Like A (crazy)Bat(lady) Out Of Hell

 

So, I'm two games into the Ten In A Row challenge with Nephilim. I'd had a couple of intro games with her before we started the challenge proper, one with each version of the character, and had a whole bunch of fun with both. I paired up Nekima1 with Kastore2 for an all-out murder squad versus Bad Fish's Brewie Crewie and had a whale of a time, with Kastore using Visceral Rampage to plonk Nekima, unactivated, on the halfway line in the middle of Turn 1. It's a place she likes to be. Bad Fish was less enthusiastic.

The other pre-challenge game was on episode 42 of Beard's Friday Night Faux series over on YouTube, during which he deployed possibly the least resistible kidnap in the game (Reva with her Pyre marker shenanigans) on Nekima2 towards the end of Turn 1. I got a somewhat flailing activation out of her at the top of Turn 2, but then she became a Lampad. Beard does love Lampad. So I didn't really get a good chance to see what Nekima2's factory could look like, because I made the mistake of walking forward a whole ONE time. But I'm not bitter, honest.

Anyway, onto the challenge games proper. I went up against Bad Fish's Brewmaster2 crew again with Nekima2 for my first game, partially because he's been getting Nekima1 to the face a fair few times between various opponents over the last few weeks, and partially so that I might get a chance to see more than, oh, two activations from her. I took the opportunity to tick some of the more optional models off the "Take Everyone At Least Once" list that I sub-challenged myself with, and hired Ithanna and the Carnivorous Wyrdwood. The strategy was Stuff Ballots, and I picked Take Prisoner (stupidly, as it turned out) and Sweating Bullets.

The game started out pretty well, with Brewie doing all of his self-poisoning durdling and me beginning the corpse marker generation. "Blood Hunter vomits up a half-digested Bayou Gremlin in the middle of the family, then wanders off to have a think about what it did" seems to be my standard opening play. Nekima throws down some more bits of Gremlin, gets the latest kid out of the papoose and soothes the Hunter. The Shaman has a little jog to hurriedly clean up some of the body bits and hides it all behind a handy nearby tree, which pleases everyone around him. Meanwhile the dogs have gotten out again and are having a fight with a surprisingly quick drunk man when all they wanted to do was to quickly nip down to the polling station and exercise their democratic duty.

(If you wanted detailed battle reports here, I'm not your man, in case that wasn't obvious.)

Okay, more seriously, the opening went fairly well. Corpses were generated, Tots were summoned, grow tokens were handed out. I did lose a Corrupted Hound to a Fermented River Monk that had been launched into my flank, who then went on to soak up something like 8AP of attacks from a Mature Nephilim, Hounds and Ithanna before he went down. That model is stupidly tanky. Fingers went to occupy the centre of the board, which was fine by me for Sweating Bullets purposes. Popcorn Turner and a Whisky Gamin had zoomed off into an upper corner to set up votes there; I never really got a look in on that table quarter thanks to Popcorn toasting the Hound that I'd sent to maybe get some sneaky votes in.

Ultimately that was how most of the game went for me. I'd somewhat foolishly picked a Whisky Gamin as my Take Prisoner target, which a Mature only managed to score in Turn 4 thanks to the sheer speed and ease of escape of that thing. Prisoner was a bad pick overall; I hadn't appreciated how much more achievable Ensnare is for Nekima2, between Dark Bargain and Birthright placing scheme markers everywhere. So I only scored the one VP for Prisoner. Another misplay on my part was assuming Popcorn was an Enforcer, which cost me the second VP of Sweating Bullets. I only managed 2VP from Ballots versus Brewie's 4, with 2 from Bullets and 1 from Ensnare. So a 7-4 win for Bad Fish in the end. It wasn't a game of proud moments for me, but hey, it was Game 1. Lots was learned, and the Wyrdwood impressed me with its extra corpse generation and its ability to survive in the middle and keep people engaged. Ithanna... I probably needed to keep her closer to the Wyrdwood to make better use of her, but she didn't do much to impress. I will say, the + on attacks into engaged models with a Coordinated Strike trigger feels good in a crew with lots of 2" reach. It's possible that she's more of a Fae model.

Anyway, game 2. This was a few days later versus Panzer Harris, also of streaming fame, and also a notorious "Charge Nekima in and mess up someone's day" type of player. He's also doing the 10 In A Row challenge but hadn't yet started, so was considering a few different Arcanists. In the end, he went with...

Toni!

We played Plant Explosives, I more sensibly picked Ensnare and In Your Face this time, he picked the same. I went with Nekima2, a near identical crew to the previous game but with Hayreddin instead of Ithanna. Panzer went with Toni1, although he later said it was probably more of a Toni2 pool.

I began with the usual corpse marker factory, then ran my three Hounds just across the centre line and dropped three Explosives to claim a fair chunk of territory where Panzer couldn't claim Turn 2. Corrupted Hounds are just so damn good for 3ss, I can't see myself ever taking fewer than two. Panzer's Gunsmith had a shot at a Tot (who redirected it into the Blood Hunter, that's a useful ability) but Black Jokered the damage flip. (I think three times this game he flipped the Black Joker alongside a 13, just the worst feeling. For him, I mean. I was surprisingly fine with it). In attacking the precious bebbeh, the Gunsmith made himself a target for a freshly grown Mature Nephilim, who promptly finished him off top of Turn 2, which I thought gave me In Your Face but had got the positioning wrong. It's the killed model that needs to be in 3", not the killer. Who knew?!

The map had a tight platform in the middle where a lot of the fighting happened, which made Ensnare pretty easy for both of us. We had some fun tussling with Hayreddin when a Union Miner False Claimed two markers right next to him, so I grew a Lilitu and Lured him away from them, only for Toni to Bring It! him back into range of them. I parked a Mature on top of the markers to deny it that way, but the Miner clearly got bored and just did it again next turn on Nekima after Lilitu had activated. Oh well, fun while it lasted.

Howard Langston had gone wide and effortlessly killed a Hound and picked up its Explosive, but this meant that he was not getting much killing done, a situation that I was fine with. Nekima threw some body bombs into the main scrum which by this point was so thick with models that Panzer's crew were testing to avoid 4 damage a pop. He remarked that he was so thrown by a Nekima standing so far back at that point of the game that he wasn't expecting any damage from her, but this feels like a good way to use her once the Brood has spread out a little bit. Nekima spent the later turns hoovering up and putting down Explosive markers to limit scoring potential on Panzer's part and dealing with Mouse. Not the most prestigious kill of all time, but that rope pull was getting annoying!

Panzer's Soulstone Miner attempted to kill a Hound on the other flank for three turns, but just kept getting misses and Black Jokers, so couldn't deny my Explosive there. Eventually the Wyrdwood wandered over and put it out of its misery. I had a chance to score the second point of In Your Face by double running Hayreddin into Panzer's deployment zone, but foolishly chose to take a shot at the Soulstone Miner to try to help the dog out. He was JUST in range and got Bring It!'d back in and finished off by Toni, scoring In Your Face in the process. Howard tussled with a Mature Nephilim for Turn 3 and 4, but Combat Finesse is just delightful. I was mostly just trying to stop Howard from scoring the second In Your Face point, but he got away Turn 5 and sprinted over the line.

So it finished 7-5 to me in the end; 4 VP from Explosives, 2 from Ensnare and 1 from Face, while Panzer got 1 from Explosives, 2 from Ensnare and 2 from Face. Overally, I was understandably happy with how it went. Hayreddin definitely felt more impactful than Ithanna, but it was mostly his healing aura that was useful, keeping up models that would likely have gone down to chip damage much earlier. I'm not convinced that Nekima really needs Henchmen, or that they can be hired to tailor to the pool rather than being essential components of her crew's mechanisms.

I remain convinced of the points that I identified when switching to Nekima from Ulix: Flight is amazing, having actual engagement ranges is amazing, Black Blood splashes do a lot more work than Stampede. There's a lot of sneaky schemability in Nekima2 that I'll be looking to lean into moving forward, and reassures me that she's not reliant on certain types of schemes appearing in the pool. I'm very much looking forward to my next games!