Sunday 22 March 2015

Mick ToMB2 month 2 purchases

As I have explored Arcanist pretty thoroughly it leaves me little purchase room, so I have gone put of faction for month 2, My first purchase was part of a TTB multipart kit with which I will be building a Friekorps Trapper and Librarian to beef up my ranged and healing for Mei as she lacks in those areas a little, my Second purchase is Toshiro the Daimyo, because once I run mei as TT his abiility to give minions fast and [+] flips, combined with the upgrade allowing him to turn the emberlings scrap-poop into summoned Komainu's has to be tried out. 

however as he's going to have to be a little more low-profile round the factory, and frankly and Daimyo worth his salt is going to clean himself up a bit after resurrection, I thought I'd give him a quick valet before he takes to the table- 



I'll get the trapper and librarian up soon.
 

Friday 20 March 2015

Tomb2- Micks Mei Feng game number three

Played my third game with Mei this week, against the same opponent as my second (which I didn't write up here as I was so enraged at my own stupidity I couldn't type... suffice to say I lost pretty badly) and was really hoping he wasn't playing ressers, unluckily he was and Molly (same master as last time) turned up for a scrap with Mei.

Strat- Reckoning, standard deployment
schemes- Assassinate (ben), Bodyguard (Me/Kang, Ben/Philip) Frame for Murder (Me/Willie) Deliver a message, AlitS

My Arcanists Mei feng- 4 pool
Vapourmancy- (slipped under the table, forgot I had it, twit)
Seismic claws (auto include, made up for my missing everything)
Kang- Imbued energies
Lazarus- Imbued energies
Willie
Gunsmith x2
Metal Gamin

Theory- gunline to stay away from his stuff while picking them off, Mei to vent steam and protect from Lures, Gunsmiths rather than mages are they are tougher and can switch to melee mode if needed) no-one can resist killing Willie so he's good for frame. and hopefully I can keep the almost indestructible Kang alive (this time)

Ben's Ressurectionists
Molly- 7 pool, gorgons tear, spirit summoning nonsense
Phillip and the Nanny
Toshiro
Nurse
Belle
Chiaki
Datsue-Ba
probably some other irritating upgrades

Theory- Molly and Tosh do all the hard work, Datsue Ba sneaks around and every other model just supports Molly like those weird guys that stand behind rappers on stage shouting 'Yeah!' and 'cmon!' except more dead. Summon everything really easily. win.  

I deployed first, I took a stance in the west with Lazarus on his own out east, Ben countered with a strong central force and Datsue-Ba facing Laz.

Turn one
Laz decided Datsue Ba was more effort than she was worth and regrouped to the west, The arcanist blob advanced together (stupid move) with Vent steam covering them all, Willie pushed the furthest up with the gunsmiths to the rear. Tosh and Molly advanced to the centre where she spent pretty much the rest of the game (with some help from the belle) but the rest of the ressers just walked a bit and dropped a scheme marker for phillip to card spam with. Phillip card spammed. Molly summoned a necrotic machine across the front of the arcanists, catching three models and wounding one, willie passed with flying colours, and the two gunsmiths gained fast so one wound was fine, molly gave the necrotic a shot a gunsmith and wounded him more as well as getting off the infectious trigger, then companioned him for another attack that luckily missed

Turn two. 
The slightly more wounded gunsmith (el pedro) shot the living shit out of the machine, Then the Arcanist blob spread out a bit, an Onryo and a shikome arrived up close (more fast for the two GS) after another round of Molly throwing her weight around. I managed to smash the Onryo with Kang which gave out slow to a Gunsmith countering his fast as well as willie. for reasons I simply can't understand I charged the metal gamin up to stand next to Molly, he missed his headbutt twice (both Ben's defence flips were higher than I could possibly score, even with a RJ, not sure what I was thinking) Tosh made something fast and stabbed the Gamin to death, the rest pretty much did exactly what they did the turn before, more scheme markers, more cards for philip. Laz bombed the living fuck out of Tosh and Molly for a few wounds each with Imbued and Flurry, Mei decided to try the 'punch ressers in the face' advice and went hell for leather at Molly, some average luck and some wasted SS meant with a few misses and a few combos I reduced Tosh to one wound and Molly to two, without cards in hand Ben still pulled off two full heals from the nurse and one condition removal on Molly to undo all my hard work. (dammit!)
I scored 1 for Reckoning. (1/0)

Turn Three
(My memory is shakier from here on in as the cold got to me, my right hand stopped working and Ben was kind enough to shuffle my cards every time it was needed) Being in melee and surviving another round of Mei punching (back down to three wounds) didn't stop Molly giving mei [-] flips, as another Onryo/Shikome combo popping up and removing Willie from the game and scoring me frame for murder. I dropped them both with combined fire from the gunsmiths and Kang, but El Pedro was left on one wound (and fast). The other Gunsmith (dirty rosewood) was lured into Datsue Ba's charge range and they got into a fairly minor scuffle with a few wounds on both sides, the gunsmith got fast again. Tosh gave Mei a stabbing while she was at negative flips. lazarus fired into the Molly/Mei scurm but only managed to give mei a push away into the nurse/belle/chiaki/phillip support team. {this is where I made my biggest mistake- Afterwards Ben pointed out I should have taken the hits on Mei instead of triggering and dropped the blasts on Molly, she couldn't reduce so she would have been forced to use her last soulstone, If I hit her twice she could only survive on a Black joker} I scored 1 more for reckoning, 2 for frame for murder. (4/0)

Turn Four
Mei activated first and started throwing punches and kicks at the surrounding support mob, but only really managed to push them away and do a wound here and there with some terrible flips except one quite startlingly good punch to phillips head which would eventually deny him full VP on bodyguard. The return attacks from Toshiro, the nurse, Chiaki (who flipped the red joker for damage) and the belle finished Mei off with some extra attacks and fire support from Molly who ran around the tree in the centre, {second big mistake- I used my last SS reducing the red joker damage when I should have accepted Mei was going down and saved it for bodyguard points on Kang} El pedro charged Datsue Ba with some aura from Kang, and between the two reduced her to one wound, she in turn stripped Dirty rosewood to one wound. Laz blasted Tosh some more for a handful of wounds, but other than the death of mei this turn was largely quiet. you will be stunned into surprise to hear that Phillip another marker for a card and moved up for bodyguard, which Kang also claimed.
Ben scored 1 for reckoning, 2 for assassinate, Both scored 1 for bodyguard (5/4)

Turn five Best to call this the turn of Datsue Ba, Molly summoned something near kang to tie him down then gave Datsue an extra Ap and companioned her, Datsue then went apeshit on the Gunsmiths, killing them both and raising two free Gaki, one then ran up to Kang to try and stab him, Laz charged up and dropped the thing Molly summoned (a Shikome perhaps?), The gaki took a chunk out of Kang, so Kang thumped the Gaki back, dropped imbued energies and sprinted into the wild, {mistake number 3- I got bodyguard confused with Entourage, rather than running into a nice safe bush I ran him into the enemy DZ, within sight of the Belle) Tosh made the Belle fast who then dragged Kang back into the scrum, the combined weight of every model on the table pounding him (plus another red joker damage flip) took it's toll and down he went.

game ends due to tournament rules

Ben scored 1 for bodyguard (5/5)
 
Thoughts- still need to remember Mei is not ironsides, she cannot survive in the same situations and needs more backup. Kang I'm starting to get the hang of, just need to get him in the ruck a bit more. Need to not lose my focus on the schemes, particularly when bodyguard is on Kang I need to save the SS. The gunline was a good call for Reckoning as it gave me early points, that said the summons were in my face so much maybe some beaters would have worked just as well, luckily Gunsmiths do both jobs well:)

My hands were without fail abysmal, I had only three cards higher than an 8 over the entire game, those being one red joker, the 11 of Masks and the 10 of Tomes. This didn't even balance out on better flips as I always seemed to flip a face card with an ace or deuce for every negative flip, one triple neg I even managed three face cards and a four. that said, without those three mistakes I could have taken the game, so I can't blame the cards here, though a little luck would have been a nice buffer;)

Mei- dogged with terrible hands and terrible flips, Mei still managed to shine and throw out a good 5/6 attacks a turn, I am looking forward to the day I get the cards and flips to see what she can really do. Vent steam is a great way to piss Belles off;) wish I'd not forgotten Vapourmancy as I still have no real gauge on it?

Gunsmiths+Kang is an ace combo, they are super destructive, especially when they are almost always fast:) they do seem a good counter to Molly as his summons extra AP is countered by the (potentially multiple) fast i was gaining, though in this game I feel Ox mages would have served me better against all the damn spirits.

Metal Gamin- I'm not sure what the hell I did here, first I gave protection to willie (already DF6?) then tried to take on Molly and Tosh in melee, should have bought a raptor and had an extra in my cache.

Lazarus- did more wounds to Molly and Tosh than any other model in the warband, bust up a summon to free up Kang at the end. blasted everything he could and survived on full wounds. He is truly my favourite malifaux model:)

Willie: always a good FfM bet, his wheel barrow took two summons out in two turns, maybe I could have got more from him. I won't be taking FfM against ressers as much as their masters (and henchmen) tend to let others do the dirty work!

  next time you evil witch summonabanch fargin icehole... {Edit: of happiness and rainbows... apparently}

Wednesday 11 March 2015

ToMB2 - Jonah's Month 1 (A little late and a little under ...)

OK, first up I'm a little late with this as the title suggests.  Only managed to get these done yesterday and they're not based yet as I need to wait to get some basing materials.  I have also managed to get the crew box done rather than the full £40 worth as should have been done this month.  Hopefully the kind souls running ToMB will show lenience on me and let me make it up next month.  Anyway, enough waffle, here are some pictures of the finished Torch and the Blade crew box:





Here it the Witchling Handler that I am converting from TTB stuff.  I had planned to get her converted and painted for this month but ran out of time.  I couldn't make what I really wanted as there were no appropriate swords in the set so I decided to go for something a bit different and make this.  I thought the flaming hands would represent her Aura.  I'm not entirely happy with it and have been told about licensed casters coming with Wave 3 so it might make it as one of them:


Sunday 8 March 2015

Mick's ToMB2 Month 1 challenge complete!

So I finished on time (just), although  no faces as my hands are shaking too much for fine detail this week, but there will be, and tattoos.. oh yes... (a final note- none are as shiny as my crappy photography skills make them appear)

Here's the whole month one purchase:-


Kang and the boys- (named Jason, Lucky and Scum) these will definitely have tattoos, kang's wrist has an obvious join I missed that I can hide behind some ink, and I think the rest would benefit from some yakuza meets work-gang style ink. modelling wise they were fon to build, with some alternate arms (and leg) but very gappy for non-posable plastics, the first time I've had an issue with a wyrd model not fitting flush, but I know these are older moulds so hopefully it'll be my only experience too:)



Next (rather inexplicably) is my wind gamin/Tengu proxy, made from a malifaux raptors wings and my spare Metal gamin, he's running as a metal gamin for now, but I wanted something a bit different in the crew and this seemed to fit:) annoyingly one of his claws fell off at some point between painting and photography, I'm going to blame the cats...



The small guys- Two Metal Gamin (silver and gold) and the Emberling. all pretty straight forward builds, to anyone making the Gamin I would suggest attached the skirt to the front of the larger Gamin before it's arms, as it was a bit tricky after. no real gap issues with the gamin, but I did miss a massive line around the base of the emberlong, which I'll fix at some point, It's so straight it couldn't be hidden easily so watch out for that when you are building your own rail crew. 



The boss- again I missed some obvious gaps when filling (what I get for doing it so late at night) mainly her left shoulder, but I'll add some tats to mask those. I decided that her whilst her wood smashing base was very cool and in character, it wouldn't ft that well with the rest of my M&SU on the quarantine zone industrial rubble bases, so I knocked up a giant exploding cog base instead, mounting mei on a pile of flying debris in the centre, this came out pretty well, even though I cant paint metallics well at all (so why base my entire army on them? who knows...) 






I've played two games with them, a close 8-6 against Jonah's Sonnia (see below) and a not close at all 10-1 against Ben's Proxy Molly crew, in which I conceded turn 3 after making some really REALLY stupid decisions (and he summoned 4 Students of steel in a row against my almost entirely construct crew, to be fair to Ben he built a staggeringly efficient Molly crew with Molly and Toshiro summoning, Phillip and the nanny generating extra cards, one each of the nurse, belle and canine for claiming recon if he didn't summon and Chiaki and the arcane effigy buffing the summons/summoners, it was horrible, and as I'n never even read molly, let alone played her, I bunched up and was quickly taught a lesson in Resser 101). I learnt different lessons from each game- 

Firstly- Mei feng- is not survivable, I can't just throw her into a mob like Ironsides and expect her to walk out again unscathed, nor can I start popping spiders to heal up fast like Ramos, she goes down fast without her trigger, and Molly's crew in particular had so many extra attacks it didn't take them long to put her down at all. she is quite punchy, but not reliably so, in Jonah's game she took 5 attacks to kill a witchling, and in Ben's after three attacks vs Chiaki I caused all of 3 wounds. her ML of 6 is easily neutered by good defense, and my utterly crap hands in both games meant I was unable to get the 13's I needed to hit at all. Her strengths are her speed, her chained attacks against lighter opponents, and her defense trigger, against Ben I should have stoned for the trigger at least once, but I am too shy with SS and still need to improve there. 

Kang is great, very hard to put down, especially if you can save a SS for late game, pretty hitty and very threatening to undead, so threatening in fact, that when I tried to use him as entourage bait vs ben he completely ignored him as he was worried about the damage Kang would inflict... Doh! Imbued defense made him even grittier, and although he needs a bunched up crew to get the best from him, he performed well enough in both games for me to consider him a good henchman for Mei.

Rail workers- slow, low wounds and no ranged attack made me consider these models pretty poor before I fielded them, but with that mental (0) action, and the buff from Kang, they were amazing at killing undead, if they could pass the WP test ever... I like them, but am unsure what role they play, they aren't fast enough to run schemes, or killy enough for reckoning/headhunter, or survivable enough for protect territory, for now they seem a good all rounder, but not specialised enough at anything. 

The Emberling- 3ss for a non-insignificant model that can drop scrap for Mei, set things on fire and be a legit railwalk target itself is awesome. an amusing trick I used against Ben was to hire an Ice golem, Throw the emberling, activate it next to drop scrap and move, and create a nice big chain for Mei very quickly. 

Metal Gamin- enough has been said elsewhere about the amazingness of these ubiquitous models, a great 4ss investment, but I must remember magnetism more, I undervalue it and it could have turned the tide against Ben had I utilised it more against his students of Steel. 

Next months purchases are a bit of an issue, I already own a fair bit of the M&SU and arcanists (I have my custom Rail Golem, Willie, Union miners, Ramos crew, Ironsides crew, some half built coryphee, molemen, Rasly box, Marcus box and a range of other bits) So to pick up new models I am thinkingI may have to go Mercenary:- Silent one or Friekorps librarian for some healing, an Arcane effigy for some condition removal outside Johanna, and maybe a friekorps trapper or Hans so snipers don't ruin me quite as much as they do now, any thoughts?

Saturday 7 March 2015

ToMB - Mick v Jonah

This past week Mick and I decided to play out our first ToMB against one another.  Here's some of the details first:

Deployment: Corner
Strategy: Interference
Schemes: ALiTS; Power Ritual; Deliver a Message; Protect Territory; Breakthrough

In the spirit of ToMB we each took the full crew boxes plus the rest of our commitment for month one and some extras.  This worked out as the Rail Crew, 3 x Metal Gamin and Johana for Mick with Torch and Blade, Witchling Handler, Brutal Effigy and Pathfinder for me.  Mick with his Arcanists chose Deliver a Message and Protect Territory and myself with the Guild opted for Deliver a Message as well and Power Ritual.

We both felt a little constrained by our crew choices as neither of us would have chosen what we had with the strats/schemes on offer (I had a (theoretically) great plan to take Nino and the Pathfinder and put them in opposite corners to drop scheme markers on turn two with some Hunters running up to support them (plus take the corners for Interference) but it worked out as far too many SS).  I felt like it was a difficult match up for me because of all the armour and practically everything in Mick's crew having Hard to Kill but with me being able to splash Burning around I did have the perfect counter so it made for an interesting game.

With the Witchling Handler I felt a little quicker than usual although one of my Witchling's did nothing except start off dropping a scheme marker in my own deployment zone then spend the rest of the game trying to play catch up (though the Handler also died fairly early - see below!)!  The Pathfinder did well by taking down a Rail Worker early in the game (I cheated in a Mask to ignore armour after Mick had cheated in a Tomb for +2 Armour which was a sly kick in the teeth!) plus was generally frustrating by chucking out and moving Traps and also dropping my second scheme marker for Power Ritual.  My Brutal Effigy ran to the other adjacent corner and dropped a third scheme marker and also managed to take out a Rail Worker (which had previously lost two wounds to an exploding Witchling!).  He also managed to hold up a Metal Gamin in the late game to keep the scheme marker in place.  The rest of the game as mostly moving around the centre staying more than 6" away and trying to move into whichever quarter our models were needed.  Samael impressed once again despite all my reservations about him and I'm thinking that I need to take him more often.  I ran him without his upgrade this time as I couldn't afford it but he put some hurt on Kang (who promptly healed four wounds because it was turn four!), took out the Emberling and also acted as a big deterrent in the part of the board he was in.

Mick lost a lot of duels early in the game although it was only the one Rail Worker who felt the wrath of the Pathfinder and the Emberling who died until end of the game when Sonnia took out both Kang and Johana and the Effigy took out another Rail Worker.  He made a mistake in the first/second turn by putting Mei Feng in Sonnia's face to Deliver a Message without realising that Master's couldn't do it.  I had moved the Witchling Handler back and she was engaged with Mei at the start of turn three when I flipped a 12 for initiative and thought I was on for the three VPs for Delivering a Message.  Mick took a risk in burning a SS to re-flip initiative and came up with a 13 (Seize the Day helped with this).  It was a risk but a well calculated one that won the game in the end (see below) but also meant the Mei took out the Handler in one hit!  I cheated a RJ for her first Df flip then an 11 but Mei did 4 moderate damage then pushed the Handler back into Hazardous terrain and did another 4 to kill her - ouch!  Mei was mostly irritating otherwise but on turn three Kang and Johana also discarded Imbued Energies to get engaged with Sonnia.  Mick won initiative next turn which allowed Johana to Deliver a Message.  My other Witchling Stalker eventually went down to the combined efforts of a Rail Worker and Metal Gamin (though there was some bad luck with a BJ damage flip in there) who went hunting the Brutal Effigy.  At this point the Pathfinder was mostly hiding so that I could try to hold the corner it was in for Interference which meant a Metal Gamin and Rail Worker could go about dropping scheme markers for Protect Territory with abandon!

The game finished with a 8-6 victory for Mick (Mick scored 3VPs for Protect, 3VPs for Deliver a Message and 2VPs for Interference; I got 3VPs for Interference and 3VPs for Power Ritual).

I'm enjoying Guild and there's more things I want to try out but the more I play Sonnia the less I enjoy her.  She feels a bit of a one trick pony who isn't particularly effective at that one trick.  The few games I've played with Perdita I find her to be a lot more flexible.  I think it partly because I've yet to really get Sonnia going so I'll definitely persevere with her some more.  I think she definitely benefits from some help with movement with makes Francisco almost an auto-take for his 5" Push.  Pathfinder's and Brutal Effigy's have definitely been my two most reliable minions so far.

I'll let Mick edit with his thoughts on his Rail Crew (or post a separate thread).

(A charitable write up there, was an interesting game, I'll add my thought's later for now here's some blurry photos... Mick)

Jonah let me deploy first, so I took cover from what I expected to be a flamey death line


Sonnia had spotted my utter lack of ranged attacks however, and just wandered blithely on


The table was pretty balanced, not too many firing lanes, not so much cover I'd be free to jog around, and one puddle of useful dangerous slime. The pathfinder is in the top right, behind the red roofed house. the git.


Couple of pics from the end of turn one, before I inevitable got too excited/stroppy to take pictures;)