James Wilson Codes

This was a match with much anticipation! The inaugural Lord of the Flames match, with an actual trophy!

I was meant to play against Dan during the last Escalation league at Powder Monkey Gaming, but he had been ill, and we’d been trying to rearrange since then.

We’d floated the idea of me playing Reva and him playing Kaeris, whom he’d really been enjoying recently. This is widely regarded as a bad matchup, as both masters rely heavily on Pyre Markers and the Burning condition, but we decided to do it anyway, for fun. And it was fun! There was an added frisson of excitement, because Dan decided to fund a trophy! An actual physical trophy.

Looking into this matchup, I really wasn’t sure how to play it. I have Reva 2 (which Dan very kindly gave me his spare, and for which I am very grateful!), but it would be her first outing, so I wanted to stick with the original.

The problem is that Kaeris 1 (and how I want to call her KRS-One every time I say it out loud or in my head) makes Pyre markers give out Injured to my models. Given that Reva and much of her keyword need to be in a Pyre while taking actions, in order to build up the Burning condition so she can use Channeled Flame to get positive flips and Embrace the Flame to heal, this was a worry - I felt like I’d just be killed. I knew Dan was a fan of the Boilermaker, who looked like a scary beater.

My original plan was to use the Dead Rider to kidnap Kaeris with the Reap trigger on his Scythe attack and then dogpile her to take her down and stop the Injured - but after discussion with friends, and looking at the card, she’d be able to use the Heatwave trigger on Up We Go! to push everyone away and escape.

So I came up with a new plan.

Apart from Reva herself, every model in the crew has a demise ability that stops them from being permanently killed. I was also itching to try the Dapperlings from the Resurrectionist Starter Box. However, I felt that THREE Lampads would be sufficiently Burny for the theme of the match. I also thought that the Grave Golem would be good for yeeting Corpse Candles around with Hurl Corpse. My plan was to not engage, concentrate on scoring points, use Reva as a Healer, and ideally not get killed due to the Demise abilities.

I'm also a little sad that while trying to get organised and drop my models off the day before so that I could just bring myself after work - I forgot the Grave Golem! So please imagine the Grave Golem any time you see Old Hob in the pictures!

So Schemewise, I wanted to avoid any killy ones. I usually take Death Beds with Reva as there’s a good chance they’ll be near a Pyre, and she usually kills something. However, this time I went for Espionage, reasoning that I had more Scheming opportunities with the Dapperlings due to Creep Along (shout out to Jamie Astbury and his ‘interact, move, interact in one activation’ philosophy) and Sweating Bullets, picking the Grave Golem. My thinking here was that if he gets killed, he gets buried and healed - and if he unburies next to a Corpse Marker, he could hopefully do it somewhere he’s engaging a Master or Henchman.

Then it was on! With Wedge, Dan was able to immediately Create Pyre Markers near me and push them towards me, and he did so. I didn’t have the option of using Blasphemous Ritual to pulse out Focused (but if I wasn’t aiming to kill, this was less of a big deal), but I pushed the Corpse Candles forward (Hurling one of them with the Grave Golem) and Dan started killing them. This wasn’t too much of a problem - Reva can summon one back at the start of her activation, and it at least put another Pyre on the Board. He was cagey with Kaeris, not leaving her anywhere she would be vulnerable. I made a mistake early on in that I moved two of my Lampads towards my left flank, having to go through a number of Pyre Markers, which gave them enough Injured to have zero Defence! Dan clearly saw that, and resisted any of my efforts to push Markers back, or create new ones.

Dan also used his models well to take burning away from the Lampads - which meant that I couldn’t use Flaming Body to reduce damage - and away from a Pyre Marker, that meant that I had a Df 4 model looking very squishy.

Somehow they managed to survive! Once I could get at least one Pyre over there, I became much more relaxed. Plus their Hovering Flame quick action is great for escaping engagement - I used this a lot in this game.

It’s interesting that playing a matchup many people say would not be fun exposed some interesting minigames and caused me to really think a lot about things.

For example, I wanted Burning on the Lampads, and Pyres near the Lampads, but I didn’t want Burning on his models because he could do beneficial stuff with it, and I didn’t want any of my models to be in Pyres because it gave me Injured - but after a while, I reasoned that I didn’t care about Injured so much. Reva was my only model with Df 5. Everything else was Df 4 (or 2 for the totems) and that’s usually a low enough stat that people can force through attacks with, so it actually didn’t have the ‘target on back’ that multiple levels of Injured usually would have.

Also, there were fewer Pyre Markers out than people in our meta would have expected - because it made sense to remove them - either summoning Corpse Candles or through other abilities if they were helping your opponent. Normally, I would used a Corpse Marker instead of a Pyre Marker to summon a Corpse Candle, but when Dan could push them through Reva and give her Injured, that changed the game slightly.

Also, the Dapperlings had a good start. They both dropped a Scheme Marker in my Deployment Zone on Turn 1 before heading to the flanks. Then, they just kind of wandered around, being very difficult to put down. Hard to Wound, Regeneration +1, and Demise(Eternal) do a lot for them. They would need four hits from a Min 2 beater in a single Turn, but the good news is that from how Demise(Eternal) works, they still need four hits from a Min 3 beater! Plus they can push out of engagement, and Heal 1 at the start of their turn. I’m very impressed.

Amusingly, both Dan and I got our map lines confused - we both thought the centreline was the edge of the enemy deployment zone, and dropped Schemes there, hoping to score Espionage! I managed to score Raid the Vaults in Turn 2 when Dan didn’t, but neither of us scored any Schemes.

Turn 3 got really interesting. I realised that Reva’s Embrace The Flame healing action was super useful here. While it can only Heal 3, it can reduce the value of the Burning Condition by any amount on any models within range. This includes Enemy models. This was something I had not realised up to this point and actually opened up a lot of play - I could strip the burning from Fire Golem, to stop him from using Flaming Body and Draw Off Flame and use it to heal my people, repeating it on a Mask Trigger.

Reva didn’t do many attacks, but Dan was (rightly) wary of her Ethereal Reaping and was staying away from the few Corpse Markers that were scattered about. She did, however, manage to get off one of my favourite combos, The Unquiet Dead with Perdition’s Flame trigger. This was at the start of Turn 3 and rinsed Dan’s hand. He wanted to keep the Eternal Flame alive, and cheated cards in to do it. Later, a Dapperling used Spore Spurt on the Firestarter (who had been a right pain, flying around the board and making himself Fast) to make Dan discard his final card (a 12!) which definitely put a thorn in the side of his activities. He did use Kaeris to kill Reva in Turn 3, which was definitely a blow.

I planted the Grave Golem near the centre, willing any Master or Henchman to come and engage him, but they studiously avoided him. I was sad because I forgot my Grave Golem proxy model, and had to use Old Hob instead, whom I have taken a lot more. However, he used his time to drop Scheme Markers on the centre line for Espionage, which was not time wasted.

However, Dan realised that the Fire Golem’s Flame Tornado action with the Burnt to a Crisp trigger meant that he could carefully (with some assistance from the lovely Ed Grace, proprietor of Powder Monkey) place a shockwave and remove both of them. This caused some wailing and gnashing of teeth. However, he moved up and placed a Scheme Marker under himself, so I could still score it at the end of Turn 3.

And Turn 3 was all we had! I started later than usual as I was on my commute home, and we’d spent so long chatting, discussing rules, and working out how the different interactions worked that we had to stop. At this point I realised I had not moved the Grave Golem in to control a Strategy Marker - partly because we were trying to wrap it up quickly.

However, a Lampad that was engaged at the back left, after some measuring, saved the day - he could use Hovering Flame to move then double-walk across the board to get to the other backline one, which was worth two, and allowed me to score Raid The Vaults on Turn 3.

The Dapperling had managed to make the Firestarter Slow on Turn 2 (lucky flips), and while he used Light Under Their Feet to push it away - it could use its activation to walk back to contest the Strategy Marker, while the other one contested the Strategy Marker in my Deployment Zone.

This meant that at the end of Turn 3, I had managed to win 4-0. While it was a shame that no viable model for the first point of Sweating Bullets came near the centre it did mean that I scored the second point of it almost for free!

However, it should be said: Dan had just killed my Master - Turns 4 and 5 would have been a lot harder for me to operate as I'd lost my healer, and 3 actions per turn.

Learnings for me:

• I can be adventurous to play a different list with the same master
• Sometimes you don't have to 'kill a couple of models to get an advantage' to win

This result means that I'm the (current, at time of writing) holder of the Lord of the Flames trophy!

It's currently sat near the till in Powder Monkey and while the rules haven't been explicitly defined anywhere, the understanding is thus:

• it stays in the shop with a post it note of the current holder
• it belongs with the last person to win it
• to win it, you have to challenge me to a matchup where we both play Burning/Pyre-based masters and win

the generally accepted masters are:

• Reva
• Sonnia
• Kaeris
• Sandeep 2
• Ulix 2