M2E Achievement League Game Reports

On a whim I decided to try Guild. It puts me on track to get the “Let’s All Be Friends” achievement or whatever it is called, and I thought it would be fun. I grabbed the nearest play-test cards and dove right in, forgetting that there were only wave two. I missed out on a whole lot of cards and potential but at the time I was too enamored with the wonder of Guild synergy, specifically the power behind the throne, the secretary of the Governor General himself, Lucius.

Lucius is a whore, pure and simple. When he does things so does his crew, when he walks he tells someone else to do an action, he can yell at someone else to do an action and they get a buff in the bargain. Lucius doesn’t DO anything really. In my game he walked around the battlefield aimlessly and gets my Riflemen to shoot the hell out of whatever I wanted, on Lucius’s activation no less.

I am getting ahead of myself; simply suffice it to say that I was very interested to see if Lucius would play in a style that I might like. Mike just so happened to be there and I thought that it would be fun to play him, seeing as how I never get to play a Rasputina crew. Not knowing exactly what we were doing we just decided to use the standard deployment and we flipped for strategy. We got Squatters Rights, which I thought would be interesting with my action giving master.

Of the schemes I forget what we flipped but I picked Distract and Entourage, thinking that I could distract a fair amount of Mikes stuff while walking into his end zone. He picked Vendetta and noted my Drill Sergeant as the target, and he picked Make Them Suffer. I didn’t reveal any of my schemes because I am devious sonova of a bitch, and Mike revealed Vendetta.

I wasn’t worried; Drill Sergeant Dashel is a tough guy with armor and ten wounds so I thought he could take the attention, and my objectives would be to keep moving and shoot for the strategy.

I had Lucius, obviously, with his Scribe of the Proxy totem, a Guild Lawyer, Drill Sergeant Dashel, a Guild Captain, a Warden and three Guild Riflemen.

Mike brought Rasputina, an Essence of Power totem, Snow Storm, a Silent One, an Ice Golem, and three Ice Gamin.

I deployed with the intent of holding Rasputina and her attendant heavy hitters on one side of the board with my Guardsmen component while letting Lucius lead his Scribe of the Proxy and the Guild Layer to the side so they could focus on the strategy and Entourage. So I put Lucius and co. in the center and deployed my hard hitting Guild Guardsmen forces on the right with a good killing field in front of them, Warden front and center with Guild Captain and Drill Sergeant Dashel behind for buffs.

He deployed to match mine, with Rasputina, Snow Storm, and the Ice Golem on one side, with the Ice Gamin on my left to counter supported by his Silent One and Essence of Power. My mistake was thinking that he would have to split to take my flanking approach but instead he played it smart and kept everyone close enough so as to support one another.

Turn one and I shot my Gild Lawyer right up the center to get at the strategy markers across the center line, and followed up by having Lucius move up behind at a more dignified pace thus letting the Lawyer claim the marker for me on my first turn. The scribe followed up I guess, he is a forgettable thing and didn’t really do much of anything in that game. Mike pushed Snow Storm up towards my Guild Riflemen line and followed with Rasputina. He made a mistake by letting Rasputina out in the open in front of my shooty guys and didn’t expect the insane range I can get out of those shmucks. If they have a focus, their range goes up to 24 inches! And I can give them a focus for a zero. So I shot the hell out of Rasputina or the first turn, doing some decent damage.

Vowing never to do that again, Mike moved his Gamin up to deal with the strategy markers and menace me with an aggressively placed Ice Golem.

Turn two I played a bit better and used my combos with the Guardsmen much more effectively. My Lawyer tried to get to another strategy marker turn it for me with Lucius help but failed the horror duel, even with a positive flip to morale and became paralyzed. And my Scribe guy did nothing again. Mike pushed Snow Storm in front of Rasputina and prepped to shoot the hell of my Guardsmen, but got as good as he gave. I killed Snowstorm with everyone’s shots and their staking bonuses while Rasputina shot though Snow Storm and even the Ice Golem and killed a Rifleman and hurt another and the Warden a bit.

Some red jokers and black jokers were in effect to keep me alive and kill Snow Storm, but I don’t feel as if I got lucky. If I had been on the ball and known all my synergies then I could have killed him anyway. This is where my comments of Lucius being a whore come in. After I had focus fired Snow Storm for a bit Lucius started walking to get me the Entourage scheme, and the Riflemen opened up again with some deadly stacking. That is where I feel I could really find some interesting combos as Lucius essentially gives me three free shots while doing other things for himself. If I get all my ducks in a line and get a good target set up then I could really pump out the damage.

That was my moment in the sun however, as after that it all went downhill. Mike started getting points from the strategy due to his Gamin rushing the strategy and I wasn’t because my Guild Lawyer was frozen in fear. Idiot.

I completely forgot about Distract and focused on getting Lucius into position for rushing to the end zone, while the Lawyer shook off the paralyzed. I charged a Gamin and blew it up which may have been a mistake but I thought that I could take it and I needed to get rid of those pesky Gamin. The scribe of the Proxy moved up and tried to menace another Gamin but didn’t do much.

My line of Guardsmen was faltering as more Riflemen died; I had got Rasputinas big guys but not Rasputina herself and she was out shooting me by a mile. We slugged it out for a while, with me losing all of my remaining Riflemen and the Warden for the cost of Essence of Power and the Silent One. I thought that would be a good trade, but even without buffs Rasputina is still a good master, and plenty dangerous.

Turn four brought me finally getting some points for the strategy and engaging a Gamin with the Scribe and the Lawyer while Lucius attempted to go around a huge rock and stay the hell away from Rasputina. Rasputina was focused on killing my Drill Sergeant and managed to kill him and put some wounds on the Guild Captain, winning him three points for his revealed scheme plus the points for the strategy he had been accumulating. I was losing badly. So I took it out and had my Captain shoot and kill an errant Gamin. That’s all he did the fat bastard. So now he was all alone, staring down Rasputina.

Turn five was a quick affair, with Lucius making a break for the end zone to try and get some points, while the remaining Gamin and my Scribe engaged in a slap fight while my Guild Lawyer shouted at the Gamin from the sidelines. Rasputina and the Guild Captain shot at each other, guess who won. So with the Captains body cooling, or rather freezing this is Rasputina we are talking about here, we tallied up our points.

I got one from Squatters Rights, and one from not quite reaching Mike deployment zone. Meanwhile mike had consistently earned points for the strategy for a total of four and three for his killing of Drill Sergeant Dashel, putting him at a total of seven.

I liked the game, even if I lost badly, as this showed me the potential for a Lucius crew. I forgot some things and could have focused on the schemes a bit more but I am confidant with a bit of tweaking I could make this into a workable and most importantly fun list. Mike was happy as well and stated that he could have done some things better, he is learning M2E as well, but was surprised at the damage output of stacked Guild Riflemen.

If I play this crew again, and I will, Riflemen will be the star of the show. With Lucius backing them up, Drill Sergeant Dashel providing buffs and the Guild Captain being a useless wad. I need some heavy hitting that I don’t think the Warden provides, but I am confident in dropping the Lawyer and the Scribe of the Proxy.

Nicely written. Any glaring over strengths or weaknesses in the second wave stuff from either side?

Rasputina is about the same. Really shooty, you don't want to get caught by her. She will shoot you dead. Her combos are crazy, but she is still squishy and can get shut down about as easily.

Now I have no idea how the Lucius crew is supposed to run, or has run in the past, but knowing nothing about Lucius or even guild I was able to make a hell of a shooty list. The potential for Riflemen and Guardsmen stacking shenanigans gets kinda crazy. I hope to try it on Saturday and just boost the hell out of any damage that I do per turn. I don't think it is unbalanced, it will just not be fun to be on the receiving end of it. Definitely the potential for a negative play experience if the Guild player gets his ducks in a row and the opposing player isn't ready or not paying attention, or even doesn't know how silly this style of stacking could get.

Any comments for me on my game report? Content? Formatting? Length? Detail? Swearing? Etc?

Its good, could nix the swearing.

Oh, and guild rifleman got the nerf bat yesterday.