Into the Wild Blue Yonder - Episodes 3 + 4 + 5

Catching up to Star Wars, and about as exciting a series so far.

Game 3 - The One That Should Be Forgotten

Rematch against my Masons opponent from Game 2.

Honour, Marbles, Flint, Mallet, Brick, Tower  vs Shark, Salt, Angel, Jac, Kraken, Greyscales

Draft went much better, except I drafted around a footbally Corsair lineup then picked Shark last. Doh! Even knew I was receiving. Double doh!

Here is a summary of this game:

☐ Not REKT 
☑ REKT 
☑ REKTangle
☑ SHREKT 
☑ REKT-it Ralph 
☑ Total REKTall 
☑ The Lord of the REKT 
☑ The Usual SusREKTs 
☑ North by NorthREKT 
☑ REKT to the Future 
☑ Once Upon a Time in the REKT 
☑ The Good, the Bad, and the REKT
☑ LawREKT of Arabia 
☑ Tyrannosaurus REKT
☑ eREKTile dysfunction


So yeah, I lost 0-12 (1 goal, 4 takeouts) in a game that went almost to clock for both. I literally did nothing, had no plan, floundered around (ha, fish) for an hour and a half doing nothing. Evidently my head was somewhere else.

I'd write a report but I have systematically erased most of it from my mind. If you watch a video of a frog being dissected by scientists, that's pretty much what this looked like.

Or, sticking with the Star Wars Episode 3 theme, we have possibly the worse scene in recent cinematic history:

I do remember why I don't usually put Angel in lineups though - she does (almost) nothing without the ball. The ball was kept away from me a lot of the game and I did not have a great method of retrieval outside using up 6 INF on Shark himself. I mean, if you do have the ball she is great at putting it on the goal, moving it around, and she is pretty tanky so also holds it quite well (especially against 1" melee models - counter attack Tackle on 1).
However if the ball is kept away from her, she does nothing. No damage, no momentum, just surviving.  Not so bad if you have really good ball retrieval (Siren1, Corsair), but otherwise, it's a gamble.

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Game 4 - A New Hope:

Game 4 and Game 5 are both against the same opponent, who had never played Fish before, so it was a good learning experience.

For this "draft" (she only had the 6 players, so I blind picked vs "Butchers" in general). The result was:

Shark, Salt, Greyscales, Sakana, Siren1, A+G   vs  Ox, Princess, Boiler, Shank, Boar, vetBrisket

I ended up putting Sakana in the lineup for these two games over Jac - he is pretty good at football and generates momentum very reliably, helps with crowd outs, fast... the downside is he is not a particularly stellar kicker (for a Fish, anyway) nor does he have a great playbook.


Turn 1:

I lost the initial roll, and got the opportunity to kick with Shark, with a nice little patch of rough ground about 10" from the board edge. Shark got his 6 INF and off he went -  tackling the ball from Brisket who had retrieved and retreated, throwing Gut & String on Boar, get a few momentous dodges and strike one up for the Fish before dodging safely next to Brisket.

The ball went back out to my left wing, where it was chased by Shank and dribbled out to the board edge. I tried to Lure in Princess with Siren but failed, and all the Butchers clumped up behind her.

4: 0 Fishermen

Turn 2:

I managed to win the initiative at dice +1,  getting me another nice activation with Shark. I took the opportunity to farm up some momentum, G&S Ox, use my Legendary on all Butchers but Shank, and momentously Tidal Surge Brisket right back towards her goal. Shark - what a dick.

The Butcher response was quite crippled, although Brisket was just in range to Quick Time Boar to charge into Shark and do something like 9 damage on two swings (+forced KD on the charge).
A+G and Sakana joined in the fun, beating up and debuffing Boiler a bit before he charged into Shark to deal another few points of damage. Shark's counter attack put up G&S on Boiler.

Siren then managed to line up a charge on Boiler with Weak Point, Singled Out and G&S and managed to land a pretty meaty double wrap, using Seduced on Boar to wrack up another 2 momentum and some nice damage on Boiler, resulting in a 2 INF -> 5 MOM conversion. Primo.

Shank then slotted a goal, and the ball flew right back to Salt who returned the favour.

8:4 Fishermen

Turn 3:

Thanks to Siren, I managed to win the first activation, load up Shark, retrieve the ball from the Butcher scrum and put in the winning goal. Given his position, there was really nowhere on the table that it could have been kicked without either Shark or Sakana getting it and scoring within 2 activations.

12: 4 Fishermen

Reflections:

Kicking with Shark is good. Very good. To the point when I should probably choose to kick most times given the choice, against most teams. Except Brewers with Stave, that would actually make my life difficult. Good thing nobody ever takes Stave.

Its one weakness - a well Lobbed Barrel.
And fire. But really, Lob Barrel. 75% of the time. 25% it's a total disaster instead.

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Game  5 - The Meat Processors Strike Back

Since the last game went pretty quickly (~25 mins?), we managed to get another game in. 2 games of Guild Ball in about 2.5 hours, quality stuff. The second game was off the clock, so dragged a bit more and was as much an learning experience and an exercise in board analysis as anything.

Same lineups, roughly the same terrain, with the exception that I received with Shark, which makes for a very different story..........

Turn 1:

Boar kicks off and the ball is retrieved by Greyscales and passed along until Salt managed to give his life to slot in a goal (I forgot to play Knee Slider to save him). The ball is thrown back over to a wing, a couple of inches from Brisket and in rough ground.

In the meantime, Boar is dragged into cover and beaten up a bit by Shark and Siren. Boiler manages to throw out a Marked Target on Avarisse, whom I then foolishly ran just within charge range of Ox. What a pro play. dat Boi....ler.

A quality meme that faded too soon.

4:1 Fish

Turn 2:

Thanks to that long charge on Avarisse, I lose the first activation, which means Ox gets to set things up and go to town on Shark. Legendary goes up, he jogs into Shark and is forced into a (lucky) KD to stop a counter attack. However he was only given 4 INF, so Shark (who also had 4 INF) lives on a couple of health.

I chose to activate Shark to save his 4 INF over getting that loose ball - Shark manages to Gut & String & Tidal Surge Ox straight back and heal up, which limits some of the Butcher damage potential keeps him alive for the turn. Boar responds by hitting Siren twice to bring her to 2 health.

Siren activates, heals up, rushing to retrieve the ball and taking a parting blow from Boar for 4 - she then fails a pass back to Greyscales (who likely would have been able to score during his activation with an extra 4" of movement), and promptly dies to a Brisket charge.
The loose ball is then picked up by Salt, who also fails a pass to Greyscales, but fortunately this one scatters into the old man's possession, so he can use his activation to run free and set up a goal next turn.

Princess jogs into Shark - I see his demise coming and move Avarisse to beat up Boiler and push him around, thereby keeping him away from Shark. This was not as clever as I had initially intended, since Boiler hits pretty hard under Ox's legendary even without his doggo. The little lad manages to bring Avarisse to under half health all on his own, and Shank finishes the job after shrugging off a pathetic parting blow from Sakana.


4:5 Butchers

Turn 3:

I lose first activation again, so Shark gets taken out by Shank and a few INF goes with him. Avarisse responds by charging back on the pitch to generate momentum, pushing Boar and Princess around a bit and healing up. Greyscales uses this momentum to slot in a goal, and the ball is thrown back out near Brisket's wing.

Avarisse is soon sent to the sidelines again by the Butcher onslaught. Salt goes for the big winning play by picking up the ball and throwing it towards the goal, hoping for Sakana to run to it and take a Tap In.

Alas, Boiler has different ideas, and charges Sakana and knocks him down despite Sakana using defensive stance and being in cover. At this stage I can still theoretically stand Sakana up with someone else (Siren had just come back on that wing), and attempt to luck out of a parting blow to score. Siren manages to get the momentum to stand Sakana up and still have 1 MP to take a goal kick, but Boiler's parting blow manages to get the KD on Sakana regardless, leaving him helpless to do anything but generate back the momentum he needed to stand himself up again.

Brisket, seeing 3 Fishermen able to get the ball next turn, decides to pick up the ball and kick it off the pitch, hoping for a good scatter in the middle. It ends up directly behind Shank, but outside 1".

8: 9 Butchers



Turn 4:

Somehow I managed to win initiative this turn, which is always good when you're playing Shark and the ball is within his reach. Shark flies on the pitch with 6 INF, gets a nice pile of momentum and passes the ball over to Greyscales, who is functionally immune to all nearby Butchers on account of his Unpredictable Movement.(NB: at this point I had forgotten that Brisket had Quick Time, which would have allowed her to dodge into melee with Greyscales and likely get a tackle without great difficulty. However she did not have enough INF for this, and if she had, Sakana was always a valid secondary pass target for Shark.)

Needless to say, with no real way to stop Greyscales, Shark ends up taking the Butcher's anger to the face and gets dragged off the pitch again, leaving Greyscales to jog in base-to-base with the goal post and tap one in.

Apparently this is from a law firm website.
America - what a phenomenon.

Final Score: 12 - 11 Fishermen.

Fish goals: Salt, Greyscales x2
Butcher Takeouts: Salt, Shark, Avarisse x2, Siren


Very close game overall - it was basically a race of takeouts vs goals, and in Season 3, goals often have the slight advantage.

Reflections:

A grinder where Shark again shows his control magic (albeit not to its full potential), even when he isn't scoring goals. The hero Fish need and deserve.
I think the whole team did work here, but Greyscales was particularly useful on account of his Where'd They Go? and 2" melee + Unpredictable Movement. Excellent against a team that usually doesn't have too much 2" melee and relies heavily on big melee damage.

I think the biggest mistake I made this game was not using Shark's legendary on Turn 2 (as you usually do) to greatly minimize the impact of Ox's legendary. Forcing the Butchers to spend an INF to sprint/charge rather than have an extra attack would have been the best use of it.



Soon we also will hopefully hear of the exploits of Billy "Football Legend" Wijnveld and his huge man bat: