Gaston Posted January 25, 2020 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2020 @4thstringer, I'm closer to Fredericksburg, FWIW. I am going to the Huzzah tournament in Feb, seems to be about a halfway point. Show up and show me up, I'm not feeling too competitively confident. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted January 25, 2020 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2020 Corner - Plant Explosives - Hold Up their Forces - Take Prisoner - Outflank - Deliver a message - Power Ritual Based on last game, I opted for Outflank and Hold Up as my schemes. To get a bit cheeky, I subbed in an Undercover Reporter. As my opponent was playing Zipp, I was banking on him trying to Outflank/Power Ritual one corner with an Iron Skeeter, then I could pop out, send it packing, and eat his scheme marker if need be. Dashel -Dispatcher Rifleman Rifleman Lawyer Guild Steward Undercover Reporter Pale Rider Captain Zipp ---12 Cups of Coffee -Earl Burns The First Mate Iron Skeeter Gracie ---Two Gremlins in a Ghillie Suit Mancha Roja Merris LaCroix Turn 1 Summary Sadly, I have no masks in hand for my Dispatcher, so the Lawyer leads off and uses Tools to grab my initiative flip card, which so happens to be a 7 of Masks. She lays a scheme marker in the corner to fib about Power Ritual and scoots on up. Otherwise my routine is about the same, Pale Rider pulls up a Rifleman, drops a scheme marker, scoots away. Dispatcher pushes up the other Rifleman, flips the marker. Dashel gives out Concentrate, summons a Mounted Guard. Steward moves up...and Black Jokers to remove the slow from the Mounted Guard. While all this is going down, Gracie, Earl, Mancha, and Merris are making a move down my right flank, while the First Mate and Iron Skeeter are moving down the other. The slow Mounted Guard pulls along a Rifleman, but can only walk once. Being unable to tuck him leads me to positioning him poorly and within Zipp’s walk/charge range. Zipp bounces him across the table into the opposing corner. Undercover lays down a scheme marker by my Rifleman. Turn 2 Summary He leads off with Earl, makes some more pianos. I have a serious concern that he will be able to build a Berlin Wall of pianos around that corner that’ll be a pain to dig out. Lawyer goes to Tools up my initiative flip (a 12 I think), then puts Shielded on the Rider and surges up another card. Zipp dismounts the Mounted Rider, then dismounts the Guard Patrol...to death. Mancha walks and charges my Rifleman, hits once for 3 damage, flurry miss, eats the scheme marker. Rifleman uses his bonus to back away, two focus shots into Mancha. Gracie Rides on up. Other Rifleman walks, focus shot into Mancha. (At this point Mancha is eating soulstones like candy to stay on his feet). Pale Rider rides away, goes to the corner. Merris picks him up and throws him away from the corner, alas. Because he isn’t in his corner for Outflank, I keep the Reporter buried. Dashal focuses and shoots Mancha, gets Drop It, summons an Executioner. Steward walks, charges Gracie, and gets the trigger to slow Mancha as well. Executioner does some more damage to Mancha. At the end of the turn, I literally forget to score Hold Up, because I am a moron. Dashel: 0 VP Zipp: 2 VP (Outflank, Plant Explosives) Turn 3 Summary Mancha swings on the Executioner, hits once, misses second. Executioner hits back, kills him. Gracie gets the Executioner down to 1 Wd with a well timed RJ damage flip. Merris continues to impressively beat up the Pale Rider, leaves him on 2 Wds. Pale comes in and pops his super, hits Gracie for 3, Merris for 3, Earl for 2; Pale heals for 2. He attacks and kills Earl. Steward BJ’s the healing flip on Foul Mouth on the Rider. Rifleman shoots Gracie for fun. Dashel walks twice and plants a bomb. Zipp comes flying in and uses 12 Cups to remove all my laid down scheme markers (he counter took this upgrade into me on purpose for this). Dashel: 1 VP (Plant Explosives) Zipp: 3 VP (Plant Explosives) Turn 4 Rider pops his charge bonus. He kills Merris, Steward charges to get in range of the corner. Executioner charges Gracie (this was a cheat, we forgot her upgrade gives her Disguised). Pale walks and drops Bomb. Grace rides away from Executioner, goes for Pale Rider. She is one 1 Wd, so no Stampede. Steward picks up my opponent’s scheme marker. Undercover Reporter, Dispatcher, Lawyer, and Dashel go through a bunch of hoops to summon a Mounted Guard. The Mounted Guard Rides the Lawyer up and walks, but is about an inch shy of Outflank. Executioner charges Zipp for fun. Dashel: 2 VP (Plant Explosives) Zipp: 5 VP (Plant Explosives, Power Ritual) Turn 5 Gracie dies to burning, poops out a Gremlin. It runs to engage Steward. Pale Rider rides, charges, misses, Gremlin squeals back. Lawyer drops a Bomb, Obeys Mounted Guard forward. Mounted Guard picks up one of Zipp’s bombs and places it back for me. First Mate removes my Power Ritual “lie”. Rifleman walks twice to engage him. I try to place a scheme marker. Iron Skeeter zooms up and eats it. Zipp disengages from the Executioner, beats up on Dashel. Unfortunately, there is nothing Dashel can do to score and he is the final activation. Dashel: 4 VP (Outflank, Plant Explosives) Zipp: 5 VP Lessons Learned: Almost, almost almost. I was definitely playing from behind scheme-wise this game, although I was quite happy with the crew’s ability to steam through Mancha and his soul stones, and Gracie, and Merris, and Earl and really come out none the worse for wear. Card draw was very impactful to me this game, it saved my bacon with the mask on Turn 1, on Turn 2 I actually ended up with a hand full of severes. Hats off to my opponent, after a few games of Dashel, he definitely gamed me with 12 Cups of Coffee and a crew that eats scheme markers pretty easily. Other mistakes were: I placed the Mounted Guard in an easy to kill position bc I let the BJ throw me off (second time I have made this mistake as well). I didn’t score Hold Up when I should have, despite leaving the Executioner slow so as to engage Gracie with the Steward. When Dashel walked to place his Explosive Marker, I should have done that more centrally. I was trying to avoid the severe terrain, but I also knew I would need a Mounted Guard to get the other corner, and that cost me some inches of movement, which ended up costing me a VP. Pale Rider should have made the Steward charge towards the center not the corner, that would have kept the Steward’s Dispel more relevant to the game. I didn’t pop the Undercover Reporter out to score Plant on Turn 2, as he would have been left by Zipp and the First Mate, who I assumed would have killed him and taken the marker. Maybe this was a mistake, certainly by the end of the game I had 4 markers down, but missed scoring max points because I missed that turn. On the final turn, I should have had the Lawyer walk twice to get Outflank, which would have freed up the much faster Mounted Guard to try to get to Zipp and score Hold Up. Who says you don’t learn more from losses?!?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted January 25, 2020 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2020 Flank - Turf War -Search the Ruins -Dig Their Graves -Claim Jump -Detonate Charges -Harness the Leyline Having a pool with Detonate and Harness just screamed False Witness at me, so I opted to dust off my old Neverborn Lucius and bring him home to a new family. I played him a ton in closed beta, but it has been about a year, so here’s to hoping playing Elite is like riding a bike. Lucius -The Scribe False Witness Guild Lawyer Investigator Agent 46 Pale Rider Domador de Cadaveres I decided to get a bit cute adding in the Domador. I figured consistent healing would be useful with Turf War (better healing than the Steward), and she can obey the Pale Rider, being undead and all (or a surprising amount of Titania’s keyword too). Titania ---Blood Sacrifice -Gorar Killyjoy Hooded Rider Mysterious Effigy -Effigy of Fate Aeslin ---Blood Sacrifice Doppleganger Terrain note: The rectangular trees were counted as impassible walls, which makes a --significant-- impact on maneuvering. Turn 1 Summary I chose to start off with a poop hand, nothing higher than an 8. Turn 1 was fairly boring, I dropped some scheme markers, I pushed some guys. Scribe ran up, Titania shot at him, 4 damage down to 2, buries. Agent and Pale take a bunch of shots at Killjoy, stagger him. He does heal and runs away. Doppleganger moves towards the Turf Marker in my upper corner. Turn 2 Summary Pale does a Ride with Me on Agent, but then drops Doppleganger in 2 swings (severe and moderate on a negative damage flip). Agent comes back central and drops a scheme marker. Domador comes up and Command Corpses the Rider to touch the Turf Marker. I have a suspicion he is going for Claim Jump, so the Investigator rolls on up. The Lawyer gives him shielded, and he pitches a bunch of cards to survive Aeslin shots. With the help of Lucius, the False Witness pops up and False Claims twice. Lucius: 3 VP (Turf War, Detonate Charges [Titania], Harness the Leyline) Titania: 1 VP (Turf War) Turn 3 Summary Effigy grows up, boo. Everything becomes a ridiculously nasty cluster in the middle. Steward pops out and gives Lawyer, Domador, and Lucius focus. Titania kills the Steward, goes in on Investigator who discards to survive. Lucius snipes Aeslin for 2 injured. Domador hits Aeslin with Decay, gets the trigger for another 2 Injured. She also obeys Pale Rider to flip the Turf Marker. Pale Rider pulls up Agent, misses shot on Aeslin, Injured +4, but has concealment. Agent fails to Mimic Rider’s gun, so walk, charge, kill Aeslin. Hooded moves to the center and makes a mess of everyone with his ultimate action, it does force some soulstone prevention from Agent. False Witness lays a scheme marker and scoots around. Lucius: 4 VP (Turf War) Titania: 1 VP Turn 4 Summary I am trying to get initiative in order to have the Lawer obey the Rider to use all his tokens, sadly I fail. Hooded Rider goes, which wasn’t awful, except that he Red Jokered on the Investigator and the blast killed the Lawyer. Flips 2 markers, Hooded ends up teleporting to the Domador. Pale comes in, uses Devastation, clips Hooded, Emissary, Killjoy, and Titania. Damage, burning, slow, etc. Titania beats on Pale and Agent a little bit. Lucius focus snipers onto Emissary, misses, charges Hooded, misses. Mid-way through, we have to call the game on time. Rest of the turn, Agent was looking to copy the Rider’s gun and shoot at the Emissary. Killjoy was slow and too far back to matter. Domador was going to try to Decay Hooded down a bit more, he had 5 wounds left and hopefully burning and Entropy with Decay could have killed him, maybe. Otherwise, scoring Turf was dead to me, so I was just looking to get more Leyline and Detonate. Lessons Learned: Despite the score, I didn’t feel I played strongly in this game. With the terrain the way it was, and playing versus Titania, it became an utter mess in the middle of the table. I wonder that I may want to take 2 False Witnesses if I am going with that scheme pool, as with only one on the table I was freaking out from Turn 2 onward that it was going to get picked off. Additionally, with Claim Jump I think I need a better tank model, a la Phiona Gage perhaps. Investigator did it in a pinch, but being fair, he’s really not meant for that role. Coulda, shoulda, woulda hired in Lone Marshal for this match up...except I don’t own him. Ironically I was wrong about Claim Jump on Aeslin, it was on something else. However, he did have Dig Graves, and popping Aeslin made that much harder for him to score it. One final thing, is rather than charging, Lucius should have had the Witness hit the Emissary with J’Accuse for the Adversary condition, which would have made Agent shooting it in concealment much easier. Truthfully, I almost feel like I need to go back to the drawing table on this one, I wasn’t overly happy with how my list felt. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rubyhathunger Posted January 25, 2020 Report Share Posted January 25, 2020 I really like these battlereports. There is one question I have while reading. How long does a game of 5 turns take for you or in your meta? Because you are putting out games like crazy, in my german meta, people are slow and new players shy away because the game takes too long for them. So one or two games a week is the limit, if a game takes 4-5 hours for me at least. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4thstringer Posted January 25, 2020 Report Share Posted January 25, 2020 8 hours ago, Gaston said: @4thstringer, I'm closer to Fredericksburg, FWIW. I am going to the Huzzah tournament in Feb, seems to be about a halfway point. Show up and show me up, I'm not feeling too competitively confident. Unfortunately that one is on a Sunday, which is the only day off for my wife from work, so we usually spend the time together. If something comes up to keep her busy or i would be the there. Is Fredericksburg considered NOVA? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted January 26, 2020 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2020 21 hours ago, Rubyhathunger said: I really like these battlereports. There is one question I have while reading. How long does a game of 5 turns take for you or in your meta? Because you are putting out games like crazy, in my german meta, people are slow and new players shy away because the game takes too long for them. So one or two games a week is the limit, if a game takes 4-5 hours for me at least. Glad you like them! My game rate isn't actually that different from yours actually. I average one a week, until work messes things up, then it drops significantly. It just looks like I am putting them out because I get backlogged writing things up and end up putting up a couple at a time. Game length is comfortably between 2 - 2.5 hrs, not including set up and take down. If I have a battle report end on concession then I just write it up as ending on "time", but concession is fairly infrequent--I personally believe on fighting to the end if time allows. I actually have a weeknight "bedtime" because I am too darn old, so a typical game night runs after work, 7pm to 10pm, basically on the dot. So for me, I'm not doing a 4-5 hour game ever, that sounds pretty painful, and I'll concede before I hit hour 3. One "trick" we do to speed things up--we post the missions a few days ahead of time so people can show up with 75% of a list built, then you are just tweaking a model or two based on opponent rather than building from scratch. Practicing Turn 1 on your own is another way to speed things up, even if it feels really weird and dorky to do. I am definitely sympathetic to new players getting in to any new tabletop game, the barrier to entry is indeed high. When starting a new faction of any game, I tend to look at it as buying a car--it's gonna cost up front, you won't get your money back, research a lot before you buy, test drive (proxy), and buy used if you can. In my case it wasn't a coincidence that I started with Perdita--the box set gets you most everything, I had little interest in Monster Hunters or Latiagos, so all I needed to add was the Guild Steward and Pale Rider (found him used from M2E). Ultimately I added in a scratch built False Witness too. So overall, pretty cheap. Dashel was my second master because around Thanksgiving everything from his keyword in M2E boxes was 50% off, and I had the Dashel model from the M2E Lucius box set that I had grabbed for Neverborn. Dispatcher I built from scratch, Steward and Pale Rider I already had from Perdita. The next thing you generally see me do is play something half a dozen times or so before moving on to anything else. Tabletop is time intensive, and I only play once a week on average. If you switch every single time, mastering anything will take you forever. The first couple games are a disaster of trying to figure everything out. Game 3 it starts clicking, Game 5/6 is where the learning curve starts to level out a bit. That's Jan/Feb for me basically. Doing things this way does help ease the cost of buy-in though. Consider my start in Perdita was about $100 MSRP. After 5 games, that is 10 hours of play, and my cost of fun is $10/hr. 5 more games, and that drops to $5/hr. Sorry for the long winded reply, hope some of this was helpful. 1 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rubyhathunger Posted January 26, 2020 Report Share Posted January 26, 2020 It was helpful, thank you. I even use the app and set up the game and the lists days before... But just unsing one crew over and over again could proof succesful. I switch beetween 3 crews (Dashel, Nellie and Titania) to justify having them, while building up a Lucius and a Lady J crew. On the other hand are my opponents also switching their crews like their clothes, so it's a completly new situation everytime we play. Sticking to one crew maybe for a month could cut down our gametime. Thank you 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuBlanck Posted January 28, 2020 Report Share Posted January 28, 2020 Replying here rather than in the general errata thread: I hired a Lawyer and Executioner in my last game, and it certainly felt like I had the crew under a little more control than previous attempts (still a little boned by a lack of Masks and Rams though). Somehow it hadn't occurred to me to buy the Drop It trigger during any of my games, despite having seen that option while reading the cards prior to trying the crew. You are definitely right that Plan Buttloadofwork is strictly secondary to finding almost any other way possible of getting that enemy marker out. Another limitation is my limited model pool - I have a single Mounted Guard proxy and no Wardens, so I'm mostly looking at Riflemen or chaff, since the Executioner is so egregiously difficult to get out. I was kicking around the idea of being able to summon without targeting markers, and in that case have the summoned model come on in contact with a board edge in your deplyment zone. I suspect that is thematically appropriate for summoned reinforcements, but not actually sensible in game. The summoning options are mostly slow-moving, so will have little impact except for Power Ritual, Breakthrough and Search the Ruins - where that mechanic would kill those schemes dead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikes Posted January 30, 2020 Report Share Posted January 30, 2020 Best thread on this forum, calling it now. As an aside, are you the same @Gaston who used to play Warmahordes on Advanced Manouvres? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted February 1, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 1, 2020 On 1/30/2020 at 12:19 AM, Mikes said: Best thread on this forum, calling it now. As an aside, are you the same @Gaston who used to play Warmahordes on Advanced Manouvres? Yup! Actually tried videotaping some games, but ran into editing issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikes Posted February 2, 2020 Report Share Posted February 2, 2020 Awesome. If you do get dome finished i know I'd be keen on seeing them. I devoured AM batreps when i played Warmachine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted February 3, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 3, 2020 8 hours ago, Mikes said: Awesome. If you do get dome finished i know I'd be keen on seeing them. I devoured AM batreps when i played Warmachine. The issue we ran into was that we just had the one camera on the table, same as always. But like if you're shooting, there were no dice in frame, so you'd get just 30 mins of no models moving. Even adding in flipping didn't exactly help make the video non-static and boring. It also added in a lot of editing time to try to chop it all down, especially if the editor was not one of the players in the game and didn't really know when something really impactful was happening. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikes Posted February 4, 2020 Report Share Posted February 4, 2020 I could imagine that. Ah well, in your write ups here are just as informative. Thanks for them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted February 11, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 First tournament with Guild! I ended up solo’ing Dashel as I haven’t really had much of a chance to play anything else, thanks to real life (grrr!). My focus for this event was that I really wanted to dig down into having a plan, efficient execution, and to see how I could specifically tailor Dashel to each strat/scheme pool. Special thanks to @Kolath for running an amazing event! The boys in blue!! ------------------- Round 1 Corner - Plant Explosives -Hold Up -Take Prisoner -Outflank -Deliver a Message -Power Ritual The list I came up for this was “fast Dash”: Dashel, 4 ss -Dispatcher Queeg Steward Rifleman Mounted Guard Lawyer Pale Rider I updated my first turn plan to account for the Queeg pushes: Queeg advance and scheme, keep Mounted in 4”. Dispatcher pushes Rifleman to Queeg, flips scheme marker. Walk to keep Mounted within 2”. Dashel gives Mounted Fast, walk, summon, focus or walk. Lawyer, Tools back the focus card. Surge if possible. End within 2” of Pale. Steward walk, dispel and focus if possible Rifleman (give fast). Focus Rifleman (give fast). Ideally you can end up a decent way up the board, have 2 fast Riflemen (summon one) and a fast Mounted Guard, and generate 9” of passive pushes. I went up against….drumroll….Mah Tucket. She is brand new for me, the only thing I really knew about her is the trick where you spam focus on Rooster Riders to couple with Frantic. I didn’t audible any models, but in my mind my change was to not give fast to the Riflemen, but keep focus in order to have the opportunity to hit the Roosters from much further back. Mah Tucket -Little Lass Soulstone Miner Soulstone Miner Rooster Rider Rooster Rider Iron Skeeter Gracie Bushwacker Turn 1 Summary He does his early turn stuff, I do mine. Queeg plan goes according to plan, the big change I had to make was offset to one side because the compound hill would stop all the pushes. Gracie rides up Mah, Skeeter flies up Mah. Miners bury. Fast Mounted Guard gets to a corner and drops a bomb. Bushwacker takes a couple shots on the Rider, misses. Rifleman puts 5 damage into Gracie. Mah does a walk, walk, charge on Rider, makes a pit trap. Turn 2 Summary Well, I really don’t want Rider to be with Mah, so I win initiative and start with him. He takes the ping from the trap to Ride with Me back, then pops two shots into Mah to give her Injured +2 and Staggered (stay away!). Mah makes a pit, does some manner of ranged attack, misses, walks and bombs. Rooster charges in on the Rider. Lawyer draws some cards, Obeys the Rider to shoot Mah (Injured +3), slows the Rooster. Skeeter goes in on the Lawyer as well. Rifleman finishes Mah. Miner pops up and attacks Rider. Dashel heals and focuses Rider, wanders around. Miner pops up and does 6 damage to the Mounted Guard. Rooster gets to the other corner. Rifleman takes a shot at Gracie. Dashel: 1 VP (Plant Explosives) Mah: 3 VP (Plant Explosives, Outflank, Hold Up) Turn 3 Summary Rider leads off, uses Devastation on Miner, Rooster, and Skeeter. Attacks Miner again and kills it. Lawyer is killed by the Rooster (it is on 1 Wd). It takes the Lawyer’s bomb and drops it. Skeeter flies both of them away. Other Miner buries. Rifleman kills both the Skeeter and Rooster. Queeg runs a bomb. Dashel shoots Little Lass with Drop It, ultimately kills her. Gracie runs away. Dashel: 2 VP (Plant Explosives) Mah: 4 VP (Plant Explosives) Turn 4 Summary Pale Rider walks and plants a bomb. Rifleman walks and picks up a bomb. Gracie lays a bomb. Dashel summons a Guardsman (all I have the cards for), shoots Gracie with Drop It trigger. Rooster kills the Guardsman. Dashel: 3 VP (Plant Explosives) Mah: 5 VP (Plant Explosives) Turn 5 Summary Miner pops up, dismounts the Mounted Guard, kills the Guard Patrol. Rider walks, charges, Devastations, kills it. Rooster Rider charges and kills the Rifleman, then charges and kills Dashel. Hits with the attack again trigger 4 times and gets moderate damage every time. With Dashel dead I can’t get anything into the corner or have anything to score Hold Up, so game is called. Dashel: 4 VP (Plant Explosives) Mah: 5 VP Lessons Learned: Tough one, I was super unprepared for the Miners, I had no clue Mah could take them, lol! Ah well, at least I had the satisfaction of killing them both. Obviously this game I ended up doing very well on attrition, and very poorly on scheming. Where I really messed up was with Hold Up. I didn’t realize until too late that the Rifleman cannot score it. Taking Plant instead, I would have scored at least once. On Turn 3 Hold Up really came into play where I didn’t really know what to do with Dashel and the Dispatcher. I should have brought the Dispatcher forward more instead of focusing, then could have tried to summon a Guard Patrol off of him with Dashel. Then with the Queeg push, creep along, fast, and walk, I could have engaged a second model and scored there too. As for my first game with Queeg, he was aggressively alright. He didn’t really “do anything” other than exist, but I got a ton of use out of the free push. So...pretty mixed results there. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted February 11, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 Round 2 Flank - Turf War -Dig Their Graves -Claim Jump -Search the Ruins -Detonate Charges -Harness the Leyline This time I was going into Turf War, so I faced a dilemma most existential: how do I make my soft bellied models not die to a stiff breeze and flip a turf marker? So I pulled out an idea from our very own Guild forums: Death Marshal Recruiter. My core list this time consisted of 2 Executioners backed by the DMR. They have Hard to Kill, then he pitches a card, makes them into a Death Marshal also with Hard to Kill. My audible for this list was the Guild Lawyer--to keep or swap for a Domador for extra healing?!? I adjusted my Turn 1 steps to something much simpler: DMR advance, drop marker. Dispatcher flip marker, targeting Executioner. Dashel, advance, give focus, summon, focus/walk Lawyer, Tools for the Job, flip turf marker, draw cards Gameplan-wise, I was out to make a triangle--if I could lock down 3 markers I was pretty happy with that. Dig Their Graves was out because I loot corpses, Detonate is just too hard for this crew. I initially had Claim Jump on the DMR because his role is essential to stand there, but he is also the squishiest model in my crew so I audibled over to take Search and Harness the Leyline instead. Dashel, 5ss -Dispatcher Executioner Executioner Pale Rider Death Marshal Recruiter Guild Lawyer My opponent took Jack Daw: Jack Daw -Lady Ligeia Montressor The Hanged The Hanged The Guilty ---Servant of Dark Powers The Guilty Dead Outlaw ---Servant of Dark Powers I have played versus Daw a grand total of….once. During closed beta. Like 18 months ago. With a totally different faction. So again, I am going in fairly blind. I know he puts out Staggered, and I was considering tossing in the Steward, but didn’t really have anyone to flex (can’t rely on getting the 13 to summon an Executioner). One odd fact that didn’t pop up but is fun: when you replace, you shed upgrades. Between the DMR, Executioners, and Mounted Guard, I actually replace a lot. Interesting counter-tech to Daw. Also I stop a lot of his pushing models with the Dispatcher, very handy for denying Claim Jump. Turn 1 Summary I do basically what I had planned. He has a Guilty scoot up and hurt the DMR, an Executioner crushes it (collects upgrade). Dead Outlaw frigging Red Jokers a shot onto the Rider for 5 damage, yikes. Dashel summons a Mounted Guard, shoots Lady Ligeia for Drop It (pre-planning!). Rider and Mounted Guard kill the Dead Outlaw. Daw runs to grab a Turf Marker, a Hanged pops over to Rider. The non-scary Guilty flips a marker. Turn 2 Summary Rider goes first to ditch staggered, pops his bonus to heal, and smacks the Hanged who is by him. Daw flips his marker, walks, attacks Rider, cheat to force a miss. Both Hanged and Montressor form an unholy mess with the two Executioners and DMR in the middle. Things get Staggered, attached, damaged, healed. Ultimately the DMR actually charges in and Pine Boxes Montressor and attacks him while buried, that way I can remove Staggered. Ligeia goes down to an Executioner. I really struggle with the Terrifying 12 on the Hanged, even Dashel charges in and doesn’t make a ton of headway. Probably averages out to 50% of the attacks on the Hanged miss due to terror. Mounted Guard flips a Turf Marker. Dashel: 1 VP (Turf War) Jack Daw: 1 VP (Turf War) Turn 3 Summary Montressor comes back, takes the DMR down to 1 Wd (so if I activate with Staggered, I die). Rider comes in, does Devastation, heals my guys, hits the two Hanged and Montressor. One of the Hanged will die to fire at the end of the turn. He then shoots Daw and Staggers him (stay away!!!). Slow Hanged manage to kill the DMR (sad). The Executioners figure out that Montressor has a lower terrifying, so they go in on him instead, he dies. Then they and Dashel get to work on the Hanged, and basically whiff nearly everything due to terror. The Hanged hops over to the Mounted Guard, does some damage. Same with the Guilty. Mounted Guard rides out of combat, shoots the Guilty with a RJ for damage, kills it. Daw slowly moves to scheme. Hanged dies to fire. Dashel: 2 VP (Turf War) Daw: 2 VP (Turf War) At this point my opponent concedes, with just a Hanged on 3 Wds and Jack Daw left, and me with plenty of time to wrap up scoring. Lessons Learned: In some ways, I think I got really lucky here. Obviously Pale Rider saved the day with Devastation and the irreducible damage versus the incorporeal models. Otherwise the Hanged were hanging in there way too long (pun intended). The terrifying was eventually overcome, but really did waste a lot of AP. My tank plan worked out okay, but this game suffered from the same thing my previous game did--late scoring. This is an early problem I had with Guild and I am not excited to see myself backsliding. The good part here was that I was able to get through most everything with 2 turns remaining to score, with the poor Hanged being one Devastation away from a bad end. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted February 11, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 Round 3!!! Standard - Cursed Idols -Assassinate -Vendetta -Deliver a Message -Claim Jump -Breakthrough This was Corrupted Idols, which I think I have only ever played once with Dashel and twice with Guild (I need to get out more). I took a left turn here and added Nellie into the crew as a second master hire. Warning: I have never played Nellie before, but she seemed ideal for babysitting a cluster of Idols and just being super annoying. Otherwise, I took a fairly standard load out with the usual suspects. Due to Assassinate being in the pool, I tossed a Lead Lined Coat onto Dashel. Dashel, 7 ss ---Lead Lined Coat -Dispatcher Nellie Rifleman Rifleman Steward Lawyer I went up against Bayou again, this time Somer. Unfortunately, another master I only played against once, in closed beta, a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Som’er Teeth Jones -Skeeter -Skeeter Lenny ---Twelve Cups of Coffee Georgy and Olaf Old Cranky Good Ol’ Boy Good Ol’ Boy Spit Hog I take Breakthrough and Vendetta on a Rifleman against a Good Ole Boy. Turn 1 Summary Idol on my right side, mid-way point. I do my little summon engine, pop out a Mounted Guard (where do they all come from?!?). His Skeeter runs to the Idol, Rifleman and Dashel kill it. Somer summons a Crier and another Skeeter. Dashel takes some shots from Somer and Georgy, but none stick through armor and shielding. The Good Ol’ Boys rip me up though. They have swag, so walk, get a focused shot, shoot the Rifleman, get a blast, and a ricochet with a positive to that damage flip as well from the focus. I take a lotta damage, sadly. Mounted Guard goes in the opposite direction. Turn 2 Summary Idol drops on my left side, mid-way point. Dashel is able to summon up an Executioner, Skeeter gets killed. Executioner dies, Rifleman dies, Steward dies, Lawyer dies. Skeeter charges Mounted Guard, to no avail. Dispatcher is able to flip another marker. Rifleman takes a shot at the Skeeter, misses. Mounted Guard kills it with the horse, runs away. Olaf puts a solid 5 damage shot into him. Dashel: 1 VP (Turf War) Somer: 1 VP (Claim Jump [Lenny]) Turn 3 Summary Idol drops on my left side, mid-way point. Dashel summons a Mounted Guard, retreats a bit. Nellie holds things up still. Mounted Guard pulls the Rifleman up to the two Idols, Rifleman walks to hide base to base with them. Other Mounted Guard schemes. He shoots Dashel down to 5 health. Dashel: 2 VP (Breakthrough) Somer: 2 VP (Assassinate) Turn 4 Summary Idol drops on my right, mid-way point. Rifleman pushes both Idols. Mounted Guard lays down two scheme markers. Other Mounted Guard runs to help. Nellie pushes the other Idol a couple inches, puts Slow on Lenny and Somer. He finally takes down Nellie, pushes an Idol. Dashel dies to two Good Ol’ Boys. Olaf walks and dismounts the injured Mounted Guard. Dashel: 3 VP (Turf War) Somer: 3 VP (Corrupted Idols) Turn 5 Summary We just talk it through, things are pretty set. Dashel: 4 VP (Breakthrough) Somer: 6 VP (Assassinate, Claim Jump, Corrupted Idols) Lessons Learned: This game was absolutely brutal. I was completely unprepared and caught completely flat-footed. That being said, as my spiritual advisor Bieber says--never stop never stopping. Fought back, got the game to within 2 points, which isn’t bad. Other that changing my entire crew and strategy, two things really leap out at me during the write up that I should have done differently: I figured out Turn 1 he had Assassinate on Dashel when Dashel was targeted like 8,000 times. But I hung around too long with Dashel, purely to use Loot Their Corpse for 2 more stones. It was time to book it, and I paid the price for not. Nellie did great, but I messed up. I used Plant Evidence to heal from moving 2 Idols and then from putting down a scheme marker. This was good. What I should have done is place and pick up the scheme marker over and over, healing 6 Wds a turn. This -may- have kept her alive long enough to deny him at least one Idol point. With these two denials, I could have moved the game closer to a tie. Obviously with the benefit of hindsight, I needed to choose better schemes and have a better tailored crew for the match up, but that’s why we play--experience! ----------- So, while an overall record of 1-2 with 16 VP and a +3 diff isn’t that great, I actually feel really good about things overall. I took my master, and for the most part my list tailoring worked out the way I intended. My losses were rough, but they were also against really good players (2nd and 3rd place), and they were very close games. Going back over things, I can easily point to mistakes that I made and could have corrected in order to close the points gap. I was also at a bit of a disadvantage of knowledge--while I’ve heard about these scary masters, I haven’t been able to experience them a few times in order to figure out how to counter and what the stress points for them are. All of these things will come in time, and I had a great time with the faction and the event! Now, time to explore a new master…. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikes Posted February 11, 2020 Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 Noooo! This thread has single handedly caused me to pull my Guard crew out to paint and I have so much more to learn! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trample Posted February 11, 2020 Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 Great reports - thank you! You've had a bit of a rough time running into things you haven't faced before, but that can only last so long. I was a bit surprised with the wide variation in your crew selection but you did say you were trying to develop an ability to tailor Dashel to each situation. It doesn't look like he summoned as much as I would have expected over the course of those games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted February 11, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 9 hours ago, Mikes said: Noooo! This thread has single handedly caused me to pull my Guard crew out to paint and I have so much more to learn! #MissionAccomplished 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted February 11, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 9 hours ago, Trample said: Great reports - thank you! You've had a bit of a rough time running into things you haven't faced before, but that can only last so long. I was a bit surprised with the wide variation in your crew selection but you did say you were trying to develop an ability to tailor Dashel to each situation. It doesn't look like he summoned as much as I would have expected over the course of those games. Summoning is hard, sadly. The keyword as a whole is really card intensive with few card draw options. Consider that you have to discard for the free focus, or for healing Executioners, or if you go the DMR route you discard again there too. Then you add in the scheme marker requirement (literally not a single opponent dropped one all day). So if I summon just a Guard Patrol off of my Dispatcher, that requires a 10 to start with, which is tough going. Getting the marker to flip requires a model to drop it, then a mask, and sometimes you just don't have the high card to summon or the mask to flip, especially late in the turn. Usually I have an excellent summon on Turn 1 because everything is planned out, and after that it can dwindle pretty quickly unfortunately. I faced some hard decisions on whether to bank my high cards versus Daw. Somer makes you toss pass tokens or your hand at the end of the turn each turn...like, why does that ability exist??? So I was always at an initiative disadvantage in Turf War versus him, as summoning gave him a token for +1, Cranky gives him a positive twist for initiative, and I couldn't bank cards if I wanted to use my pass tokens. Draw wise, the Lawyer is helpful, but after that you're looking at either the Judge or Dade. Judge wasn't terribly exciting for these pools (also the self-damage part) and Dade I don't own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DuBlanck Posted February 11, 2020 Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 14 hours ago, Gaston said: Now, time to explore a new master… Thank you for your service, Guardsman. This has been a useful thread both in actually helping me get Dashel sorted out in my head, and stopping me just reverting to Lucius entirely. 3 hours ago, Gaston said: The keyword as a whole is really card intensive with few card draw options. I've definitely found it very limiting in my games - there are just enough TNs and similar that you need a reasonable hand, and that can often mean spending cards on utility that I'd rather spend on punching. The flipside of that is I recently killed the Hodgepodge Emissary by pouring dogs on it until it stopped moving, and that only cost me the summon cards - quantity has a quality all of its own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark Reaper Posted February 11, 2020 Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 I have great fun reading these. Keep up the good work! Who will you play next? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaston Posted February 11, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 30 minutes ago, Dark Reaper said: I have great fun reading these. Keep up the good work! Who will you play next? Choices are Nellie, Lady J, or Lucius. I've only started collecting Hoffman and Basse, and usually it takes me a couple months to assemble and paint (stupid adulting). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark Reaper Posted February 11, 2020 Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 All strong choices. I have a soft spot for Lucius, but Nellie is also amongst our top masters, and Lady J is decent as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikes Posted February 11, 2020 Report Share Posted February 11, 2020 7 hours ago, Gaston said: Summoning is hard, sadly. The keyword as a whole is really card intensive with few card draw options. Consider that you have to discard for the free focus, or for healing Executioners, or if you go the DMR route you discard again there too. Then you add in the scheme marker requirement (literally not a single opponent dropped one all day). So if I summon just a Guard Patrol off of my Dispatcher, that requires a 10 to start with, which is tough going. Getting the marker to flip requires a model to drop it, then a mask, and sometimes you just don't have the high card to summon or the mask to flip, especially late in the turn. Usually I have an excellent summon on Turn 1 because everything is planned out, and after that it can dwindle pretty quickly unfortunately. I faced some hard decisions on whether to bank my high cards versus Daw. Somer makes you toss pass tokens or your hand at the end of the turn each turn...like, why does that ability exist??? So I was always at an initiative disadvantage in Turf War versus him, as summoning gave him a token for +1, Cranky gives him a positive twist for initiative, and I couldn't bank cards if I wanted to use my pass tokens. *quietly pushes Guard keyword back into paint queue* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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