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Thursday 9 March 2017

Molly goes to Hockley

2016 was not a great year of gaming for me. I managed to play at Warboar towards the beginning of the year and maybe a handful of games the rest of the year. This was mostly due to real life and work getting in the way. The plan is for 2017 to be more productive on the gaming front.

So I signed up for a few events, discovered a fellow resser that lives pretty close to me and scored a lift to Snowdown in Hockley. Here begins the recap of my first tournament for 2017.

The morning began with two of the Croydon lot arriving to give me a lift. The driver, Grant has set his satnav to speak like Mortimer. A rather thematic beginning to the day. We arrived with plenty of time to spare and picked up some breakfast at the Sainsbury's. Then the general greetings as all the folk started shuffling into the venue and complaining about being awake so early on a Sunday.

Game 1 - George (McCabe)



George admitted that this was his tournament with Guild as he was normally an Arcanist player and apologised upfront about needing to repeatedly read his cards. I assured him that this was not a problem as I was pretty rusty myself. So that set the scene for a game that was always going to be laid back in attitude from both of us.

The board had little rivers and bridges everywhere and a few buildings, trees and ruins. We decided to make the rivers hazardous.

George dropped McCabe, Francisco, a lawyer, executioner, Lunar and a million dogs.

I ran:

  • Molly with her spirit upgrage, take back the night. 
  • Sybelle and bleeding tongue
  • Izamu and decaying aura
  • Datsue and my little helper
  • Phil and my little helper
  • Dead doxey

Turn 1 Molly and Sybelle were near the centre with a dog. Izamu had been pushed up by his friends and he charged in and murdered the executioner. 3 points for me and 2 for George (Quick Murder and Frame for Murder). Phil was cycling cards at the back. Datsue was heading for my right stash marker.

The lawyer was a real pain this game and kept paralysing Izamu. I think my hyper aggressive Izamu fooled George into thinking he was framed for murder - he wasn't. George was brave and ran a sword wielding Lunar into Datsue to try remove my right marker. Datsue survived and turned Lunar into a Gaki. This through George's plans for scoring claim jump as his corner dogs were now mostly useless.

This was a fantastic game with each of us doing our best to delay activations to try figure out what the other was up to. Although I started with less I managed to remove a few of his early making it much closer. Final activation of the game (in round 3 or 4 - we were slow) I had one marker down for the trap. I attempt to summon a drowned with Molly to leave another with finish the job (this would have bumped it to a 3 VP scheme) and I flip the black joker. Meaning I only scored 1. Bollocks. This left the game at a 5 all draw. Which I was still pleased with. Fun game. Great opponent.


Round 2 - Joe Wood (Collodi)

Typical. In 3 of my last 4 tournaments I have faced Joe.



I can't actually remember the fifth scheme, but no one would have picked last stand so it works.

This game had 2 ponds either side of the centre and we elected to make them hazardous. I had some windmill thing in front of me in the centre. Joe had a bunch of crates in a similar position on his side. I hate playing against Collodi. Joe had Collodi with things, Widow weaver, 3 stitched, an insidious madness and a bunch of the marionettes.

I ran:
  • Molly with her spirit upgrage, take back the night. 
  • Sybelle and bleeding tongue
  • Izamu and unnerving aura
  • Datsue and my little helper
  • Phil and my little helper
  • Dead doxey
  • Grave spirit
This was quite a bloody game in the middle. I cycled cards with phil and pushed Izamu forward with Datsue and the doxey. Sybelle took Molly for a lift. His marionnettes wasted time. Izamu wiped a stitched off the board and then got hit multiple times and flipping  a bloody 7 with gamble your life. Bye Izamu.

Second turn Collodi and the stitched and thrown more damage around. But I managed to wipe the last two stitched from the board. Joe started dropping claim jump markers but I managed to engage a marionette with Datsue to stop him scoring. I picked up some points for hunting party, but think Sybelle went down. All the dead stitched and models had dropped enough scrap and corpses for the weaver to bring out a Teddy.

Turn 3 is when it really started turning against me. I was running out of enough models to really prevent Joe's plans. In the end it went 9-4 to Joe. I had picked up a few points for claim jump and hunting party. I managed to block at least one of the accusation points (would've been two if I had won initative on the last turn).

All in all it was still a fun game.

Round 3 - Grant - my lift home (Nicodem)



I can't remember the fifth scheme on this one either so chose one at random.

I was a little nervous going into this game. Interference is not my favourite, Molly is ok at blocking it, but not so great at scoring it.

Grant ran Nicodem with the card draw upgrade and the muhahahaha one. He had a carrion emissary (MLH), phil, Mortimer (MLH), necropunk and a nurse.

I ran:
  • Molly with her spirit upgrage, take back the night.
  • Sybelle and bleeding tongue
  • Izamu and decaying aura
  • Phil and my little helper
  • Dead doxey
  • 2 crooligans
The board had a few forestsand big buildings and some ruin thing in the middle.

I decided that I would try hide some crooligans for claim jump and take a sneaky show of force as I thought it would go uncontested.

I hid my crooligans behind a building. His nurse and emissary ran down the flank towards my right. And the rest stayed in the corner feeding Nico cards and corpses. I sent Izamu, Sybelle and Molly towards the emissary. Phil and the doxey did some card draw shenanigans. Turn 1 I brought out a hanged and knocked some wounds off both the emissary and the nurse. Nico then summoned a hanged and a shikome.

Turn 2 Grant went first and using MLH managed to toss up a massive wall to block Molly from seeing him and killed the hanged. I could see the shikome aiming for my crooligans. So I activated Molly she used her (0) to give Izamu a walk and then he charged across and murdered the shikome. Izamu never left that spot. Grant kept bringing out punk zombies to harass him. I think must have murdered three over the course of the game. He was also in the 6" bubble and not scoring interference but he did net me 3 for show of force all on his own.

At this point the vulture moved into the middle and gave Nico huge range and he created a massive amount of zombies and a few punk zombies.

Molly was basically pinned into that corner for the rest of the game and fended off quite a few rounds of zombies and hanged. But ultimately her and sybelle went down. Both annoyingly to paralyse and being eaten by a flesh construct. I wont forget that one. That gave Grant 3 points for Eliminate the Leadership, we both thought it was less for being after round 3, but we were out of date on our schemes.

Phil quickly removed the vulture with his shooting action from that (0) upgrade he desperately needed! This forced Nico to venture forth from the corner and waste valuable AP. At one point Grant tried to drop schemes in my half for leave your mark, but Phil turned those into corpses. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea against Nico, but figured he wasn't short of corpse markers so what the hell.

In the end we both picked up 3 for the strategy. I netted a full 6 on my schemes and he could not get any for leave your mark. So 9-6 and a potential walk home. Another great game.It had been a while since I had played against Nico...MLH and the emissary have been fantastic for him.


I was happy with the day. My opponents were all great. I finished middle of the pack. George went on to pick up best Guild player, Joe picked up best Neverborn and 4th overall. So the games where I dropped points were against strong players. Looking forward to the next tournament, which for me will be 1 April in Croydon.


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