Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Pulling Out the Relics

A rather diverse weekend for me, partly due to some awesomeness at Hobby Quest in Longmont for their Army Amnesty Day, the day after Christmas. First up was Malifaux, then I got a steal on some Relic Knights models, finally finishing out Saturday, being true to my word, with some of the hated Fantasy.

When I showed up on Friday, I quickly jumped into the bits pile, throwing down $5 for a three minute shove you bag full of sprues spree. I'm proud of how I did, even though I probably should be ashamed of my greed and shoving. As it was, I made out with Ogres, Necron Canons, Easterlings(what? I like the models), a headless Necron Lord, and some Dryads, also mostly headless. Then I managed to play a store regular in Malifaux. He was running Misaki, myself Leveticus. It was Turf War, I took Breakthrough and Distract, he announced Breakthrough and I never found out his second scheme. I had known he was playing Misaki, so I let him know I would play Leveticus, just to even things a bit. The strat and pool leaned heavily towards Tara, but I stuck with Levi. I tried a construct list for giggles, bringing Howard Langston and the Hooded Rider. Howard was a bit of meh, but the Rider may be making a return more often. He ran Misaki, Ototo, Toshiro, Shang, two Torakage, two Oiran, and something else I can't remember.

I setup broad across the middle, while he deployed split, with Toshiro in the center.

He pushed the majority of his crew on the left forward, slunk Ototo forward on my right. He tried to use an Oiran to pull the other one forward, but failed, so they basically jostled up just to the right of center. Toshiro made a play up the center, to which Howard Langston happily answered with nimble then charge.

I was then able to use Mr. Langston to  finish Toshiro, before he was able to do any summoning, putting a major crimp in my opponent's plans. The Hooded Rider dropped Oathkeeper, charged one of the Oiran, beat he a little, then Distracted the other one. I wasn't able to get a second one this turn, but we both snagged Turf War, as Misaki moved in towards Howard.

On turn three I killed the other Oiran, and Misaki moved over to reinforce his right flank, leaving me with the only Turf War. Rusty Alyce managed to Distract one of his Torakage, and Howard moved over to threaten the other models, freeing Rusty from attack. He was able to move away, and would drop a Breakthrough marker on my side. The Hooded Rider left the Distracted Oiran and headed deep into enemy territory to drop my own Breakthrough markers. Leveticus made short work of Ototo, bringing in an Abomination, while Rusty pulped some other models to do the same.

With the center mine, he moved his remaining Oiran for safety. I had already Distracted Misaki, so was able to clean the left flank, trapping her between my brand new Abominations. At this point I was looking at full for Turf War, with him having little chance of getting it, full Distract unless I recklessly killed his models, and at least two for Breakthrough, but likely three, since half my models could easily back up the Hooded Rider, shoul he not be able to get the last marker. This left him with one for Turf War, one, maybe two, for Breakthrough, and his second unknown strategy. He graciously called it. Another beating for him, for the second time I played him. Not as terrible on VPs, but I still mauled his crew. As a really new Misaki player, I couldn't give a ton of pointers, or really any. I do think Toshiro up the middle should have been replaced by Ototo. Or at least aided by. I was able to stop him from summoning, and Ototo offered absolutely no threat and I was able to kill both at my leisure. I am not terribly sold on Howard Langston. He hit hard, but not unbelievably so. A Abomination sowing model would have been better. The Hooded Rider was fantastic. He was able to bring hurt, survive repercussions, and use his 0 to push away to accomplish the mission. He will be back.

My opponent showed he was a swell guy, by not only taking my knocking on the chin, but then he went ahead and demoed a game that I had just made a steal of a purchase on a preassembled crew. Relic Knights. I had picked up the Cerci Speed Circuit box for basically half price. They are already built, so I won't be able to convert too much, but the Royal Wrecker may still get some work either way. We were joined by another noob, who had been using my new models as visuals to assemble his own Cerci box. He seemed rather new to the whole gaming experience, and complained that it was a little too complicated while we were still discussing movement, which is basically the same as Infinity.

My teacher may not be the most seasoned opponent, so we got a few things wrong, or maybe noise, other guy, my own issues conspired to confuse me, but either way we played. Deploying in Relic Knights doesn't have a zone. Say what? Yep, no deployment zones. This mistake I am sure is purely mine, trying to force it into existence. But we all deployed as if the were zones, basically, with the new guy being "out of zone," but not really. My teacher, who I have failed to name because I am afraid I will grossly mispell his name, brought his squad towards me, and set back with the rest of his force, shooting the noob. The noob's name I don't know, so, noob works here. Especially since the other noob at the table is me, and I, generally, just refer to him as me.

There was some early confusion on how the hand worked, so I wasn't drawing enough cards. I also had not gotten my hand to table resource control figured out, so I didn't have what I needed, or even know what that was. As such my Wrecker charged his unit, realized I didn't have the cards, and just sat there. The teacher also had cards issues, so he failed to shoot the noob. The noob just kind of shuffled around a bit.

As things became more clear, I managed to drop a brutal AoE off of my Wrecker onto the master's crew, then actually use the Wrecker, killing one of the unit, and rolling a fair amount onto the other, then the noob finished the other one off. Then it was off to the races. The Wrecker zipped to the teacher's corner and popped his objective, not real RK wise, just a random interact sorta mission. Marie-Claude headed for the noobs and was able to pop it, even though the noob was threatening me, physically and verbally, with his Marie-Claude. In the end I was able to force him into a weaker position with his and take his objective. Had this been a real game, I would have just had to mop up. As it was, the bell rang, and I had to go to work.

The store event was awesome. They drew prizes as I was cleaning up, of which I, shockingly, won neither. It was a load of fun, tons of people, a great event. I hope to make it next year.

Having harassed Mike S since I picked up the models the night before, I finally convinced him to bring his stuff. He wanted to play Malifaux, and as it is my favorite, I, of course, set up a table. However, they play on the same board, and we ended up play Relic Knights instead. I'm not real sure whose idea it was. He has Cerci and Black Diamond and decided to play Black Diamond. He started to assemble them, but after a second staring at the mold line, decided to fake it and away we rolled. We were playing the same "scenario" as I played the night before, with actual 6" deployment zones. I have no idea how a real scenario with real deployment would have gone. He spread, I semi-grouped.

Mike played a very "ok, lets try this unit" game, while I was playing very "these guys rock and I am awesome" game. Okay, so I may have been coming off of a false win. My guys quickly paled in killing power to his. I don't know if his just hits that hard, but his tank is nuts. It did force me to do some repairing, which is something I both did wrong and need to learn to use effectively. I didn't really do it WRONG, so much as the hard way. I also didn't realize how Marie-Claude adds so much to the crew, beyond he obvious "assets" of course.

This game was very I kill you, no I kill you more. We just beat on each other as I pushed my Wrecker forward and his Knight pressed my left flank. Marie was in bad shape for a while. I hadn't realized her heal was a reaction, so I failed to use it, as killing his Knight seemed more important. In the end I did just that, and then MC hid behind a building before heading toward one of his objectives.

 The Wrecker raced into his squad, which we may have played wrong, but I do think they suck. However, the Wrecker eventually died.

I was able to take down his tank, and it was my Pit Crew and Marie-Claude versus his squad. I think the Wreckers would have been hard pressed, since they had no range, but MC easily out classed them. Also, neither of us knew how to end the game, so we just kind of shrugged and called it. Since then we have been doing a fair back and forth about what we screwed up or did wrong or whatever. I am looking forward to the next game, when we do things right. I do want a game of Malifaux first, though.

Then, I did something horrible, I play Fantasy. Kidding, it wasn't "horrible"... exactly. I was playing my Tomb Kings, what I could remember of the list I last used against Troy. Fast moving blocks of chariots and cavalry. I had changed my command and picked up Arkhan in chariot, from the TK book, not the End Times. This meant I didn't have to have any Nehekarhan lore. I also ran two Liches on horse, one Light, the other Darkness magic. He was playing High Elves, but no Life magic, on High Elf. I think his hope was to limit my rage quitting as much as possible.
Early on, things went south for me. I Was out ranged, and my catapults did jack and diddly, scattering to horrible places. My magic was decent, but the follow up for any setup I did failed in some way.

However, as the game progressed, it swung heavily my way. My "useless" undead cavalry held up his Sea Guard for several turns, and the rest of my army started to weigh heavily on his force. The horse archers fell to his archers, but with them firing elsewhere, I was fairly happy. My catapults did very little, but once the Chariots, Knights, and Necrosphinx got locked in, thing swung. I was able to take down Teclis and his lord on eagle. I did forget to turn my Sphinx, which would cost me a charge the next turn, but thats not what did it.

Having routed part of his army, and set myself up to clean the fringe before I ever had to think of his swordsmen, I was able to strike the death blow. To myself. Arkhan periled, rolled low on the chart, and went home. Almost instantly my army started to falter. Full units, ready to just wreck face, crumbled to dust and were gone. My resounding dominance(may be exaggerating) turned to dust before my eyes. It didn't take long after that for him to all but clean me off the table.

The worst part was that it wasn't even the stupid crumbling. The game just wasn't all that fun. Maybe it is bitterness, but just like the last game, I just didn't really enjoy playing the army. It was very meh. I don't know if it is a lack of tactics, or what, but the army feels lacking. The strategy is run forward, if you make it, wreck face, lose heirophant, lose game. The really isn't anything I can do. I mean, the heirophant just ate himself. It wasn't a terrible mistake, or a well played maneuver on Nabors's part. It was just a bad roll.

So, in an attempt to see if its the game or just the army, I plan to bring my whopping 500 point Ogre force this weekend and see if I can get in a small game with that. Probably a bad sampling, but we shall see.

Until then, hopefully I will get a hobby progress article up, but I would hold my breath, were I you.

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