Malifaux BatRep Lady Justice Vs Ramos

I’m back baby! Been a long time since a Malifaux BatRep...I've still been playing for all these past few months so back to it!

Lady J Vs Ramos 30SS

Deployment – square Corners
Mission: Lady J – Slaughter, Ramos – Slaughter

Schemes:
Lady J – (Announced) Eye for an Eye and (Announced) Break Through
Ramos - (Announced) Sabotage and a secret one….hmmm….



Lady Justice:
Samuel Hopkins
Nino Ortega
3 x Witchling Stalkers 27SS Cache: 7SS

Ramos:
Joss
Johan
Brass Arachnid
4 x Steampunk Arachnids (SPA) 27SS Cache: 5SS

Lady J and her crew win the first deployment and prepare for a full frontal assault (get it? Lady J, Full frontal? Lol. What a geek). Knowing that terrain will not slow the relentless scuttle of the arachnids, she positions her crew more or less in the open, but with a path of least resistance from severe ground. Ramos and his crew lurk in the woods opposite…the graveyard on the edges of Old Town separating them…

Turn 1:

Ramos wins first activation. Brass Arachnid (BArach) goes, companions Ramos, scuttles forward to lurk behind a road sign. Attempts to reactivate Ramos, fails with a measly 1Mask. Ramos generates scrap and attempts to create a spider…10Ram –failure. No cheating or soulstones, but its not that important…although with reactivation and 2 spider, 2 swarms could be have been made Turn 1…
Over to me, Nino activates and legs it up a town house nearby in preparation for future sniping…Joss activates and double walks to the outskirts of the graveyard…more or less all other activations go the same way..with everyone flooding forward except Ramos and his bodyguard Johan who stay put in the woods, and Hopkins who charges up his flaming bullets.

Turn 2:

Ramos’ crew win initiative (remember that first BatRep…remember the pattern that emerged there?) and the first activation is Ramos, who generates a Scrap token and tries to create an SPA, fails on a 6Mask, cheats Red Joker Tome (waste of Joker perhaps?)! …creates the SPA successfully.
Nino up next for me and scrambles on top of the roof and casts ‘in my sights’ on Joss, goes off, but is half an inch high for a shot…
The summoned SPA moves up with the others, my first Witchling begins to flank around the right side of the graveyard. BArach moves up next to Joss and tries to ‘Stoke’ – giving reactivation, needs an 11Tome, flips a 10Tome! So close, but no cigar.
Lady J’s crew flank right, 3 SPA create a swarm, which slow moves behind the Keep’s gatehouse. Joss moves into the graveyard and uses 2 tokens to generate Armour 2..this is, of course, a massive waste of tokens as it ends in the closing phase! Error!

Turn 3

This is ‘the turn’. Here is where most of the action always seems to take place for us, occasionally in turn 2 with certain crews.

Importantly, I win the initiative! I check my hand once more quickly and activate Nino. He targets Joss and does consistent ‘weak’ damage for 4 shots! That’s right – double ‘trigger happy’ right after ‘IMS’! Awesome…although you’d think I’d squeeze in more than just weak against a Def4 dude! Joss is dead. 9SS gone, almost 1/3 of the force gone….eggs and baskets man.
Ramos up now, generates scrap and tries for an SPA, but Joss had used a lot of good Tomes in his efforts to stay alive (vain effort!) so no SPA.
Hopkins moves up the right hand side of the Graveyard and with Flaming Bullets loaded, kills the BArach in one shot, also ‘ricocheting’ into a nearby SPA for 1 wound.

There is some manoeuvring between SPA and Witchlings as both Steve and I attempt to use up all our insignificant (at this point) models…Johan puts himself in the firing line for Ramos too for next turn.
Next real action comes from the SP Swarm moving up from the gatehouse to behind the keep, Lady Justice spots this and hops down from the graveyard wall, double walking and getting a melee expert attack against it. Before striking, she uses Sword Style – Fate to add 2CB to my result…I check my hand and off we go…BOOM! One dead swarm…Lady J got in enough for a flat flip on damage, I cheated to Red Joker and flipped an extra severe for 13 wounds after critical strike trigger and Armour 1 on the swarm…

This turn has been crippling for Ramos. Joss and the created Swarm…a damning blow.

Turn 4

I win and a Witchling scout walks into melee with the wounded SPA, kills it with severe and critical strike, although the SPA only had 2 wounds left, overkill perhaps, but these renegades need to learn the severity of opposing the Guild.

Lady J legs it up field to get the ‘break through’ scheme next turn. Ramos activates and fails to create the Electrical creation (suicide bombing is not encouraged by the Guild!) but does manage to burn half the wounds from a Witchling through Electrical Fire.
Ramos uses casting expert to cast Fire again at the same target, who mans up and defends with a Red Joker, and triggers Reflect magic, dealing 3 wounds back to Ramos! Except he is Armour 2 and so only suffers 1 wound….hold up! EFire ignores armour! Beautiful, 3 wounds back on Ramos from a lowly Stalker.
Johan takes a pot shot at the poor guy next, and despite soft cover of the woods Johan is firing through, a Red Joker leads to a flat flip and moderate damage kills the Witchling…
No other action as all my force surges towards the shrinking-by-the-minute forest where Ramos is hiding.

Turn 5

We call the game here as the worst case scenarion for me is a 2-1 win, the most likely outcome of playing a full turn will be a 6-0 victory for me and Lady J…so in an effort to get some revenge we reset and go again!

Unfortunately the outcome is the same in the second game, and Steve (Bringer of Death) is forced to go home and think about what he has done! Challenging Guild supremacy = foolish!