Battle Report - aSonnia vs Pandora

[nix]

(Reposted from Dead Tau Project Blog)

Ok, so I snuck out of work on Monday and grabbed a game of Malifaux late in the afternoon. Not a bad thing, the day was a bit stressful and I needed a break. While I was out, local eChris (who also appears on Gamers Lounge from time to time) shared that he was really anxious to get his Pandora crew back on the table. See, eChris has been playing an awful lot of games lately with the Arcanist, and he had not brought out his Neverborn in probably a month or more. With that said, the way he asked me led me to believe we were looking at a "Hard" or "Tournament Style" game. You know, no hold barred face smashing goodness. I thought that sounded fun, as I love playing eChris and I had not tried aSonnia out in a tournament setting yet. We agreed to the throwdown during out regular Tuesday night gaming, and went to our corners.

So, that brings us to Tuesday night gaming and this Battle Report. I have had some requests on the blog for more battle reports, along with a fair number of requests to the podcast (for both battle reports and pictures of our painted models). I rolled into the store and eChris was ready to go. We picked out our crews and started setting up. He had just completed painting up some of his NB models, so pulled them out to play. I will say this, now, before the battle report. While his list was good, it is not fully up to the Tournament level of list he typically runs.

So, first the basics:

30 Soulstone game

Shared Destroy the Evidence

Standard Deployment

eChris's crew:

• Pandora -- 6 Pool
  
• Doppelganger [8ss]
  
• Lelu [7ss]
  
• Lilitu [7ss]
  
• Lilitu [7ss]
  

Schemes: Hold Out & Assassinate

My Crew:

• Sonnia Criid -- 7 Pool
  
• + Sonnia, Avatar of Conflagration [2ss]
  
• Desperate Mercenary [2ss]
  
• Desperate Mercenary [2ss]
  
• Guardian [7ss]
  
• Santiago Ortega [7ss]
  
• Watcher [3ss]
  
• Witchling Stalker [4ss]
  

Schemes: Subjugate & Raid

And that brings us to the board and the deployments. The crew pictures above (sorry for the blurry picture of my crew) show how we deployed, but here is the board as a whole.

You should be able to make out the wooden tokens at the center of the board then spread onto his side (these are my Evidence markers and the Neutral marker) and then the black bases on my side of the board (his evidence). One of his evidence markers is behind the ruins on the right of the board and cannot really be seen.

Turn 1

We flipped initiative and got underway. Turn 1 was, as is typical, a fair amount of maneuvering. I would be able to out-activate eChris, so I started conservatively by moving a witchling stalker forward, protecting Santiago with the Guardian and then shield bashing Santiago for 1dg, and drifting up with the mercs. I did not want to have Pandora run wild with incites/pacify or be grabbed (easily) with the Lilitu lures. For my crews, first turn positioning is important, while I can loosen up a bit starting turn 2. eChris had his doppelganger copy Dementia and Casting Expert, he cast Dementia at Pandora then walked forward a bit. The triplets shifted around, with Lelu positioning himself just inside the door of the ruins, Lilitu luring the Witchling Stalker forward to the fence, and the other Lilitu shifting to my left, sitting just outside the left side of the ruins. Pandora shot up the board by passing a number of dementia checks (requiring eChris to cheat 3 cards from his hand), got himself onto his closest objective to the right, but was out of range to cast anything when he got there. I moved forward with Sonnia, put up inferno and tried to throw a fireball at my witchling stalker. I measured range and found the Stalker was ~1 inch too far, so held onto the 10 of Tomes I was planning to cast with. My last move was to move up with the Watcher, sitting smack on the neutral center evidence marker. At the closing phase inferno knocks the two mercs down to a single wd and Santiago down to half wounds. Here is the board at the end of Turn 1.

Turn2

Turn 2 kicked off with a really good draw on my part. I had held onto the 10 of tomes from turn 1, and drew into my hand another 11, 12, and red joker. I took a look at the board and was ready to take initiative, and luckily flipped two high cards even with the negative initiative flip from the doppelganger. I started the turn with the Stalker charging Lelu, cheating high enough for a straight flip, tossing down the red joker, and doing enough damage (with Critical) to kill Lelu. I knew this would set eChris onto his back foot, but not push him out of the game. I still had to subjugate 2 models to turn them into Witchlings for my scheme, and had a ways to go on my strategy as well. The outside Lilitu moved forward and engaged the Watcher with her 4 inch reach, stopping him from destroying the neutral evidence. The Watcher jumped forward onto the evidence in eChris's deployment zone, getting out of melee with the Lilitu and opening her up for some shooting. The second Lilitu lured the witchling forward and smacked him around a bit. The male desperate merc moved over the wall to take a bead on the outside Lilitu, and let loose with some uncontrolled fire. Thanks to For My Family, and some judicious flips, he was able to get both shots off, hit with 1, and knock her down 2 wounds. The rest of the turn had Pandora ping some damage onto the guardian, Santiago, and kill both Merc's before I could turn them into Stalkers. eChris walked with his Doppelganger, mimic'd the Watchers walk, then walk again to sit on top of my evidence and engage the Watcher so he could not destroy it next turn. Sonnia pushed out a fire ball into the Lilitu, dropping her to 3 wounds remaining. This put me in a touch position, as I had the AP to kill the Lilitu, but could not do it with Violation of Magic to get the Subjagate. I decided to pass my last action, leaving Lilitu to slowly waste away, taking 1 wounds and dropping her into Violation territory.

Turn 3

Turn 3 started with my negative flip making me go second. I realize I cannot count on luck every turn. First activation went to eChris, who had the nearly dead Lilitu run behind the shacks to my left and try to hide from Sonnia. Sonnia moved forward (double walk), burned a soulstone to study her confiscated lore, and then let loose Violating the wounded Lilitu. Lilitu shriveled into a hooded Witchling Stalker, who was set in melee with Pandora. Lilitu lured the watcher away from the evidence, dropping wounds on him from Pandora, and killed him with her whip. My newly summoned Stalker put up his bubble of Magic hate and then tried to hit Pandora, only to suffer a point from emotional trauma and let Pandora push 4 inches away. The doppelganger copied the Stalkers sword and charged the Stalker engaged with Lilitu, but missed the attack. That Stalker activated, put up a bubble of magic hate, and turned his sword on the Doppelganger, bringing the skinless girl down to 2 wounds remaining. Pandora activated, put another wound on the slow stalker via pacify and pushed toward the rear evidence marker, back into his own deployment zone. She pacified Sonnia to push again to get out of the magic hate bubble, then cast self loathing at the witchling stalker. The Witchling hit himself with his own sword, taking him down to 1 wound. Pandora them finished her turn by pinging the Witchling, pushing onto the rear evidence marker, and causing the witchling to die and blow up, taking the doppelganger with him. This left the poor Lilitu in a fair amount of pain, but not dead. Santiago and the Guardian moved forward, took some pot-shots, but did not really swing the game any one direction. At the end of Turn 3, the board looked as such.

Turn 4 - 6

Turn 4 started with no negative flip as the doppelganger was dead. Even so, Chris won initiative and started the turn by Sacrificing his Lilitu for a soulstone, forcing me to focus on Pandora for my Subjagate scheme. The end of the game was fairly straight forward once that happened. eChris burned out my hand casting at Sonnia and Santiago, forcing me to play off the top of my deck after dispelling her spells. Sonnia cast inferno and then manifested, becoming aSonnia and moving down the board. Santiago and the Guardian positioned to destroy the center evidence, and the witchling ran for the rear evidence. Pandora successfully held off my ability to destroy the evidence and stayed as protected as possible from Sonnia, so I could not Violate her. I did a lot of positioning, resulting in Sonnia moving forward to destroy the rear evidence, Santiago and the Guardian destroying the neutral evidence and the other forward evidence, but I was unable to destroy the third evidence by the end of the game. Pyres could have killed Sonnia several times, but I was too focused on moving and trying to Violate her for my Subjugate scheme to just simply kill her with them. Here is the board at the end of the game, (that's a burning counter on Pandora).

The game ended with me achieving 3 points for Destroy the evidence, 2 points for raid, 0 for Subjugate while eChris scored 0 points on Destroy the Evidence, 0 for Assassinate, and 0 for Hold Out. Final score, 5-0 in Sonnia's favor.

Overall a great game, with some fantastic moves on both sides. I spent a lot of time trying for my Subjagate scheme, and ended up out of position to grab my last marker. eChris proves again that Pandora can hold off another crew handily even while all alone on the board.

[the_madhatter1]

Really cool bat rep, the pics were awesome too!

[FearLord]

Great report! Some really interesting moves from both sides. Pictures look really good.

[nix]

We may talk about parts of the game when we record the podcast this weekend, but I would love to know your thoughts and feedback. For example, @Fearlord, which moves did you find interesting? Interesting good or bad?

This is especially helpful for me as I love to analyze my games after the fact with an aim toward prep for competitive play. As this was supposed to be a "hard" or "competitive" game, I am interested in feedback.

[nilus]

I'd love to hear you guys discuss how luck can really swing a game. That 2nd turn Lelu kill was pretty damn lucky.

Also I love the wood tokens. I really need to order me a set. I think everyone I know who plays has them now but me.

Also going to send them an email to see if they want to make a puppet wars set.

[Punchausen]

Fantastic report, thanks!

One question - why did you bash Santiago with your shield in the first turn?

[nilus]

One question - why did you bash Santiago with your shield in the first turn?

I can answer this one. Santiago is awesome once he has suffered 4 wounds. So Nix hit him for one and then made sure he was in range of Inferno to do the total of 4 damage.

[FearLord]

We may talk about parts of the game when we record the podcast this weekend, but I would love to know your thoughts and feedback. For example, @Fearlord, which moves did you find interesting? Interesting good or bad?

This is especially helpful for me as I love to analyze my games after the fact with an aim toward prep for competitive play. As this was supposed to be a "hard" or "competitive" game, I am interested in feedback.

Oh interesting good definitely - my group are still learning the game to some extent, so it was interesting to see how your opponent's moves fed into the scenario (making moves specifically to engage the Watcher to stop it from destroying evidence etc.

The game was especially interesting to me, since I just played with Avatar Sonnia against Pandora last week (as seen in my recent Battle report, so its always nice to see what people do differently. As a Sonnia player, I liked the Shield bash / Inferno on a Protected Santiago to get him down to 4 wounds seems like a pretty effective way to up his potential early... I haven't tried to play Subjugate with her yet - while it seems doable, there always seem to be easier schemes to take, and it leaves Sonnia free to nuke stuff, of turn my own wounded models into fresh Witchlings, which seems to happen fairly frequently...

[sinistercats]

Bill- one thing that might be really helpful is the thought process of looking at the scenario and how that tweaks what crew you'd take.

People will talk a lot about how "this master is good for that scheme" and I think some discussion around that thought process would be really helpful. Both to get some insights into how you think about AND reinforce that the crew creation can/should change based on the flipped scenario?

Just some things I'd just like to hear more about. Love the podcast- keep up the good work!

Rand

[nix]

Bill- one thing that might be really helpful is the thought process of looking at the scenario and how that tweaks what crew you'd take.

Great point, and I am happy to share my thought process.

To be fair, I knew eChris would be taking Pandora. I was not sure which crew he would toss out, but knowing Pandora was in play at 30 stones, that initially set the idea for my list over the strategy. I expected one of two mixes to his crew.

1. Pandora, Insidious Madnesses, Sorrows, other stuff
   
2. Pandora, Twins, other stuff
   

With this in mind, my initial master was narrowed down siginificantly. I was pretty much down to Sonnia or Perdita as my master, as they work (in my experience) best vs the types of tricks coming from Pandora and either crew. I decided to go with Sonnia so I could test out her Avatar in a competitive setting, and because I had played her more than Perdita lately.

Choosing Sonnia already set some basics for my list. 1 Stalker, 2 Desperate mercs dropped in as the core. Then we flipped strategy (Shared Destroy Evidence) and I found that one of my other favorite pairs fit well with this list. Santiago plus Guardian gave me an extra walk and fairly quick end of turn move with the guardians Over Protective. I knew I could set at least one of my objectives next to the neutral objective and span the distance with Santiago and the Guardian. Plus, Santiago's free walk while hurt would help with moving and then using a (2) action to destroy the evidence on the same turn.

So then I looked at my core to see how that worked out. The mercs would (hopefully) push out a bit of damage onto whatever crew eChris brought, and then summoning off the mercs with Violation of Magic could set me up on objectives to destroy additional evidence. Good and Good. The initial stalker would be mostly interference vs eChris's crew. I could toss him out as a target, use him for activation order, etc.

That left me a couple points left. I wanted to pick up a pair of guild hounds, as their movement is great for this strategy. Their cost would push me to a base 4ss pool, which Sonnia does not work well with. I could drop the Stalker, but then my "interference" target would be gone. The Dogs would be fairly vulnerable to either Pandora crew, so I dropped that idea. With 2-3 points open I could go with a Watcher or a Totem. The Gov Proxy could help my crew vs Pandora prior to my manifest, but the Watcher was faster, significant, and I2I. Overall that was the better choice. Watcher was in, and my crew was set.

Now to pick schemes. I looked across the table and saw what crew eChris had brought. With such a low model count, I felt fairly confident I could kill 4 models before he wiped my crew. With that in mind, I took Raid. Raid is not an easy choice, but I felt good about it.

Second was taking Subjugate. I have had, overall, fairly good luck with Subjugate lately and due to this it has moved into my list of "easy to accomplish" strategies. I wanted to be violating models to summon extra stalkers anyway, and the violation spell successfully summoning a stalker helped both Destroy the Evidence and Raid. With that in mind, I did not see a reason to change it.

I took a second look through my remaining list of "easy" schemes.

• Hold out - bad because Pandora moves quick - rejected
  
• Assassinate - Pandora is tough to kill - rejected
  
• Bodyguard - Pandora is a tough cookie, and a good set of flips can run Sonnia off the table. Maybe but does not fit with everything else like Subjugate
  
• Breakthrough - my crew is not fast enough to guarantee 2+ models in his deployment zone. I prefer 2+ models in the deployment zone for this. Rejected.
  

So, with that in mind, I stuck with the 2 schemes I had already looked at. Subjugate and Raid.

[Brettqpublic]

Nix,

Thanks for posting. It was a very entertaining read. Also, as a new player I find the level of analysis you bring to the boards extremely helpful.

I do have one question. Typically, do you burn your Mercs and Santiago on turn 1 or 2?

Best,

Brett

[nix]

I do have one question. Typically, do you burn your Mercs and Santiago on turn 1 or 2?

That depends on the game and how things are progressing. I typically set-up to burn them on Turn 1, but try to keep my Sonnia activation until last. I can than judge if it makes sense to fire off inferno for the burn or take another action.