Last week I was able to get a game in with Alfonso, a local player that I’ve chatted with a few times, but had never played with.  I decided to take my new ToMB Gremlins.  Alfonso took Guild.

• Deployment: Standard
• Strategy: Reckoning
• Schemes: A Line in the Sand, Vendetta, Bodyguard, Protect Territory, Frame for Murder
• My crew:
  • Zoraida with Crystal Ball and Hex Bag
  • Francois LaCroix with Dirty Cheater and Hide in the Mud
  • Raphael LaCroix
  • Rami LaCroix with Dirty Cheater
  • Pere Ravage
  • Silurid (via Entrall)
  • Nurse (via Enthrall)
• Alfonso’s crew:
  • Sonnia Criid with Cherufe’s Imprint, Reincarnation, and The Mask
  • Samael Hopkins with Witch Hunt
  • Guardian
  • 3x Witchling Stalkers
  • Austringer
  • Death Marshall

We both declared Protect Territory.  I took Frame for Murder on the Silurid, under the theory that he’d get killed in an attempt to deny Protect Territory, but I could Reckless-run somebody up to occupy the markers as needed.

Turn one, Zoraida summoned the Voodoo Doll, who hemmed Pere Ravage, then Interacted with the Doll to move Ravage forward.  The Nurse jammed the Doll full up Uppers, so Ravage could shoot all the way across the board.  Rami used Reckless to Focus, shoot and completely erase a Witchling Stalker, then take a swig from his Flask to heal back up.  Raphael, the Silurid, and Francois moved up to get into more interesting positions.  The Death Marshall tried to Pine Box Ravage, but failed.  Sonnia, noticing how brutal Rami could be, put up her Flame Wall to block his LoS to most of her crew (and kept it up the whole game, tweaking the location by turn), then put some hurt on Ravage.  Samael used his Burn Them Out to put Burning on Ravage.  At the end of the turn, Ravage was down to one wound, with the Guardian and the Death Marshall in close range, plus Sonnia in range of Ooops.

Turn two initiative was excting – could I get Ravage to suicide himself before Alfonso could neutralize him?  He flipped a 12, and I flipped low.  Despite the long odds, I decided to burn a stone, but still lost initiative.  The Death Marshall activated and killed Ravage.  This put wounds on the Guardian and the Death Marshall, but summoned another Witchling Stalker.

Otherwise, Francois ran up and killed the Death Marshall, before getting ganged up on and killed, giving Alfonso a Reckoning point.  The Austringer got hemmed.  The Silurid kept dropping markers along his flank.  Rami took more potshots, and Raphael put the hurt on a Stalker.

Turn three, Zoraida stabbed the doll to kill the Austringer (including cheating the defensive flip down with the black joker).  Rami and Raphael finished off the Guardian.  The Silurid kept leaping around, dropping scheme markers.  Sonnia took the bait, and killed the Silurid dead (giving me full Frame for Murder points), and clipped Raphael with extreme blasting as well.  Zoraida stabbed the doll, killing both it and the Austringer.  The Austringer’s Finish the Job meant that there were two scheme markers in base contact.  Alfonso revealed Bodyguard on Samael, and kept him hiding behind a building and Sonnia’s Flame Wall.

It was getting late, so turn four would be our last.  Raphael repositioned to be in Protect Territory range of the scheme markers, but got killed.  A Witchling Stalker came out from behind a corner and sat right next to the two scheme markers.  Sadly, it wasn’t quite in base contact, so Zoraida couldn’t Obey it to Interact them away.  Instead, Z Obeyed it to walk away, and came out and dropped her own marker.  The Nurse and Rami did the same.  Samael came out of hiding and sat next to the two markers that the Witchling Stalker had abandoned.

The game ended, with a 7 to 6 win for Alfonso.  We both got full points for our schemes, and Alfonso got one Reckoning point.  Alfonso played a great game.  He kept his models safe behind the Flame Wall, which forced me to either spend AP repositioning Rami or hit suboptimal targets, or both.

I had a blast with the Gremlins.  Reckless and Dumb Luck are both a ton of fun.  Dirty Cheater is a very handy little upgrade, and mostly erases the down sides of Reckless.

One key mistake was activating Pere Ravage early in turn one.  If I had held him back until later in the turn, Alfonso would have had less of a chance to try to take him down.  Hitting him with the Uppers and Hemming him (and using Dance Puppet) was probably overkill, too, without getting him to blow on turn one.  Next time, I might try to hit him with the Nurse, Obey him forward with Z, then blow him on his own activation.  Or just run him forward with Reckless late in the turn, then blow at the start of turn two.

I’m also still not quite sure what to do with Francois.  He seems to want to be in melee, but died pretty quickly unsupported.  Maybe I should keep him back as a shooter, and only move forward to respond, or protect the rest of the gunline.

I’m looking forward to more Gremlins, and having enough models to use Ophelia at 50 stones.