Masons coach finally equal to the task

Our monthly gaming day has been set as the final Saturday in the month. We meet at 8.30am and play through to lunch time. It is working out very well and leaves the rest of the day to do family stuff. Yesterday saw us back at the Guildball pitch and we were both looking forward to it very much. The Dark Templar had laid out his thoughts on his blog.

I had done some reading on my Masons and decided to take Brick for the first time. I dropped Tower. There is a lot written about Brick but I had figured out that his roll can be complementary to the overall team. I am playing him as a rumble strip. He sits in the middle of the board and can charge anything that comes in his 6" range. With 19 wounds he can be a pain for the opposition. I am not planning to give him influence and this will mean that I can stack it elsewhere. Flint and Harmony will be my runners and ball carriers. Honour and Mallet will be my beat sticks. Marbles will support in the middle of the board and cast Tooled Up on Mallet, adding plus one to his damage.

My plan was to stack Influence on Honour and Mallet and focus them on a single target to kill someone and get the player numbers working in my favour. I want to use Momentum to allow my guys to have the additional 4" dodge. This will increase my movement and make it hard to get to me. That was the basic plan.

So to the game.

It was fantastic. A proper dust up, a really great game that ebbed and flowed and had us breathless by the end.

We played Plots for the first time.

You deal 5 and pick 3 out of the five. I had Man Down, Knee Slide and Miraculous Recovery. Very handy especially against the Butchers.

I opted to receive the ball. This was a first but I figured starting with the ball would be a good thing for the Masons.  Brisket kicked off and the ball bounced very kindly to land in front of Harmony.

Harmony picked up the ball and then kicked it to Honour who kicked it to Mallet who kicked it Flint. This all generated lots of Momentum and gave me lots of 4" dodges. I was able to advance Mallet using Quick Time. Honour got stuck into Boar. Unfortunately the Butchers were wise to my tactics and managed to break line of sight so that Mallet could not double team Boar. As it was he was badly mauled. Mallet got stuck in to the rest of the Butchers team instead. My new dice were on fire. I am loving them.

The new tokens were brilliant too!! It is much easier to keep track of all the buffs etc.

Flint advanced up the right hand side of the field with ball.

The Butchers got to him and stripped the ball.Only for Flint to get the ball back and score. A great start. The Butchers were bloodied and we the Masons had scored. This felt like a very different game to those that we had played to date.

The Butchers recovered the ball.

They bunched together in the middle of the park to take advantage of over lapping pulse effects. They recovered their composure and began to do what they do best - dish out damage. They advanced the ball and quickly scored while taking out Honour, Harmony and Marbles. Ouch! I was able to use Miraculous Recovery to get Honour back into the game and try to defend against the score. To no avail. 10 - 4 to the Butchers.

However she was well positioned for the restart. I recovered the ball and ran down the right and kicked to Flint. I used Superior Strategy to allow Fint to immediately activate. He ran and used Where'd They Go and Super Shot to score. 10 - 8 before the Butchers could do anything about it. It was on a knife edge. Could the Masons get the ball back and score to win? Or would the Butchers finish off another Mason to claim the victory.

It was to be the Butchers day. They ganged up on Honour and took her out of the game. But what a game.

I have proved that the is much more to the Masons and the way to achieve this is to stack Influence. Brick works because he is not given any Influence. I am starting to understand how to use Influence to generate Momentum to give additional Movement. There is a lot to this game and each team has its own specific character. I think that the Masons are difficult to play because you have to think strategy and tactics and then use the Influence properly to deliver the plan. Bloody good fun though.

He shoots - he Sscoooorresss!

2016 and the start of some regular gaming. Hurray. Today it was Guild Ball. My Masons taking on the Dark Templars Butchers. Our first proper game with six a side teams, needing 12 victory points to claim the win.

Now I had given the game some thought. We had played a couple games with the Starter Box sets and learned a fair bit from that. We both agreed that this is a really good game to play and that each of the teams has its own distinct character. The players combinations and styles are also unique and the game dynamics are very well thought out.

Team selection.

My captain Honour is in, as the whole team revolves around her.
Next is Harmony. She is linked with Honour and can even use Honours stats in certain situations.
Marbles is in the line up. He is a cool mascot and can be great for the team.
Flint is my ball carrier and main Kicker so he is a must. Long distance kicking if Influence is used well.
Mallet is a solid player if a bit slow. He will be shoring up the middle of the park.
My final choice was the inclusion of Tower. I liked the way he could dish damage against Knocked Down players.

Tactics

I had a basic plan. I knew that the Butchers would want to take hold of the middle of the field and then lock the Masons into battle and beat them senseless. To counter this I planned to kick the ball wide to create space and then pass it a fair bit to generate Momentum and use the Give'n'Go and Pass'n'Move rules to allow characters an extra 4" Dodge. This had worked well in our starter games and with Flint on the board I should be able to really take advantage of this.

I planned to use Marbles to tie up  the Butchers ball carrier Brisket. Marbles has the Goad ability. This forces the named model to move towards Marbles all the time he is on the board. Also because Marbles has Loved Creature the Butchers will not want to kill him early. This gives the team big bonuses in the turn he dies. So move Marbles away from the play and lock Brisket out of the action.

Tower and Mallet will engage the Butchers in the middle of the park.

Honour, Harmony and Flint will form a flying squad and operate on the sidelines with a view to scoring 3 goals. Each worth 4 victory points.

The plan is to score early and then use Flint, Marbles, Honour and Harmony to Tackle. They have Tackle in their first damage slot and this will be important.

The main thing is to move and pass. Score early and try to get the ball back. Take advantage of the early rounds when I have all my guys on the board.

The Game

The Masons started the game by kicking off.

I lined up with my Kicker in the middle and then split Harmony and Honour. This gave me options to move the ball away from Brisket. I kicked diagonally and placed the ball just over the half way line. 4 dice needing a single 4+ roll. Fail! The ball scatters and ends up almost off the board.

The Dark Templar had included Shank in his line-up and I think the model is just spectacular. I love those flowing chains.

Brisket was lined up on the Butchers right, so would be the target for Marbles. Ox and Boar lined up in the middle with Boiler on the left.

The chase was on to pick up the ball. I actually managed to get Flint to the ball. He ran down the line with it and then kicked back to Harmony. 4 dice needing a single 4+, Fail! OMG! The plan had been to make two or three passes to give extra movement to Harmony and Honour but No.

The ball scatters and both teams decend on it. Ox comes through and finally gets hold of it. Love that model too and the DT has done a cool painting job on him.

It looked like I was in real trouble.

Marbles had done his job and was locking down Brisket and Princess on the left and Tower and Mallet were standing up to Boar in the middle.

I realised that I could hit Boar on a 2+ and planned to try and take him out. Mallet hit him with Knock Down. I had given Tower loads of Influence and he then got stuck into the prone Boar. I got close but couldn't quite kill him. I needed to have a third person there to guarantee success. I got soon close though.

I sent Honour after Ox to Tackle for the ball.

He countered a couple of times and so the ball exchanged hands. It was very dramatic and thankfully I had given her enough Influence to do the job. Finally she got the ball and passed it down the field to Flint who used Pass'n'Move to advance towards the goal.

Finally Flint uses Super Shot to gain Kick bonuses and takes his shot with 5 dice needing a 4+.

Success!! The Masons score. It's our first ever and quite dramatic! Yippee!

Now in reality I was being beaten to a pulp elsewhere on the board. All that messing at the beginning was costing me. I had been 6-0 down but this score got me back to 6-4.

In Guild Ball the ball bounces straight back into play. It bounced out to the far wing so I used Run the Length to advance Flint in its direction.

The problem for the Masons was that we were losing players. This then gave numerical advantage to the Butchers and additional dice rolling advantages. We needed to retrieve the ball quickly and score again to have any hope of victory.

Both Marbles and Flint have Tackle in the first damage columns. I needed to use this. Marbles continued to Goad Brisket so she couldn't escape with the ball and this gave Flint the chance to get close and Tackle the ball back.



Shank was close and he stole in back for the Butchers. He hit Flint hard and did a lot of Damage allowing him to Wrap. He Tackled on the first damage and Flint used Close Control to hold on to the ball but Shank Tackled again on the Wrap and then stole away.



Honour went down to Ox. Marbles went down and then in the Maintenance phase Flint finally went down to Poison.

Butchers win 12 - 4.

Summary

We love the game. This one was good fun. It was unfortunate that I fumbled the ball so much in the beginning but once I finally got hold of it and generated Momentum I started to shine.

It is clear that each character has its own role and getting them doing the things that they are good at is vital to having success. We learned a lot in this our first proper game and it was great to see some of the new characters in action.

We still have a lot to learn and I know I will enjoy the journey.

Assembling the team

Well the postman has been and as a result I finally have a Guild Ball team. All members of the Masons are now present and correct.

I have stepped away from the Games Workshop glue and am trying something different. So these are the first models that I have not pinned in quite some time and it will be interesting to see if they will be playable.

The new models are Brick (the big boy at the back), Marbles (the furry guy at the front), Chisel who is a season 2 addition (behind Marbles and looking particularly lovely), Flint (back left) and finally Tower (holding a very nice looking hammer).

So there will be some painting to do, rules to be read and tactics to be learned. All highly exciting!