A Few Tuesday Games

Showed up last night with one goal: play my newly painted aKirai and Jaakuna models.  Unfortunately, the closest I came was to have my aKirai card borrowed by another player.  I did manage three games though, which is more than my usual night.

GAME ONE

The first game was against Aaron, another local Henchman (and the one who kicked my butt with Leviticus against my Pandora list a few weeks back).  This time he played Rasputina and I played McMourning at 30 stones.  I put Rafkin and a pair of Crooligans on the board, wanting to see if they were actually any good.

They weren’t.

They actually didn’t really do much of anything.  On turn two, while cowering from a Gunsmith, they both tried twice to cast their Mist spell and failed all four times.  And me without a moderate card to cheat and not feeling it was worth a severe.  They ended up being killed off rather unceremoniously by the Gunsmith and it wasn’t until Rafkin joined the fray that I was able to win that front and grab my Stake a Claim scheme.

Overall the rest of the game went like this: with Raspy and a Silent One taking one flank around a building and Snowstorm coming up the middle, I was finding myself kinda hemmed in.  He blasted into McMourning and dropped some Blast markers on top of my Chihuahua and a nearly-dead dog, grabbing some quick points for his Slaughter mission.  Them, combined with the two Crooligans, left me in a bad spot.  I sent McMourning charging into Rasputina, knowing the best way to keep her from hurting too much was to put her in melee.

Of course, he had the Avatar at the ready.  I felt confident I could keep McM alive though, with his plethora of stones and high wounds.

Didn’t turn out to matter as I won initiative and McM chopped through Raspy right quick (well… it did take all of his attacks, so it wasn’t really RIGHT quick).  From there, my Belle lured the Snowstorm up to my lines and eventually McM cut through the Silent One and dropped a Rouge Necromancy on the Snowstorm.  A couple turns later, it was over.  I didn’t have enough models to grab Reconnoiter anymore, and there were a few people waiting for games, so we tallied up the likely final score of 4-2, McMourning’s favor.

GAME TWO

Another player from Victory, Nayte, was by yesterday looking to get some games in.  He’s a strong player for the amount of time he’s been playing, and has a lot of room to grow.  He’s been talking to Dan and me about Ressers (mostly Dan, since pretty much everything I know about Ressers I learned from Dan) and been trying to get them to work.  He’s been pretty successful with them, taking second in a recent New York tournament, and moving up in the pile of players we have each week.

He and I haven’t played in a few months, so we lined up to face off.  He hadn’t played many Neverborn players, and since they were my primary faction, I figured I’d give him some more experience.  I asked him between Lilith, Pandora and Zoraida who he most wanted to get some experience against (I don’t have the Dreamer’s new rules printed out) and he said Lilith.  He’s seen the others played, but wanted to see a good Lilith player again.

So we played 30 stones, him taking McM with the Avatar and Von Schill, and me taking Lilith with some twins, tots, and a Stitched.  Early on I moved one of my Tots up near Von Schill and tempted him to come after him.  He did, shooting the Tot for 3 wounds.  I had Lilitu move around and Lure Von Schill into my lines with Lilith and Lelu.  Both models went to town on him, dropping him to Slow to Die and forcing him to use a bunch of stones just to keep alive.

By sapping his stones away, I was able to get him to about one stone left before Lilith had to use any of hers.  Pretty soon, Lilith and Lelu moved in to the rest of the Resser crew and McM didn’t have much he could do left.

Meanwhile, three Night Terrors were swooping around my back lines, grabbing Plant Evidence markers and wrapping up VPs.  Lilitu and a Tot went after the bats and had killed one off, and were closing in on the others, when we called the game so we’d have time for another.  I had 8 points wrapped up, and he was capped at 4.

GAME THREE

Nayte told me to re-rack my crew and he’d come at me again, this time with a few tweaks.  He dropped the Night Terrors and picked up Sebastian and a second Canine Remains.  I took the same selection again.  This time I got to choose my strategy and took Supply Wagon, figuring it might be interesting to try to anchor my usually mobile crew somewhere.  He had Contain Power.

I wasn’t able to get to his Von Schill on the first turn this game, so I slowly moved up to the middle of the field and waited until the second turn to start going after him.  I got to Sebastian on the second turn while he was bringing Von Schill around the back of the board to flank me and go after the wagon.  Lilith and a Terror Tot cornered Von Schill, forcing him to start dropping stones again just to stay alive.  Every stone he lost was one less McM could have when I went after him.  Meanwhile, McM killed off my Stitched which killed off his Chihuahua in response.  Almost killed off the Belle too, but my damage flip ended up with a Red and Black Joker in it.  Damn.

Von Schill jumped over to the wagon with only a wound remaining and a stone or two left.  Lilith had to let him go because I needed to get around to killing off McM and the rest.  My twins had gotten up to McM but he killed off Lelu and LIlitu didn’t have much to do anymore.

My Primordial Magic and Terror Tot kept close to the wagon to keep it safe and I spent high cards keeping them alive.  McM summoned a Rouge Necromancy, then manifested, dropping Adam on Lilitu.  She died pretty quickly there.  I was down to Lilith, two Tots, and my Primordial Magic against aMcM, Adam, a Rouge Necromancy, a Belle, Von Schill, and the Grave Spirit.

Lilith charged into McM and killed him (I had drawn a Red Joker into my hand and had stones while he didn’t).  The Rouge Necro and Adam jumped on Lilith, but I was able to stone to make sure their first attack missed, then the -2 CB made sure the rest of theirs also missed.  My Primordial Magic charged into Von Schill and between him and the nearby Terror Tot, I managed to finish him off.

Lilith hit the Rouge Necro to knock off its two heads, then put some wounds into Adam, then turned back to the Rouge Necro to kill it off.  Adam managed to hit Lilith once, dealing two wounds, but Lilith waxed him the next turn and stepped onto the Stake a Claim, keeping about 2” from the Belle so she couldn’t try to run in front of the wagon to stop it.  Two attempts later, she was dead from Wicked.  The wagon rolled into place and I pulled an 8-0 victory.

Dan managed to pull out a victory in his Game of the Week this week, but still owed me a beer from last week when I bet that Nayte would beat Skill-less Brian.  We headed out for dinner and to settle some drinks.  During the conversation, I decided enough was enough and tossed down the gauntlet, challenging Nayte to the next Game of the Week.  Told him to bring Kirai, and asked him who he wanted to face.  Lilith had just beaten him twice, so he wanted his revenge.  Next week: Kirai vs. Lilith... grudge match!