Friday, March 14, 2014

EotD - Skirmish reports - Entrapment and Lost Artefact

Yesterday my friend Chris and I played two games of Empire of the Dead. It was the first time I had played the game since Christmas. I had gotten back into Malifaux towards the end of last year, and this is what I have been playing a lot.

Since we last played EotD I had finished my Supernatural Branch and the coaches that I got for Christmas, and this was and opportunity to get both on the table. We continued with our campaign, which meant that Chris would play his Sons of the Empire and I would play my Supernatural Branch. None of us chose to invest in a coach, so we decided that we would add the London Omnibus and Hansom cab to the scenery.

Entrapment
Chris rolled the dice and we ended up playing Entrapment. Like a previous game we had had, the Sons of the Empire would attempt to get to the other side of the board and the bobbies would try to prevent them.

We played like we have done for the past many games with alternate activations - meaning that we would activate one model at a time.

During the first turn I thought I had gotten my bobbies into good positions, while Chris moved his Sons forward.

In the second turn the mayhem started. The Sons were equipped with hunting rifles and two with sawn-off shotguns, while I had a shotgun and a netgun as my long range arsenal, and this proved to be a bad decision on my part. The Sons started to kill my bobbies and seriously wounded my Detective Sergeant and Detective Inspector - thanks to Chris rolling 10s constantly.

At the beginning of turn 3, I was down to one bobby armed with a heavy pistol and one armed with the single-shot netgun. Both my Detective Sergeant and Detective Inspective had lost a wound and were Discumbobulated and Down, and I had lost 3 bobbies.
So I conceded the game and Chris won a huge victory.

I got a few more injuries to my bobbies and my bobby with the Perambulator Boots got Unhinged, meaning that he would have to check his sanity and the first sign of combat.


Lost Artefact
For our next game we rolled Lost Artefact. We made some minor adjustments to our crews, I sold the netgun and bought a hunting rifle instead. Chris, among other things, further enhanced his "snipers" with Night Goggles.

For this game we decided that the London Omnibus and the Hansom cab would move each round. We would roll a dice for each of the models and the one who rolled the highest would be able to move the vehicle 5 inches in either direction or change the direction. This would turn out to have quite and effect on the game as they would block lines of sight, provide cover and sometimes even block passages.

We moved into position in turn one, meaning that we had models that would be able to get to the first markers by turn two and check to see if they were the artefact.

Chris' Vice-President ended up getting the Artefact, this was the fourth marker we checked. I then tried to shoot the VP, and removed a Wound from him, but was unable to do further damage. Chris then won the dice roll for the London Omnibus and moved it into a position so that it block the passage for my Detective Inspector to charge. I tried to diverge most of my crew but a combination of the London Omnibus blocking but line of sight/passage and bad dice rolling the VP got away and Chris put Watch and Shoot on most of his crew meaning that I would have to risk hits in order to try and get to the VP.

In the end I was reduced to my Detective Sergeant, my unhinged Perambulator Boots bobby and my Detective Inspector on Down, the Bravado checks finishing the job on my crew.


Conclusions
It was nice to get back into EotD. Despite losing I enjoyed the games and I really love the setting. We both agreed that in order to use the coaches we should setup the terrain in a way to accommodate them a bit more.
The netgun is really a useless piece of equipment. I wanted to use the model with the netgun, and it was first afterwards that I found out it was a single-shot weapon - why would you ever choose to use it?

The token set was nice to have as it meant that each condition was easy to overview.

Here are some images from our games.






















3 comments:

  1. Great report as usual, I think you need a constable with a hunting rifle or 2 with shotguns for a balanced group.

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  2. Thanks Robert....yeah two hunting rifles is something that I will try in future games.

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  3. I've found shotguns to be useful too.

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