Joelfaux Review

Hello again! Sorry for the impossible to read first paragraph in the last post, but it was fun to write! So, last weekend was Joelfaux, and it was great fun. First of all, thanks to Joel for running the event, it was an outstanding first event and I will be making an effort to get to more. Also thanks to Henchman Lee for helping out, I don’t think the event would have ran anywhere near as smoothly if he hadn’t given up his place in the tournament to do so, so big thank you to him. I was pleasantly surprised with the venue; the hall was about twice the size I remembered it. The space was well used and didn’t feel cramped at all. As for position in the country, I thought it was great, 20 minute walk from my house! 

So onto the games! My first game at the event was against James, and I thought my game against Hutch was good! The game itself was tactical and closely fought, coming down to the last activation, and James is a great opponent. I randomly flipped for my master and Zoraida was the first to be used, whereas James was using his Lady J crew. The first strategy was Squatters Rights, so I took 3 Silurids, 3 Bayou Gremlins and Bad Juju. My schemes were Frame for Murder on Bad Juju, which was unannounced and Line in the Sand, which was announced. So, in the first two turns I ran Bad Juju up towards Lady J and boom, 3 VP in the bag! By turn 2, I had flipped 3 of the squatters rights markers and managed to protect 2 of them for the rest of the game, gaining another 4 VP. At the end of turn 2, James was looking like his battle plan was kill all of my stuff, which I was perfectly fine with, until he decided that he wanted VP as well. He’d been picking up VP by killing my minions with Justice, but then he got flipped 2 of the squatters markers and had killed enough of my stuff to stop me flipping them back. So the entire game came down to both of us taking Line in the Sand. By turn 3, I had 5 markers across the centre line, but hardly any models left to protect them, so James managed to destroy 3 of them and place his own in their place. This left him with 5 scheme markers on the centre line, me with 2. Mine were safe, he couldn’t get to them and remove them in the same turn. His, I knew exactly how I was going to get rid of them. To take swampfiends in a Gremlin Zoraida crew, you have to take Tarrot Reading, which 90% of the time does nothing in the game other than allow hiring of Bad Juju for no extra cost. However, there is a 2 action on there which allows you to move scheme markers. So with Zoraida, I walked in between two of his markers and pushed them off the centre line. I thought this had won me the game, he would have 7 VP to my 8, but then something happened I could not stop. James activated Judge and shot his own Death Marshal. With the first shot, he flipped red joker for defence, so could not kill the Marshal. As 2 Marshals needed to be killed to replace the 2 markers I moved, I thought this had me safe. So the Judge shot at the other Marshal and killed it. Then he activated one of the Death Marshals and shot at the third, which was engaged with the Voodoo doll. So he then flipped to hit the Marshal but failed to kill it. This meant the final action of the game was the Marshals second shot. He hit the Marshal instead of the voodoo doll and killed it, dropping a scheme marker on the centre line. This swung the game. James got 9 VP to my 8 and won the game with the final action. It was a fantastic game and got me all psyched for the rest of the tournament, giving me hope I could win my other 2, but that did not go quite to plan…

Game 2 was against Bruno, who’s Perdita crew is perdy (get it!). This was a great game for Bruno…  Again, I flipped for my master, and once again, Zoraida came up. The strategy was Turf war, and my schemes were Entourage and Breakthrough. My thought processes behind these was that I could launch Silurids up the flanks of the board and drop markers for Breakthrough, drop Bad Juju and a Warpig into the middle for Turf War and have Zoraida turn into a crow and jump across the board near the end to score my Entourage points. Well, this didn’t exactly go to plan. The first reason this didn’t work was a tactical error, I ran the warpig up the flank of the board to avoid getting shot by Perdita and Fransico. This meant I had to jump Zoraida into the middle of the board to try and gain points for Turf War. Now I thought that as she is difficult to hit I wouldn’t have much trouble keeping her alive for 1 turn until I could move her to somewhere safer, as the middle of the board was completely open. I underestimated the power of Perdita. She charged and used soulstones to avoid the negative flips to hit the shanany grannie (not a thing). Then with negative flips to wound, a moderate was flipped. Then with the second attack, she got red joker-ed. This kind of ruined things for me, and the cards were being particularly bad for me. Bruno to his credit was being very apologetic at my misfortune and was another great opponent, in a one sided game. So by the end of turn 2, I had no way of stopping Bruno, with him gaining all 10VP and me only getting 2 from Turf War. 

That poor result catapulted me down the tables and it was no surprise when my name was called out on the bottom table in the wooden spoon off! Now at this point, my only chance of getting a prize was to go for the wooden spoon, but I don’t like losing… This means that I was in a win win situation. If I lost, I’d get the wooden spoon, if I won, woohoo! So onto the game, playing the only ten thunders player at the event, Aron. Somehow, even on the bottom table, I couldn’t avoid Lynch filth! Well, Ten Thunders Lynch, so it was a very different experience to the dirty dirty Neverborn Lynch. For my master, I flipped again, but not wanting to use Zoraida again, I limited it to odd flip for Som’er, even for Ophilia, and a 6 was flipped, so out the Kin came! Now both me and Aron had never played the Stake A Claim strategy before, so we we’re learning on the job. Firstly, we both ran our crews forward into each other, well, past each other. I got 1 VP for dropping a claim marker at the end of turn 2, but that was the end of those points! Aron dropped loads them in the following turns so I didn’t get any more VPs for that! So I had to gain VPs from my strategies. I had 2 Bayou gremlins standing on markers for protect territory, and had distracted models for 1VP. So it came down to turn 5, Aron had 3VP for Stake a Claim, I had 1. Aron had 2VP for a strategy which I can’t remember what it was. I had 3 secure in protect territory due to the way the board was set out, and 1 for distract. This set us as even, so I had to get a VP for distract on the last turn. Going into the turn I had 2 models distracted, Lynch and an Illuminated. I had the illuminated pinned down by a bayou gremlin so it couldn’t un-distract itself. Lynch was another matter completely, with 3 VP he could escape Ophilia’s melee range and then un-distract himself. So I was waiting for as long as possible before activating Ophillia. To try and stop Ophilia pinning down Lynch, he through Yamaziko and a Torakage into her. Now both of us had forgotten 1 key point about distract, in that you can distract as many models as you like. So to win the game, all I had to do was activate Ophilia and distract Yamaziko to get the win. Aron took this very well, and the game could have gone either way, exactly like my first one, except this time it swung in my favour. It was another great game.

So in conclusion, it was a brilliant first event! Thanks to Joel for running it, all of my opponents for 3 great games and everyone who showed up for a friendly and all round brilliant atmosphere!