Plamojuku Events Thread

[Jye Nicolson]

Second Saturday of July as it turned out!

We got through a bunch of games, for me personally 3xWarcry and 2xUnderworlds.

For Warcry we got through three Convergences with the aspirants winning all of them! This included @The Other Dave finally moving on from the first Goblin convergence (it's a mission that favours elite teams, which while Dave's 10 gobbo list is undeniably strong, "elite" only describes a couple of those models).

Underworlds highlight was a 4 player Gargant game, where we got a little murdery a little early on and fought each other more than we fought the Gargant, with predictable results Had a very close game against Kawamura-san too, which I was sure I'd lose after he brilliantly wrong-footed me playing a flex Magore team that I was convinced would be aggro. I deployed wrong, handed him objectives assuming they were irrelevant (spoiler: they were relevant), and tried to wait him out when waiting was *his* gameplan. My Condemnors did unexpectedly scrape the win with some luck but it was still a sharp lesson about making assumptions.

[Jye Nicolson]

The end of another state of emergency means games days at Plamojuku are back!

Today was the unplanned but inevitable Orruk Matsuri as three of us brought the new Ironjawz deck for Underworlds and Dave even brought his models along to give us a look at their cracking paint job.

Turns out they're a fun team with their Waaaagh mechanic and the ability to hit incredibly hard. I was lucky and had a mirror match go my way vs Ochiai-san, and again versus Dave's Nurgle team and then both teams again in a three way match. I do think I owed that to convincing Dave to play Nurgle; he seemed like he wanted to, and I don't mind admitting I'm scared of his Banshees! The Wyrmspat have some nice tricks and can be a pain to kill, but without the unstoppable Glory geyser Dave's Mournflight deck is built on they don't get out of hand nearly as quickly.

The main event though was a five player Gargant game with Kuroi-san driving the eponymous beast. This was a blast but we did learn two things:

- It is *significantly harder* to kill a Gargant that has any sense of self-preservation, especially when every model on the table is as slow as a wet week and easily kited.

- If we, for once, make sincere common cause against the Gargant and resist the lure of treachery, it will make no difference as the dice will turn against us anyway.

Needless to say this was a win chalked into Kuroi-san's column

[The Other Dave]

It was good fun, and I did at least get a lot of experience against orcs. Fortunately, I think my basic take is that while they're definitely strong, they're not overwhelming - they can definitely be nickel-and-dimed down. I think I may have to put Ur-Grub Nurgle on the back burner, though.

Yesterday actually made my kind of interested in the multiplayer expansion. Even if it is just WD reprints, some more game modes for multiplayer would be cool, as we always seem to end up having a couple larger games going on each month.

[Jye Nicolson]

Agreed, the big games have a lot of social value and Gargant is always hilarious so the more of that the better. I just wish they leaned more into using your full deck!

[Jye Nicolson]

We played some Underworlds yesterday, good times!

I unexpectedly managed wins with the Bladecoven in three out of three three player games. The second was girigiri and I thought they were getting wise to my nonsense, but in the third game both my opponents tried to avoid me to block my scoring, which is the opposite approach you want vs the squishy but strong-finishing Khainites.

We're playing next Sunday too, hoping to have a crack at the new dungeon rules for Warcry which should be out a couple of days beforehand.

[The Other Dave]

Man, I'm going to need to, like, not work some weekend. I'll shoot for the 1st, but it's still hard to say.

[Jye Nicolson]

We had a new game modes day at Plamojuku yesterday.

I had a couple of games of "Doorcry" (Warcry with the new Catacombs expansion), and I really liked it. It is similar to Kill Team Arena in the basic functionality of the rules, but it is *not* trying to be hardcore Matched Play and has a bunch of good old Warcry nonsense. Doors can be breached with a double or opened with a lever, and when opened don't close again. Bridges can collapse! I killed one of Kuroi-san's ridiculously OP Flesh Eater Courts things by running a little rat onto the bridge and sending both of them into the lava Various bits of dungeon terrain have special rules, like breaching walls or being haunted, it's fun.

I ended up winning both games largely through good luck on the missions we rolled up (though to be fair, a pretty large proportion of the mission table feels "lucky" if you're Skaven). Kawamura-san used the new Scions and they looked awesome but as usual his luck betrayed him and he had super low ability rolls all game so didn't get to exercise any of their shinier new abilities.

We also played Arena Mortis, the multiplayer mode for Underworlds, and it is great. The constant respawning fighters, ridiculous upgrade stacks and the mechanic of stealing a glory from the leader if you kill them makes for a really dynamic game, and for us it stayed close until the end in both games. Ochiai-san won the first with some very cunning Ironjawz play, then I managed to tough out the second with an extremely katai Ironsoul.

Next time is the 14th, hoping to have the Scions painted up myself.

[Jye Nicolson]

We've since had a couple of game days, including today which was pretty much a full house! We had two tables of Warcry and one of Underworlds going all day, until finally we had a 4 player Arena Mortis game with the last remaining folks.

Warcry Catacombs and Arena Mortis remain a lot of fun. Arena Mortis is always surprisingly close for such a gonzo play mode, our game could have gone any way in the last turn; Kuroi-san ended up winning but only in a reversal over Kawamura-san, and only after I failed to pull off the same reversal .

I got lucky with Catacombs earlier in the day, pulling off a very close game the first round before getting the best of mission/setup for the next two and carrying them much more decisively than I'd expected. I'm a fan of this game mode, it's not quite as balanced as Kill Team Arena but not as degenerate either, and the 5 round missions feel like the right length.

[The Other Dave]

We played a 3-way Arena Mortis game too, and maybe Mortis benefits from having a lot of players, and maybe we got unlucky with the mortis engine that doesn't let you target the model holding it with gambits - that plus a couple fighters with "no knockback" upgrades meant our only real option was to whale on whoever happened to be on the counter.

(We did check, though, and the rules say the mortis engines are treated as objective tokens, in the Japanese rules anyway, so things like Restless Prize seem like they'd work on them.)