020 - Battle Report x 2 Seamus vs Leveticus/Pandora

I'm afraid to say my ranking in the local league took a nosedive this week after a run of bad games. Where I was in 4th place last week I'm now in last place (11th). In our league, rankings are calculated on a rolling 3 week interval, so a few bad results can have a big effect on your standing.

Seamus vs Leveticus
I first played against Craig's Leveticus crew, which would be my first game against the Steampunk Necromancer.

Craig brought Levi, Alyce, 4 Steampunk Abominations and 3 Necropunks, while I had Seamus, Copycat Killer, Sybelle, 2 Belles, Hanged, Onryo and Punk Zombie. My strategy was Slaughter and Craig was playing for Destroy the Evidence. In the early stages of the game I was incredibly wary of most of his models as I couldn't be sure what tricks they were going to pull against me, and this meant I struggled to be pro-active in my tactics.

Levi took the occasional pot shot with his spells to wear down my Belles, while the Steampunk Abominations rushed down the centre-table and combined into a Desolation Engine. Although the Engine did kill Madame Sybelle, the combined efforts of the rest of my crew managed to put it down and score me an early lead on Slaughter. I couldn't keep up the momentum though, and when Rusty Alyce came forwards later in the game to start sniping my models (killing 3 minions including a headshot against my Hanged..! *sob*), my forces became too depleted to be able to fight back.

I did almost manage to deprive Craig of his last Evidence marker, when my Onyro brought down the Necropunk that Craig was relying on, but in the end Leveticus had two whole Turns to finish off the Onryo and claim full VPs, whereas I'd failed to score any!

I did enjoy the game though, and learned a lot about how Leveticus works. His mechanics are quite unusual on paper, but I don't think they affect how you should play against him too much. One thing I did come up against was his ability to deny me my Corpse Counters. His models didn't leave any, and often mine didn't either when they were killed by particular spells. At one point I had a hand full of high crows ready to summon some Belles, and Levi just summoned a new Steampunk Abomination before I had chance.

Seamus vs Pandora

This was another complete drubbing for me, although I discovered afterwards that this was mainly because Adam, who was bringing his Pandora crew out of retirement, had slightly abused Pandora's "Project Emotions" ability.

My crew was Seamus, Sybelle, 3 Belles, Hanged, Grave Spirit, Onryo, Punk Zombie, and Adam had brought Pandora, Poltergeist, Baby Kade, Doppelganger, 2 Insidious Madness and 2 Stitched Together. Despite having Pandora myself this was the first time I'd faced her, and it was interesting for me to see a Pandora list played without Sorrows. At first it seemed that Adam would be using the Insidious Madness in base contact with her as replacements for Sorrows, but as he got closer they separated and Pandora moved around using different Woes as cover each turn.

The Strategy was shared Claim Jump. I started off well by wounding one of the Stitched Together and killing Kade on one flank, and taking out one of the Madnesses in the center. This unfortunately left many of my models bunched together and Adam used this opportunity to cast Project Emotions (with Mental Anguish trigger) with a high enough casting total that Seamus, Sybelle and a Belle were all caught under the template and forced to flee from one action. (I've since checked and found that the trigger should only be applied to the target, so Adam shouldn't have been able to do this! Ah well... we live and learn)

From Turn 4 onwards I was on the back foot, with Pandora well established in the center of the board and half my crew too far away to affect anything before the end of the game.

I'd also kept a Belle safely back in my deployment zone when I realised that Adam had taken Kidnap as one of his schemes. Unfortunately I'd mis-judged which 3 models he had chosen and this Belle was unable to contribute to the game at all. Luckily the other Belle (the scared away one) was the last model left for his scheme and she survived til the end due to having legged it across the board, so he was only able to score 1VP for Kidnap.

The final result though was 7-1 which, although not as bad as against Leveticus, meant that I'd lost my most recent 3 games and fell to the bottom of the league table.

The only way is up!