Boyz n The Brood
Hi all, Tarquin Sweetbiscuits here with a quick reckoning of Game 3 in my Ten In A Row Challenge with Nekima and her Nephilim. I went up against Beard on episode #47 of Flip-Floppin' Faux over on YouTube, with my Boyz N The Brood versus his Library Visitors, with Raid The Vaults as the strategy on a Flank deployment. We had Take Prisoner, In Your Face, Protected Territory, Ensnare and Information Overload as our scheme options, which is an awful lot of marker-type schemes to account for when facing a crew like Linh Li's. However, I've struggled to score the second VP for In Your Face in my games so far, so I thought I would try out some of Nekima2's flexibility and took Protected Territory and Ensnare. Beard went with Ensnare and Information Overload, which makes total sense when you have models like Story Of Sun Wukong at your disposal.
Turn 1 began for me much as the other games so far; Blood Hunter drops a corpse marker, focuses and lingers in a circle with the other Nephilim for card cycling purposes once Nekima gets started. She dropped some more corpses and summoned a fresh Terror Tot while also cycling 6 cards, not a bad way to spend an activation! The Black Blood Shaman had a little double jog and lifted two corpse markers (although the Wyrdwood then put one of them back down for later use), gave out a bunch of Focus and a grow token to two of my Terror Tots. My Young Nephilim cautiously (or so I thought) advanced once and focused, but that didn't stop a summoned Katashiro from slamming into them with a Red Joker for damage, taking them down to 1 health instantly. Which was nice. I lost them to a second Katashiro before they got to activate again, which was a pretty hefty loss. The rest of my crew advanced once, focused, as a setup for Turn 2, although my three Corrupted Hounds made a beeline for the halfway line to start dropping some early potential Protected Territory markers. No scoring as ever on Turn 1, onto the next!
Turn 2 went alright for me overall. I lost all three of my Corrupted Hounds to Sun Wukong, Banying and I think a Bookkeeper, which was not ideal, but I was okay with Beard's AP being spent chasing down my 3ss models while not doing as much scheming himself. Nekima did more card cycling, corpse production, healing and grow-tokening, and even had a cheeky little walk, not fearing a Reva kidnap this time! My second Young Nephilim went in to have a swipe at Banying on the halfway line while providing some competition for a Vault marker, but Banying predictably bamfed out and then the Young got Katashiro Red Jokered again, before being finished off by Minako Rei. My lower flank was collapsing quickly, but the central ground was shaping up nicely for expansion. My Tots had been grown into a replacement Young Nephilim, a Lelu (mostly so I could tick him off the list of Take Everything At Least Once) and a Lilitu, and corpse markers were appearing everywhere for later sudden Maturing. I managed to score a Raid point and my first Protected Territory point, to Beard's 1VP for Raid. 2-1 to me going into Turn 3.
Turn 3, I entirely abandoned the lower left Vault marker and left it to Banying, Minako and two Bookkeepers to hold. I began a chain of activations to try to score a sneaky Ensnare upon Thanh Giong in the upper third, by the Carnivorous Wyrdwood dropping a marker after walking up to contest a Vault. I had however given Beard his own first Ensnare VP by activation the Wyrdwood. Oh well, not a lot you can do about it versus Linh Li. I then had Nekima activate to pulse out healing and give a grow token to Lelu, the Blood Hunter then ran around and "gifted" a delightful meal in his vicinity, which Lelu then used to transform into a Mature, dropping a scheme marker with 3" in the process via Nekima's Birthright ability, right in range of Thanh Giong. I was so lucky that Beard hadn't chosen to activate Thanh at any point in that chain, but to be fair I was being careful to not give him any reason to feel threatened there. The Birthright ability had given me a decent pile of scheme markers in my own deployment area that I suspected was denying Information Overload, but Beard redoubled his efforts and had something like 8 markers in my half down by the end of Turn 3. Lilitu had become a Mature by this point and was helping the Shaman hold a Vault marker while Banying took repeated shamefully sneaky attacks at her through a Shadow marker, joined by Minako later. I scored Raid and my first Ensnare VP, while Beard also got Raid and Ensnare plus his first Info Overload VP. 4-4 going into Turn 4. Do you think I should pick 4 for my lottery ticket...?
Turn 4 was a tussle over the central two Vault markers, my Mature and Shaman killing off Minako Rei but then my Mature dying to Banying and becoming a Wanyudo thanks to Karmic Debt. It's starting to become a theme of Beard's to take your models and transform them into burning instruments of his own fiendish machinations, no matter which Master he's playing! I'll be impressed if he manages it with The Clampetts, however. The upper central Vault was being contested between Linh, Thanh, Nekima and the Wyrdwood, which stayed even throughout, so no help for me there. I'd sent my remaining Young Nephilim to hold Beard's back Vault but Linh sniped him away, while Sun Wukong easily made it to my back Vault without opposition, so Beard scored his third Raid point. 4-5 to Beard.
Turn 5 I killed off Thanh and got Ling dangerously low on health, so low in fact that one of Beard's Bookkeepers wandered over and finished her off to deny my careful setup for my second Ensnare VP. I abandoned Ensnare and proceeded to massively overthink how I could score Raid and Protected between Nekima's Dark Bargain and the Wyrdwood's Regrowth, when all I actually needed was walks and interacts. With hindsight, it was perhaps possible for me to deny Beard's second Ensnare point but by then I'd accepted the game was done and was just trying to maximise my own scoring. My Matured Lelu dropped one marker for Protected, the Wyrdwood the other, and Nekima removed an offending marker and stood on the back Vault to score my third strategy VP. The game ended 8-6 to Beard, and was a thoroughly grand time all round.
Things Wot I Learnt:
- Remember Combat Finesse on your models! Banying cheated maybe two, three times while attacking my Mature and I didn't catch it until way too late to wind back, but she likely would have survived if I had.
- Don't try to outscheme the schemedown. If I'd gone with In Your Face or Take Prisoner I'd have scored either with relative ease, and a decent shot at the second VP for either too.
- Keep your dogs on a leash. I didn't need to send the pups in so quickly, it just made them an easy target for Bookkeepers and Banying when I could have hidden them behind the handily placed house and rushed past everything later on in Turn 2. Similarly I could have held my Young Nephilim back further; Flight 6 with Fly With Me as a bonus action is a delightful amount of mobility that I didn't make the best use of.
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