Lynch vs Mei Feng 50 ss

[tmod]

Hi,

 

My first Battle Report and only my second game. My opponent played his first game, so probably not too much brilliant tactical insight for others, but would appreciate any comments, both on play and list synergy (or lack of)! Stil WIP crews unfortunately, but getting there eventually...

 

Jacob Lynch 5ss pool

Woke Up With a Hand 2

The Rising Sun 2

Wanna See a Trick 1

Hungering Darkness

Addict 1

The Illuminated 7

The Illuminated 7

Beckoner 7

Beckoner 7

Terror Tot 4

Terror Tot 4

Terror Tot 4

 

Mei Feng 3ss pool

Seismic Claws 1

Price of Progress 1

Kang 9

Emberling 3

Rail Golem 9

Bleeding Edge Tech 1

Willie 6

Rail Worker 5

Rail Worker 5

Metal Gamin 4

Metal Gamin 4

 

Strategy: Squatter's Right

Scheme Pool: Breakthrough, Bodyguard, A Line in the Sand, Plant Evidence, Cursed Object

Deployment: Flank

Schemes: Lynch revealed Breakthough and Plant Evidence, Mei revealed nothing.

 

The setup:

 

Mei first turn:
Golem and gamin on right both double-walked behind house towards squat marker in the corner.
Willie walked behind obelisk towards the corner and killed terror tot on it's way towards marker.
Kang double-walked behind obelisk and crates.
Mei Feng and Emberling walked directly to the left to intercept tots in the corner.
Rail Workers and final Gamin advanced to the clearing between the two stacks of crates.

Lynch first turn:
Terror Tot near bottom moved right towards squat marker. Used sprint, but no tomes in hand or flip.
Terror Tot in canteena moved over to marker behind shack
Tot behind Canteena double walked to marker i corner
Beckoner in the doorway of the ruined warehouse (obscured) double-lured Kang.
Second Beckoner walked forward and gave Kang Brilliance.
Poor planning regarding the order of the last activations:
Hungering Darkness moved into melee range of Kang and made one attack. Annoyed at deploying so far away from all the action!!
Lynch basically just moving out of charge for Illuminated, and take pot shots at Rail Workers.
Illuminated Charge Kang. Hurts him badly, but not down to last wound due to ss prevention.
Last Illuminated moved around and attacked Kang, but ss prevention kept him at two wounds.

Turn two:
Terror tot in the corner continued despite Mei and claim the farmost marker.
Second terror tot moved to behind tower and dropped a marker in contact with it.
Mei Feng followed, but due to lack of LOS couldn't charge, and due to black joker only managed to slightly damage tot.
Emberling moved and destroyed scheme marker near the shack.
Rail Golem and gamin continued behind house, and moved up to marker.
Rail Workers moved in to support Kang, who managed to severely injure one Illuminated. Gamin moved into contact with Darkness, who finally ate Kang due to permanent Brilliance from Party never ends.
The second beckoner failed to give Willie Brilliance, but with so many models clumped in the center the wounded Illuminated charged anyway before he could activate. Illuminated are Ace, killed Willie, but died in the blasts.
Last Illuminated charged Metal Gamin by Hungering Darkness, and before Lynch's activation last both Rail Workers and the Gamin was wounded, and all three had Brilliance.
Getting the order right this time Lynch used Pay Up thrice and 52 pickup at the end and obliterated all opposition in the middle

Score due to strategy: Lynch 1 - Mei 0

Turn three:
Terror Tot moved away from Mei and avoided the disengaging strike due to lucky flipping. Used Sprint to double-move behind the tower and dropped another marker.
Ace of Masks now in hand, the second Terror double Sprinted in front of the tower to the edge of the forest.
Emberling flipped Squat marker and moved to the one in the upper left corner.
Mei Feng followed Tot behind tower, but once again failed to wound it due to first a black joker and then a lucky defence flip.
Rail Golem and Gamin claimed squat marker in lower right corner and moved near Lynch's deployment zone.
The rest of Lynch's crew fanned out and started to drop markers in Mei's half of the table.
Beckoner Lured the Emberling away for the Squat marker so it would have to spend an AP getting up in the corner again next turn to flip it.

Score due to strategy: Lynch 2 - Mei 1

Turn four:
Golem and Gamin dropped markers.
Mei destroyed markers, whereas the remaining Lynch crew dropped new ones.
Emberling finally claimed marker in the corner, but Mei lost control of the one near the shack. Still two for scoring though.

Score due to strategy: Lynch 3 - Mei 2

Turn five:
Golem use Locomotion to get into contact with Beckoner under the hanging tree near the middle and smothered her to a pulp. Gamin stayed near the table edge and kept dropping markers.
The Emberling was too far gone to achieve anything, and Mei was also too far away to do anything but destroying markers.
The rest of Lynch's crew stayed at a safe distance and kept dropping markers. In the end there were about 12 markers on Mei's half of the table, most next to a piece of terrain within 6" of the deployment zone.
Pretty certain Lynch was going to get max points, but the question was Mei's hidden schemes.

Score due to strategy: Lynch 4 - Mei 3

Turned out Mei had Bodyguard on Kang, and a hidden Plant Evidence. Thus Mei scored two for Plant Evidence and zero fro Bodyguard, and Lynch scored three.

Final Score: Lynch 10 - Mei 5

Thoughts:
Neither player made all the best decisions during this game, but there was three deciding moments all tipping the scales in Lynch's favor. Firstly the Luring of Kang. It was not due to a good analysis of the game situation, but simply because I feared the close combat prowess of the Rail Crew and when the opportunity presented itself I wanted to thin out their lines. With the loss of a Scheme it was already going to be hard for the Mei player. With hindsight, Kang should probably have activated later in the turn, and preferably stayed out of LOS when he knew he had to protect him. That said, it was a royal PITA to get rid of the guy, and had the Rail Golem been closer and able to rescue him, or Willie able to lay down blast markers near my tightly packed crew things could have gone a different way...
Secondly the Terror Tot that kept Mei Feng busy for basically the whole game AND STILL managed to slip away and pretty much accomplish schemes on his own was definitely the man of the match! Even had Mei Feng gotten him in the end she was to far away from the rest of her crew to use Railwalking, and thus pretty much out of the game. Both Tots under threat by Mei SURVIVING and dropping markers like no tomorrow was just gravy...
Thirdly Lynch's performance when he obliterated three Hard to Kill models in the center using Pay Up and 52 Pick Up. After much of my crew had damaged them during the turn it was perhaps not a huge achievement, but still succeeding with four attacks (three attack action and one ability) and eliminating three models at the end of turn freed up my whole crew to secure schemes and left Mei Feng with nothing to respond with.

In hindsight I made a potentially costly error when deploying HD so far back. I thought he had a charge of 8, and him being just out of charge range cost me the opportunity to eliminate a model turn one (Kang). Also I screwed up my activation order with models blocking LOS from one another, but in the end it had little impact on the game.

Mei Feng did, in my view, three costly errors. Firstly in was an error to leave Kang exposed and activating him early. He could have pulled it off with more support, but both Mei and the Golem was to far off, and the Rail Workers/Gamin were just too slow to catch up and rescue him.
Secondly it was an error to send Mei Feng hunting Tots. Sure, she should normally be able to kill them both, but would still be left far away from the main action. If there had been some constructs forming a chain so she could Railwalk back it might not have been so bad, but with Kang threatened all her minions where scrambling to save him, and Mei was left stranded. Probably sending Willie after the Gamin would have been better. With a ranged attack with blast he could have killed them, and might still have made it back to place some markers.
Finally I think it was a bit too passive to let the Golem take the long detour. He tried to convince me he had bodyguard on it, and I thought it likely, but in the end it just cost him an opportunity to smash face. 11 ss should do more than kill a Beckoner and place a few markers!
 

 

[Argentbadger]

Great report, thank you for sharing.  The picture at the start showing where the terrain went is very helpful, though I do wonder why you didn't take photos at the end of each round too.  If I may critique the style a little, the first turn reads a little strangely as it seems that you're playing that a whole crew goes, then the other; though it is clear that you do it correctly from turn 2 onward.

 

Your analysis at the end is well thought out and I agree in particular that faking Bodyguard on the Rail Golem was a bit of a waste.  If you're going to keep a model safe and have one with Bodyguard on it, you might as well make it the same one.  In general I feel that there's no point in deploying miniatures anything other than right on the starting line unless you plan to swan around your own deployment zone (e.g. for Reconnoitre) so the Hungering Darkness might as well have been at the front.  There is almost nothing in the game that can take a shot in activation 1 of turn 1, and the things that can will always have a target unless you can keep your whole crew out of Line of Sight (which is usually impractical).

[tmod]

Great report, thank you for sharing.  The picture at the start showing where the terrain went is very helpful, though I do wonder why you didn't take photos at the end of each round too.  If I may critique the style a little, the first turn reads a little strangely as it seems that you're playing that a whole crew goes, then the other; though it is clear that you do it correctly from turn 2 onward.

 

Your analysis at the end is well thought out and I agree in particular that faking Bodyguard on the Rail Golem was a bit of a waste.  If you're going to keep a model safe and have one with Bodyguard on it, you might as well make it the same one.  In general I feel that there's no point in deploying miniatures anything other than right on the starting line unless you plan to swan around your own deployment zone (e.g. for Reconnoitre) so the Hungering Darkness might as well have been at the front.  There is almost nothing in the game that can take a shot in activation 1 of turn 1, and the things that can will always have a target unless you can keep your whole crew out of Line of Sight (which is usually impractical).

 

The answer to your question about photos is simple; I didn't think of it beforehand! :-)

 

Actually I didn't take any shots or notes during the game at all, but afterwards I decided I wanted to be able to reflect on what and why, and we put the models back to their starting positions to take the shot of initial deployment. That's also the reason for the rather inconsistent format; when going through the game it was much easier to remember the first turn based on where all models went (no chance of remembering the individual activation order!) when I considered each player by himself. Later on when there was more interaction it was easier to remember the order of things... Will hopefully do it more properly next time! :-)

 

Thanks for the comments, especially on the analysis! :-)