The Stench of Defeat

On Tuesday night I headed out to the game store to grab some Malifaux games.  Most times, I have nothing planned and just grab games where I can.  Last night, though, I had two games lined up.

GAME ONE – aRAMOS (SLAZ)

The first was against Slaz, our local Archanist player.  I hadn’t played him since early this year when I was playing Ressers a lot.  He had beaten me with aRamos and I wanted to get a rematch against him.  So I set my Neverborn aside and dusted off my Ressers once more for a McMourning vs. aRamos rematch!

I took the Avatar this time – he wasn’t an option last time I faced aRamos, and since I had Line in the Sand, I opted for a trio of Night Terrors and the Dead Rider.  He took a fairly standard aRamos list, and kept Johan as a bodyguard.  I rarely face Johan, so I was a little fuzzy on what he did, but I figured he shouldn’t be a big issue.

Things started going poorly for me as I managed to flip a Black Joker on McMourning’s first turn as he tried to kill off the Canine Remains.  I ended up killing both of them, but shorted myself some bodyparts doing it.  Everything else was looking good though as my Night Terrors and Dead Rider were flipping my dynamite markers.

On turn two, my Dead Rider grabbed one of his Large SPAs and yanked him back to the edge of the board to kill him, and my bats were circling around away from the fighting.  I brought McMourning forward and summoned a Flesh Construct to face off against Ramos, hopefully putting a few wounds in him before he manifested.  Here’s where my lack of understanding of Johan came in.  Johan pasted the Flesh Construct in three hits.  Damn.  aRamos manifested.

I got the initiative on turn three and was holding a decent hand, so I decided to send McMourning after aRamos.  I used Scalpel Sling and Slaz cheated in a moderate Tome, then stoned for a severe putting his defense pretty high.  Still, I felt I had a good shot.  I tossed a 13 and stoned, needing a 6, and missed.  So McMourning could not actually attack anything more.  Instead, he booked it onto Slaz’s side of the board, hopefully positioning himself so that Slaz couldn’t come after me without risking the Turf War.  My Dead Rider, meanwhile, finished off one Large SPA and was moving in on a second.  My bats surrounded McMourning to cut off his positioning so aRamos would have a harder time landing a Leap near enough to attack.

Turn four did not go much better.  McMourning landed his first hit on aRamos for 6 wounds (prevented to 5) but missed after that.  aRamos summoned two new Large SPAs after the Dead Rider killed the other one and was flipping dynamite.  aRamos, the bugs and Johan took turns whacking McMourning, but he managed to survive the turn.

Turn five saw McMourning try to hit aRamos again, but another moderate Tome plus a 13 on the stone this time pushed the attack out of my range.  Needing a 7 on my stone, I again flipped too low and wasn’t able to attack anymore.  My bats weren’t accomplishing anything, so I drained two of them for Soulstones to try to keep McMourning alive, but he bit it after some concentrated attacks.  He moved most of his crew towards my side of the board, holding one Large SPA back to break my Breakthrough.

Turn six, my Dead Rider launched himself at the Large SPA, killing him and moving into his deployment zone, but by then, the four dynamite markers I had flipped were being flipped back and he was on my side of the board with enough people to get two points for Turf War.  The game ended and I lost, 2-4.

GAME TWO – PANDORA (BILL)

The second game was against Bill.  He told me he was going to play Neverborn last week, and I was planning on taking Neverborn too, but then he put up a bit of a stink, so I acquiesced and switched to Ressers.  Then I made the mistake of telling him who I was taking after we flipped Strategies (I had Reconnoiter so I went with Kirai – I was hoping to get a McMourning-friendly strategy), and he put Dreamer down and picked up Pandora instead.

The game went predictably for Pandora vs. Kirai.  Pandora got to Kirai without much trouble (high model count gave a lot of models to bounce off of with Pacify), killed off all the Seishin with her pricking them, then was able to target Kirai with enough stuff that her own Pitiful kept hurting her.

I was able to get my Insidious Madness up near Pandora a couple turns with the (-) WP flip, but even with that, Pandora was often outflipping my crew as they tried to target her.

I started with one Shikome and summoned a second on turn one.  The first one was going after Lelu, and the second one spent the first turn targeting the Doppelganger as its Prey.  I was able to get to Lelu, but he ran the Doppelganger away and Lilitu was able to hold the Shikome down.  I never really had the opportunity to swirl it away because I was under pressure from Coppelius the whole time.

Overall, not a lot fell my way.  Bill had a really solid crew to counter mine, and mine did not have much that could directly deal with his outside the Insidious Madness, and that hurt my crew just as much as his.  By the end of turn six, he had wiped my whole crew and maxed out his points, giving him a 8-0 victory over me.

So at the end of the day, I lost two in a row.  Rough night for me.   I had to go back home and let my wife know that it was the stench of defeat she was smelling on me.  She told me I had to sleep on the couch that night.

But I’ve already challenged Slaz to another aRamos match.  I have yet to beat that guy, and I’m convinced that prize is just in reach.  Looking forward to the re-rematch…