Arcanist Vs Neverborn - Mei against Lileth

[Adran]

Mei Feng Vs Lileth

Crews

Mei Feng

Emberling

Kaeris

Willie

Rail worker

Union Miner

Lazarus

Destroy the evidence

Alternate route

Secret Sabotage

Lileth

Collodi

4 mannequin's

3 wicked dolls

Killjoy

Reconnoitre

Assassinate Kaeris

Grudge Lazarus

Diagonal deployment in the ruins

Turn 1

Lileth walks towards the Arcanists, and hides behind a forest that just popped up. Collodi fills himself with stones and moves along the board edge away from the main bulk of Arcanist forces. Anyone would think the large number of blasts on the other side of the table scared him...

Emberling links to Lazarus and punches him forward 3". Union Miner buries to give me freedom where he goes for next turn. Lazarus moves forward and lays the line. Rail worker moves and lays the line. Willie walks and sets a snare near lileth but on the other side of the forest. Mei feng Rail walks through Lazarus and the rail worker she then walks up to the nearest of the evidence markers, and from the has a fairly simple line towards the 2 remaining evidence counters and the termination of her rail route.

The Miner pops up directly between Lileth and Mei feng to prevent lileth having a charge on Mei. ( he has a choice of Mei, Wille or the railworker to get near too)

Turn 2

Lileth Charges past Willies charges, but gets hit by the explosion. She smacks Willie on the charge and then uses her fast action to kill him. Poor willie. He explodes, dealing yet more damage to Lileth, who uses a soulstone to prevent all of it.

My Miner, now he isn't needed to block a charge, lays some line past the halfway mark, and goes to stand next to an evidence marker. In Hindsight this turned out to be a bad idea as straight away, the wicked doll hiding behind the nearby ruined building gets into position and slits its own throat, and somehow, from out of the slit throat Killjoy appears. Kaeris moves towards him, and puts a fire wall between him and the miner.

With the death of Willie, collodi moves his forces together again, ready to strike next turn. Since Lazarus is still about, he leaves most of the dolls about 3 1/2" from him. Lazarus Shoots at lileth, but with little success. The Emberling Punches Lasarus away to try and get him from sight. then remembering that Lazarus has already activated, he runs after him.

Mei has a relatively poor turn. She interacts with the evidence, but there isn't much else for her to do, so she moves just in front of Kaeris, ready to either help against the collodi forces in my rear, or killjoy to my front.

After everything I have has been Killjoy walks through the fire and smashes my poor Miner to peaces. Killjoy them eats him to heal up from being on fire.

Turn 3

Killjoy charges Mei feng and misses.

Then I lose initiative.

Killjoy activates and kills Kaeris over 2 attacks. The first hit for severe, the second hit for red joker and severe. Not good. It was careless placement from me to allow the charge to Mei to be in a place to hit Kaeris, after poor luck for the Miner to die to the melee expert. Killjoys last attack uses the black joker, so fails to hit Mei.

I use the emberling to move Lazarus further away from the now primed Collodi bomb and put up vent steam. Collodi makes the 4 marionettes and the wicked doll fast, gives two marionette and the wicked doll melee expert and uses his 0 action to make the wick doll activate straight after him and his marionettes. the non melee expert marionettes move collodi into strike range of lazarus. The Melee expert fast marionettes both defensive stance, and flurry Lazarus, and the Wicked doll also defensive stances and attacks Lazarus.

Lazarus survives on 1 wound, and is slow. The only other good thing is that the neverborn are down to only 1 card in hand. Lazarus uses melee expert into one of the marionettes. I flup high, and my opponent lets it go. I cheat in a lower ram and trigger unload ordinance. The blast actually does more damage than the bayonet killing 2 marionettes and the wicked doll and wounding collodi. I decide that the healing flip is more use than assimilate at this point and gained 1 wound (probably a bad call. Not sure what I should have assimilated, but could have made it permanent with the sudden scrap windfall I was in, denying the scrap to collodi. ). My next attack failed to hit. Lileth came around and tried to hit Lazarus but failed.

I was now left with Mei and a rail worker to activate. I considered using mei to kill killjoy, but though the black blood damage was probably going to be too high. So I decided to railwalker into the main fight, ending with a jackhammer kick into the injured marionette. I scalding breathed collodi, getting a vent steam and a superheat off, but the damage from the scalding breath was put on the last remaining marionette.

The Rail worker joined the fight, using his 3" melee range to hit collodi. I had considered using him to stop Killjoy getting a charge, but I couldn't engage him in melee without taking a terrifying effect. Whilst I could have stood 3" from him and hit him, I can only make my melee range 3" whilst he strikes, so it would allow a free charge for killjoy. I didn't have the cards left to guarantee passing the terrifying, so decided he was going to get charged anyway, I might try and hit something I can hurt. I get a couple more damage onto collodi

To summarise

At the end of turn 3 there is a large melee containing Collodi with 1 marionette just hanging on to life and lileth Vs, Mei, Lazarus, an attached emberling and a rail worker, with Killjoy a free charge out. Annoyingly to me, its taking place about 10" from my deployment zone, not near any evidence or even towards my railway.

I'm down to 1 ss vs Lileth/collodi on 2

Turn 4

Killjoy charges the rail worker. He survives.

Initiative goes on for a while. we tie on a 6, on the re-flip my 3 loses to a 4, so I spend my last stone for a 9, so he responds with a stone for an 11.

Lazarus dies in the first activation. Mei Flails aimlessly and kills nothing. Mei Dies. Collodi runs away. The Rail worker fails his terrifying test, but due to placement, just sits and cowers.

Turn 5

I win initiative. Activate my Railworker. He rallies. and since he hasn't left Killjoys terrifying doesn't need to take a second test (I think this works, at this point I know I've got 0 vp and lost).

Discards a card to do an implacable assault. Chooses Paired weapons to offset the negative flip of rallying.

First one, I hit on exactly the same as his defense. He doesn't cheat. I think carefully about it. I can improve it to a couple of points above his. I'm currently on a -3 flip (-2 for tied score. +1 for implacable assault and -2 for hard to wound). As I'm reminded about the hard to wound 2, I decide its not worth the cheat. Without the hard to wound, I might have cheated.

So I flip damage. Red Joker, 13, 1, black joker. NOooooo!!!!!!!

I attack again, but its only 4 damage.

Killjoy kills me, and he spreads out to get all 4 quarters.

Things I learnt.

Collodi crews really hate models with Blasts. Almost as much as they hate models who explode on death and models who hurt you when you hit them.

Picking a crew because you want to try out new models does come with some risks. I picked this because I wanted to try Willie, combining Kaeris with Mei and Lazarus. The fact I knew I was going to face the puppets just made those choices better.

Killjoy is a tactic. I already knew this, but should not have let him kill my crew as well as he did.

The typical Mei crew is not all that fast. Her scheme is pretty tough to achieve and probably needs some fast constructs to help. I concluded this last time I used, but having tried it again, I still think the same.

Railworkers can be pretty good. Their weapon choice impresses me more and more. If I hadn't had to choose the paired to counter the negative flip from rallying I could have stopped all that stupid hard to wound on Killjoy.

Their use as railwalker points is good, and I am looking forward to shovelling coal into a rail golem.

The union Miner has some potential movement tricks which I like the look of, but I've still to get the best out of them.

Kaeris isn't a M&SU member!

Lazarus is pretty nice in combat, when he can unload ordnance. I probably would have preferred a rail golem, but he did do the most damage out of all my crew. And he did that in 1 hit!

Mei is quite fragile. Df7 is nice, but she has no other defence. I'm still looking at the best combination of actions for her, but if I activate her early I think i really want the armour off. If I have the crow in hand to support the trigger, then I'll use a jackhammer kick, but generally I seem to get better millage out of the Tiger claws. Especially when they already have burning tokens. Scalding breath can be a nice use of the Casting expert to get a vent steam and Superheat off early to spread those burning counters.

Only got 1 turn of Willie use, but he still managed to put 6 wounds onto Lileth. It looks like he'll be good, just need a little more data.

Still to try Kaeris in a burning counter rich environment

[sharpobjects]

Nice report.

On turn 3 I think you should have burned stones to make the attacks from Killjoy miss. You didnt post the actual card flips so maybe the numbers may not jive, but you were on a new turn, fresh hand so I thinking you had 1 or 2 good cards you could have cheated in and then soul stoned to try and make the attacks miss.

Kill joy puts out so much damage even without the red joker being flipped. I know you only started with 5 soul stones. I didnt see you use any on Turn 1 and 2 so it may have been the best time to burn a few to help kaeris survive. If Kaeris would have survived you may have been able to take out Killjoy by casting Immolate on him twice after you give him a burning token with your gunfighter ignite.

It was a good game despite the outcome because you learned a few things to help you improve for the next time

[Adran]

On the first attack I decided against flipping a soulstone as I wanted him to get a burning counter. I think he was on a negative flip and flipped 2 severe. On the second attack I think I did spend a soulstone needing a 5 and still lost. I probably should have tried to avoid as much as possible, and just assumed that in the 3 attacks I'd probably fail at somepoint.

i think I had 12, 10, 9, 8 despite not haveing to have used many cards in the first 2 turns and tried to craft a good hand.

[Pox]

Was a good game and only the third game played with Collodi.

certainly took a lot away from that game...and yes it is odd to take Killjoy in a reconnoitre mission but wanted to try him out again and had just doing some painting on him.

1 - Don't move Collodi too far in the first couple of turns from his dolls or else it significantly reduces his effectiveness in terms of buffs. (moved him prob a bit too far turn 2.) Also the further you need to move Collodi the less attacks his marionettes will grant him. Saying that he is FAST and you should be able to always pick your target with ease.

2 - Killjoy is still a great minion despite his high cost and can tackle things that the dolls dislike (like explosions, fire, blasts etc.) Need to be careful with his placement, and ensure he gets as many free charges as possible on enemy models.

3 - Marionettes are not insignificant even when more then 12" away from Collodi so make great reconnoitre minions especially since Collodi can make more from scrap if (when) they die.

Certainly be interesting to see how this set-up works in the future against other crews.