Time for a battle report...Jack Daw was....interesting....

   So let chat for a bit about how it felt to both fight with Jack Daw, and fight against him.  I got to play against my friend Matt on Thursday night after he got done playing the Star Trek game against Dave.  The Star Trek game looked interesting, but I hate vehicle games where I have turn tracks, so I doubt I would ever play, unless I was needed for a pickup game.  I have played a few games of Wings of Wonder for that reason.  While I was waiting I forced a couple of friends to play a quick game of Disc World.  I lost due to an excellent trick from Dan that had all of us leaving enough trouble markers on the board for him to win.  Good plan Dan!  I have asked Matt to write up his feelings about playing against Jack, and I will write up the battle report and how it felt fighting with him.

   First of all, we were only able to make it to turn 4, so we did not get to the end of the game and after chatting, he thought it would have been a draw and I thought he would have won.  So I guess as you work your way through the battle report you can decide yourself.
  As was reported in the last blog entries, I was playing Jack Daw, so for Matt it was not a huge surprise when I declared Outcast as my faction, and I was equally unsurprised when Matt called for Guild.  We had already decided on 50 stones for the game as we wanted to play a standard game with the crews we would have normally picked (that matter more to the story later).  We flipped for deployment, and Matt won, and than had me deploy first.  As happens many times in the games I have played lately, we flipped for flank deployment, so we got to making the Ls on our corners. I choosing left and he, of course, choose opposite.  I had a two pronged attack with a group at the far right of the bottom of the L, and a second group where the point of the L was.  Matt set up high on the top section of the L, and high on the bottom.   Next I flipped for the strategy, and got a crow, so read out the "Reckoning" entry.  Boiled down we each needed to kill 2 models per turn after the 1st turn.  This is the one strategy that enforces the "kill models" type of objective and to kill two a turn, but not more or less can be a challenge. For the scheme pool we had:  Line in the Sand, Protect Territory, Bodyguard, Outflank,  and Spring the Trap.  I took Bodyguard and Outflank as my schemes, and in the end I found out Matt took the same.
   After all that we finely get to crew selection.  I was playing Jack Daw, Lady Ligeia (totem), Montresor, The Guilty 1, The Guilty 2, The Hanged, Nurse and Hans.  Matt was playing Lady Justice, The Judge, Witchling Stalker 1, Witchling Stalker 2, Francisco, Guard 1, Guard 2, and Guard 3.  While there were upgrades on a number of characters, only the curses on Jack Daw made a real difference.  So now we are finally all set up to talk about how the game went.

The Board at the end of Turn 1

Turn 1
I won initiative and we moved all our models.  Lady J, The Judge, and a witchling stalker all moved up the left side of the board, with Montresor and The Hanged moved against them.  Matt moved Fransisco, a witchling stalker, and all three guards down the right hand side of the map.  Jack Daw and Lady Legeia moved to the middle, and the Nurse with the 2 Guilty moved across the bottom.  Finally Hans just moved down the board to get an angle.

Turn 2

Everyone continued their moves into turn 2.  The Hanged was close enough to move up with his first action, and then attacked Lady J with the second action.  He failed the attack was done.  Montresor used his nimble to move up and then attacked Lady J twice to no effect, including one attack with a Black Joker flip.  On the other side of the board, Matt's group stayed in place and I moved the Guilty and Nurse toward the building, and Lady and Jack moved up the back.  No attacks by that group at all.

Turn 3
   The Hanged attacked The Judge and hits for his half damage attack, and The Judge cannot heal for the rest of the game.  Lady charges and kills The Hanged with 2 attacks plus an Onslaught.  On the other side I attack with Jack Daw doing a point of damage and getting my first curse onto Matt's Guard minion.  Now the curse I played on him was the Guillotine curse that means as soon as a minion or peon model activates you have to spend two cards or the model dies.  Then to "flip" the curse he has to discard a card and spend 2 action points for the penance.  Matt's witchling stalker in the corner dropped a marker showing that he had outflank.
  
   Now if you have been paying attention, you can see that this is the first point of the game. We know technically we both have three points as no henchman or enforcer was killed, but as of now it is still 1 to 0 Matt.

Turn 4
   I won initiative and attacked Lady J with Montresor and gave her a single point of damage.  Lady J then returned the favor, but kill Montresor in a single turn.  Lady J still had time to move up and get closer to Hans, although behind the tree and so out of LOS.  Hans then went a killed the front guardsman in two AP, and then Lady Ligeia attacked the guardsman and ended up getting a severe damage result, killing the guardsman and doing 2 to all other models in the group with the blast.  Jack got back his curse from the guardsman that Lady L killed.  Now this means that with two kills i got a point for Reckoning.  This means that at the end of four, it was 1 to 1.  Now that ended the game, and so I will tell you why Matt felt a tie, and I felt he would have taken it.  As it was going into 5 he still had his bodyguard alive and I did not.  Now Matt thought that with the two pincers I had around the house and his group, I could have taken Fransisco out removing those points from his board, and with that group gone he wouldn't be able to get the other point for outflank, so it would have been a 1 to 1 draw.  I don't think I could have taken the whole group, and so didn't think I could get rid of Fransisco.  To me it would have been a 4 to 1 or if I could have gotten someone to the corner a 4 to 2 loss for me.  If it had gone to 6 turns, which is always a possibility, then i think it would have been more likely, but by then he could have gotten Lady J over there, so you never know.  Always hard to just guess how it would go if you didn't get to play it out.

Chad's Thoughts
Now this is the heart of Matt's complaint about the Jack Daw curse mechanic.  He brought the witchling stalkers because he could use them to clear conditions that the curses created.  The only problem with that plan was that the curses do not cause conditions, they add a characteristic and an ability.  This caused Matt to discard 3 cards from his hand and use a minions full activation just to clear the curse.  Now I do agree with Matt that this is a powerful ability, but it only affects minions, and causes no damage if it is cleared.  It is an all or nothing power.  Now Matt cleared the curse, flipped it over, the first time I used it, costing him 3 cards and 2 actions.  It only cost me a single action to give him the curse, and although that action was an attack and caused a point of damage, it was one of Jack's AP.  Now Matt could have let the minion die and kept the resources in his hand, so to ME, this doesn't feel any more powerful then any other master who can kill a minion (on average) in a single turn, like Lady J.  I will say though to start it did feel like it was very easy to get off, as it is a trigger that auto-completes.  The other two possible curses will work on any model even including a leader, but those two only "fire" after a tactical or attack action, and so only cost you 2 AP and a single card.  If you let the other 2 effect the model it also only causes 2 points of damage, not an auto kill usually with a secondary effect. Take a look at the curses as this is a very interesting mechanic.

Matt's Thoughts
   I had not looked into any of the wave two models . So going in blind I had the feeling that I was going to get demolished. I remember from Malifaux first edition that Jack Daw was super tough as were his lackeys the hanged. So going in I knew that I would have a tough battle. As the game started and Chad started using his abilities, specifically the cusrses, I knew I was in trouble. With some misunderstanding on my part on how the curses worked I did not believe that I had a chance. I had the understanding (wrongly mind you) that there was no way to get rid of the curses. They are tough and expensive to get rid of (two actions and one card).
    As the game progressed I started to think that the curse was powerful maybe to powerful, but he is a master. I started to take back my stance a bit as the game was getting closer to conclusion. All Masters are great at something and Jack Daw is good at getting you to lose your cards. I would like to play another game to conclusion to get a second opinion of Jack Daw. I am sure Chad would be willing to do that. After 2/3 of a game against Jack Daw, I would say a solid master.

Final Words
   I will say that I will definitely be playing Jack Daw again as both his crew and the mechanics of his play are both fun and interesting.  One of these things Matt also said was that part of the problem was the surprise of playing against Jack without first reading all of what he could do.  As stated earlier Matt would have changed a choice or two during his build if he had known what Jack could do.  He also said that he would not play against Jack at all, if more than one member of his crew could take the curses.  I think we will need to play a few more games before we know if it was really a negative play experience or just that he never say him play before.
   I hope you enjoyed this write up, I have never written a battle report before, so I would love to know if I need more or less detail, or what if anything is missing.  Thanx for reading!!