Elemental My Dear Watson - Round 2 - Symbols of Authority

 On to the second round!

This is Symbols of Authority, a strategy I haven’t played before but seems deceptively simple on paper. Four strategy markers placed outside your deployment zone and 8 inches of each other, concealing and impassable but not blocking line of sight. A model in base-to-base contact can take the interact action to remove it and you score a point if you manage that each round.

Discussion on the MWS discord was helpful in pointing out the areas you can stick the markers where a 2” reach model blocks off access completely. I also read the Danger Planet article https://www.goonhammer.com/how-to-gain-grounds-and-influence-people/  on the strategy (which also includes the other two non-GG4 strats in this event, Corrupted Leylines and Break the Line, so that was handy!) and had a think.

The schemes (and my initial thoughts) are as follows:

Secret Meetup – There is a ton of terrain on the board that could be picked, but predicting where my opponent’s models are going to wind up is a challenge.

Breakthrough – This doesn’t look too difficult since you’re going to be pushing towards the enemy deployment anyway.

Death Beds – A scheme I’ve played before, hooray! I like this one a lot.

In Your Face – This really depends on what the opponent is bringing (they all do to some extent but this more than others). I’ve seen a lot of people talking about building to have no models at 8+ so denying it immediately.

Bait and Switch – This looks neat. It also looks like something I’m definitely not taking. Far too dependent on controlling the endgame.

I went back and forth on this for a long while. I only really want to play crews I own, ideally (which means Kin, Angler and Tricksy). I was matched up against Longtin Haku playing Neverborn, and with Neverborn I’m thinking of Mature Nephilim and Angel Eyes. I know Nekima2 is extremely popular at the moment – in fact on the MWS discord there was a conversation about what Bayou can try against her in general and there was no obvious and easy counter.

On the face of it I don’t like Kin here because they prefer to fight at range. Tricksy are good everywhere if you learn how to play them – but that’s the problem, they are my least played crew and relatively complicated to set up. I do like Trixiebelle, she’s Bayou’s only Don’t Mind Me model which seems good for the strategy, but I think I’m going to struggle here. Angler are tough, and have 2” reach, but what they don’t have is guns – outside of Aunty Mel – and if you’re bringing Mel, Bogg and Ser Vantes, that’s a lot of targets for In Your Face and a very elite list. Angel Eyes can eat your armoured models very quickly, too.

So ultimately, I decided to go for Kin again. I like Ophelia! I think she and the Kin keyword are probably Bayou’s toughest because fewer things get around shielded than armour, and with the schemes I like Death Beds (Corpse Markers) – because you do tend to lose a lot of Young LaCroix over the course of a game – and I feel like the crew can also run In Your Face nicely. With Bo Peep for some added speed and Ophelia marching up the middle with her Trick Shot that pushes people three inches away, I think Breakthrough is also very doable. Secret Meetup and Bait and Switch are more challenging mostly because I have trouble predicting where enemy models are going to go and trying to force it becomes a bad time.

My initial list thoughts looked like this:

Kin Dread (Bayou)

Size: 50 - Pool: 8

Leader:

  Ophelia LaCroix, Overloaded

    Twelve Cups of Coffee

Totem(s):

  Young LaCroix

  Young LaCroix 2

  Young LaCroix 3

Hires:

  Sammy LaCroix

  Merris LaCroix

  Squish and Squash

  Beau Fishbocker

  Swine Twirler

  Bo Peep

Sammy and the Swine Twirler can hopefully get me a flying piglet to be annoying round one, as the Twirler drops an enemy scheme marker anywhere I like. Merris has 2” reach, can drop scheme markers at range, set things on fire and is very fast. Squish and Squash can get people out of engagement, run around a lot and heal, and Beau and Bo can also heal, help with the unpack, have 2” reach and are generally good models.

I am a little worried about the lack of punching power in the crew, but everyone except Beau and Bo can pick up a tarbomb and there’s a lot of ways to put out burning so hopefully that will help. With nothing above 7, it also can’t give away In Your Face. If that scheme wasn’t in the pool I’d be a lot more tempted to turn Squish and Squash into Raphael, but Raphael is very killable especially if he’s being hunted down by Mature Nephilim.

Then I actually played the game!

Haku had made a bet to try and win the tournament with the puppet keyword which I did not see coming, so his list looked like this:

New Hinamatsu Crew (Neverborn)

Size: 50 - Pool: 6

Leader:

  Hinamatsu

Totem(s):

  Mysterious Effigy

Hires:

  Widow Weaver

  Angel Eyes

  Vasilisa

  Coryphee Duet

  Carnivorous Wyrdwood

I did consider switching out Merris for Rami, but ultimately Rami having no engagement range and Merris having 2” felt like it might be more useful. She’s also a lot quicker at getting up the field and I thought I was going to need to push out hard if I was going to get anywhere. Thinking that there’d be fewer corpse markers on the table going into a bunch of puppets I selected Breakthrough and In Your Face.

This is how we looked at the start of the game! (The last two symbols are in the far bottom corners but cut off due to the screen)

Round one I pushed up aggressively with Ophelia, intending to see if I could stagger the Coryphee Duet and slow it down. The answer was… no, no I could not. Turns out stat 7 + cover is pretty difficult to crack, who knew? She did red joker a damage flip into Angel Eyes and crack her for 5 damage after stones right away though.

Merris advanced up the right hand side, the Jockeys took the left, with Squish and Squash circling around to begin to join the scrum in the middle. Beau hung back so he could get to my back point(s) again if needed. Meanwhile, the Coryphee Duet tore the Swine Twirler and a Young LaCroix apart and Hinamatsu went into Ophelia but shielded and some lucky flips meant she was fine.

Sammy summoned a Flying Piglet with the enemy scheme marker that the Twirler drops, and then moved into position to act as a retreat beacon for Squish and Squash if she needed it or to set up some Jinxes for next round. Meanwhile, Widow Weaver summoned two Stitched Together and Vasilissa began to move out from the central position it needed to be in for its aura to hit everyone.

Round two was mostly about trying to get Ophelia out of engagement so she could go finish off Angel Eyes. Beau got her out of Hinamatsu’s reach with Lead the Way, then backed off. The stitched tried to bog her down too. Sammy cleared the first Stitched out the way with Under Pressure on her Jinx, and then Squish and Squash bumped the second out the way. Ophelia was then free to charge into Angel Eyes!

And forget that she has Disguised, so she couldn’t actually… attack. Angel Eyes was able to get the reposition on her claw attack and because I’d used Squish and Squash to get Ophelia up there rather than helping Bo Peep get the extra little bit of movement she needed to get to the symbols, I didn’t score any points this round. Whoops! She did summon a Young LaCroix back but I mispositioned it and failed to block off the charge lane for the Stitched. So it just charged into them both and killed it again.

Bo Peep got as far up as she could, and on the other side of the board the Coryphee Duet secured the first symbol, danced apart and engaged Merris. She used Up We Go to free herself from engagement, black jokering the damage, failed to drop a bomb on them with her bonus action and then ran away, forcing the Duet to choose between killing her or setting up for the second Symbol next turn, which ultimately kept her alive a little longer.

At the end of the round, Ophelia wound up engaged with the Wyrdwood and a Stitched, and Vasilisa and Widow Weaver moved on up.

Start of round three I made a critical error and tried to disengage Ophelia to get around to Angel Eyes again. This failed. In retrospect what I should’ve done is get Merris out of dodge and activate Ophelia later with the Hooch Igniter to start burning my way through both of them at once, but hindsight’s 20/20. Ophelia was locked down with both of them, did a bit of damage to the Stitched and ultimately achieved very little.

Not getting Merris out of there meant that Hinamatsu went into her and whilst it took her every attack to push it through, she did ultimately manage to kill my poor flying gremlin. Bo ran up and scored me my first point (hooray!), Sammy got a stitched out the way with Glimpse the Void on her Jinx, Beau healed Squish and Squash up and then the frog lady ran up along with the Flying Piglet to push towards the enemy deployment.

Round four… and another critical error. I forgot the Wyrdwood has Planted Roots, so after Trick Shotting the Stitched out the way with the intent of doing the same to the Wyrdwood and then charging into Vasilisa to pin it down and soften it up to maybe score In Your Face … I couldn’t do that! Really wish that the Hooch Igniter plan had occurred to me whilst I was actually playing the game because I’m pretty sure that if I’d had two rounds to burn the tree and the Stitched down, between the Igniter and the Tar Bomb she would’ve been able to do it.

Beau slammed a web marker that Widow Weaver had placed to try and get to a Symbol, then ran back to sit on it with his 2” reach. Bo Peep scored my second strategy point, the Wyrdwood ate the Flying Piglet (whole, so no scheme marker in the enemy deployment) and Squish and Squash ran up to drop a scheme marker in the back corner, but Vasilissa was able to get into engagement with her. The Coryphee Duet couldn’t quite make it to a Symbol this round, so set up for next round and dropped scheme markers along with Hinamatsu and I think Widow Weaver to score the second point of Breakthrough.

At this point I’d run out of a plan for what to do with Sammy, too. She was engaged with a Stitched but got it off her with the Convulsions trigger on her Voodoo Pins. In retrospect, I should’ve had the last surviving Young LaCroix (these kids were dying all over the place) shoot her to give her fast and a card, then started running towards the Symbols that were otherwise completely safe. I’m not convinced she could’ve got there and interacted before the end of round 5 unless I could find another way to hurt her first, but she ultimately was not contributing anything else at this stage.

So, we just talked out Round 5. I couldn’t see a way to get the first point of In Your Face with Ophelia still locked down as tight as she was. The Coryphee Duet could obviously grab the 3^rd Symbol and the second point of In Your Face (but not the first, that wasn’t possible!). Bo Peep sat behind a pipe just in the very edge of the enemy deployment was able to score both the second point of In Your Face and the first point of Breakthrough, a win for the Puppets!

Final Score: 6-4 (Loss)

Despite scoring 4 points in both this game and the last one, I felt like I was more successful in this round. I still made a few key errors which cost me – I again felt like I wasn’t using the upgrades to their full effect, they mostly served as additional ablative health to a few models, and having Ophelia effectively unable to do much for three rounds was painful, but that was also entirely down to my misplaying her. She could have done a lot more.

Going in with 8 stones felt like a lot, but I think it was justified. I finished the game on 2 stones, having mostly used them to keep Ophelia alive and get key triggers for Sammy. If I’d had fewer stones, it would’ve been much easier to kill Sammy and Bo Peep, who single handedly scored me every point I got in the game. Ophelia probably wouldn’t have survived being thrown forward as aggressively as she was, either; the fact I then misplayed her doesn’t change that keeping her around was important.

The Coryphee Duet was as horrible as I expected, and I didn’t really have an answer to it. I tried to get some burning on it and if I’d managed that I would’ve tar bombed it to hell and back, but that didn’t happen. Perhaps Rami would’ve been helpful to try and get some armour piercing shots into the mix, but I’m not convinced that would be better than the job all the other pieces in the crew were doing. Merris threatened the backfield and had to be dealt with, the Twirler allowed the Flying Piglet summon which was another nuisance that needed to be picked up, and the Right This Way ability was very useful in round 1 even if he didn’t survive to round 2.

My pleasant surprise for this game was how great Squish and Squash felt. Paired up with Sammy, they drew me cards for 3 turns in a row, moved people around, and sprinted 18 inches towards the finish line in round 4 between the Leapfrog and running. Size 2 also means a lot of things in the crew can hide behind her, flinch and 7 health makes her pretty survivable for a 6 stone model. She didn’t use her healing or her Menacing Croak this game but she didn’t really need to. I know a lot of people were down on her when she dropped but I think she’s a piece which is a lot more than the sum of its parts when you slot her into Kin. A bonus action that becomes a 6” place to a Young LaCroix and a card draw because Sammy is nearby is very good. The only downside is that you are slowly killing yourself, but in this game I just topped her up with Beau for a 2 of Rams and she didn’t need to worry.

I really enjoyed this game. Haku was great fun to play and I came away feeling like I’d learned a lot, such as ‘do not build your plan around attacking models you can’t attack and moving models you can’t move’, which may sound like an obvious takeaway but I’ve never claimed to be a good gamer.

The game was streamed and is available here if you want to see how closely my written recollections match up to reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKKb-y1shHo

Next up, Round 3!

HONK!