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. 

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