Good morning all ye faithful little minions and I hope you are all well and having a fun filled gaming time. I thought I would have a little brain fart about the weekends event that we attended, which as you may know was “The Wyldhammer cup”. It was a charity event hosted by the good good people at Wyldstorm games in Great (debatable) Yarmouth. With the proceedes from the event and charity raffle going to WAAC (wargamers against all cancer), also of note Parky’s lovingly painted Masons raised around £400 on their own! I can’t remember the exact figure and hopefully someone can leave it in the comments, but I believe all in around £1000 was raised for the charity. Which is amazing and everyone who contributed either by attending, buying raffle tickets or donating hard earned florins deserves a pat on the back. Chris Norvall also deserves a special mention as he pulled together some great prize support for the raffle, awesome work dude. so onto the event and my experiences on the day…
We had 26 people on the day with a car load of northerners coming to invade and in fairness taking a good load of swag from the raffle back with them! The event was 5 rounds which I always find tough going in one day. However it never seems enough for a 2 day event.. But that’s just me. The venue had plenty of space at every table which was really good. Especially as the day wore on and the nerd odour intensified! Having run the Morticians quite a bit recently I went back to my Brewers who I have not run in ages. Boy am I glad that I did as I believe there where at least 5 Morticians players all running Obulus as well. Which kind of makes me sad as I am a big fan of Scapal (although I have used Obulus recently) and really want to see more of her. As a side note I have a couple of games against Parky tomorrow so I reckon she will come out again for at least one game. Anyway back to the tournament…
For my 8 I ran Tapper (just haven’t used Esters enough), Scum, Hooper, Friday, Spigot, Stoker, Gutter, Hemlock. Those keen eyed readers amoung you will of realised this is the team I am planning to use in the big league (which has been delayed at the minute). If you want to know more about my reasons for each selection I suggest you go back and read that article rather than me waffle on here.
Round 1 vs Hunters (12-4)
Tapper, Scum, Hooper, Gutter, Stoker, Hemlock.
Theron, Farhad, Hearne, Chaska, Egret, Hemlock.
So the running theme of me going to an event and playing someone I usually face continues, this time it was Dan Humphreys and his Hunters. So this is one of the match ups I wasn’t looking forward to along with Alchemists. The low defence of the Brewers vs all the ranged nastiness of the hunters and snared just worried me. Hemlock was definitely a solid choice for me here as she kept the conditions off Tapper and Gutter. 2 influence on her a turn is rarely wasted. The one time I didn’t use smelling salts she used noxious blast instead. Stoker didn’t really do what I had planned for him which was mine sweeping. But then without Jaecar and Chaska getting taken out turn 1 there wasn’t any for him to get to. Dan kicked off with Chaska dropping it just over the line and getting the beautiful 1” scatter. So I decided to abandon a rush for the ball, sprinting Stoker into the middle of the pitch. Dan then sprinted Chaska forwards collected the ball and punted it back to his lines. Through his next couple of activations Egret got the first goal of the tournament and a spot prize for Dan. However in the meantime Chaska was within the magic 12” of Gutter so in he came to my half of the board and between herself and Tapper off he went to the great icey sponge in the sky. The game was then over fairly shortly after this with Tapper rolling up Hearne and then Theron and finally scoring the winning goal. The other 2vp came from when Hearne came back on the pitch and Dan left him within 2” of the board edge. Unfortunately for Hearne I had Steam roller in my hand and off the board he did go. I was pretty relieved to get that game over with as the Hunters are still very much a mystery to me, plus snare just scares me stupid with Brewers.
Round 2 Vs Hammer… (2-12)
Tapper, Scum, Hooper, Gutter, Spigot, Friday.
Hammer, Marbles, Mallet, Mist, Flint, Avarice and Greed.
Surprise surprise I had to play Dan Harwood who is fast becoming my second round nemesis. Although I have yet to get close to winning. Before the game started I had a feeling that the kick off roll would be pretty important as it would allow whoever got the ball the ability to really increase the range of there captain… I lost.. DOH! Damn you back stabbing little bastards! At least I managed to extend the game to about 45 minutes this time compare to the 20 it took last time. My one little slice of glory is that Dan went on to win the tournament and I helped him achieve that. Fortunately I can’t remember to much about this game even though it was short. Overall I played better than the first time I faced off against Dan with Scapal. But even so it was a bit of a lesson, really need to focus more in games against Dan. He reads the game really well and capitalises on mistakes made. Also helps that Hammer is just a brute who can manage 6 point activations every turn. One thing I took away from this game was the value of Avarice and Greed’s extra activation. It’s something that you read a lot about on the forums but for one reason or another just doesn’t seem to occur a lot in the local meta. But I can tell you it is fecking frustrating kicking off and not having the last activation of the game, which happened to me twice in the day.
Round 3 vs Union (6-12)
Tapper, Scum, Hooper, Gutter, Spigot, Friday.
Blackheart, Coin, Gutter, Decimate, Fangtooth, Mist.
I am fast growing a big dislike of Union teams which is largely due to having lost the 3 games I have played against them so far! But also I think it is because we see the same players a lot due to them being able to play for other teams. Then you see them all together in one team and uggh that team is very strong. Personally I think it would be nice if in future we see some Union only players, which is something I have seen flying around a bit on the forums. Also I think it would be nice for the Union players to have access to some things that aren’t turning up on every other table. An alternative to this maybe to limit how many Union players you can have in your roster. Yup I know a little hypocritical as I did have 2 in my list, but I would be happy if it was 1 in the roster or on the pitch or something like that. This was probably the most frustrating game from a play perspective of the day. It just felt like I couldn’t get anything going, not specifically bad dice or owt. It just felt like things weren’t coming off. Matt did miss a 4 dice shot with Blackheart… but he deserved it for using Blackheart J. I think it took a lot more effort than it should have to put Blackheart down, but then he probably bribed my dice or something!
Round 4 vs Butchers (12-6)
Tapper, Scum, Hooper, Gutter, Hemlock, Friday.
Fillay, Princess, Boiler, Brisket, Shank, Tenderiser.
Having never played against Fillay I was not looking forward to this game as I had heard all the horror stories. Luckily I didn’t need to worry because apparently at some point in his life Wayne had really pissed off the dice gods! There were times in the game I genuinely felt bad for him. Can’t remember specifics now but there where certainly a couple of occasions where he rolled dice I would be proud of! My thoughts on swapping Hemlock in for Spigot was to hopefully clear bleed and also Spigs is a bit squishy. In all honesty it didn’t really work for me. In future I think I will leave Spigot in as one thing I learned is that until you get 4 or more successes’ Fillay’s playbook isn’t that hot. So I reckon if you can get someone into her with a high def it’s possible to limit her damage.
If I remember correctly Fillay got 3 take outs or at least did the majority of the work done. Tapper went down, Hemlock went down and I can’t remember who else… but tiebreak says 12-6 so someone did! (probably Gutter) so after the initial shock of watching Fillay bouncing around killing things and with the sage like advice from Chris Rutter “Is there any problem that can’t be solved with a healthy amount of violence from Mallet?) ringing in my ears. I proceeded to swap Mallet for Hooper and boom! One dead Fillay. To be fair I am not really sure how it happened! It looked like she was about to take Tapper out again and left him on 1hp. I presume commanding aura was up and then when she was KD and Hooper has his heroic up it gets a bit nasty. Rolling 9 dice with +2 damage kinda sorted that out. Boiler, Princess and Brisket had all already been taken out whilst Friday crept up the opposite wing. She then used shadow like to dodge into Tenderisers counter charge aura and scored the winning goal. Again its just a personal point but I am not that big a fan of goal keepers. There just seems to many ways to get around their counter charge that don’t require a lot of work, but that is just my view. Luckily for me I rolled a 5 to score as I had totally forgotten that Tenderiser also increases the difficulty of the shot which is definitely a thing. Possibly I got a little over jubilant at my win in this round, I did apologise to Wayne after the game. It was just simply that I was really worried about what Fillay might do to me. So I guess the one thing I have learned is that anything that reduces her defence is dynamite: KD, Snare, Thousand cuts, Dirty knives etc. big thanks to Wayne for being a good sport and a rwally enjoyable game.
Round 5 vs Morticians (12-4)
Tapper, Scum, Hooper, Gutter, Spigot, Friday.
Obulus, Dirge, Ghast, Silence, Mist, Avarice and Greed
Yup lost the kick off and got out activated by the other team… bloody Greed. Huge huge thank you to Jonnie Cannon who was both a scholar and a gent as I played like an absoloute melt this game. I don’t know if it was because it had been a long day or what was going on. But I mixed up Spigot and Hooper once, Got Scums base move wrong, stood up Hooper then used his Heroic play and a couple of other jummie things happened. On the bright side I did manage my best roll of the day… it was either 7 or 8 dice against against Ghast needing 3’s to hit. Managed to get 2 3’s and the rest where 1’s! it was truly glorious. Managed to get the win though with 4 take outs and a goal from Gutter. Again Steam roll was gold, although not to bounce someone off the pitch. Silence came back on the pitch after being taken out. Gutter charged in doing her best to fuck it up by getting one 5 on 9 dice allowing me 3 points of damage and then got the rest done on the remaining influence. Jonnie did manage to get bad dice turn 1 failing to Puppet Master Gutter. Then from that point on Obulus always needed to activate early as I put pressure on him. Therefore, Jonnie was burning a lot of his influence just getting dodges which won him the momentum race but allowed me to spend my momentum how I wanted. Mist had crept up the wing with the ball which Friday stole off him and then kicked it towards the cat. Scum then spent 2 turns ferrying the ball around and un-snapping it so that Obulus couldn’t use Puppet master to get it back as easily. Very nearly clocked out in this game as we were both right down and I think I had less than a minute on my clock. A very intense game and again big thankyou to Jonnie for putting up with my melted brain. I now know what it must be like for Straw when he plays!
Everything said and done it was an awesome fun day which I believe everyone enjoyed. Well done to Harwood on winning the tournament. I genuinely expect to see his name appearing on the top tables alot more. A little disapointed to not finish top Brewer as that honour goes to Pete. But well done to everyone who finished top of there guild. Even Spoony managed to finish top although in a one horse race!!
Next year’s event is already booked, which gives Parky plenty of time to start painting next year’s prize. Although after the effort it took him this year it will probably just be a ball! Hopefully we will see you next year 26th August for another day of charity shenanigans.
TheBattlehammer 