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!
No comments:
Post a Comment