James Wilson Codes

This is the first game in a while that I've taken an Urnbearer. They are one of my favourite sculpts, but I was fed up with them getting killed. I'm glad I did take her! I switched out the Leech King from my usual list to make space, so I had an extra couple of soulstones.

My plan for the game was to use Kastore's Visceral Rampage to drag models into the Urnbearer's Pools Of Blood aura, healing Kastore and damaging them. It kind of worked, but not like how I imagined.

The Game

I thought this game had gone terribly at first! I did my practiced Kastore 2 unpack, moved him out of Corner into the middle of the board... Mei Feng and the rest of his crew were nowhere to be seen! He ended up double walking then charging. He ended up doing 2 damage to the Mechanical Rider. He also failed to score Death Beds on turn 2 because I didn't leave him within 1 of a Metal Gamin and I forgot I needed to be there in order to pulse out damage from the Urnbearer's Down To The Last Drop. Then the Mechanical Rider rescued the Metal Gamin with Ride With Me at the start of turn 3.

I think it's the scary reputation that Kastore 2 has. He seems to either:

• rampage round the board murderously
• be killed by a concerted effort of enemy models
• be kind of lost, all on his own because he's being avoided

This game, it was mainly the latter...

It did mean I didn't have any trouble dropping my bombs, and I managed to kill the Metal Gamin unactivated turn 3, which was good, although unfortunately I was going to Visceral Rampage him back to the Death Beds friendly location, but on 1 Health, it would have killed him.

It it just kind of felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. Mei Feng killed my Cavern Nephilim (often an MVP for me) and Barbaros was kind of stuck in the middle. I was really regretting taking Sweating Bullets at this point because Greg only had one eligible model! He didn't take henchman - he had enforcers with the Soulstone Cache upgrade! So I had to get Mei Feng into the centre of the board and engaging him, and keep her there till the end of turn.

I managed it - I'd forgotten how good a combination Barbaros and the Urnbearer can be. To The Last Drop can ping out 2 damage - one from itself and one from Black Blood, which is great as a tactical action against models with Armour. Also, the Black Blood gives the Urnbearer Shielded, helping keep her alive for longer! But the Hazardous aura was amazing. However, to get Mei into the trap, I had to use 2 Lures from the Urnbearer and 2 Bring Its from Barbaros. The final Bring It, Mei Feng Black Jokered her generated melee attack, and I cheated in an 11 of Crows to declare the Cage Fighter trigger. Barbaros then hit Mei, and used Push Aside to move her (ping damage from Pools of Blood) into a Gremlin Eating Plant (height 3 hazardous terrain)

I wish I'd taken a picture, but she was kind of cut off from her crew, and more importantly, engaged by a Barbaros who was within 6 inches of the centre so I could score Sweating Bullets.

Greg brought in Neil Henry to keep Mei alive, which worked, but his actions (and he got more later courtesy of the Mechanical Rider chipped away at his health. However, I still had Death Beds to score - and he managed to kill the Gwisin that was protecting the Urnbearer unactivated - I'd planned to drop the Scheme with it.

Kastore to the rescue! This was turn 4, and Ed had asked us to wrap up in 15 mins as the shop was closing. It was the first time I'd taken The Whisper upgrade and I was finding it very hard to plan my activation knowing what the cards were. I had an 8, the Red Joker, and the Black Joker. So something was going to fail! In the end, I used the Black Joker for BroodMaster's Blade, which failed, walked, walked, used Pools of Blood to overheal and move 2 inches, and interact, leaving the Red Joker topdecked for the Urnbearer to kill Neil Henry.

Meanwhile, Greg had scored 3 Plant Explosives, and was about to get Information Overload - he thought he had it, but with Kastore's extra Scheme marker he needed one more.

At this point, it was 5-3. We had to talk out turn 5, but I'm confident I scored 8. Greg's score was harder to work out - he could have got an extra bomb point, if he'd won first activation and escaped with Mei Feng, but she was also his main chance of scoring Death Beds (he did say he'd forgotten to score the first point earlier, so he might have got 2 more points if he did!) and I would have been prepared to cheat initiative and off her first activation as she was very nearly dead. Luckily with ping damage it's harder to stop accidentally killing a model by flipping a red joker and not being able to cheat down. It finished as 8 points to me, quite confidently and probably a between 3-5 for Greg, depending on how Turn 5 would have turned out.
I was very happy with the result, considering how many mistakes (and occasional bad flips) I made - felt slightly better than I deserved, in some respects.

Takeaways

Learn your models

Learning the models is definitely helping my game! I was still reading cards, but it wasn't for things like ranges, stats or target numbers, and that has freed up some headspace for me to concentrate on things like 'how on earth do I score this scheme I've just picked' and 'why did I not leave space for Gwyll to get through?'

If I'd followed this advice for upgrades then I would have remembered to draw a card from The Whisper when Katore killed the Metal Gamin.

Hazardous terrain is great

I've underused Hazardous before - 1 damage really adds up especially if they are engaged and can't easily move.

Ping damage is great

This is the first game where it's really helped me - maybe it's time to try Kastore, Awakened again🤔

Card Control is important

The Whisper was great, but it's going to need me to think about:

• The cards in my hand
• Focus
• The top 3 cards
• What I want to achieve, and what can fail

because you HAVE to flip the cards, and if you mess it up, it will be painful.

But, these are all things I should be thinking about anyway, so it should improve my game!