Vassal League - Ashigaru Association - Reports

[Barnaberible]

Reports from the Vassal League – Ashigaru Association

OK, so I am planning to do a quick write up on my games in the Vassal league for those who are interested.

Game 1 – Mei Feng vs Nicodem (Conrad from the Malifools) – Shared Line in the Sand

Mei Feng

Emberling

Mole Man

2 x Coryphée

Mech Rider

Willie

(as far as I remember!)

Nicodem

Grave Spirit

Filthy Izamu

2 x Canine remains

2 x necropunks

Rotten Belle

Convict Gunslinger

Schemes are unique for 3 games, I had Breakthrough and Mei Feng’s personal one (the name of which I forget) and Conrad had Kill Protégée on Mech and Stake a Claim.

This was my first game with Mei and the game finally commenced around 9:30pm. This was Conrad’s first full game on Vassal, factoring in this and the power cut I had we ended up finishing at nearly 2am. Conrad being a self confessed insomniac I think this was all part of his cunning plan! Here how it panned out....

I set up first deploying at the top of the map with Willie on the left, Mech in the middle and Mei, Emberling, Coryphee and molemen on the left.

My plan was for Willie to take the left flank and defend the dynamite there with his demo charges, Mech would be able to react to where Conrad deployed, the coryphée would arm counters on the right, lay the rail markers, flank all the way round, kill stuff and get breakthrough, the moleman would shuffle up and either help for breakthrough or protect dynamite and Mei would go along with Mech.

Conrad deployed predominantly on the left, with Izamu in the middle and convict / Belle on the right.

Turn 1

OK, so I was planning to send mech out to my left to support Willie and arm the 2 markers on my left, which was all well and good until I realised he didn’t fit through the door on the house to the left so Mech ended up having to advance straight up the board toward Izamu and up to a dynamite. The Coryphee shot off down the right dropping rail markers and duetting, Willie moved up on the left, moleman failed to bury so just walked, Mei headed off to the left and toward Mech.

Filthy Izamu linked Grave Spirit and headed straight up the table toward the middle marker, the canines shot up on the left to a marker. Necropunks changed direction and tried to leap toward Conrads right flank, needless to say they failed and just walked that way. Belle and convict moved up on the right.

Turn 2

Coryphee armed dynamite dropped rail markers and then tried to move down an alleyway to arm a second counter only to find they wouldn’t fit down the alley so moved into some cover. They were then lured by the Belle and ended up completely out of position. Convict had a shot at them and did a couple of wounds.

Mech armed 2 dynamite but was left a little exposed in the middle and got smacked about abit by Izamu leaving him on 4 wounds. Mei was completely out of range for rail walking so just walked up toward the centre.

The canines activated a dynamite only for Willie do drop a demo charge, walk into range and blow it up killing both the dogs.

Having deployed at the top of a staircase Mr Nico had managed to get down the stairs and shuffle up the board a bit bolstering undead and trying to paralyse stuff.

Necro punks failed to leap again and then moved up toward the dynamite on the right.

End of this turn 1 VP to me

Turn 3

I got initiative and did briefly think of withdrawing Mech riider to prevent Kill Protégée but I decided to hit Izamu, did some damage on first AP and then got reposted to death on second attack with Izamu healing. Izamu then hen proceeds to Kill the Emberling.

Willie disarmed the dynamite and was then paralysed by Nico, who also summoned a punk zombie in his face.

Deciding the best way to reach the second dynamite was with the Coryphée I foolishly danced them apart so one would fit down the alleyway to arm the counter, it was just out of range! They also dropped some rail markers.

I decided to change direction with Mei, Rail walk to the Coryphee and arm the dynamite before venting steam to give a bit of protection. The Belle tried to lure the single Coryphee but failed, convict tried to shoot it but failed.

Mr moleman got tunnelling and moved up toward the dynamite counters

Punk Zombie hit poor old paralysed Wille and did him some serious damage

End of this turn 1 VP to me 2 VP to Conrad for Kill Protégée

Turn 4

Mei decides to move toward the centre dynamite counter to try and protect this from being armed by Izamu, she punches Izamu for a few wounds and then uses seismic punch to push him a little before being paralysed by Nicodem. Izamu smacks Mei about a bit.

Punk Zombie finishes off Willie and I rub my hands together waiting to see how many blast templates I can place, I flip a 1 and with the hand I had it wasn’t worth cheating but the blast hits the punk zombie who the disarms the dynamite.

A necro punk manages to leap over the moleman and disarm another dynamite (leaving me 1 up on dynamite) The Coryphée duet up and plough into the convict gunslinger, soulstones and all, to get the paralyse combo with movement out and then obviously black joker the damage, they do a few wounds and push out but do manage to lay the final rail marker to get my scheme.

The second necropunk heroically leaps past Mei and hides behind the stake a claim (which was a staircase)

Convict moves up to try and shoot the coryphée but can’t get LOS and the Belle tries to make Mei slow before we remember she is immune to slow.

End of turn 1 VP to me plus 2 from Scheme

Turn 5

Izamu smacks the poor old paralysed Mei about a bit and nasty Nico tries to paralyse her again but fails.

The Punk Zombie arms another dynamite putting Conrad 1 up for Dynamite the moieman and necropunk just sort of sit there staring at each other as I remember.

The Coryphee plough into the Belle, soulstones and all, with the intention of hitting her and then moving onto the gunslinger and then of course they black joker the damage but do manage to put her out of her misery. The gunslinger moves back round in the other direction and tries to shoot the coryphée but fails.

End of turn 1 VP to Conrad

Turn 6

Nico bolsters undead or some such thing and Izamu smacks Mei about a bit putting her down to 4 wounds.

They Coryphee plough into the Convict Gunsliger, soulstones and all, and this time get a positive flip for damage flipping the Red Joker, which is promptly followed by the Black Joker (I mean c’mon). Using the rest of their AP however they do just about manage to kill him, push out of combat and get into Conrad’s deployment zone for my breakthrough.

Mei Decides to disengage from Izamu and moves up to the Necropunk which is now sitting on top of the stairs for stake a claim. She uses seismic punches and shoves in straight off the top for 6 falling damage. The necropunk has hard to kill so obviously doesn’t die before moving back onto the stake a claim.

The moleman charges the second necropunk on the dynamite in an act of defiance and does nothing.

Conrad finally realises I have breakthrough but doesn’t have anything to respond to the coryphée so moves to Punk Zombie up toward the middle of the board.

End of turn 1 VP to Conrad

We flip to see if we continue and considering it was nearly 2am I am glad we didn’t. If we had it could have gone either way.

Final score

Mei Feng - 7 - 3vp strategy, 4vp schemes

Nicodem - 6 – 2vp strategy, 4vp schemes

A narrow win but a win is a win and it has to be said I had the most awful set of cards (apart from my turn 2 hand) and I still have several easy schemes to use in the upcoming games...

My first game with Mei and I just didn’t get the most out of her. I have a horrible habit of setting out in one direction and then changing my mind turn 2/3 and just end up wandering around for a turn or 2, plus I don’t think I could read the writing on the card by the time we finished...

[Barnaberible]

Vassal League – Ashigaru Association – Match 2

Scott (Collette)

Colette

2 x Performer & Mannequin

Cassandra

2 x Coryphée

3 stones

Peter Ronnmo (@aSeregon on Twitter) (Vicks)

Vicks

2 x Ronin

Strongarm Suit

Vanessa

Orian

6 stones

Strategy – shared line in the sand (GG)

Colette Schemes – Sabotage, Stake a Claim

Vicks Schemes – Steal Relic, Stake a Claim

OK, so match 2 vs Peter, who has comfortably won match 1 and I should also note this happened almost 2 weeks ago so its from memory! We had flipped in advance for strategy and I knew I would be facing the Vicks. I really enjoy playing against the Vicks but really struggle against them so I decided to bring Colette which would give me a chance of out manoeuvring them (hopefully) as in a stand up fight I would no doubt be going down pretty quick.

The Skype line to Sweden wasn’t the best quality and Peter hadn’t faced Colette before but we got there in the end.

I was also a bit disappointed to see Vanessa in the list, the ability to give the Vicks cards is quite scary and she also adds a lot of movement options to the crew meaning there would be no place to hide.

I decided to start with 2 x performers in place of Johan simply to add a bit more survivability and movement options but this meant a very low starting cache and no real resilience to the crew; this job would have to fall to Cassie.

We flipped for deployment and Peter deployed first (we were using the river crossing map) and deployed mainly on the right hand side at the bottom with Vanessa just off centre toward the left.

His Stake a claim target was the large bridge, my sabotage target was crates on the left of the map and my stake a claim was some more crates toward the centre of the map.

Deployment gave me a bit of a headache as I wanted to deploy Cass on the left to get the Sabotage and the Coryphée on the right, but I knew the coryphée wouldn’t hold out to the Vicks for long so had to switch and put Cassie, Colette and the performers on the right and the Coryphée on the left with a mannequin.

Turn 1

I won initiative and Cassie moved out, flipped a dynamite and got into a bit of cover, the Vicks et al moved up on the right toward Cassie, the Orian tried to lure out Cassie but I had reasonable cards and resisted.

My performers moved up behind Cassie one on either flank, Colette linked to a mannequin and generated some stones reactivated and created a dove then did some switching back and forth with Cassie and cast discharge soulstone on one of the Vicks for a couple of wounds.

The Coryphée were a bit isolated on my left and they moved up, duetted and flipped a marker.

The strongarm suit tried to leap (I am not convinced about the usefulness of leap unless you have the trigger built in) failed and walked over toward the Vicks.

Turn 2

Vicks got initiative and one hit Colette who switched back with Cassie giving the Vick slow, and then the second slingshotted into Cassie’s face. She was unable to hit her because of celebrity and Peter didn’t companion the Vicks so Cassie and the Sword Vick had a staring competition standing on the dynamite, Peter was obviously waiting for me to attack with Cassie and I was waiting for sword Vick to activate.

There was a bit of trying to lure things going on from the performer on the left and the Orian none of which succeeded and the strongarm suit failed to leap again and moved up to the main action around the right of the board.

Vanessa made some cards and moved up staying out of the Coryphées range.

The Coryphee were a bit lonely on the left of the board so they activated another dynamite marker and spun round into base contact with my sabotage objective.

Colette created some stones and threw out a dove

My second performer stole a soulstone off the Sword Vick (nice ability that is) and activation order meant that Sword Vick had to activate before Cassie, she smashed a dove and moved back out of the way a bit nearer to the strongarm suit.

Cassie then activated and cast breath fire onto the strongarm suit twice bouncing the blasts onto the Vicks and Ronin forcing Peter to use a couple of stones for prevention flips.

End of turn 2: Colette 4 dynamite armed, Vicks 0 armed – 1VP to me

Turn 3

Initiative would be key here, Peter got it (I think I stoned it but still didn’t get it) The Vicks activated and tore into Cassie. Luckily (thanks to some poor cards from Peter, some liberal cheating and the liberal use of some stones) she survived without a scratch and had a pop back forcing Peter to use some more stones and finished off one of the Ronin.

The performer tried to lure up the strongarm suit, failed (because I had used most of my cards for Cassie) and moved toward the dynamite on the far right.

The stronarm suit smashed up the other performer but she survived.

Colette decided to get the hell out of Dodge, disappeared Vanessa (but didn’t get the replacement trigger) and switched with the mannequin on the left of the board dragging her linked mannequin with her as she went.

The Coryphée sabotaged the crates, moved up to the middle dynamite marker and armed it.

Colette dropped Vanessa back in on the top left corner of the board behind some rocks

End of turn 3: Colette 4 dynamite armed, Vicks 0 armed – 1 VP to me + 2 VP from sabotage

Turn 4

The situation on the right of the board was a bit dire for me. Cassandra was the trying to hold a marker supported by a very injured performer and was facing a strongarm suit, Ronin, 2 Vicks and an Orian.

She died

The strongarm suit smashed the performer and a mannequin and between them all the Vicks managed to disarm and rearm 2 markers with the Orian going for the one on the far right. This left the strongarm suit in range of Peters Stake a Claim.

The Orian was just out of range of the marker and this allowed my second performer to arm the dynamite. I was running low on stones and couldn’t really spare them for Colette so she generated some and switched with the Duet leaving her near my stake a claim target and the duet in range of Vanessa.

Vanessa had a pop at the duet before retreating then the Duet moved in and did their thing to Vanessa but thanks to double weak damage on the blinding damage (at least I was holding the black joker this time) it left her on one wound before retreating.

End of turn 3: Colette 3 dynamite armed, Vicks 2 armed – 1 VP to me

Turn 5

I had Colette linked to a Mannequin and the duet left.

The Vicks did what they do and slingshotted across the board with Vanessa (in hindsight the Duet attack on Vanessa may have been earlier this turn, not last turn) and one shotted the Duet for 8 damage (Damn Vicks!)

The performer on the right was finished off and the marker was flipped giving Peter a one up for this turn.

Colette sheltered behind my stake a claim crates, generated some soulstones for the oncoming attack and basically hid.

Everything else in Peter’s crew moved toward poor old Colette barring the Strongarm Suit which moved toward his stake a claim.

End of turn 5: Colette 2 dynamite armed, Vicks 3 armed – 1 VP to Peter

Turn 6

I burned my rubbish cards for a couple more stones and waited for the onslaught. The Orian tried to lure Colette out but I resisted it, Peter sacrificed a Ronin for 2 stones and then slingshotted up to Colette and tried to steal her relic, I had one high card left and we both used a stone but I came out on top.

The strongarm suit moved onto the stake a claim target

End of turn 6: Colette 2 dynamite armed, Vicks 3 armed – 1 VP to Peter

Turn 7 might have been a bit of a problem for me! Peter flipped and got a 12, I used Colette’s ability to make him flip again (gotta love that) and it was an 8 so we finished there

Scores

Colette 7 (3 from line in the sand, 2 from sabotage, 2 from stake a claim)

Vicks 4 (2 from line in the sand, 2 from stake a claim)

So despite being battered (again) by the Vicks I managed to hang on in there to claim the victory

If there was another turn I was sitting on 3 stones and still had a linked mannequin left so it would have been touch and go to see if the Vicks (both quite wounded) would have been able to steal the relic or kill Colette, but I’m quite glad it didn’t come to that!

I have to admit Peter had dreadful cards on turn 3 and I had a pretty good hand so this swung it a little in my favour for that turn.

All in all it sort of went exactly to plan, lock down and get VP’s for the first 3 turns then give them up and focus on schemes. While steal a relic is difficult to achieve it did force me on the defensive a little with Colette (as I didn’t want to leave her in range) so I have mixed feelings about this scheme in general. This is the second game in a row where my opponent has given the coryphée a wide berth, so they haven’t been as effective as they could be. But on the other hand this has allowed them to do most of the leg work of objective grabbing unopposed.

For my part man (well girl) of the match has to be Cassandra for holding the marker for a vital extra turn allowing me an extra VP from the strategy. There was no way she was going to survive but lasted long enough.

[Argentbadger]

Sounds like a really good game, thanks for writing it up.

I’ve always found Steal Relic to be a tricky objective to achieve, as most masters with low enough WP to be worth even trying it on can stay out of the engagement or simply stone their way out of it anyway.

[gorillawizard]

I do like reading your report old buddy but alas i like pictures too, maybe a screen dump of the end of turns and deployment??

[Barnaberible]

Good idea, if I can figure out how to do,it I will!