Jonah's ToMB Month 1 - Some more Ropes

As I said in my original post for ToMB I am cheating a little bit as I am wanting to learn Guild as a faction rather than just focusing on one Master.  As such I've got a couple more games in but I've switched it up and used Perdita for both of them.  First was a game of Headhunter against a Lucius crew and second a game of Extraction against a Collodi crew.  These were both really good learning games as both my opponents are new to their crews (I think I was only the 3rd/4th game for Lucius and maybe only 2nd for Collodi) and playing the new Gaining Ground strats which none of my gaming group have much experience of (it was my first time playing either of these strats).  I managed to pull out victories in both of them (8-6 against Lucius and 9-6 against Collodi).  I had pretty similar plans for both the games which was to target all the minions to reduce the effectiveness of the Masters.  In the Lucius game I made the decision to give up easy Head markers so that by killing off the minions I could stop him scoring ALiTS and in the Collodi game I also took MTS.  In the Collodi game my opponent thought I had taken Assassinate so spent the last turn running away with Collodi when in fact I'd taken Take Prisoner against his Beckoner.  This was partly a risk because Beckoner's tend to hang back but she was also the less destructive part of his crew and wasn't a priority target like Collodi's puppets.  Nevertheless I got quite lucky as I engaged her with Perdita in the final turn (killing a Stitched Together who would have meant me only getting 2VPs) then my opponent focused to Lure the Judge away from the Extraction marker which stopped me scoring for that turn which would have made the game a 6-6 draw had I taken Assassinate.  Fortunately she pushed towards my Brutal Effigy who had yet to activate and ran over to engage her.

My crews for both games were pretty similar.  I took Perdita, Francisco, Nino, Pathfinder, Rifleman, Enslaved Nephilim, Papa Loco, Papa's Taxi (Death Marshal) in the game against Lucius.  Nino got to use Hair Trigger first turn against an opposing Rifleman but then the second Rifleman my opponent had took a double focused shot courtesy of Lucas and one-shotted him for the cheek of killing his mate!  Never really got Papa going  as once the DM let him out he just picked up a couple of Heads!

Second crew was Perdita, Francisco, Judge, 2 x Riflemen, Enslaved Nephilim, Brutal Effigy, Pathfinder.  Judge didn't do a lot but hang around a lot though he did go a bit mental on an Arcane Effigy which burnt a lot of cards (not many from my hand though) but scored a VP for MTS which was worth it.  I like the Judge though as he seems very difficult to put down (see comments below on Francisco), has some good utility with being able to make other take Ml attacks and his own attacks can be devastating if you have the cards/SS.  He'll definitely be getting more of a run out.

Things I'm learning:

I find Guild quite slow.  This means I've yet to take Breakthrough or Entourage which are schemes I used to find easy to score well from with my Resurrectionists.  I think this is partly because I've not used things like Hunters or Watchers yet and a Hoffman box is probably going to be my next purchase (I've also not played McMourning as Guild or McCabe yet who are both quite manouverable crews that suit those schemes better IMHO).

Related to point one I find Perdita and friends a lot more manoeuvrable than Sonnia.  The Nephilim plus Perdita's own ability to push as an ability and Francisco's upgrade to pull people around with him too means her crew can move around to where they want much more easily than I found with Sonnia.  This is something that I need to get used to as I want to play Sonnia as I do enjoy using her.

Francisco is not invulnerable!  From reading things about him and looking at his card(s) he seems pretty durable but  even with HtK the fact he is Df5 and Wd8 means he goes down pretty easily.  I keep putting in him situations to fight things or hold things up and as a result he gets put down pretty quickly.  He has gone down to McTavish/Gator, Hoffman, Dashal and a Rifleman and Collodi meaning he's met his demise in every game, sometimes quite early too.  He's a solid piece and definitely worth his SS but I need to be more cautious with him and pick his fights.  See also Nino and the need to protect him.