The lament of the Bayou

For whatever reason I just cannot play Bayou.

A more statistically accurate statement would be that I am no better or worse with Bayou than I am with any other faction. But for whatever reason with Bayou, it feels much much worse than any other faction.

Back in M2E, as I have described elsewhere on this blog, I originally started out being drawn to the game because of Gremlins. Who doesn’t love comedy Greenskins? I originally wanted the Brewmaster box to start off but as that was delayed by a LITERAL EPOCH I picked up Som’er instead and I was god awful with him. I’ve been over this before and shan’t redo it again but TL;DR I suck with Bayou.

As a gamer I tend towards two things, resilience and control. This is mainly due to being an absolutely terrible aggressive player, I am just awful at alpha strikes (as my videos are testament to!). That whole hang it on knife edge win/lose/draw mentality just doesn’t work for me.  I prefer to make longer, more drawn out decisions over a number of activations but equally I don’t play enough with denial in mind. I like to focus on getting my points rather than immediately asking questions of my opponents, rather the question I tend to ask “how can you stop me getting to 8vp, and are you going to get to 8 as well”?. On occasions this is moderately successful as my continued 4th place at tournaments (now in multiple hemispheres!) shows. 

However I am not convinced that this method of playing is compatible with Bayou. Which is a great shame, as I love Bayou! The warring families, the mimicry, the over the top lore and how that’s reflected in the rules. But because of my love of these ridiculous little Gremlins, every loss is mentally exaggerated and keenly felt. To the extent where, as ridiculous as it may sound, a loss (even one into a terrible match up that was always going to be going up hill against a practiced opponent where you are using a keyword for the first time) is unreasonably felt and lamented for days.

I’ve come to two conclusions (the first one is much easier, so I’ll start there)

1) I’m not sure my playstyle is represented in the Bayou and that’s ok. The Gremlins don’t have a Pandora or a Jack Daw etc and that’s no bad thing, not every faction should have everything available to them. That kind of homogenous game design is boring to me. It’s ok that my preferred way of playing is not necessarily to be found in the faction that I was initially drawn too.  Not everyone should be able to do everything.

2) I’m not able to objectively play Bayou in a way I play other factions. For example: character wise the Ten Thunders mean absolutely nothing to me (with the exception perhaps of Lynch and the Honeypot keyword, that has some cool lovecraftian horror vibes and that’s very much a thing I enjoy). The lore is fine, interesting in places but it doesn’t connect with me in any meaningful way. That’s not a problem by any stretch. In fact it would appear to be a benefit in many ways because win, lose or draw they’re just pieces on the table. We analyse our mistakes and move on hopefully improving for the next game. 

Bayou for whatever reason is much more personal, these are characters I know and I enjoy their lore and all of their ridiculousness. Many of the keywords I keenly associate with friends who played those characters because they loved them:  The Jones family is my friend Dumb Luck Dom, Ulix is both simultaneously Farmer Skittles & Tarquin Sweetbiscuits, Mah is Bunty etc etc. (Yes everyone that plays Bayou has a silly name, I think that’s part of it.)

To lose with Bayou is to let them down somehow, and I’m not good enough with them to do them justice which is a little sad to realise.

I’m downsizing my collection at the moment, selling on various models to folks in my local community and farther afield.  My Bayou models sit there on the shelf with empty spaces growing around them as I just can’t bring myself to get rid of them but yet feel I’m just not good enough to use them either.  The connection is too personal.