Monday, March 18, 2024

Warhammer Underworlds - Cyreni's Razors versus Elathain's Soulraid

Amanda and I played a quick game in the afternoon on Sunday to try out the two new Idoneth Deepkin warbands; Cyreni's Razors and Elathain's Soulraid. We'd thought Nic and Orion were coming over in the evening and wanted to try them out BEFORE that... but then Nic and Orion bailed... so we only got the one game in. 

Amanda won the roll-off to choose boards and made me choose first - a wise choice as otherwise I would have oriented the boards with the short ends together ("longboarding") making it was easier to make channels for Cyreni's Hammertide ability (a target within a straight line is dealt one damage and is staggered!) 

I took the Hall of Sublimination board and then Amanda chose the Tortured Coil board. 

Amanda made the mistake of letting me go first, though, when I had Cyreni set up on with a clear path to one of her warriors... so I did the Hammertide and dealt Fuirann one damage and staggered her. 

As a reaction after my power step, Amanda placed her Shoal Token - where she could, in future turns, place the Spinefish! 

Then Tammael charged and... I think... dealth Renglaith two damage!? 

Alathyrr charged, stepping onto the location where the Shoal Token was - denying Amanda the ability to place the fishy there this turn... but she just replaced it at the end of my turn... 

The Elathain Ill-Fated charged into the brawl. Which, I think dealt Alathyrr two damage!? 

For my Third activation, Cepahnyr charged across the board onto an objective, and gave Fuirann a wallop with one of it's big tentacles... would have taken her out of action... but all successes does nothing against Amanda's single crit... 

(she was back to rolling crits again...) 

The Spinefish showed up... 

...and then Duinclaw, the Giant Crab, charged in... 

...and chopped poor Alathyrr in half with it's Crushing Claws... 

for my final action of the round Renglaith got out of there and stabbed at Tammael, missing... 

The board at the end of Round One... Things did NOT work out for me. I had one out of action, a second that was Vulnerable (one wound left). I'd only scored one objective (for one Glory Point) and wasn't able to score anything in the End Phase because I'd totally misread one of my other objectives... Ughhhh... 

Amanda wasn't doing a LOT better, but was ahead of me with Three Glory Points. 

And that's apparently where I just stopped taking pictures... Trying to sort out all these cards and trying to figure out how to get them to work together, with the warband was hurting my brain and required all my focus and attention...

I did manage to pull ahead by the end, and won nine to five!? Despite her small lead at the end of the first round, Amanda was having an equally hard time trying to piece it all together... and only scored two more point through the rest of the game. 

I think she scored one of them by killing Cyreni ... because Cyreni charged right into the midst of them and with Hammertide and a couple of upgrades staggered the lot of them and scored a few objectives before dying. 

Alathyrr managed to hang on and survive the game by completely disengaging and running away to try and score objectives - holding objective tokens in enemy territory. 

Elathain's Soulraid is a very aggressive warband. they score points for killing enemies and collecting souls... which is, thematically, what the Idoneth Deepkin are all about. They just don't seem as TOUGH or hard-hitting as some of the other aggressive warbands out there. They seem to have some interesting stuff and with some more plays (and maybe a Nemesis deck) could be pretty nasty! 

Amanda actually suggested playing another game when I relayed the message that Nic and Orion weren't going to make it... but this one burned me right out for the day and I suggested I'd rather try and get some painting done.  So, in the evening Amanda and I finished watching Percy Jackson Season One with Keiran and then finished off Season two of Community - and I got some work done on Ephilim's Pandemonium and the GARGANT!

Warhammer Underworlds - Blackpowder's Buccaneers versus the Dread Pageant

Saturday afternoon Amanda and I found ourselves with not a lot to do, so we sat down to play a quick game of Warhammer Underworlds... which ended up turning into THREE games of Warhammer Underworlds. 

I wanted to try out Blackpowder's Buccaneeers - because I'd just finished them up. I'm not super excited about the warband... The way they inspire and the whole mechanism for how Blackpowder's Gunderbuss works all seemed pretty convoluted and a LOT all had to happen at the right time, together to make it all work... I'm sure that if it did all work out, they'd be GREAT... but there is so much out of ones control with dice rolls and card draws... I mean, ANY warband id going to "work out" if everything goes right for them. So I went into the games with not a lot of hope... 

Amanda wanted to try something new and when showing her all the options, she decided the Dread Pageant was pretty and would like to give them a go... She had absolutely no recollection of ever seeing them before, despite the fact that I've played them a lot... against her... There was a Relic Deck in the box I'd made up and let her just play that... 

For not particular reason, other than to have a consistent board... and maybe, I guess, Gorlock Blackpowder is a pirate and was released during the Harrowdeep era.. I just got out the Harrowdeep/Nethermaze boards. 

GAME ONE

I won the roll off and made Amanda choose board first, and she chose the Ultimatum Engines board and then I chose on the Profane Larder board and oriented in along the long edges. 

Vasillac started things off charging up to an ojbective location and stabbing poor little Peggz to death... 

and used the Gory to upgrade with... something...? (it didn't really matter..) 

Blackpowder used a reaction card to saunter on up close to Vasillac... 

Screech followed along and then Kagey and Mange the monkey charged and stabbed Vasillac back, just a little, but it was enough to use their light-fingered Reaction ability to BREAK the upgrade and generate a Swag Token for Blackpowder - which would allow him to shoot his Gunderbuss some more! 

And here I thought that ridiculous ability would NEVER work!? 

Glissette danced up and tried to stab... Blackpowder...? I think...? But I started rolling like Amanda usually does with me and nothing could hit ANY of my fighters!? 

Blackpowder blasted Glisette apart with his Gunderbus (because I somehow forgot that his giant-ass "cutlass" had a range of two as well!? 

Slakeslash joined in the brawl... and... didn't do much, if I recall...?

Maybe it attacked the monkey as well and tied and batted it back...? 

Round Two and Slakeslash is charging again! 

Gorlock Blackpowder finished off Vasillac.

Blows were exchanged between Blackpowder and Slakeslash... Slakeslash took a pretty hard beating. 

And the charged off across the field to attack Hadzu leaving the monkey to fight Slakeslash. 

With the "aid" of Kagey and Shreek, Blackpowder murdered and ate Hadzu... 

Slakeslash took a swing at the annoying monkey... 

much to his regret... (Slakeslash only had one wound left the monkey finished him off with ping damage...) 

Leaving the board entirely clear of enemies! Harrrrrr! 

In the end I scored TWELVE Glory Points and Amanda only scored three... I cannot credit any sort of skilled play... I had some INSANE luck - like the kind of luck Amanda usually has!? I rolled a LOT of critical hits and defence rolls... I happened to draw the right mix of cards and the right time... 

I'm still convinced the inspire mechanism and using the Gunderbuss is still convoluted and difficult to pull off unless you are very luck in both dice rolling and card drawing. I just happened to be both in this game and it worked out really well for me! 

Also, Amanda was playing with a deck she hadn't even LOOKED at and had no memory of playing against these and so had no idea what to do with them - despite me trying to explain the basics... wounding, inspiring, then MURDERING!!!

The first game went rather quickly so Amanda suggested we play another! 


GAME TWO

All set up for Game Two. Amanda chose the Profane Larder board, which I'd used in the previous game. Initially she'd takend the Chamber of Genesis board (or maybe the Hall of Sublimination...?) - one of the two boards in the Harrowdeep/Nethermaze set that didn't have a hazard hex - which I pointed out she might want if she's ONE wound away from inspiring, sometimes it might be worth it to run through one just to inspire the warband, so she switched and took the Profane Larder which had one close to one of the board edges. I chose second, so I took the n the Chamber of Genesis Board and oriented it so that hazard hex was at the back of her territory and not of much use to her... 

Vasillac started things off by charging on to a objective marker in my territory and trying to stab the monkey! 

She really did not like that monkey... 


Kagey charged Vasillac with the aid of that monkey! 

Then I used a ploy to move him to an objective just across the border into enemy territory... I can't recall if this immediately scored me an objective card...? I feel like i might have... Because it but Kagey dangerously close (like, within range) of Glisette's gange two Dazzling Glaive attack... 

Slakeslash charged Blackpowder. Blows were exchanged. 

Then Blackpowder charged around the blocked hexes to kill Hadzu, who'd been sneaking around there... 

Then Blackpowder ate Shreek... 

Blackpowder wasn't in much danger, at that point. He'd only taken one damage. But Shreek had also taken one damage and eating the bird removed both damage counters from the game and made it that much harder for the Dread Pageant to inspire. 

This was a tricky match up for them to inspire... They need there to be six wound counters on surviving fighters...   The problem is, most my warband had only two wounds, and three of the four of them dealt two wounds in damage with each attack - which would kill everyone but Blackpowder outright with one blow. 

The Relic Deck I'd built for them (ages ago, before they were even called "Relic" decks) has a lot of ping in it (stuff that deals one damage), but a lot of them were conditional... and she had to have it in her hand when the conditions arose!? She was definitely starting to figure it out by Game Two.

Round Two - I managed to get all my crew onto Objective tokens. I had a few cards that allowed me to score if I had one, or more, fighters on objectives in enemy territory. 

Slakeslash removed one of those... 

I started taking fewer pictures at this point as the game was getting a bit harder with Amanda finally figuring out how to play the Dread Pageant... and I was trying to figure out how to move forward with fewer good dice rolls and not getting the cards I needed in the right order!? 

Blackpowder beating down Slakeslash.. 

Blackpowder and Vasillac gave each other some prods or shots at a distance... 

At the end of the game there was only Blackpowder and one of his gnoblar crew and Vasillac. I won the game 11-10... Amanda was catching up. (and I realized later I may have misread a card that allowed an extra die in one of my attacks that took out Slakeslash, that I may not have actually been allowed to use...? so...) 

After this game Amanda suggested "best two out of three"... and I suggested that maybe she didn't understand how that worked. Though, in most Warhammer Underworlds tournament formats, where players play three games back to back to back and the best two of three determines the winner, they DO play a third game, even if a player has won the first two... maybe that's what she'd been thinking of (as I'd recently been telling her about stuff I'd learned about Warhammer Underworlds tournaments... 

Playing the third game had less to do with tournament formats and more to do with we had the time and have both realized that playing a warband a few times in a row gives us a better feeling for how the warband works and is meant to be played - and which of the cards in the deck are actually working and which are duds that could be edited out when building a Nemesis (or Relic) deck... 


GAME THREE

I took even less pictures in this game as it was just a shitshow from round one. Totally forget to get a picture of the set up. 

Glisette started things off by running up and trying to cut the monkey in two... 

Why so much hate for the monkey!? To he honest, I was glad they kept trying to attack the monkey, as it had a better defence than the gnoblars - and that probably saved it more than once! 

Blackpowder used the reaction ploy that allowed him a move action after an enemy move action... that I hoped might help the monkey... 

It did not... 

Gnoblars head to the enemy Objectives while the Dread Pageant swarmed into my own territory. (We each had objective that score for being in or holding objectives in enemy territory!?) 

having swapped territory we kind of stayed there for the rest of the game. 

hanging out in enemy territory shooting the Big Gun... 

For my final activation, Kagey charged Glisette... I'm not sure why..? Was Kagey inspired and dealing two damage...? Was she already wounded. Kagey failed, so it didn't matter... 

It was clear that Amanda had figured out how to play to the Dread Pageants strengths - and Objective cards - as she only lost one fighter this game and won ten to four! There was also an element of things-did-not-work-out-for-me (hence only FOUR glory points). But she definitely figured the warband out and played a good game! 

The rest of the evening we spent watching Season Two of Community on Netflix (as we'd noticed it was leaving the platform at the end of the month) and I worked on finishing up Elathain's Soulraid and Cyreni's Razors - one of which Amanda was hoping to try out on Sunday in our game against Orion and Nic.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Warhammer Underworlds - Cyreni's Razors

This weekend I finished off BOTH of the Idoneth Deepkin warbands I have for Warhammer Underworlds. Amanda's been asking me to paint them up ever since Nic and Orion started showing up with their Cyreni's Razors...

Cyreni's Razors are the more recent of the two, being released last December with the Deathgorge box. 

Cyreni's Razors

 Cyreni of the Abyss - Wizard-Leader of the warband

Alathyrr - Namarti Thrall

Renglaith - Namarti Thrall

Cephanyr - Big Squid

Hopefully these will see some action later today...