Game 4. Vs Butchers

Game 4

Vs. Ox's Butchers. 

This is a rematch against my last opponent. I decided to try out a different type of playstyle and he went for Ox to change it up. 

I pull a crappy 5 cards... Husbandry (worthless in Morticians), Too flash, Give as good as you get, Get it back, and another one.

I chose Too Flash, Give as good as your get, and Get it back. 

My team is a weird one today, I want to try something out. 

Scalpel, Dirge, Silence, Minx, Cosset, and Graves1. 

My plan is to try an do something a bit reliant on dice and my opponent, the worst combination ever,  and charge Graves 11” turn 1, threatening 13". We shall see how it goes!!

My opponents flips Ox, Princess, Boar, Boiler, Brisket, Shank 

Here is deployment.

 

Silence kicks off to threaten the early embalming fluid and get that damage for Graves' damaged target. The kick scatters in what seems like a good direction, but I hate how close to that barrier it is, mostly because it's potentially not a good place for Graves to charge if he sticks to behind the barrier. We shall see! 

Scalpel gets 3 for Second wind and a kick or sprint. 

Silence gets 2 for embalming fluid. 

Minx gets to 2 to sprint and marked target with always a back up plan to charge 

Cosset gets 2 to Lure 

Dirge get 0 

Graves gets 4 to charge, tackle, and gain as much momentum on a charge as possible. 

My opponent moves Brisket up to the wall to grab the ball and pass it back to one of his players, he super shots to pass it to Boiler. He uses the momentum to use a give and go. I use Too flash on Boiler, it seems that I could actually turn the graves plan into a reality. 

Silence advances and cannot decide to use Embalming fluid on Boar/Ox/Princess to potentially burn and damage them all or Boiler for the +2" on the charge if i hit him, but because we are going all in on the plan I use it on boiler to get a damage, and succeed. 

Boiler advances over to the wall and keeps the ball, he comes within' Graves' charge range, but I don't want to measure it so as not to show my opponent my plan, since he could still find a way to block. 

Dirge Advances to plan to crowd out Boar next turn. 

Princess advances near Boiler, hmm, interesting. 

Cosset sees her opportunity to Lure princess! She advances and wiffs really hard, rolling a 3 and a 1. I scorn everything. Fortunately this was not the game plan, and therefore I lose particularly little value by missing. 

Shank advances closer to my side of the pitch, within' charge range of Minx.

I contemplate for a moment as I want to use second wind of Graves so that way I'll be freed up for next turn, and closer to my opponents goal, but I feel like I can get a lot of value out of turn one here into turn two and Minx is worried about getting charged by Boar after getting to Shank, so I feel like I need Second wind on her, similarly it allows her to reposition a long long way (7") and Shank cannot knock her down so I have little fear of counter attacks. 

Ox moves up and tough Skins himself, near shank. 

Minx Charges Shank to get some momentum and damage. She hits a 2, 1, and 2 for damage, all momentous. Unfortunately Ox’s aura is now over near shank and therefore I end up taking 4 damage on the parting blow… ouch. 

Boar used his free charge to come forward and fail said charge. 

This picture is right before Graves charges Boiler 

This is the picture right after I charge Boiler... 

Graves Charges Boiler for free, 11" away, also getting Princess into melee, I roll enough successes to rip a Scything blow into Boiler, Princes and hurt Scalpel, but it is worth it because with two more attack I can put Princess to 3 wounds, so that she dies to bleeding on the following turn. Then due to having two more influence than normal due to too fIash I use another attack to tackle from Boiler and my last influence to pass to Scalpel.

Wow, what a great turn, my plan with the Graves missile worked!! Issue is now I’m super scared of Boar, Ox, and Shank… Now that the three of them can basically do what they need to charge whomever they want. What will I do now?  

Turn 2: 

I win the initiative. 

Silence gets 4 so that he can place and embalming fluid onto Boar/Ox/Shank and force Ox to go last and Boar to go next. 

Scalpel 6 since she has the ball and will Score this turn and try and kill Ox. 

Graves gets 1 for a slap + Bleed on someone 

Cosset gets 2 so she can charge Ox and get as much damage as possible to help Scalpel kill Ox. 

Dirge and Minx 0 Since I feel like I will get benefit out of my other players more. 

Silence goes god mode and hits everyone with burning and uses Tucked on Boar and shutout on Ox. He then walks out of the way for Cosset to charge. Everything went according to plan. 

Seeing as I had to sacrifice someone… I let Boar charge Graves and he does 13 damage to him, Ouch… and clears conditions. 

Cosset is ready to get into Ox. I want to activate Scalpel later since I don’t want him to slingshot a goal with Brisket. She goes crazy and he defensive stances. I deal 4 momentous with Dirge’s damage support. I then attack again and he counter attacks and I take a KD, i use a momentum to clear conditions and attack again. Unfortunately I am unable to heal since I used momentum to clear conditions so I sit at 9. He should have double pushed me so that I’d be out of melee, but it ended up working out since then Shank attacks her twice and did 5 damage. 

Dirge flies behind Ox and Shank to get Crowd outs for Scalpel and Minx. 

It might have not been correct to activate Dirge when I did, because Boiler then comes into melee with Graves and Scalpel and kills Graves, but then attempts to Marked target Scalpel and misses. 

Scalpel is ready to go. She attacks boiler to ><1 to get away from him. She advances over to Ox who is crowded out by dirge and Cosset, but crowded by Boar. 

She attacks him and puts him into the dirt but is unable to get into range to score. With her final attack she hits boar and wanting a >< to get out of his melee she actually gets a KD instead. She then uses her heroic to get second wind and wants to go over to crowd Shank and be as far away from Brisket as possible, unfortunately she must poison herself, but that is a small price to pay for my plan to be in melee with Shank for more crowd outs.

Minx charges shank with 3 crowds, rolling 5 successes for 3 momentous and a double dodge, she then heals Cosset for 4, which some may consider it risky, since then the momentum becomes 4 to 0. 

Turn 3:

Score is 4-2 

Scalpel gets 6 since she has the ball and wants to try and seal the game by scoring. 

Cosset 2 since she wants to kill shank then charge someone else. 

Minx 1 in case of a charge + extra damage for the influence 

Silence gets 3  so he can tucked/shutout and then Embalming fluid. 

Graves sits off since I wont need him this turn. 

After his allocation I notice Shank on 0 influence and 4 wounds so now it is paramount that Silence uses tucked on him…

Unfortunately I am slightly out of 6” and because of this I cannot move up to generate momentum, therefore I have to hard roll a 4 getting the tucked since the more important roll is shutout on Boar so that I can mess with him before he charges and kills my players. So, I hard roll the 4, and also hit tucked on Boar. *Fist pump*.

Shank does nothing.

Cosset gets ready to kill Shank but cannot go Crazy since she is at 2 wounds, fortunately she is at 6 tac with Gang up, so he uses damage sponge… and I roll one 5… fortunately with Dirge I do 2 damage on 1 hit. I then go again and roll a single 4… to do 2 damage on 1 hit again… wow that was close...

She then heals for 4 with momentum, and goes crazy down to 4 wounds. 

She charges Boar and engages Brisket to attempt to get her to unpredictable. She chooses not to.

I get 8 hits, for a Screeching Banshee and 1 damage dealing 5 damage and -4/-4 movement. 

He counter attacks and deals 3 putting me at 1. 

Feeling like he cannot do anything anyways Boiler charges Dirge, he rolls 4 hits… and does 2 damamge and a bleed. That brings Boiler over to me so that I can finish the game needing 6 points to win.

I feel like I can advance around boiler and attack him 5 times, dodging and pulling him with her, to kill him, and then being in range to shoot. 

Here is a picture of the Template showing where she has to get, and a 30mm proxy as to where she will start attacking Boiler.

I attack Boiler with 8 Tac and he chooses to counter attack. 

My first roll...

Because he is counter attacking, I want to leave his melee since he has a >< early, but since I need to use him to dodge into the range of the goal I need to keep him nearby.

So I choose the 4>< at the end of his playbook and Mom< at the start, dodging out of his melee.

Then I use my Legendary to pull him back into my melee, engaged by Cosset and Dirge.

I then Smack him once more to dodge into range of the goal with 3 influence and 3 momentum. 

The Score is 8 - 4, it's time to go for the game winning shot...

I bonus time... and...

 

3,3,1,1... 

Well damn...

That... sucks...

The ball deviates a particularly small distance. 

Ok, so how to salvage this?

With 2 influence left I can use second wind on myself, and go grab the Ball..., but Cosset is about to die, and has poison on her... so... WAKE THE DEAD!!!!! ON COSSET! Booyah, finally got the chance to use that Character play. Now Boar won't be able to kill her and then charge Dirge and Kill him. Especially since she has 4 wounds, he most likely cannot kill her by himself. 

Scalpel then uses her heroic to second wind over to the goal post and grab the ball. 

Brisket goes, unable to put cosset down herself and steal the ball she attacks cosset to put her to 2, and then dodges away from Cosset with the second attack. She then advances to Scalpel to steal the ball, and attacks, due to cover she only has 3 tac, therefore I counter attack triggering "Give as Good as you Get". He tackles and I flip "Get it back", putting me to 2 momentum. Then I counter attack and tackle. He attacks again and…. No successes! Damn cover from the goal is such sweet tech. 

Minx charges Boar!! I rolled 8 successes and go for pure damage and momentum, then uses two momentum to clear conditions on dirge so he doesn't die to bleed. 

Boar attempts to kill Cosset, and because of the 2 damage from Brisket kills her through Wake the dead. Sad days… 

Dirge advances to Boar to crowd out for Graves to come back on and charge Boar.

End of turn 3, score is 4 - 8.

Turn 4:

Unfortunately due to Boar and Brisket having the opportunity to go since I missed the goal, I am unable to win initiative. This is particularly bad because...



...this is now what Scalpel's life looks like.

Fortunately I can bring some of my players back as well, and my players are particularly fast.

Due to this, I bring back Cosset in charge range of Boar and Graves with charge range of Boar (with marked target) or other players if he moves them forward.
Also when Scalpel dies none of my players will be in his range other than Boar. Who is decently tied up.

I allocate 2 to Scalpel in case she lives. Seeing as she is crowded by Boiler and Brisket and Ox is nearby, she will most likely not.

Silence gets 1 to shutout Boar so I can kill him before he kills my players 

Cosset gets 2 to charge and kill Boar. 

Graves gets 4 in case he can do something. 

Dirge gets 2 influence, you heard me, 2 influence. You shall see why…

(and no it is not because I ran out of places to allocate influence, shh I totally did) 

Here is the allocation and final position of players start of turn 4. 

Whelp... it's time for my opponents activation...

Boiler kills Scalpel without trying.

Silence uses Shutout on Boar

Ox Sprints forward and uses "They ain't Tough" on Minx and "Tough Skin" on Boar. Uhg... 

This messes with what comes next, 

Dirge's big turn...! He attacks Boar with 3 tac, going for singled out and... 

Goddamn it... Tough Skin... 

Good thing I have a second influence and I get it with the second one, SINGLED OUT!! He then advances to melee with both Ox and Boar. 

Shank does nothing. Sounds like a theme (he. he.) 

Cosset prepares to charge Boar… but with 8 tac due to crowd outs + Singled out, I don’t need to use Crazy since I’m on 4 wounds. I cannot heal her because then if I get her knocked down on the counter attack I lose my activation, so I charge, he Counter attacks and defensive stance, and then because of Ox being nearby… only needs 4 hits to kill Cosset… crap… I didn't even think about that. 

Fortunately he’s crowded out by 2 so he needs 4 4’s on 6 hits, so he rolls 5 successes and murders her, immediately ending my activation.

Score is 8 - 8

Briskets comes over and murders Dirge bringing him down to 0 momentum. 

Score is now… 8-10… 

Minx goes now. Engaged with Boar she attacks him, and bonus time the first hit…..

She rolls 6 successes and Screeching Banshees to lock him down if I do not kill him, and wraps doing 1 momentous damage, putting him to 5. I attack again and bonus time, rolling another 6, putting him to 1 wound and dodging out of melee, then being able to charge her back into Boar...

killing him. 

Booyah. 

Score is now 10 - 10 and no player on my team has a player of his in their threat range and same with him. 

I still have Graves left, so he charges over near Shark to kill him next turn. 

Due to my momentum there is no way I can not win initiative. 

Turn 5:

Graves is going to walk over to Shank, deal 4 damage with 4 influence and finish this game. 

Coset comes back on for Insurance in case Graves plan doesn't work.

Graves gets 4 to do the deed. 

Silence get 4 since he can prolly do something

Cosset gets 2 to potentially have game

Minx gets 1

Scalpel Get 2 to threaten that side 

Then totally unexpectedly… 

Boar gets in my way

But that gives me a different idea, and they say that any good Guild Ball player can change their plan on the fly... so..

I attack and... Momentous Push on 2 hits...

I attack and Mometnous Push on 2 hits.

I advance.

I attack and Bonus Time!, and roll 7 hits... I consider changing the plan again and going for 4 damage..., NOPE! Momentous Push! 

I attack a final time and...

THE CROWD MOBS BOAR!!!!!!

The final score. 12 - 10.

Conclusion:

Whew. This was a Slog. What seemed like a game I had in the bag turned into an extremely close game due to one goal miss and good clamoring from my opponent to get back into the game. I feel like my team was particularly gimmicky and rolled well with the literal momentum of the game (not the stat momentum), which showed when my opponent was able to come back after I'd charged in with my squishy furious models. Fortunately with 7"/9" on most of my players, it allows me to come back in and threaten automatically, which is a particularly nice boon. I enjoyed trying something out of the box to attempt to bring a bit more of a gimmicky list into Guild Ball, and even though it is a bit dicey, I feel like the players I chose have the tools to win any game. Playing a game without Ghast is rough, especially against Boar. I felt like I basically had to deal with him every turn, or fear giving him run of the table, and with my slew of squishy, fast, dodgy models, I didn't have anyone to hold down his mid table, which I am not used to at all. Also, Cosset hates playing into Butchers, she dies to a stiff breeze. 

Also, starting by kicking off really pushed the game out of my hand due to all my players being extremely fast and threatening, and therefore doing well with being able to use teamwork momentous plays to attempt to score early and push the aggressive playstyle on my terms.

If I were to play this again, Rage would most likely go in for Minx, just due to giving me a slightly stronger damage output from Scalpel herself as well as deterring my opponents from coming into the middle since Rage will be there to generate a bunch of momentum and damage. Similarly Scalpel can >< players into his charge range and use her legendary to free him up. I might also consider Avarisse and Greede simply due to having another big bad beater, who is tough to take down, and gives me the ability to also go last with my Graves missile or Scalpel turn 1. 

All in all this game was tons of fun. I extremely enjoyed the back and forth that came out of me missing the goal, especially as a grudge match from the last game. 

Until the next one! 

Musings...

I've been thinking a bit about my line-up and game plan with Scalpel, where she actually fits in, and what I should be doing with her game to game.

I still don't have much game time with Scalpel but I generally don't use tormented Agony or Wake the Dead. When I played her in the past I used Tormented Agony a lot more, and I feel like that was specifically due to matchup where my opponents had players who did a lot less with influence than certain captains or other players, messing with my opponents game plan.

Wake the dead is a weird one. Two influence to potentially protect a player from death seems like a large expense. Especially with its effects relying on your opponents play. Reanimate proper is an extremely strong rule since it clears conditions and can trigger every turn, it also has the benefit of being able to trigger off of death from conditions in the maintenance phase, which abilities like Wake the Dead, go away at the end of the turn.

If Scalpel could move around influence for 0 influence herself or trigger Wake the Dead with momentum, I feel I'd use it a lot more. It just feels like it's too much effort to focus on any of those things in particular at the cost of influence. Fortunately Tormented Agony also has the benefit of dealing damage from the playbook. Similarly Scalpels ability to reposition her opponents also deals a few damage, her >< also gives momentum and a singular damage. If she had easy access to tooled up or another form of damage buff she'd murder things extremely dead. I'm not a huge fan of Rage using tooled up because then I generally won't get to charge with him. It really the big difference between an ability like commanding aura and tooled up. Also the singular influence on Rage is most likely more relevant for momentum and damage than simply adding damage to Scalpel, especially since she can >< a player into Rage's charge range, as well as free him up from others holding him down in melee.

For me it's always been a bit more obvious with Obulus. 4-5 for puppet master, let others do the work. 8 when its time to push for the win.

With Scalpel I feel like I want 6 every time so I can squeeze as much work out of her as possible, but it might be a matter of keeping less on her. If I have 3, I can attack a few times and use second wind, or pass and attack, or use wake the dead, if I have momentum I can always use second wind for free on another model or herself to gain a large repositioning ability.

I was worried about just trying to play Scalpel like a worse Obulus. For these reports I reverted back to Ghast and Silence, but I might play without both of them for a chance since otherwise I run out of roster space.

I think I'll take from Darren and try Cosset, Minx, Rage/Silence, and Graves1. Get some furious players in there and use Scalpel to pull enemy players off of them. Use my players extreme speed 7/9 for Cosset/Minx/Scalpel. Graves being 5/7 with 2", and both Minx/Graves having damaged target, and Minx having marked target.

We shall see!

Game 3: vs Butchers

This game was a bit of a quick game on a time constraint, against a local, so I apologize in  advance if the details are not 100%!

My game is against Fillet, I chose Tap-in, Steamroller, and Give as good as you get.

I remembered the Brutal match against Brewers last match and chose a more aggressive list in that of Mist, Rage, Silence, Ghast, and Dirge.

He goes with Fillet, Boar, Rage, Meathook, Boiler, Princess

I win the roll and chose to kick off.

Mist moves in front of an obstruction and kicks off the ball, beginning in cover. He kicks the ball over to my opponents cover, to hopefully get some extra tac.

Boiler advances to grab the ball and passes to Rage, who uses a give and go.

Mist recognizes his opportunity and advances 8" within melee of rage.

Wiffing the first attack, I generate momentum then tackle, but due to the wiff I only get a 2 dice shot over Fillet.
Scoring, I use the momentum to Run the Length to tie down Boar/Rage and force them to not have a free charge.



Truffles, proving her worth, pushes mist on 1 success out of melee with boar.

Rage tools up Scalpel and advances for next turns charge.

Boar charges and messes up Mist handily, choosing to KD him with his final attack.

Butchers Rage uses his free charge to come over to my side of the pitch for next turn.

Ghast moves foward.

Fillet chooses to Quickfoot and charge Dirge, she comes into Ghast's melee and bleeds Ghast and Dirge with Blood Rain.

Scalpel activates steamroller and charges Fillet with 13 dice, she uses defensive stance.
Wiffing, rolling not a single 6. She attacks twice more to gain some momentum.

Mist gets smacked by Meathook, bleeding him bringing him down to 4 wounds.

Turn 2

Score is 4-0

Silence 3, Scalpel 6, Ghast 3, Rage 1

My plan this turn is to have Scalpel kill Fillet, allow mist to die, and potentially get Ghast over to Boar to ruin his turn.

He puts 6 on Fillet 1 on Rage, Boar and Meathook, Truffles.

I activate Silence to help crowd on Fillet and Rage, expecting Scalpel to not be able to do the dirty deed by herself and wanting Fillet to activate last. I advance, punch Rage and gain a momentum, I chuck a tucked at boiler missing, and chuck a shutout with bonus time at Fillet and miss.

Crap...

Fillet activates, crashes into Ghast doing a bunch of damage to Ghast/Silence/Scalpel, bleeding the three of them. Ghast counter attacks during her activation to KD her down to force her to sacrifice her advance to continue attacking. She chooses to heal for 4 as well. In the bloody chaos she manages to kill Dirge.

Ghast KDs Fillet, KDs Rage and pushes rage away. Then advances into B2B contact with Fillet and keeping Rage within' 2" to neutralize him and bring him into my Rage's threat range.

Truffles choses to continue to prove her worth and murders Mist, she then advances over near the ball to grab it for next turn.

Scalpel fails to take down Fillet, but brings her to 3 wounds. Yet also decides to remove bleeding.

Boiler trundles.

My Rage contemplates going to kill fillet somehow, but instead realizes he must complete his ultimate goal and charges himself? With KD and a gang up from Ghast rage does exactly enough damage to kill himself, awkward.

Unfortunately this puts my Rage within Charge range of his Boar. I'll admit that his boar had absolutely no charge targets until this moment, I felt that it was worth putting his Rage into the dirt and then potentially controlling boar for the rest of the game.

Due to him killing Dirge and Mist I have no more activations and him three.
Boar charges in, Meathook advances and stabs Rage.

Not killing Fillet sucked because all of my players kept bleeding and took a bunch of damage two turns in a row.



Turn 3


Score is 6-4

Scalpel gets 4, Silence 4, Ghast 1, Mist 3.

Mist comes back on to threaten a Goal for later he feels pretty safe on the other side of the pitch.

My plan is for Silence to redeem himself and kill Fillet himself, if he has any influence left over I can use it to Tucked/Shutout and Bring back dirge. Issue is I need to do 7 damage, so I expect to need all 4. First attack cranks it to do 3 damage, so I'm able to shutout Boar and revive Dirge.

Meathook kills Rage and walks midfield.

Dirge Crowds boar and Truffles grabs the ball, passes to Boiler with bonus time, who pass-and-moves to my side of the pitch.

Ghast KDs Boar to prepare for the Scalpel beatings.

Boiler with only 1 influence is unable to get over to the goal so he gets over to that side to threaten for later.

Scalpel advances over to Boar and genereates as much momentum as possible and moves over near his boxes to threaten the goal. I use my Legendary to pull boiler within' mists threat Range.

Boar flounders against Ghast. Mist steals the ball off Boiler and passes to Scalpel.


Turn 4





The Score is 8-6 and with my lead in momentum I go first.

I allocate 6 influence to Scalpel who has the ball, 3 on Ghast and 4 on Mist as back up. He brings back Rage and Fillet in case I am unable to score the goal.

Scalpel advances to Rage and generates 3 momentum and dodges b2b with the goal, so that she can shoot at the goal 3 times with 3 influence and 3 momentum. With the first shot, I reveal tap in and am able to score.






For this match I was extremely worried about Fillet after what happened from Tapper last game, and thus I brought my crutch in that of Mist, with him allowing me a more aggressive scoring method I only need 2 take outs to finish the game with Scalpel generally being able to score a goal herself. I feel that during turn 1, after I scored, my opponent could have gained a bunch of momentum and allowed himself to go first. Instead he chose to come forward to threaten my players, which allowed me to in turn, fight him and set up for the rest of the game. Fillet still ended up doing a hell of a lot of damage even though she was controlled for a decent portion of the game. Had this gone another way I would have had to scratch my way back into the game after Fillet killed my team.
I will definitely need more practice against Fillet. She's scary and Scalpel is so much easier to kill than Obulus.

It was awesome to get a great game in against my local Bryan, he's been doing a good job of helping the community grow and coming out to play when he totally should be sleeping. Be careful all you out there because the next battle report between us will be him decimating me, ha!

Until next time!

Game 2. Vs Brewers

Game 2! Vs. Tapper Brewers

I chose Damage Sponge, Give as good as you get, One-touch Football. Jay Finnegan suggested to give his favorite plot combination a try, Damage sponge/give as good as you get, so I felt it would be fun.

My team is: Scalpel, V. Graves, Ghast, Silence, Vileswarm, Rage.
His team is: Tapper, Scum, Friday, Spigot, Hooper, Stave.

Did I mention I hate brewers? Tough hide and high damage is the bane of my existence.

I win the initiative and chose the side without the crappy forest, and to kick.
I kick off with Scalpel near my side of the forest so that I may go get the ball or force Friday into my threat range.


See that crappy forest? Ya... that plays a large part of the game... 

Friday goes to grab the ball, and gets into my threat. Rage gives tooled up to Scalpel.

He moves the ball down the line and I charge Friday putting in 10 damage and for whatever reason I feel safe enough to on the opposite side of the forest completely out of line of sight from his entire team so as to not use second wind on myself. My plan was to keep Friday on 2 boxes so that I can kill her with my first influence turn 2 and then have the ability to advance and get work done on the rest of his team.


See totally safe? 

Stave then pulls a super sweet move and Sprints b2b with the forest (therefore technically within in, and therefore able to see through it), and lobs a barrel directly on top of scalpel, pushing her into range of his entire team.



Silence retaliates by putting embalming fluid onto Stave and the Cat (this is important for later).
Stave is now 0"/2" speed.

Turn 2

Scalpel comes back onto the pitch close enough to utilize the fast ground and a sprint to pull Friday in.

Scalpel 5, Ghast/V.Graves 2, Rage 1, Silence 2.

Rage/Ghast/V. Graves can all charge Stave, he wins initiative and chooses to lob barrel at Ghast/V. Graves since otherwise he can only hit rage. Ghast gets blasted out of threat range from everyone and V.Graves hits the obstruction.

Rage charges Stave and pumps him full of damage and momentum, KDs him down as well.

Tapper in the forest, advances out of the forest and passes to spigot to get a pass-and-move into melee with Rage. He Triggers Commanding aura with 2 influence, then spends his last influence to attack. I activate damage sponge and he wiffs completely with no momentum, therefore no ol' Jakes.

Scalpel sprints and legendaries, tagging the fast ground, to get to the knocked down Friday. In hindsight apparently I forget that my legendary is an 8" pulse and I only pull Friday in, kill her, heal myself and generate a pile of momentum, I use second wind to go b2b with Spigot, who has the ball, and the goal.

V. Graves clears conditions and advances to attempt to push Spigot into threat range of Ghast, wiffs on the first attack only needing 2 3's. Second attack momentous pushes into melee with Vileswarm and range of Ghast.

Hooper walks away from vileswarm and uses 3 influence to KD and deal 16 damage to rage, while engaged by V. Graves but under Commanding aura.

Spigot has a worthless 2 influence activation whilst engaged with Scalpel because the goal grants cover.

Turn 3



This game is an obvious slog with little ability to grab the ball.
Going into turn 3 Scalpel realizes her chance to kill Scum, I feel like I can attempt to control the midfield a bit more.

Scalpel 6, Silence 2, Ghast 2, V.Graves 2.

Winning the initiative Silence uses tucked on Hooper and Shutout on Tapper.
Vileswarm had moved to block LOS to rage from hooper and since he only had 2 influence I felt secure in forcing him to kill rage and gaining little value out of Hooper. Tapper going last means only he gets commanding aura, which is good for me.

Hooper doesn't do much. Ghast chooses to Charge stave for Unmasking to mess things up and hold down his players.

Stave murders Rage with his fists.

Scalpel has to make a hard decision with using 6 influence to kill scum (who is on 5 wounds due to embalming fluid and burning) or take the ball and score. I tend to have a hard time killing brewers player but not a hard time scoring so I opt to kill Scum and go back into B2B with the goal.

Spigot moves and punts the ball over near Friday, the deviation is pretty good.

V. Graves recogizes that Tapper can still charge Scalpel, therefor he walks over na dmomentous pushes Tapper into melee with Vileswarm, Ghast, and himself.

Friday sprints, picks up the ball, and is a 1/4" out of goal shot range.

Tapper then chooses to turn around and put V. Graves into the dirt. Stupid Tapper...

Turn 4




Score is 4-6

I win initiative and have Rage come back on in charge range of Friday who is on 4 wounds.
V. Graves comes back on hoping to get the ball and bring it back up the pitch.

This turn is extremely important. I know if he scores with Friday I most likely lose since 1 more take out for him would be easy. I know he needs momentum to score, but he can also chose to run away with Friday and I need rage to kill her as well.

Scalpel 5, Ghast 2, Silence 2, V. Graves 2, Rage 1

Silence activates first, walks into melee with Stave and uses the momentum from attacking him to sling a bonus time Tucked into Tapper.

Tapper kills Vileswarm. Rage kills Friday with his charge and Berserk and kicks to V. Graves deviating the ball right onto him.

Hooper charges Scalpel with Steamroller knocking her down and pushing her once, then attacking again and pushing her once again. She's sitting on 9 wounds KD near Spigot within cover but crowded out by Hooper.

I hold off on Scalpel's activation to attack Stave with Ghast to stop stave from Lob barreling onto Ghast and Silence. I KD tapper and Stave.

My risk did not pay off and Spigot puts Scalpel into the dirt.

Not realizing that Stave actually has a playbook he does 3 damage to Silence and KDing him. Getting him a bunch of momentum.

I attempt to get myself back into the momentum race with V. Graves passing to Rage, one-touch-football passing back to V. Graves and then V. Graves passing back to Rage.

I lose initiative and with Tapper and Stave in melee with silence and the score being
10-6 it was up to the initiative to have some semblance of chance of coming back into the game.

Tapper kills silence to go to 12.




I don't know what to specifically say about this game. My opponent was a good Brewers player and I tend to have issues with brewers due to tough hide, 2" melee, and high damage. Scalpel specifically has a hard time with all three of these factors.
I can say that losing Scalpel turn 1 was a huge part of the game, I felt that I'd be safe from his team on the other side of the forest, but Stave absolutely controlled me the entire game with getting Scalpel killed and keeping Ghast off their team until he was ready to handle Ghast. Ghast never triggered Fear or Rising anger the entire game. I felt I wasted a bunch of influence on Ghast and V. Graves, and I could put enough significant attacks with any of my players at any point of the game.
I feel that I shouldn't have even attempted to play Murder Ball, and should have taken a more scoring oriented team.
Forgetting that my legendary could have pulled his players a bit out of position and Spigot into threat range of Scalpel to steal the ball and score could have put me into the game significantly, but I kept getting caught up with a one track mind attempting to deal with Stave, Tapper, Hooper and Tough hide in general with the fact that Hooper can do 16 damage with 3 influence using 1 influence to knock Rage down.

Whew... I'm extremely glad I got to play a Brewers player who was particularly good at positioning while I was using Scalpel. I hadn't played this matchup yet and other than my friend Mark (whom i've only gotten to play a few times since he lives a trek away) we don't have a strong resident Brewers player, and he doesn't like Stave at all.

I feel like when going into Brewers i feel an intense need for Tooled up and Rage, especially with Scalpel. Killing players in this matchup is a commitment, and no easy task, so I find it is much better to prey on players like Friday and Spigot and Scum whilst going for 2 goals. Scalpel definitively has the tools to pick out the enemy models she wants to kill, especially with Tapper and Hooper mostly being stuck in the middle. I killed Friday twice and easily had multiple chances to score.

Thanks everyone for sticking with me for the second post! This game was rough!

Whew... Until next time!

Game 1! Vs. Union

A quick pick up game with a player using Union.

My list was...
Scalpel, Dirge, Ghast, Silence, and V. Graves
and I gave him the option between Casket/Rage/Bonesaw.

Not knowing any of the players he chose Bonesaw simply due to him looking the least scary, and I'm inclined to agree he made the correct choice.

His lineup was Blackheart, Coin, Decimate, Mist, Rage, Avarisse

I get the plot cards One-Touch football, steamroller, and Nuts. I feel like with the high kicking stats with my players I can utilize one-touch, steamroller is one of my favorites and the nuts is just the least worst choice that I still feel like I can use.

I win the Roll off and choose to receive.

Mist Kicks off and the Ball scatters extremely wide onto a patch of fast ground particularly close to his side of the pitch away from all of my players.

Here is our deployment and Kick off. 

Silence moves up and shoots embalming fluid, hits mist and misses a tucked on mist. The Tucked was planned so that I could attempt to force mist to go with no momentum and unable to get the ball in an advantageous position

Decimate sprints and uses second wind on mist.

Dirge moves up

Mist where'd they go, smoke bomb himself and sprints, grabs the ball and with second wind, goes forward 

Scalpel sprints into melee with decimate, 4x mom 1><,  pulls decimate into Ghasts threat range and then second winds herself to threaten mist. The parting blow does 1 damage. 

Ghast charges Decimate for 3 damage, v.graves wiffs a 6 tac into Decimate going for the momentum and potentially KD.
Bonesaw makes his way over to the centre back of the table to get the ball from Scalpel later. 

Start of turn 2

Influence is 3 on ghast, 1 on silence, 4 on Scalpel, 3 on Bonesaw, 2 on V. Graves. 

My plan is to have Ghast engage and KD rage/Decimate/Ava, but I am worried about Mist. Fortunately I am willing to concede the goal so as to pick it up with bonesaw and reposition it to scalpel to score. 

So Ghast KDs Decimate, advances and cannot engage all three but instead puts a KD into Rage and a 3 damage into decimate to soften her up more. 

Blackheart Generates some momentum, Mist Sprints and scores.
Score is 0/4

The ball spits out over near Bonesaw, who heroics and charges over decimate grabbing the ball and football dervishing a pass to scalpel, who is engaged by Blackheart. She uses the pass to take a give and go, disengaging from Blackheart and preparing to murder rage.

My opponent uses Ava to single out and KD dirge.

V.Graves Gravedigger + Kills decimate who was on 1 wound, and KD/Bleed Rage for Scalpel to bounce off of for a goal. Scalpel then advances over to rage, generates a stack of momentum, and push dodges him over to within range of the goal, puts second wind on herself, shoots with bonus time, and waltzes over to coin with second wind.

Greede then goes crazy, clears conditions on Rage, and attacks dirge with 11 dice, murdering that bird harder than I've ever seen.

Score is 7/6

Here is the end of the turn picture...

and a closer up picture of the scrum

I notice that at some point rage had activated and attacked bonesaw for momentum and bleed and then advances over to free attack Ghast for some momentum and bleed. He ended, after scalpels activation, engaged with Ghast and Graves. 

Turn 3

Scalpel get 6, V. Graves 4, Silence 3. 

He brings back Decimate over near the ball and fast ground, and heavily allocates to Blackheart, Mist, and Decimate, giving 2 to Ava. 

My plan is to have Scalpel kill coin and engage/put an attack into rage then have V.Graves gravedigger kill Rage for the win. I'll have silence go first to control blackheart/mist/decimate's ability to score and win the game, but I'm not to worries since they are so heavily to one side. 

I start with Silence who punches Ava for momentum, dodging off of him and using tucked on Ava and a bonus time shut out on Rage, hitting both. Idiotically I disengage Ava without needed to at all. 

Ava uses the too flash token to charge Scalpel, pushing her a bunch away and slapping a lot of damage into her, but not knocking her down.

Scalpel activates and severely underestimates coin's defensive capabilities literally taking 6 attacks to take him down, she uses second wind on herself and walks over to engage Rage. 

Decimate sprints 11" and passes to mist...

Bonesaw walks to engage rage since after the effort it took to kill Coin I ain't taking any chances, and I'm not worried about the goal from mist. 

Mist sprints and scores. 

Score is 9/10

V. Graves activates and attacks rage. Rolls 3 successes and chooses to KD/Gravedigger. 

I recognize I need to wrap at least once and get 5 successes another time to kill him with only 3 influence. First attack, I bonus time up to 10 tac and roll 7 successes dealing 5 damage, a sigh of relief..., second attack I crank the roll and deal another 5 damage and take him out with an influence to spare. 

12/10. 1 goal 3 take outs. Didn't use any plot cards.

Conclusion

This was a weird game. As much as I felt in the driver's seat most of the time, my opponent was able to catch me off guard and I was unable to do exactly what I wanted. His kick off was stellar, basically allowing him to put the first points on the board and effectively slow down the game. 

I felt he most likely would have posed to me a much greater threat had he had Blackheart on one wing and Mist on another. 

In all honesty I don't know how much information I gained for Scalpel, V. Graves, or Bonesaw due to having so few activations in general. I'll admit that V.Graves did allow me to focus on the few players I was actually able to nail down gaining the extra 2 VP so as to not have to track another player down. The combined effort of Scalpel, Silence (tucked/Shutout), and Ghast, with Scalpel being the main facilitator for moving my opponents players around allowed me to do just that. 

Scalpel can basically reposition herself at the end of her activation to get to any player she wants so that the next turn she can easily get to them and set them up. Different to Obulus she can easily hit her 2 damage unassisted, especially on targets with armor, unfortunately if she doesn't roll well those 2 damages are non-momentous, but needing 3 4s on 7 dice is really not that bad. 

I never used her legendary, but had plenty of opportunities to do so, I believe it was a matter of "do I need it?" moments and the answer never being "I absolutely need so I do not get a worthless activation. 

V. Graves I found like I wanted assistance from Ghast/others in the form of KD or crowd out, otherwise I wasn't dealing a lot of damage or gaining momentum. I think Gravedigger is a bit more of an opportunistic trap as it literally only effects the opponent psychologically. I do not believe that he suffers from the Casket issue since he has a playbook that repositions opponents on 1 hit, 2" melee, and low momentous results. He does seem to suffer from the Casket problem where he has to use gravedigger, but due to the fact that other players can claim his prize, it is mitigated a bit. 

Feedback is greatly appreciated and I can be reached on Facebook, or my e-mail is alexstraubwork@gmaiil.com. Let me know if I could do anything better or you'd like to see more with this blog. 

First Battle Report tonight!

Hello! I have the Big Leagues coming up starting tonight, and am preparing my lineup!
Due to how we are running Union in the Big Leagues I'll mostly be sticking to Morticians exclusively for now.

Scalpel, Dirge, V. Graves, Silence, Ghast, Casket, Bonesaw, Cosset...

I'll be back tonight with a report.

This is a blog about...

Hello all! This is my first post here, and my first post on any blog of my own, so I apologize if I don't do a great job with formatting or content viewing, I hope to make it an enjoyable read!

So, My name is Alexander Straub, my forum name on the official forums is Narak, and this will be a Blog focused on my Guild Ball experiences and battle reports.

A little background about me, I've been playing games that involve other people my entire life. I started with Magic the Gathering around when I was 8 years old and played semi-competitively my whole life. I picked up miniature gaming around 3-4 years ago in Warmachine and Hordes, and around February this year I started playing Guild Ball.

My Guild Ball experience: I've been playing as many games as possible locally, generally placing from 1st-3rd in the last 5 local tournaments I've played in. Nationally I've only got the opportunity to play in nationals proper and after losing to Brian White in the first round I assume that it was single elimination, like many of us did.
I started with Morticians and due to being a Pundit, I picked up Union as a Demo team and fish because I enjoy Corsair. I own Alchemists by accident and my girlfriend's Butchers.
Currently I only play morticians competitively.

My Plan: I intend to make this a Scalpel focused battle report Blog. I cannot say how long this will last, but I intend to play her as long as I'm having fun!