Match Report: Slippin and Slidin against the Masons

[Penguin Warrior 49]

Hey everyone, I played an interesting game yesterday against a friend running the Masons. I meant to take pictures but forgot while focusing. In the future, I'll make sure to get into the habit of taking some time between turns to snap a few.

Fish: Shark, Salt, Greyscales, Sakana, Hag, oSiren

Masons: Hammer, Marbles, Brick, Tower, Mallet, Chisel

I picked my usual 3/0 composition since I haven't played into Masons in a while and want to give this build a try against every team before I get experimental. The goal was to spread out, force Hammer to overextend and chase while I threatened the ball at all times.

I won the roll and decided to receive. He kicked off to my left with Hammer and the game got off to a rough start when Sakana missed his kick back to Siren, who then missed a kick to Hag. The ball scattered onto Greyscales, but I had no momentum and Brick and Marbles had stuck themselves right in the center of the pitch where they could annoy Shark. So I changed my plan and had Shark Tidal Surge Greyscales up the pitch before giving him Quick Foot. Unfortunately, I left Sakana literally just in range of Hammer (thought he couldn't get over the barrier between them but he was able to spring around) so Hammer came in and applied a whooping. Greyscales charged into Brick, dodging the charge from Marbles, and dodged into Tap In range for my first goal. Mallet smacked Greyscales on the charge while the ball ended up behind Hammer on my left. Fish 4 - Masons 0

With the missed kicks, I lost initiative and so Hammer farmed Sakana for momentum before finishing him off. Then he moved back to recover the ball and sit on the far left, where he dropped it off. I think this was a huge mistake by my opponent, who put his superstar captain pretty far out of the way, even if it put the ball out of my reach. Knowing I wasn't going to score a goal, I stood up Greyscales and dodged away from Mallet, the got a couple momentum out of Marbles, who had obnoxiously Goaded Siren. Tower shifted around. Siren had to Lure Marbles in because the Goad would force her to step into Chisel's threat range. Mallet shifted forward before Shark moved over to engage Marbles and set up for next turn. I made a stupid mistake here and left him just within Brick's charge range. Fortunately, he only did 2 damage and a knock down, which I cleared before buy 6 attacks onto Marbles and generating 6 momentum to put me in control of the roll off for next turn. Chisel ran to recover the ball and passed it onto Tower, he dodged back towards the Masons goal. Fish 4 - Masons 2

I won initiative and started off by using Where'd the Go and a charge to get Greyscales onto Tower. Cover and Defensive Stance made this unlikely (I needed to hit the momentous Ball's Gone), to be sure, and fate rewarded my poor decision making by giving me no results even before armor. Greyscales sulked and attacked again to earn a point of momentum. Chisel then went Crazy for the second time that game and charged Shark and hit literally every result, dealing five damage momentously. Her next two attacks each did one point of damage, leaving Shark at around half health. However, this put Chisel pretty far up the field and relatively low on health, so after engaging both Brick and Marbles with Salt, I moved Sakana up from where he'd come back on by my goal and he managed a momentous 1 and Weak Point on Chisel. Tower triggered Unpredictable Movement, then booted the ball up the pitch towards Hammer. Siren couldn't manage Seduced on the playbook against Brick on 6 dice and settled for a dodge and a point of momentum. This is where my opponent had a tough choice to make and I believe he made the wrong one. Hammer was out of range of any of my players, so he sprinted to grab the ball and moved up to pass it to Chisel, who was still engaged by Sakana (Hag had dodged Shark away). Even though he bonus timed the kick but missed and the ball scattered right to Shark. He didn't have much he could do at that point since he'd used his momentum Bonus Timing Chisel's attacks and the pass, so he had nothing left. So Shark went and dodged around off of Marbles, who was triple engaged. Originally I was setting up for a Bonus Timed Snap Shot from Greyscales, but a lucky roll netted me a Tidal Surge and instead Shark sprinted up the pitch to knock the second goal in. I used Knee Slider to dodge Shark back into engagement with Marbles. Mallet recovered the ball and tried to pass it to Hammer, but missed the pass and had it scatter just out of Hammer's recovery range. Fish 8 - Masons 2

The writing was pretty much on the wall at this point as I won initiative and activated Shark who dodged around off of Marbles, getting another lucky Tidal Surge to really seal the deal. I popped Caught in the Net just in case and grabbed the ball before banging home the last goal. Final: Fish 12- Masons 2

This was an interesting game. My opponent hadn't run Hammer in a while and screwed up his positioning pretty badly. I made sure throughout the game to never leave a trail that Hammer could easily follow so he was always making decisions about how to chase my team while also keeping the ball safe. He also only had Hammer in range to take influence for his buffs. Ultimately, this was pretty good evidence that forcing a Masons team to spread out really hurts their ability to fight. This game would have been a lot tougher if he had Flint or Honour threatening a couple of goals. But it was a useful lesson that Sharks threat can force opponents to make poor decisions in extend the game. I've been having a blast with this build recently and it's been very effective into Union and Blacksmiths as well. With the upcoming loss of Avarisse and Greede and Gutter, I'm glad to have a Fish-only build that works pretty well.

Sorry again for the lack of pictures. Future reports will definitely have them!