Army Amnesty Day

The day after Christmas, I headed on down to Longmont. Hobby Quest was putting on their annual Army Amnesty day, and with the kids off to their uncle's wedding, I wanted in. I managed to get in a couple games against David, the guy I played against last time. Troy also made it down and was able to wreck David's day.

Game one was Guild versus Ressers. He played Sonnia and I took Resser Tara, in light of a Cheated Fates podcast I recently listened to. They went on and on about how much better she is as a Resser master. I didn't agree with more than a couple of the things they said about her play style, but that may have been a faction difference for play style. As such, I decided I should give another crack at the Resser version and see where it all landed. I took Tara, Rogue Necromancy, Bette Noir, two Death Marshals, and three Void Wretches. He took Sonnia, Samuel Hopkins, the Judge, Santiago, and three Witchling Stalkers. The strategy was Stake a Claim. I had Frame for Murder on the Rogue Necro and Breakthrough. He took Assassinate and Frame for Murder on Samuel Hopkins. Turn one I fast Bette and fast and bury the Rogue Necromancy. I had put the Death Marshal too far away from Bette by a hair, so I moved the DM up and Black Jokered the Pine Box. Why I didn't charge her, I don't know. This kinda gummed my works, as I wanted Bette to be the first one out. Instead I ran with the Rogue Necromancy. I was able to move around on some land masses to get to where the Necro could charge Santiago and the Judge turn 1. I charged Santiago and brought him down to his hard to kill and he died at the end of turn to poison. Turn two was much the same, I used Tara to power up and redeploy the Rogue Necromancy, which charged in and brought the Judge to a single wound, which he lost to poison, but not before he brought the Necro down to 5 wounds. David moved most of his crew up the center, taking shots at Tara, doing three wounds and giving her Burning 4. I then used Pine Box to bury Tara, in hopes of using the Wretches to remove the Burning and heal her. All three failed, and my cards sucked. However, I stone to prevent the Burning and pull a Red Joker, so all was mute anyway. On turn four I put Bette into his crew, do mediocre damage, and he spends the rest of the turn killing her, which I don't have a ten, and she perm dies. At this point, Wretches are dropping random markers, and heading for Breakthrough. Tara and the Death Marshals are mostly camped in the center for Stake a Claim. He has moved up, but is choosing to shoot me and isn't watching the points, so he ends turns within a breath of getting Stake a Claim, but never moves up. On turn four, he uses Hopkins to kill Tara, netting him Assassinate, but denying Frame for Murder, since she was my only Master of Henchman. I try to do some shenanigans with the Death Marshals, burying Hopkins and hoping they survive with three wounds between them. Those hopes are dashed when Sonnia easily shoots the first and drops a blast on the second, ending both in one action. My Wretches do final scheme drops and the game ends. I grabbed Stake a Claim on turns 2, 3, and 4, he grabbed 2 and 5. I got full points for Frame for Murder and Breakthrough, while he snagged Assassinate. The game ended 9-5 in my favor. I think he could have easily gotten three more points for the strategy if he would have just thought about it over killing my models and moved a model once. At most, 1 AP to not shoot Bette on a negative flip would have been HUGE. After the game, David seemed very down about it, but I think he would have done better had he focused on mission and not on straight killing. I think he has been playing a while, but he plays like he just came from another system.

After that, David played Troy's Pandora, and that was basically a two turn bad day. Afterwards, I managed to talk him into playing my Viks crew, as I felt it would be more of what he wanted for the game. I took both Viks, Vanessa, Taelor, Bishop, Convict Gunslinger, and a Desperate Merc. He took Lady Justice this time with Hopkins, Santiago, the Judge, Fransisco, and the Scales of Justice. We were playing Reckoning, but I still thought this was an overly heavy beater crew. Anyway, I got obliterated. I took Distract and revealed Sand. Turn two opened with him coming over a hill and Red Jokering Bishop with Lady J. Well, there goes my schemes. He had already killed Viktoria of Blood turn one, and I was definitely on the back foot. I did manage to Distract Lady J and Santiago. Viktoria killed Fransisco and was into Santiago and Hopkins. The Desperate Merc had died all alone and so I didn't get his stone, his son will be very sad. He managed to lock up Taelor and Miss Demeanor, and was able to finish both off using J with a little help from the Judge. Turn 5 was just Vanessa and Viktoria of Ash and I lost initiative, and then there was just Vanessa. The game went on and he finished me off, winning 5-2. It was not my best showing, I made some mistakes, waiting to long to move Viktoria of Ash up to support Viktoria of Blood. I also thought he was targeting Taelor instead of Blood and used the wrong stat and such, but that was my mistake. I also didn't see that he could easily charge Bishop and foolishly lost him as well. I tried to make up for my early mistakes later in the game, but just couldn't get it done. I do believe I need to play the Viks a lot more if I am going to have much success with them, as I just don't know what I am doing any more.

A great day for gaming. As for Army Amnesty, I didn't win anything. I also didn't even pull out my Ogres to get some work done on them, though I did get some done afterwards and this morning.

Wait! Did he say Ogres? I guess you will just have to wait for another post to hear about that.