Two Games of Two

I ran out of interesting titles for articles long ago.  Perhaps even that is giving myself too much credit, since it makes the grand assumption that the titles of my previous articles are in any way interesting.  However I did play some games, so that's what I'm here to talk about.

Band rehearsal on Wednesday was cancelled, so I took my ever-growing box of Strange Aeons-related lead, resin and plastic down to Trilogy in hopes of finding someone to play a game with.  Sebastien was kind enough to stick around even though he had worked in the shop all day, so we sat down to create him a Theshold list.  Uncle Mike made some of his hand painted miniatures available for sale at the shop a few weeks back, and Seb had picked up a trio of guys who would serve as his first agents.  I helped him kit them out then we rolled up a scenario, set up a board and were off.

The layout of the board was quite interesting, resulting in a long partially-ruined building running right down the middle. Playing as the Lurkers I ran my lone fishman up the left side of the board and the cult leader and .22-wielding minions up the right.  The agents took cover in the building.  Rather than putting my unarmed cultists in a close combat situation I elected to move the fishman up.

As he rounded the corner the alert agent fired off a shot, but missed and coming face to face with the unnatural horror fell prone to the ground and was quickly cut down.  We did miss rolling for resolve of an agent here, who would have been close enough to require it.  Some more conflict inside the building ensued, resulting in the death of another agent and the fishman.

The Threshold character retreated back through the building, forcing the cultists to pursue him.  As he came around the left (west side of the building) he was caught out in the open by cultist gun fire.  Unable, or choosing not to retreat this resulted in a firefight lasting several rounds.  Another cultist fell and once again we forgot to roll resolve; we only remembered about this rule after the game ended.  Being outgunned resulted in the character eventually being taken out...and ultimately dying on the injury table.

Only a single game played and the list has to disband.  Wow...and ouch.  I felt bad, but at least I didn't roll the result on the injury table.  That would have...wait for it...added insult to injury.  Ba-bum-bump!

For our second game we switched roles, this time with me playing my 18BP Threshold list.  Our scenario roll resulted in Lurker choice, and Sebastien chose "All Dead Things" (I think).  This was a 1-map piece scenario with D3+3 grave markers which the lurkers were to try to desecrate.  Seb set up the table and the markers and I chose a table edge to start out.

Seb's cultists were bolstered by a fishman and a single zombie.  I moved my agents into better positions near several of the grave markers with a good view of the field.  The fishman sprinted off and quickly destroyed one of the grave markers as I foolishly spread my ranks too thin to make use of Loamy's lieutenant ability.  This meant that Arthur was alert for a large part of the game, but also was mostly useless.

As the fishman made his way towards another marker the other Lurkers moved forward on the other side where they had good cover.  My character Carl heroically jumped up to higher ground and started firing into the cultists as they tried to make it past.  James (our brave civilian) took up a position farther back in hopes of stopping anyone should they make it past Carl.

Loamy and Elizabeth were able to gun down the fishman while Arthur looked on with mild interest.  The cultists were able to get past Carl but the leader was slowed down by ricocheting shotgun fire.  James took some shots at the cultists rounding the rocky outcropping and was able to kill one of them.  However due to his mental instability from previous, he crumpled to the ground face up.

Seeing his distress Elizabeth and Loamy started back to help and Carl tracked the cult leader from his high vantage point, ignoring the slow moving zombie following behind.  As the agents gathered together James went down badly, but the cultists were caught in a hail of fire. With no one to command the shambling zombie, it slowly lurched forward as bullets tore it apart, returning the hapless undead corpse back to true death.

Instead of searching for map pieces the scenario allowed to roll for scrolls and ancient tomes.  With four survivors I rolled four dice and had great success: 3 scrolls and an ancient tome!  To represent the ancient tome thematically (and since the model for Arthur is carrying a book) I purchased him a decrease on his resolve stat, and a Holy Book.  My list now weighs in at a substantial 21 points.  I'm hoping that Arthur can survive a game or two so that he can start translating some of those lovely parchments.

On Thursday our VS group was almost a no-show with it being only Scott and I.  We played two games, the first being my Revenge Squad against his Inhumans.  With my board advantage and several copies of "Knowledge is Power" I stopped him from recovering several characters, thus almost entirely stopping from getting a working engine going.  He returned the favour in our second game where he played his Sentinel Robots against my Weapon-X weenie deck.  Flipping a copy of "Total Anarchy" on me meant I could attack and stun his robots, but not maintain any character advantage.  So with a victory each we called it a draw and parted ways friends...at least until next time!