Game 26 - Does the brew bring any Honour to the game?

Game 26 - Does the brew bring any Honour to the game?

 

Tapper VS Honour

The setting:

This time our local pundit organized a tournament of sorts.   18 players, all Thunderbolts Gent members, divided in 3 groups play against eachother.  One game per opponent.  Results will (hopefully) put you into a play-off when the group-games have finished.  And in the end winner will take all!

First group has : 1 Masons player, 1 hunters player, 2 Alchemists, 1 mortician and a butcher.

Second group has:  2 Alchemists, 1 Union, 1 Morticians, 1 Fishermen and 1 Engineers player.

Last group has: 1 Masons player, 1 Morticians player, 2 Butchers, 1 Alchemist and me as a brewer.

Each group has some beginners and some more advanced players. (I'm counting myself in the more advanced players group.)

As you can see Alchemists are popular, so are Morticians and Butchers. Then comes Masons, the sole hunter, fishermen, union, engineers and me as the brewer.

We play as we would friendly games, no clock, and no fixed roster.

The first encounter:

The masons player from our group started with an invite to all players in our group.  Since there was no answer after a few days, I raised my hand and offered to have a drink with the masons.  I played Wouter Raes before in my 24th game feel free to read up on it.  It was a close game now and nothing makes me suspect this time would be different.

I arrive at the WEC first and order my Duvel.  I have a friendly chat with some club members who set up a game of their own.  With some time left I set up the board and start pondering on who to field.  I'm not ready to start dancing with Esters just yet.  Instead I'm going for a full beat-down list.  Here is what I field..

The line-ups:

Even though Wouter is a fan of pure guilds I want to give A&G another go:
My line-up: Tapper - Scum - Hooper - Stave - Mash - Avarisse and Greede

His love for pure teams was showing in his line-up, no union:
His line-up: Honour - Harmony - Marbles - Mallet - Flint - Tower.

Wouter chooses not to go with Brick, who he sees as his crutch.  He wants to play without him to learn the team without a zone of control that Brick offers him.

We rolled to see who'd go first and he won the toss.  I get to kick the ball.

Game on:

My opening move shows how young our meta is.  I kick with Stave who is 4'' from the sidelines.  Stave kicks the ball even closer to the sidelines and the game starts.

Turn one:

* Honour activates, walks into cover and gives Flint another activation.  Then uses her play to activate the sister.
* Harmony walks up to the ball and decides she's happy where she snapped it.
* Stave sprints up to Harmony placing him 6" away from her center and lobs a barrel on her head.  Gets the 5 and she's off the board. 2VP for the brewers.  I know a cheap shot, but one I'll never manage to make again against Wouter Raes.  (or anybody who has already fallen for it before or heard/read about it somewhere, like here...)
The ball scatters towards the Masons who get to scoop it up next activation.  Well I took Harmony out, no need to be as lucky as to get the ball too I guess.
*Flint walks up, snaps the ball and walks it back to Mallet, some one two football shenanigans happen and Flint is back in posession of the ball and dodges into a forest out of Brewer range.
*Greede shuffles himself a bit to the side of the goal.
* Tower shuffles up the board.
*Mash comes up towards the middle of the board.
 * I believe the monkey walks up to Mash looking to trigger UM.  I don't see why I should.
* Some measuring is done but I'm still out of reach. Hooper can't charge that far, so Tapper goes and throws Marked Target on Flint and brings commanding aura up.
* Flint Where'd they goes for his second activation and places himself out of any immediate danger.
* Avarisse Charges up in front of  Mash to hit Flint  rolling 4 net hits. I opt to leave Singled out for what it is and do 2 DMG and the double push for momentum and placing Flint so MAllet has no LOS with Mash.
* Mallet activates and ends his advance within 2" of Mash who dodges out of Marbles range.  Mallet hits Avarisse instead.  I make the mistake of blocking a charge lane from Hooper to Flint with Mash.
*Hooper sprints up and gives Mash an extra ARM.

*Scum goes within 4'' of Tapper for next turn's INF.
I believe this is turn one.  Forgive me if I got the order of activations somewhat twisted and wrong.

Turn two: 

As I remember it, I lost the initiative.   Tapper got Shut out. Flint tried to use tapper as momentum generator but failed miserably ending up where'd they going away from Tapper towards Stave.  Who knocked Flint down, with a charge, took the ball off him after it scattered into his belly, unsnapped the ball and took another swing at Flint.  Honour went mental on Avarisse taking him down to a couple hitpoints.  I used some models to prevent charging on Avarisse and healed him up a bit. As last activation Tapper killed Flint with assits from Stave and Scum.  Avarisse was back down to a painfull low 2 hitboxes.

Turn three:

I win initiative this time.  Pass the ball after snapping it to Stave towards Scum and dodge the momentum away to get within barrel lob range of a group of 4 masons!  I hit them all and walk Stave into melee with Honour.  Honour kills Avarisse and hopes do do some damage on Tapper.  Bad rolls decide to give Tapper a stroke of luck.  Harmony joined her team again and walks up to some cover towards Scum with the ball.  Tapper was lucky defending himself, but he fails to knock Honour down even with CA up.  Mallet comes in to lay some hurt on Mash.  Hooper comes in to Hit Marbles while the beast is still KD'd it takes 4 non momentous DMG from shove the boot in and CA.  As last activation I think Tower came up to the brawl.  Wouter would've had Marbles if the cat didn't shadowlike and walk up to the Monkey to benefit from Hooper and Stave who could hit Marbles, the aura from Tapper and her own 4 TAC. 4 net hits result in 2+1 momentus and 1+1 non momentus damage.  MArbles dies.  It's 2-6 to the brewers now.

Turn four:

Initiative goes to the Masons.  Mash dies. But all other rolls fail to do anything to the brewer line-up.  I'm starting to feel sorry for Wouter.  The Tapper - Hooper machine kills Mallet and Tower next turn.  the score is now 4-10 Flint came back on with 8 health at the end of the turn counterattacked Scum to tackle the cat, who then tackled back.
Before turn 5 starts I have two options  kill something or score.  Looking at the board I can shadowlike with Scum, who has the ball, hit flint for 1 momentum and pick the push result to walk in and score.  I decide to put an extra influence on Scum, just in case.  I get what I want, but greedy as I am, and with Scum only having a 1/4" kick I wanted to bonus time so needed another momentum.  Scum didn't land enough hits and gets stuck doing 1 DMG.  Trying to break melee for a parting blow results in a Tackle, I do not move any further and buy the last attack on Flint to Tackle back.  I then unsnap the ball away from Tower and Mallet who came on, forcing Flint to move closer to Hooper and Tapper.  Flint is able to score bringing the score up to 8-10.  I'm looking to kill something now.  Tapper wants to break free from Honour who is engaging him and charge Flint for the kill.  Tapper fails to hit the lady enough to do so, and takes a parting blow to charge Flint.  Tapper takes some DMG but gets to KD Flint.  Honour sees that Hooper will finish Flint so engages him.  Harmony follows and goes to engage the cat (who doesn't UM).  Stave activates, uses Ramming speed to push Honour away, decides to follow up (stupid STave) enabling her to do a responsive play, enabling her to dodge back into Hooper engaging him again.  I can buy one attack to knock her down at least freeing Hooper up again.
Tower walks up and lets Honour stand up again.  Hooper knows he'll have to take a parting blow but lets Greede and A&G come to help out with some crowding out before doing so.  Preventing Honour to do pick a KD result from the parting blow he'll take.  This lets Mallet come in and help Flint up too.  Hooper goes in using True Grit generating a dice pool of 5 TAC + 4 CHARGE + 1 CA + 1 Tapper's Melee - 1 from being in the forest cover = 10 dice.  It wraps resulting in 4 DMG and a push, both momentus.  Generating me some needed momentum to start turn 5 with.  I end with Mash moving forward picking up the ball where the goal kick left it.

Turn Five:

I do win initiative!  Tapper swings once and ends the game there and then.  Flint dies a second time.  8-12 to brewers.

The End.

Overall idea of the game:

I had fun, but not too much since the dice rolls on the other side of the table weren't avarage at all.  The game started sideways for the masons with me pulling the 'lob barrel you of the pitch trick' off.  Wouter didn't really get back on his feet after that.  The first few kills couldn't have been avoided, but the cat really opened Wouter's eyes when she put her claws into the monkey to kill it.  The game should've ended with me scoring a goal with Scum but hey, it's dice rolling and shit happens.  It just wasn't Wouters day.

Where I improved my game:

I actually need to think about positioning my models more.  Twice I slapped my forehead with the palm of my head because I had put a model in the way of a charge lane.  I finally used Hooper as a beatstick.

Thoughts about my line-up:

After including A&G again and Mash for his UM and 2" reach I must say I like the beat-down style of the team.  On the other hand I didn't get to use Avarisse or Greede as a player that much.  Singled Out looks great, especially with the short brewer playbooks.  I just couldn't figure out a way to get enough influence on Avarisse to make it happen.  Or at least not without giving the player being hit the opportunity to walk away or prevent a charge in another way.

Mash is good in this line-up to keep the ball away from the other team.  Him and the cat.

Voices are raising, demanding me to pick up Esters.  But I love Tapper to much to leave him in my bag, that's where the fat lady belongs!  Never say never though!

 
That's it! End of my report!  A Whopping 12-8 for the Brewers, putting me in the top of my group.


See you next time!
Bob Out