TheBattlehammer

I thought I would just drop this on here something that struck me whilst out on a run this morning. Yup that is right, doing my bit to keep the BMI of the Battlehammer down.  I suddenly thought “is there a team out there that can be as potentially flexible as an Esters tournament 8?” I know Peter O’Sullivan will love this! Plus I know you will be reading this at some point bud. He has been championing Esters to me for a while and to be fair I think the penny finally dropped this morning. Now this isn’t going to be a big in depth tactical analysis of play-books and the like. Perhaps that will come in time. But at the minute I just have too much on with other Battlehammer projects J However I wanted to share the thoughts that I had.

It occurs to me that within a tournament 8 an Esters team can actually choose to play the 3 main styles of play quite well. These being the conditions game, beating face or scoring goals. Which in a tournament is an amazing amount of flexibility. Your opponent won’t have a clue what style they will be facing. In the case of most other teams the captain will tell you what there plan is likely to be: Shark = goals, Smoke = conditions, Ox = Beat face and so on. However with Esters as your captain and with the following 8, I really don’t think you will be telegraphing what you will intend to do.

Esters

Hooper

Mash

Spigot/V Spigot

Friday

Hemlock

Stoaker

Scum/Quaff

 

The Conditions Game

Esters and Stoker brings burning to the table with her blast earth and Molotov or flame jet from Stoker, whilst Friday and Hemlocke allows access to poison. You can season this with Spigot to add tooled up for extra ranged damage or an additional source of knockdown. This line-up has the potential for all 5 players to dish out conditions. Also to be fair it will be fairly resistant to the conditions game played by your opponent.  Which with the way season 2 is looking could be a big thing. The Hunters have a new condition which is really going to ruin are day! -1 Def and -2/-2 movement is just not good on a team that is already slow! Plus are poor Def will mean it’s easy for them to get there ranged plays off. The same goes for Smoke teams and lets not forget the new Butchers captain Filay! This little crazy bitch hands out more bleeding than a nunnery at special time! So although this Brewers team is handing out the conditions it has some awesome counters to it. Esters can use her Heroic play  “soothing voice” which allows the removal of ALL conditions and heal 2 points, this is in effect exactly the same as Hemlocke’s “smelling salts”. Except Hemlocke can use activate it through udsing influence which is great if there are conditions hanging over from the last turn. Hemlocke’s play is also an AOE and has an 8” range, which coupled with her base move of 6” allows her to reach people 15.5” away! Totes awesome! To add to this both Stoaker and Hemnlocke have the character trait “Magical brew” which allows them to remove  conditions on them once per turn during there activation, again saving momentum or influence! To be fiar it just occurred to me that if Hooper was in this team instead of Spigot he could use his heroic play “True grit” to remove conditions on him, although this requires momentum to do it the same as usual, but with the nice bonus of +2 tac. Therefore this line-up has 2 players that can remove conditions for free, 2 players that can clear conditions from other players and 5 players that can hand out conditions to the opposition (including knockdown)! Not bad for a bunch of drunk’s who apparently just want to knock things down!

 

The Beater team

I will keep this really short as enough has been written about how good Brewers are at beating face. In this line-up I would take Hooper, Mash, Friday & either Stoker or Spigot. If I was running Veteran Spigot (which I can’t wait to do) he possibly wouldn’t make my beaty team. His drunk version does a lot more damage and brings tooled up with him which coupled with Friday’s short playbook makes her an animal on the charge. Esters flexibility shines again as she can be dishing out +1 damage to playbook results and on the turn when you really want to kill things she can do it 3 times! Quaff will also add to this team as he can give out +1 tac to a player within 4 inches! What’s that? Hooper rolling 12 dice on a charge!! Yeah I will take that matey.

 

The Footballing team

Personally I can’t wait to try footballing Brewers. In my humble opinion Veteran Spigot is just amazing. Yes he has lost a lot of his damage capabilities, but when he has the ball!! O man is he good. I won’t go any deeper (he said… snicker… snicker) other than to add that with the ball and Esters speed buff, Spigot has a 12” sprint, throw in fast ground 14”, loved creature in effect 16”!!! HOLY SHIT!! The other Obvious choices in a footballing line-up are Friday and Mash. This does mean that you will have 3 strikers on the pitch. But for me Mash has never operated in a conventional striker’s role. For me he holds onto the ball keeping it safe with unpredictable movement, before sending it out to Friday or Spigot to score. The 4^th spot is a little less certain in a footballing lineup. Both Hemlock and Stoker have a 3/6” kick, Hemlock does have a momentous tackle on column 1 and an effective threat range of 14” on goal. Unfortunately Esters “Empowered voice” is only friendly guild models L boooo. This means that all the players (excluding quaff) have at least a 3/6” kick, that really isn’t to shabby!

 

Conclusion

As I said at the start this wasn’t going to be a really in depth tactical analysis, but just a quick reflection on some thoughts I had this morning. But it has got me excited to try out this swiss army knife team. If you can think of a team that can deliver such diversity with a tournament 8 I would love to hear it! My experience is still pretty limited, but I am learning (I hope)!!

 

Love and Kisses xxx