Now I have the PERFECTLY REASONABLE personal rule of only playing with painted models, something which Lee doesn't share. Anyway, it essentially meant that we had to play a henchman led game, as I hadn't finished painting my whole crew yet, and I always leave the master until last. I had however managed to paint Kang, the dawn serpent and two rail crew. Check out this slightly blurry photo below:
These guys are mostly finished, although some of them need a bit of cleaning up (Specifically the guy with the pickaxe. Like I said before, I never really use more than two of minions that don't need summoning, so all that still needs finishing is Mei Feng herself, and the Emberling. I'll do a more in depth post on painting when I have the whole crew done.
The game:
We decided to play a henchman led game. Lee is playing with Collodi, and the starter box has a whole 12 of its SS in totems, so he was down to just 12 points he could take with Vasilisa. To help out he took a brutal effigy, which he could buy with his first months allowance (he's waiting to see if he can fit it in painting wise). This still only gave him 16 points, so taking a few upgrades and a healthy cache of 6 brought him to 20pts. This meant I would be taking all that I had painted, with no room to bulk up the cache or add any upgrades. A little bit concerning, but I knew Lee wasn't looking forward to facing Kang as all of his models are constructs, and Kang is particularly good against them.
We flipped for Turf war, which was nice and simple, but Lee cleverly took Fears Given Form. Going to have to deal with Vasilisa early or I'd be taking some constant damage. The Schemes we flipped were a good mix of marker schemes and killy ones. Lee quickly guessed I would be choosing murder protégé, an easy one for me as all of his models cost 4 stones, all I'd need to do is kill one 4pt model for 3vp. He also managed to guess I had put bodyguard on the dawn serpent. 6 inch movement and a heal action is handy wit this, although the slight risk is that with Murder Prot in the pool too, if I lost it I could be down a full 6vp right there. However, Lee declared both of his schemes to do with markers, so that particular nightmare was avoided.
The game itself was pretty simple. I was surprised by just how fast it could actually move, and the Df6 owned by most of the crew was a bit nasty too. I ended up keeping my crew together quite a bit, easier to do once I'd taken out Vasilisa and her nasty aura upgrade. I really appreciated all the + flips I could get with this crew too. My hands for this game were mostly mediocre, so it was an easy choice to use the rail crew's 0 action to get more +'s on top of Kang's aura. Most of the cards I actually cheated with was making sure I passed the fears given form tests.
The situation after I had moved all my models, but before Vasilisa sprinted up the board.
The game ended with me having 9pts to Lee's 4. Lee lost most of his models (only had 1 wicked doll left on turn 5), but by choosing marker schemes and getting an early game Strat point he managed to net more than he thought he would. Considering how good Kang is against constructs and how his crew was essentially easy mode for mine, I think that's a pretty good result for him.
So what did I learn about my crew? Kang is awesome. He's scary in combat, and against particular enemies he just makes the whole crew mean. He will be returning to the table. I was also pleasantly surprised by the rail crew. Throwing a low tome in for what is essentially armour 3 is awesome. Their damage track and the ability to get +ves on both attack and damage is also pretty great. The dawn serpent did very little this game. I guess I need to try him out again.
All in all, a good game, with a good mate that may have been pretty one sided. Now I need to think about what might be a good spend for Month 2...
