Game Report - Brewers vs Engineers

Since returning to blogging I have not written up too many game reports. I've gotten out of the practice bringing my camera with me on game night. Additionally I've been focused on playing and improving my games of Guild Ball, so have not done a lot of analysis and thinking during or after the game. All that said, I made a point of packing up my camera a couple weeks ago and bringing it out to a game with Ben. Ben had just picked up and assembled his second Guild Ball team, Engineers, and was looking forward to learning how the team worked. I've been working to figure out how to play my Brewers better and specifically how to get some solid use out of Spigot.

A bit of time has passed since this game and I've already run an entire tournament plus played a couple other games in the interim. I'll be trying to remember as much as possible from my game, along with some of the drivers behind my decisions.

Setup

Ben used a very basic Engineers team with Ballista, Mainspring, Ratchet, Salvo, Velocity, and Collosus. I think this is a great way to start out with a new team, getting the feel for the basic team players before expanding your selection with Union players. You should be able to get a solid feel for the role each player on a team fulfills and then be able to make smart choices on where to substitute and swap out. Ben Deployed in a fairly standard line across the board, keeping Collosus in the center of his line. I had the kick-off so this made sense to me.

On the Brewers side I decided to also role out with a fairly standard Brewers setup. Tapper, Scum, Spigot, Stave, Friday, Hooper. I needed to figure out how to use Spigot more effectively, and was hoping to find the rumored damage dealer I've been hearing Hooper is. I kept Friday in the line as she's a fantastic striker, and of course no Brewers team is complete without Stave. I had the kickoff so chose to kick with Stave. I like using Stave for my kick-off as it allows him to move up the field before the game starts. This gives his impressive threat range for his barrels a solid grasp on the center of the board. I'm also not concerned with his poor kick stat as he has enough to place the ball over the mid-line. I'm starting to set the ball centered on the mid-field line, knowing my scatter (minimum 1 inch) will always carry the ball across. This becomes tricky if your trying to kick at an angle, which I do not regularly do. In this case the ball flew straight forward, halfway to Collosus. I was comfortable with a plan for knockdown to spring the ball from from whoever ended up holding it.

I drew out my Guild Plots and chose Sideline Repairs, Don't Touch the Hair, and Knee Slider. Against the Engineers I was expecting a lot of ranged knockdown coming my way, along with a fair bit of damage over time. I suspected I'd be able to score with Friday and considering I only had a single striker, the Knee Slider would come in handy to return back toward midfield after a goal. Don't touch the Hair is always a solid choice, and I planned to move aggressively into Ben's line and engage as many Engineer as I could. This would give me an opportunity to slow down some of his attacks.

Turn 1

Turn 1 left me feeling a bit like I was playing my Union team. Ben moved forward with Collosus and his team, providing me the opportunity to use Stave to knock down and push Collosus close to my lines. This opened up multiple options for charging in to attack Collosus. I was not expecting to take him out on Turn 1, but aimed to put a fair bit of damage onto him. Following my initial knock-down and push I began moving my additional models into position to provide bonuses from Ganging up. Scum shifted over and Friday moved up the field and his Collosus with Dirty Knives, penalizing his defense and preparing him for the charges.

I started the attacks with Spigot walked in and rolled a bunch of dice on his single attack. 5 for the attack, 2 for ganing up, and an additional 3 for Collosus being knocked down and -2 defense from the knives. I only realize after the fact I should have had more due to Spigot's Floored trait granting extra dice against targets whoa re knocked down. After rolling and removing failures and armor, I was left with two full playbook results and a single success on the second wrap. Not horrible on a single influence attack. I left Collosus with damage and moved on through the turn. Hooper came in next with a charge, rocking 14 dice on a charge. Although he did fairly well, I  shorted myself several dice overall. The calculation should have gone:

• 6 dice base TAC
• 4 dice on the charge
• 1 dice for knocked down (def 2 to def 1)
• 2 dice for dirty knives (-2 def off def 2)
• 3 for ganging up
• Total of 16 dice

Even with the 14 I rolled I was able to dump a load of damage on him due to Hoopers Shove the Boot in trait. At the end of the battle it was enough to take the guy out and score me my first 2 points in the match.

I knew that going into Turn 2 I had to hold off Ben's shooting and also get the ball  from Mainspring, shoot, and preserve my own team. I also figured that Ben would be looking to blow up Mainspring considering this was his first game and I'd ended the turn with model's grouped up nicely enough for it to have good impact.

Turn 2

Turn 2 started with Ben activating Ratched and tossing out a grenade along with overclocking his totem. This set-up the bug for a nice explosion and solid effect against my grouped up team. I used Friday's Shadow like to bounce into the bug and her low momentous tackle to grab the ball away from him. Ben played Protect your balls but wasn't able to grab the ball back. This left Friday able to move across the field and take a shot on goal, scoring and then Knee Sliding over to cover Velocity. Ben kicked the ball back out onto the field, leaving it sit near Ballista and Salvo, resting on the ground so it wouldn't get knocked free by a thrown barrel.

 

Following that action the score was sitting at 6 - 0 in my favor and Ben felt he needed to try and balance things out. He moved Mainspring forward, attacked for a point of damage on Spigot, then blew himself up. This did some damage and dumped fire out on three of my players, but also gave up an additional 2 points to me for an 8-0 score. This left me 1 goal out from winning the game. I activated Stave with the intention of putting out the fire and knocking Ben's models around a bit. I was successful in knocking Ballista away from his team, causing Ben some challenges in getting him back into position to support the team via momentum generation. 

Ballista needed to get back into a better position so Ben stood him up and walked him back toward the scrum. He finished up his turn knocking down Stave and popping his legendary play in the hopes I'd start wracking up some damage. Unfortunately for Ben this was not my first time facing Engineers and I had already accomplished a lot for the turn. I didn't have a driving need to re-position and suffer the damage and was able to suffer out the remainder of the turn staying still in the minefield. Ben continued through his activation, activating Salvo and pushing my models around a bit for some minimal damage. He left the ball laying in the open field, hoping he had blocked it out enough with Ratched, Ballista, and Salvo to keep me from getting anyone to it. I chose to complete my turn by moving Spigot through the minefield to block out Velocity on Turn 3, hoping to get initiative but positioning in case I did not. If Ben got initiative I had Velocity covered by two players. If I got initiative I had Spigot positioned so I could make a run to retrieve the ball with Friday then jump back into Spigots Football Legend aura to make the shot on the goal. Ben took the last activation to move Velocity toward the ball and hope to provide some additionl protection against my team grabbing the ball and shooting.

 

Turn 3

Turn 3 started with Ben taking the initiative but surprising me by activating Ratchet and tossing some grenades out. I suspect this is due to his inexperience with Engineers, as he only slowed down a couple players I already had late in my activation order. I'm not sure if he missed the goal threat from Friday or simply underestimated her ability to get to the ball and score. I am aware that Ben had been suffering knockdowns from Stave through the game, and he may have been trying to mitigate Stave's threat range on the board, spotting that I'd given him 2 influence.

I activated Friday and using her shadow like dodge plus sprint was able to slip through his lines and grab the ball. Friday thenThis left Friday in a tenuous position, engaged with Velocity but also in football legend range. Despite losing dice from engagement and having a blocked line to the goal (we played this incorrectly), I decided it was worth the chance to win the game and made a 1 die roll. I ended up making the goal and winning the game.

Guild Ball - Brewers Team Review

The Brewers have been a tougher team to get my hands around than the previous teams I've reviewed. I used them briefly (less than 4 games) in the era prior to the kickstarter arriving and really liked them. I thought I had a good handle on how they played at that point in time, and expected to jump right back in once I got them painted. Now that my team is painted and I'm putting them on the table, I found myself mistaken at how they played. I've dedicated a solid two dozen games to working out the team and I feel like I have a decent handle on the basics. I will say in these opening comments, the brewers are the team I'm having the toughest time winning games with. I can see their strengths and they are fun to play, but they just don't quite deliver what I want them to do in game, specifically for my play style.

Brewers Team Overview

The Brewers are intended to a team focused on melee damage second to the Butchers, if the prevailing interwebz information is to be believed. There is a very nice article on the Muse forums that has been re-represented in an article on the Ozball blog that shows the distribution of team characteristics.  My own experience differs in a couple areas to this in some specific ways.

The Brewers as a team are very good at knocking down opponents. Many of the players have knockdown results as a first or second choice on their playbooks, often as a momentous result. Brewers also have a fair bit of damage to serve up, but I find that it's actually a bit behind the damage capability of a solid damage focused union team. Many of the damage choices the Brewers have are not momentous or the damage support options (such as Commanding Aura) are not momentous or easy to reach.

One of the areas I find the Brewers do succeed is in pushing the opponent around the field. My experience with the team indicates their strengths to be knockdowns and pushes overall. Unfortunately I have not found a way to turn this into a scoring solution as effective as goal scoring or take outs. Many of my opponents are aware that the sides of the board are a dangerous place to be when facing the Brewers, thus choosing to congregate closer to the middle of the field.

Tapper

Oh Captain my Captain...... Tapper is the only captain in Season 1 who does not have a legendary play. In place of that he gets one of the more interesting heroic plays in the game. Tapper has the ability to convert a single momentum into two influence once per turn, then allocate those influence to a friendly guild model within 4 inches, including himself. This means he is very capable of generating his own momentum via attacking then generating additional influence to finish beating down an opponents model. Tapper has a decent damage spread in his playbook, along with the typical Brewers easy access momentous knockdown. He also brings along Commanding Aura, via playbook and directly paying for the ability. His commanding aura is just shy as useful as Blackhearts (in the union), bring a bit harder to reach and non-momentous. Despite that, he is able to use this ability to support his teammates when they are dishing out damage.

Scum

Brewers bring a cat to the field as their mascot, a cat who will forever be in the shadow of the playtest version of itself. This cat may not do the crazy attacking damage the playtest cat did, but she is an amazingly fast model. Shadow like plus Unpredictable movement combined with a 6"/8" move make this kitty very capable of zipping around the board. She's a good little ball carrier, combining UM with her 5+ defense and being able to be called across the board by Friday. Often the toughest choice is when to give it the ball vs keeping it close to Tapper for his extra influence generation via Tappers Tactical Advice.

Friday

Friday is the Brewers in team striker, and she operates very similar to other strikers in the game. 6"8" move, 3/8" kick, a 1 success momentous tackle, shadow like, and a heroic play which replicates super shot on other strikers. Friday picks up some extra defense from being near Spigot, which she prefers do to his Football Legend trait anyway. While within 4 inches of Spigot she can jump up to a 5/11" kick if she's used her heroic play, plus has a 5 defense. This makes her a real danger for snap shots as well as straight shots on the goal. Like some other Brewers, Friday has a playbook that is "shorter" than her TAC, making it possible to wrap playbook results pretty easily. She is able to dish out some damage, but really wants to be throwing out dirty knives when not positioning to shoot on the goal. Overall she is one of my favorite strikers in the game, although she is a tier down from Flint and Mist.

Spigot

Spigot tends to play the role of damage dealer or bruiser in my Brewers team, although he appears to be built with a heavier focus on support. He's got Football Legend (extra kicking) as a trait, Tooled Up (extra damage) as a character play, and Times Called (extra movement) as a heroic play. He can pretty quickly trigger Balls Gone via his playbook, a quick way to get the ball and also has a single success momentous tackle. Overall he seems ideal in a support role but for some reason I always find myself not using him that way. At the St. Louis Open I watched a number of Brewers players using him to buff their team, which really showed me where I was using him wrong. I just have not been successful since then in changing how I use him. I suspect my overall win ratio with the team will jump once I can train myself to focus on Spigots support abilities in place of his damage track in his playbook. Spigot is one of my favorite models in the Guild Ball range, I really like both his spilling tankard and his broken bottle.

Hooper

Talking with Mat Hart recently I was presented the idea that Hoopers role on the Brewers team is one of enforcer, bruiser, and damage dealer. Here's another sign that I just do not understand the team as I should, as Hooper often is one of the models I cut from the line-up to replace with another option. Hooper is very resilient with Tough Hide and a decent damage track combined with a 3+ def and 1 armor. His playbook has damage in it, which get's increased due to his trait adding +1 damage to playbook results on a knocked down target. My challenge here is his first two (of 3) damage results are non-momentous, forcing him to grab at least 5 successes in order to deliver momentous damage. His knockdown is on 3 successes, higher than most other Brewers, and he has a momentous push on 1 success. Overall, Hooper is a good player but I'm finding I prefer Stoker or a Union choice over him most of the time.

Stave

I would argue that Stave is the poster player of the Brewers team. He is certainly not very fast on the field, but has one of the largest and most noticeable impacts on the game of any player in a team. Stave has access to the very solid momentous knockdown as the first choice in his playbook, but this is not what he really does best. Stave's signature barrel is really what people will notice, to the point of often forgetting he has a playbook at all. Stave is able to hurl his barrel 6 inches, causing a 3 inch AOE on impact which can knock down and then push models hit. The combination of knockdown plus the 4 inch push is incredibly useful for a variety of uses including springing the ball free from hard to tackle models, making target models more vulnerable, and for positioning opposing players to your teams benefit. Stave projects an 11" - 13" threat zone on the table, threatening careless models on the flanks of the field with being knocked into the crowd for a fairly easy take-down.

Stoker

Stoker is one of my favorite models on the Brewers team, but that has a lot to do with how much I enjoy painting up fire. Stoker is a bit maligned in the general Brewers community, which is something I'm not sure I competely understand. This misunderstanding may be why I have trouble winning with the team however. Stoker brings a couple abilities to the table which are fairly unique, adding extra damage to play book results on a target with the burning condition and extra influence if positioned near Stave (Tactical Advice: Stave). This ability mitigates his fairly low influence stat, allowing him to contribute 2 influence to the team in place of 1. Stoker also has access to the same Magical Brew trait that Hemlock brings, permitting him to shed conditions for free once per activation. Aside from this Stoker has 3 different character plays which all apply the burning condition in different ways. He can simply light someone on fire, light someone on fire and do damage, or light a terrain feature on fire along with anyone in it. Add to this a 1 success momentous double push (in a short playbook) and Stoker can move the opposing players around the board very effectively.

Union Additions

There are 5 season 1 Union players who will play for the Brewers team, Gutter, Hemlocke, Rage, Fangtooth, Avarisse & Greede. I have primary focused on playing pure Brewers guild to get the best feel for what their models do. I can see some real benefits to swapping in Rage or Gutter as a damage dealer to the team. I can also see times when having Hemlocke on the team will be good, simply to toss out some poison and blind affects. I'm not confident that A&G contributing a 7th activation can be best used by the Brewers, although I'd love to hear a strategy for that. Fangtooth fits in nicely, adding in additional knockdown. His biggest downside will be the risk of slowing down an already slow team with his aura.

Painting Tutorial - Guild Ball Brewers player Stave

I thought this would be a fun article to share with readers, although I am going to provide a big disclaimer at the beginning. I paint to achieve a table top standard, and am by no means a top painted. I've had lots of conversations with top painted such as Jay and Convy, and realize where my painting skills fall short. Considering that, if this tutorial helps you then I am happy to share. If you find ways to incorporate what I did here and improve upon it, please share as I am interested in new techniques!

 Background

I was browsing the painted models section of the Guild Ball forums and came across a wonderful post by Hobbybutterfly. In this post he  walked through painting up one of the Union team players, Fangtooth. He used a technique which I found to be intriguing, where he started the skin with a base coat of red instead of a flesh color. I typically start with a darker flesh tone then highlight with a lighter flesh tone when I'm painting skin, so the idea of starting with another base color blew my mind a bit. I liked the way his Fangtooth looked in the pictures so tried the same technique for my own. I did not leave as much red showing in the recesses of the skin, but was really happy with how the colors worked out. I felt that it gave a nice red tint to the skin tone along with really bringing out the bruises and cuts on Fangtooth.

Keeping this in mind I decided to use a similar route for my Brewers. Looking across the Brewers team there is a fair bit of skin with lots of bruises and bandages on the players arms, chests, and backs. Keeping in mind the theme of the team, I thought it would also be a good choice to stray a bit more toward purple, hoping to provide a deeper bruise coloring but also reflect the ruddy "I'm a drunk" look the Brewers deserve. The only model I will refrain from starting with a base red is Friday, where I plan to stick to my typical darker skin/lighter skin theme.

I decided to go ahead and put together a little photo-essay of my painting on the big guy, Stave, for the blog. All my paints for this (with one exception) are P3 paints for anyone trying to reference them. On the primer, I use a matte grey automotive primer to prime my models as I find it's very cost effective ($6 a can), has great spray control, and is actually fairly thin so I don't lose detail.

Step 1 - Base Coats

I start out by applying the base coats for all of my colors. I am a bit of an inconsistent painter overall, not always following through with each stage/layer together, but often putting down multiple layers on an area before moving to another. (i.e. I'll finish up the cloth before moving to the skin, etc) In almost all situations I tend to put down my base coats together to block out what colors I'll use while painting a model.

On Stave you can see that I left a couple areas primer grey and did not paint those up until I did the final details on the model. Specifically the bandages/cloth wrapping Stave's wrists and the eye-bolts on his wrists. I ended up painting those on my final detail pass (as you'll see below.

Base Coat paints

• Cloth = Rucksack Tan
• Skin = Sanquine Highlight
• Wood = Bloodstone
• Leather = Boostrap Leather
• Belt = Umbral Umber 

 

Step 2 - Mid-tones

I let the base coats dry on the model before moving onto laying down the mid-tones. This step is where I begin to apply a lighter/brighter color of paint to the model to create shadows and depth by applying over the base coats.  While painting the skin I tried to paint around the cuts, leaving the purple/red showing so that it would come through as a bruise or cut. I left a bit of a wider area than I wanted to end with, then used a clean brush to "push" the edges of the paint I just applied toward the center of the bruise, "feathering" the edges a bit. The effect is a bit hard to see in the pictures, and I'm honestly not sure how well it comes out at the end. I went back and reapplied sanguine highlight to any bruises or cuts that I inadvertently painted over during this step.


Mid Coat

• Cloth = Moldy Ochre
• Skin = Khardic Flesh
• Wood = Blood Tracker Brown
• Leather = Gun Corp Brown

Step 3 - Washes

I discovered washes years ago when GW brought out their initial line of Citidel washes. I have to admit that washes are one of the tricks I learned ot use early, not only to make my model look better with only a little effort (by bathing the model in a wash) but also as a technique to strengthen and provide depth to my colors. I apply washes after my mid tones to help blend together the base (shadow) and mid, and also to provide a bit more depth to the shadow. This also changes the mid-tone color a bit, sometimes allowing me to go back and highlight with the same mid-tone color, causing an easier transition.

Washes

• Cloth = (Citadel) Seraphim Sepia
• Skin = Flesh Wash
• Wood = Brown Ink
• Leather = Brown Ink 

Step 4 - Highlights

Applying the highlights is where I start to get a bit frustrated when I'm painting a model. Typically my process is to apply my base coats and then go do something with another model while I wait for the base coats to dry. This happens fairly quickly and I can then move onto mid-tones and washes. Applying the washes while the mid-tones are not completely dry is not a bad thing, as it provides a bit of blending if you do it carefully. This actually helps the overall look of the model so I can move through those two steps fairly quickly. I have not had the same results applying my highlights while the wash is still wet. This means I have to wait longer for my washes to dry (frustrating) before applying my highlights. Then, the highlight step is where the model really starts moving to being finished, but I want to rush to get to the final detail step and be done. 

Considering that, you can see where I've gone through and painted the high points of the models. I'm really looking for the top edge of creases on the cloth and muscle ridges on the skin. I blend a bit closer to the depth's on the skin to even out the overall skin tone along with covering most of the flat areas of the leather pants, leaving the depths and stitching colored by the wash, mid, and base coats.

Highlight

• Cloth = Rucksack Tan
• Skin = Khardic Flesh
• Leather = Gun Corp Brown

Step 5 - Final details

During this step I go back and give the model all the final details I have not yet covered. In the case of Stave I add in the Tartan, cloth bandages, metal eye-hooks, beer foam, and facial hair. I also give it a once over and touch up any areas I may have caused a mess on while painting the highlights. I did notice after completing and photographing this step that I had missed his patches and the stitching on his tartan, which I went back afterwards and touched up.

I want to also thank my Guild Ball Tonight cohost Phil for providing a great video on painting Tartan on these models. The Tartan pattern I used follows his technique in the following video.

I hope that you've enjoyed this tutorial and that it inspires some ideas for you to go and paint up your own models.