King of NOVA - Round 2

Yesterday I outlined what I could recall of my round 1 game during the King of NOVA tournament last weekend. I had a great game against Nayte, a fantastic player from Victory Comics. While it was not on my mind at the start of the day, I realize after the tournament that my win vs Nayte was one contributing game to the Best store in VA prize, as it was a game not within the same store. Several of the Huzzah Players ended up getting matched against each other through the day due to general placings, which had a number of our games not count toward the overall Best Store rankings. By the same token, Victory also had a lot of thier players playing each other, so it likely balanced out.

So, I was jumping into round 2 of the tournament on a win but feeling a little off due to the end of round discussion. I was happy to see I would be facing Marshall from the Neverland Games store in PA. Marshall is another henchman and I have been up to one of his events, although he and I had not had a chance to play each other. I knew he was a savvy Neverborn player and remember him playing Pandora with Jack Daw. On Flipping Turf War, I knew it was time to switch up lists and brought out Pandora. I do not remember what his first flip was, but he burned a stone to reflip and got Stake a Claim. He declared Dreamer and we were onto the game.

Game 2 - Dreamer (Marshall from PA) vs. Pandora

Marshall was running Dreamer/LCB, 2 Day Dreams, 2 Stitched, an Insidious Madness, and Bad Juju (Sludge Beast). I have not faced Bad Juju much, and only know a little about him. I found the choices interesting, and was ready to go. I had flipped Turf War, so needed more models completely on his half of the table than he had on mine (and one model in his deployment zone). I grabbed Reclaim Malifaux as one scheme, and breakthrough for the second. I knew where I was going and had a plan to get there. Marshal placed his Stake a Claim in the middle of the sewer canal, second panel in from my right. I do not remember the schemes he chose. With that we started the game.

Turn 1 and 2 was a surprising amount of very little actually happening. One of my Tots killed a desp merc and grew to a young, the other Tot tagged the right corner and began to move up the board. Pandora walked in both rounds, heading up the stairs. The twins headed up the left side of the board, starting by tagging the middle center and left center quadrants. My Young moved across (during turn 2) and tagged the back center quadrant. Marshal moved up the board, hiding on the botton level of the center of the building, and keeping most of his crew buried.

The excitement really came out during turn 3 and 4. One of Marshall's Daydreams moved up and sacrificed itself to bring out LCB, who then tried to attack Pandora only to fail twice from her WP duels. LCB summoned up a replacement day dream, who then put Chompy to sleep and brought out dreamer at the left base of the stairs in my deployment zone. Dreamer used his action to bring out his friends, placing both Stitched in protective formation around him and bringing out his insidious. Sludge Monster also came out during the turn and started oozing toward Marshal's stake a claim. Lilitu continued to move up the left side of the board, tagging quadrants and heading for Marshal's deployment zone. My Young did what he could to move across the board just outside my deployment zone and on the other side of the wall, hiding from the stitched. Pandora did what she could to drop some templates onto the Stitched and Insidious, causing a daydream and the stitched to run for the rear of the board and chipping away at what he had. She had to burn a walk to get into the smoke and near the top of the stairs.

On turn 5 (I believe), Pandora got initiative and was able to force the nightmares far enough away from Dreamer to target him, then tagged him with a spell and killed him, following up with breaking the One Master Immediate activation of LCB by pacifying him and pushing off the edge of the top level platform to drop down to the bottom level, protected from the Stitched and the Sludge monster. Marshal worked on recovering with his stitched, rallying and moving toward his objective. Lelu charged in and finished off Chompy with some well placed attacks, turning the game heavily in my favor. The rest of turn 5 was a tot grabbing the last quadrant and leaving my tot and Lilitu in Marshal's deployment zone. Pandora walked some more and got LOS onto the Sludge Monster, using Pacify to push around and get a line on the Stitched. Lelu scooted up to take out the Sludge Monster, and then turn 6 saw Pandora forcing the Stitched away from the claim jump and sitting on top of it. All in all, Pandora did more walking in this game that I have ever seen her do in the past. The game ended with an 8/0 win to me, bringing my 2 game record to 6tp/+9 differential/14vp.