Goblins and Dwarvses and Orcs, oh MY!

[Jivatma]

a day or so behind....

Cave Goblins (me) vs Vanguard

Being the defensive player my roommate is and figuring the Vanguards as a defensive faction, he opted to go second. Moving forward and Sly'ing toa froward position leaves a very big beefy Sneeks on the front line with only 1-2 incoming dice. With no attacks I pass the turn and he takes a 1-dice swing. (hit) Oh well. Sneeks is a beast! Goblin horde-attack and Goblin Invincibilty ensures another turn of destruction and now i'm up 2 magic His turn are misses and my turn comes around to another goblin horde-attack and more kills. Slying away for safety and waiting a turn for my eater ends up hurting as he finally manages some kills. Its well worth the losses though as Eater seems to be PERFECT against Vanguards. Eater and a Goblin Rage comes out and dice get rolled on walls. With his units easily protected, I can't help but cringe as 2 more archers hit the field for a cluster of 3 that wedges down the center of my troops giving 3 dice on Sneeks, 2 on a Berserker. Pressured by a berserker deep in enemy territory, one of the archers can't attack but my Sneeks takes another 1 damage (phew!). Out comes mook and let the carnage commence.Sadly even with Taskmaster, my Sneeks isn't able to kill the middle archer, but my eater and Mook manage their kills. With the archer still alive and a lot of magic, I'm forced to sly away to safety, all of which are still dangerous spots. A few bad moves by my opponent leaves me another common enemy unit to nom as my mook and eater pound away at walls. Before I can make too much headway on the walls out comes Kalon sneaking down the edge of the map to put pressure on my Sneeks and his sole slinger guard. Hlariously enough I draw 2 walls to box him in and effectively remove him from the game. With Kalon mazed in between 4 walls, its just a matter of time before Blarf, Mook, Sneeks and a fighter/berserker can finish off his priest/archer line. Another bad move by my opponent gives me a chance for the kill, 4 Mook-empowered dice bring down a wall, and 1 mook-empowered slinger finishes the job. hoo-rah 50% chance.

---------------------------------------------

Cave Goblins (me) vs. Vanguards

Rematch City! Upset by the loss, and mostly bitter (with good spirits) about the amazing play that took kalon out of the game, my roomie wants a rematch. Dice come out again and he opts to go 2nd again! Move forward and Sly says the goblin overlord, and once again, Sneeks is in amazing board position and has no real incoming threat. This game i try a slightly different tactic, deciding to summon more on Berserkers then 0-cost fighters that I couldn't always get into position. The game plays itself out very similar to the first game, except I manage to get 2 Berserkers wedged between 2 of his walls and surrounded by his units for some monster horde-attack-infused mayhem. Units die left and right and the walls take a beating, yet Kalon comes out with only 3 wound markers $_$. Another rage and sacrificing my eater proves all I need left to take out the mighty Lightbringer with the help of Mook. Blarf comes out super late, and takes a beating from 2 holy judgemented priests, but I manage to dodge some more dice and with Blarf and 2 fighters + horde-attack, Archangel goes down the turn it was summoned. With Mook still at full life, and my Sneeks and Blarf down to dangerously low HP, its a very tricky task to squeeze past his walls right next to his last archer line and Sera and a priest. Mook is my hero and 44% is nothing as he kills not 1 priest, not 1 archer, but 1 priest, 1 archer AND a 1/2 life sniping Rachel loveguard without so much as a damage to show from all of it. After killing his line, its only Sera and an archer left and I manage to finally move all my units in for the kill set-up. Once again Mook manages to kill off the Priest, and with Sera no where to run, Mook moves in to Taskmaster Sneeks for the sigh of victory and relief. Overall both games were VERY close and once again Vanguards prove they are not an easy deck to learn, nor to play.

------------------------------------

Fallen Kingdom (me) vs Tundra Orcs

Bored and in the mood for one more, my roomy decides he wants to be the underdog and try his first hand at facing the Fallen Kingdom. Sadly it is a very brutal and one-sided match as I introduce to him the pain and sufering it is to be on this combo-heavy deck. From the little Raise Dead trick to pay for reapers/warriors with only 1 magic To forced summons, and even a very nice combo I figured out, i can jut see the depression on his face the entire game. he does give me a run for my money early game as my units get dumped into the magic pile and my event cards are more or less left useless as I cannot find my champions. At one point I dark sacrificed a unit just so I could magic Drain. A good set-up on his part give his shammy a shot at my summoner and sadly enough for me he hits and renders one of my forced summons useless. With Ragnor-catty-corner to my summoner however, I'm sorely pressed, but out comes Elut-bal to save my life. As Elut-bal reinforces my Summoner, My zombie warriors make quick work of his fighters giving me more and more zombies. Sadly enough he has no problem killing them with shamans and i lose more of my "replinishable" units to his magic/discard pile. Next turn yields a forced summon for Skhull and a LotD + Dark Sacrifce gives me exactly what I need to heal my Elut-bal and begin closing in on Blagog. One-turn kills are amazing as another LotD + DS heals my Skhull and lets me chase down Grognak. Dice really really seem to be agaisnt my poor roommate as He only manages 2/2 shaman and 2/4 grognak dice on Skhull (leaving him with only 1 life left). With Dragos on the field by now and His summoner down to 4 life, I move in slowly for the kill frowning in blissful depression as Grognak misses 4/4 dices on my Elut-Bal.

-----------------------------------------------

Guild Dwarves (me) vs Vanguards

A new day, a new game, right? in between classes I manage to squeeze in a game that pits me against the ever-improving roommate's Vanguards. I picked Dwarves Since I hadn't gotten to play them in a long time and out come the defenders. He opts to go first this time and moves up to slow my forward momentum and begins pinging at my units. The board set-up is perfect and my draw is godly. My first draw yields Defender, Reinforce, Engineer, Heroic-feat, Besiege the walls. out comes the defender + engineer and with the way the movements happen, His wall is blocked from summoning. 5 Dice and 1 dice on his wall yields 5 hits leaving me with excellent position to finish off his wall on the 3rd turn. Almost as a slap in the face, he summons his 2nd wall. Turns out it was bad placement as now i have an engineer within range of the new wall. He can't get to my Engineers with the Defenders in the way and with Besiege the walls and my engineers, I manage to kill 1 wall and bring the other down to 3 remaining life. He has a very good turn killing both of my engineers and a Defender, but its not enough as my draw remains so "pro" - A spearman + Magic Drain + besiege the walls + Gror + wall. His last out comes a spearman, his last walls falls, and then he gets magic drained as i begin to mop up his knights and priests. My next turn yields Gror and Thorkur and I opt for Gror's massive AoE. Moving up yields only 1 dice. Sadly it Gives Gror a severe disadvantage as he is surrounded with priests and Sera and Whittled away to 1 life left. Heroic-Feat + Gror does 3 more damage and rather then run, my opponent goes for the kill. Its fruitless though as Thorkur comes out to finish the job. Wall destruction at its finest

[Jivatma]

Tundra Orcs (me) vs Vanguards

This is without a doubt one of the worst games I've had. and not really due to bad playing. I think I did everything right in the situation. I just could not roll dice. My smashers would roll the average 1 hit, My grognak would just about always roll 3-4 hits, My blagog however was lucky to do 2 hits, and My shamans NEVER worked. I killed 1 thing with a shaman the entire game and always rolled a 1 or 2 with them. It was horrible. Overall With the defensive nature of my roommate, he stayed back and defended and we stayed at mid-field the entire game. probably the worst/best play of my side of the game was a ice wall + reinforce.

on the 2nd turn of the game, I drew reinforcement, ice wall, smasher, blagog, freeze. Sera was on the 3rd row of the field flanked on 2/4 sides by protectors. I opted to "waste" my reinforcement on my single Smasher (since i wanted to save magic for Blagog) and freeze Sera in teh same turn (since my opponent only had 1 magic). Dice come out and its an amazing play, but i can only get 1 hit. Sadly in response My opponent 'wastes' a Summoning surge for 1 magic and unfreezes sera in order to retreat her. After this I could never capitalize even though i haad 3 more rolls on her. Eventually I had to move into a position that gave my opponent 6 dice on Grognak (4 of which needed to be hits) Sadly he got the hits and ended the game. But with no magic on his side of the field and 2 freezes in my hand I was in an equal position of freezing his archangel + kalon and rolling 7 dice on Sera (5 of which needed to be hits). I think had I gotten lucky this would have been a much much more interesting "chase"