughtered by a bouncing, charging, giggling Jackalope very early on leaving me with a tough decision about how to score Breakthrough. In the end I was unable to move any of my crew far enough forward to start dropping scheme markers so didn't get any VP's for that. But, I was able to score every turn for Squatter's Rights and my plan for Distract worked a treat, netting me the full 3 VP for a total score of 7. Vaiuri on the other hand, only scored for three turns for Squatters Rights (damn you Rogue Necromancy!), managed to grab 1 VP from the announced LitS and snuck a cheeky 3 VP's from announced Breakthrough in the final activations of turn 5, so we ended with a draw.

 

Things I learned:

The Rogue Necromancy is hard. Very, very hard and should not be underestimated. So there.

 

The combo of Ashigaru and Toshiro is really good. Especially at defending a position. I was able push Vaiuri away with the Ashigaru's trigger and then brace to stop counter-charges nearly every turn and thanks to Toshiro's buffs, I was hitting more often than not and making things fast to help give out Distract.

 

Yin makes an utterly fantastic denial piece. Her attack triggers, Mass of Viscera ability, and Terrifying make her a complete headache to get rid of, she can tie up a model and then kill it with relative ease. Unnerving aura on her is just nasty too.

 

Yan lo himself proved to be something of a beat stick once his Chi reached 2+, zapping Vaiuri's Cerebus in one activation (thanks Red Joker) and bampfing around with Lightning Dance. He was surprisingly tanky too thanks to his ascendant upgrades, Once I'd attached a couple of those and got some Chi back Vai was loathe to attack him due to the negative flips, and possible Defence trigger. Although I was a little disappointed my one and only Hunpo assault of the game achieved absolutely nothing. Also, I didn't get to try out Reliquary as only Toshiro died and that was near the end of the game.

 

The star of the show though was Chiaki. Without her I think Vaiuri would have rolled right over me. Every turn she was handing slow, sometimes twice. Removing pesky conditions and making Vaiuri's models insignificant. Couple that with distract and squatter's rights and Vai had to work very hard to actually do anything at all.

 

 

Overall a great game and a real eye-opener on Yan Lo's play style. Definitely the right result too.

 

I'll post my thoughts on the second game shortly.

[Swiglitz]

Right o, thoughts from the second game.

 

My second bash of the weekend was against Shadowfane and his Jakob Lynch crew. This was more of our usual semi-competitive-but-not-really style of play, where we actually try to win the game while not really taking anything terribly seriously.

 

The strat was Reconnoiter and the scheme pool turned up: LitS, Bodyguard, Protect Territory, Plant Evidence and Power Ritual.

 

As this was a normal game in preparation of the incoming campaign I chose the following crew:

 

Nicodem w/ Love thy Master, Reaper Grin & Undertaker.

Vulture

Mortimer w/ Corpse Bloat & My Favourite Shovel

2 x Punk Zombie

Rotten Belle

2 x Canine Remains

 

I selected Bodyguard (on Mortimer) and Protect Territory for my schemes.

 

We were playing on the same board as my previous game with Vaiuri, but crucially we flipped corner deployment instead of standard. I had built the board so that the gateway was slightly more accessible to the foresty side of the wall, as the buildings side had access ladders leading up onto the wall itself. This would have been fine were it not for the combination of Recon and corner deployment. I won deployment flip and elected to deploy inside the buildings half of the board. Which meant Shadowfane was deploying, more or less on the edge of the ramp leading up to the gateway in the rough middle of the board. About two or three activations into the first turn it became apparent that Shadowfane was really going to have a tough time claiming more than two quarters. His crew was unable to scale the wall away from the gateway, and the 6" no score zone more or less covered that whole section of the board. Meaning, for Shadowfane to push into my half of the table and start to threaten my control, he would have to spend at least one turn with some of his models not contributing to the score. Whereas I could run up the ladders onto the walls, and be in his half of the board with relative impunity. Despite this handicap, Shadowfane elected to forge onwards and all power to him for making this call as we had a very tense and exciting game.

 

My initial plan was to run both Canine Remains up into the nearest table quarter outside my deployment zone, drop a couple of scheme markers for protect territory and claim that quarter for Recon. The rest of my crew would divide between forging a blockade on my side of the gateway to  meet Shadowfane head on while claiming a quarter, and moving up onto the city walls to force him into keeping a couple of models back to claim one of his own table quarters.

 

The plan did not work.

 

Despite being hamstrung by terrain, Shadowfane charged through the gate and into my table quarters very quickly, decimating my Punk zombies and summoned Hanged in short order. It was only some very desperate summons throughout,  and sneaky movement of canine remains that kept me in the game. Shadowfane had taken Power Ritual and taken a couple of terror tots to help him achieve this. He flipped the Ace of Masks quite early in the game and thanks to Jakob's hand manipulation abilities had two lightning fast Tots sprinting all over the show. I manged to nab one with a combined Rotten Belle Lure and Punk Zombie combo but the other dropped all three markers of Power Ritual, scoring Shadowfane the maximum VP's. 

 

The game became a bloody war of attrition over two of the four table quarters and a cunning movement based cat &  mouse for the other two. I was having to consider every single activation very carefully, just so I didn't end up without enough models to score the strat each turn. In the end, the game was decided on who scored their second scheme. We'd both taken Bodyguard but where I'd managed to keep Mortimer up on the city walls, safely digging up corpses and lobbing poisonous muck at various Neverborn gribblies, Shadowfane had elected to spearhead his assault with his bodyguarded Hungering Darkness. Once we hit turn 4 and I knew where the VP's lay I was able to focus fire Huggy down and deny Shadowfane some valuable points. The final score was 10-7 to me. But it felt a damn sight closer than that playing it.

 

Things I learned:

I simply cannot allow Terror Tots the luxury of waltzing up and down the table flanks. Two games now Shadowfane has scored maximum VP's from a marker based scheme due to my inability to stop his Terror Tots. Any thoughts on dealing with the tiny menaces would be greatly received.

Dopplegangers have the capacity to really screw over a crew. Shadowfane over-committed his early in the game and I was able to nuke it, but it was a nasty threat until then.

Lynch's upgrade that lets him cheat cards face down is horrible. Most duels I was forced to hedge my bets and cheat in a moderate card because I was holding my high ones for summons. Often, Shadowfane was able to out-guess me and won a lot duels I could have if I'd known what card he was cheating.

I need more condition removal. Brilliance is a slayer.

After wading into a discussion on the Dreamer and his summoning last week I felt slightly vindicated in my opinion after my performance this week. I was able summon consistently, getting one new model every turn. But at no point did I have the resources to get more than one good model (cost 9+) per turn if I wanted to achieve the rest of my goals after that. Having said that, I did summon 3 hanged and 2 Shikome over the course of 5 turns...Sorry dude

After taking Necrotic King for three games and never using it I swapped it out for Reaper Grin and an extra Soulstone. Of course this week, Shadowfane never went near Nicodem and there were 3 or 4 times I said 'I wish I had Necrotic King, it would be ace on that Hanged right about now.' C'est la vie.

 

With another week gone and more lessons learned. We're going to try a three player game next week as we are still without Suvalas (curse you and your real life). I'm also going to dismantle the board I spent hours building and make something a bit better balanced, maybe a graveyard or ornamental garden? Also, after my experimental game against Vaiuri I shall be fielding Yan Lo for the next few battles. Wish me luck.

 

As always I'm sure the others will give their thoughts on our games over the coming days.

 

Have fun