Mob Ball, Part 1

This is going to be a somewhat different series of posts to what has been contributed thus far. Introducing myself, hello my name is Dave and I am not a Guild Ball player. I actually viewed the game with some disdain; as others started dropping Warmachine, a game I've learned to love and enjoy, I was hesitant to making the shift to pick up Guild Ball. There were attempts to coax me into joining in all this fantasy-football hooplah, but the more JS tried, the less interest I had and the more resistant I became. 

I spouted out all sorts of other practical considerations, like I was completing a pretty intense University year,  I only had so many resources I wanted to dedicate to playing war-dollies, what's this Bloodbowl wannbe crap, I only have the attention span to focus on one system at a time, etc etc etc. Ultimately, these were all just excuses. I resisted because I felt I was being badgered into playing something I didn't want to engage in. Warmachine was my game, and I was dedicate to the path of glorious mediocrity with my Skorne.

But I did cave. Well, "caving" is probably disingenuous; JS in one final push to shill, incorporated the assistance of several other of my fellow gaming compadres, including Nikola, Peter, Dan, David, and Chas, to pitch in and buy me a team of Alchemists.

such joy

You can see how touched I was. Honestly, you guys are the best - at the end of the day, these games are about the people, and I'm so fortunate to be in the great company of such a hunky bunch of man-meat.

So, as I write this Mob Ball series of posts, please don't get me confused with the other Dave, that David Stent fellow who waxes lyrical about all sorts of tactical rules nuances, and playing with Morticians. No, I'm the Dave that's going to play with the dashing and progressive Alchemists.

Upon receiving my box I started putting them together and spit-balled some ideas of what I could do with them creatively. Hearing that some random complained that Midas looked too "feminine" and paid a bunch of moolah to have the sculpt made into his own likeness, I cranked up the douche-ness of Midas by giving him a fedora to aid in his attempt to pick up 7's and 8's with his piece of flair and skill at negging (if you're unfamiliar with this terminology, good). 

I had grandiose goals of turning the whole team into a pack of fuck-boi pickup-artists, but I wasn't getting much inspiration for pieces of flair for Catalyst and Vitriol (wtf is up with her pose), or Compound. Mercury is pretty much already a skeeze-ball, level 10 creep. Might do something to Katalyst though, if I ever get around to getting him. And Venin could do with a nice hat.

From here, the approach I want to take with this series of posts is one of wide-eyed openness and naivety - what I think and experience as I learn the game and play matches with those rascally Alchemists. I have next to no knowledge about the game or its setting, and at the moment of this writing I have played a grand total of one demo 3v3 game, watched 2-3 games played by others, and have  viewed one online video. As such, the level of tactical insight and analysis I can present will be rudimentary at best. But I am interested to see what will happen as time passes and my experience develops. Hopefully documenting this will prove an interesting and insightful endeavour, if not entertaining at the very least.

In the meantime, I'll share again my greatest accomplishment to date; making this shill-meme