One Down For Reals This Time!

Had the day off today and "convinced" the wife it was a good idea to let me go off and play some games. I ran up to Huzzah and played Mike for my first game. He has been picking up Ressers lately and so I figured I might actually have a chance to beat him. I continued my Hoffman play and he played McMourning. It was his Slaugther vs. my Supply Wagon. Things were going as expected, I was dancing around charge range, letting him come closer. As he got into range I zipped up and engaged him. Followed up likewise with McMourning and it was an orgy of destruction in the middle. Luck was with me for two turns in a row where I manged to win initiative. I dropped McMourning after he put quite a bit of damage into the PeaceKeeper and Hoffman. Things were looking good as I dropped is Sebastian and a Crooked Man right after than, leaving him down to one wounded Crooked Man. Next turn, I won init again and attacked the Crooked Man, killing him. He slow to died, I shunted the damage from my PeaceKeeper (his Kill Protege) to Hoffman, expecting to flip to heal with my stone. I flipped....BLACK JOKER! Horrible, Hoffman dies, Bete Noire pops up and basically proceeds to wreck my whole crew. The game ended in a tie 4-4. We managed to exactly tie on Slaughter so no points for him. Alas, still haven't beaten Mike!

Second game was against Bill, he played Arcanists:
Turf War, Kill Protege (Peace Keeper), Sabotage
Kaeris -- 5 Pool
Fire Gamin [4ss]
Fire Gamin [4ss]
Fire Gamin [4ss]
Gunsmith [6ss]
Gunsmith [6ss]
Soulstone Miner [6ss]

I rolled out with, shocker, Hoffman:
Line in the Sand, Grudge (Male Gunsmith), Steal Relic
C. Hoffman -- 6 Pool
Guardian [7ss]
Hunter [6ss]
Peacekeeper [9ss]
Watcher [3ss]
Watcher [3ss]

I hadn't been very effective with the Mechanical Attendant so I decided to leave him home. Besides, I could use an extra Watcher for objective grabbing Line in the Sand. We started out doing a bit of jockeying for position, playing a bit of cat and mouse. Finally, I decided to go for it and charge at a group of his consisting of the female gunsmith, and 2 Fire Gamin. The PeaceKeeper was able to take out them out eventually along while Kaeris was beating everyone up. Bill got in a few shots with his Male Gunsmith on Hoffman and was whittling me down pretty well. Initiative came up and I think I flipped a 6 or 7, Bill flipped a 4, stoned and followed it up with a 2. The Peace Keeper charged at Kaeris and did some mighty damage to her, only to be beat back in the end. Kaeris fled off to a corner but the Peace Keeper followed and finally finished her off. Meanwhile, Bill managed to take down my Hunter and Guardian leaving a big pile of scrap in the middle. I was down to a heavily damaged Peace Keeper and a heavily damaged Hoffman and a Watcher. Bill was left with a SS Miner, Fire Gamin and the Male Gunsmith. My watcher was just running around pinging points, doing his job so he was basically out of the fight. At the end of the turn, Bill was able to position his SS Miner to melee Hoffman and the Peace Keeper. Popping him up, he won initiative and laid into the Peace Keeper. Hoffman shunting some of the damage off. At one point, Hoffman was damaged for his last 4 health, after flipping a Black Joker for defense and ended up flipping a Red Joker for the prevent! (Makes up for the bad luck against Mike). I was able to get my Peace Keeper away and we played some Cat and Mouse again. I managed to get both his Male Gunsmith and his remaining Fire Gamin (after it tagged the terrain for Sabotage) and with Hoffman's machine puppet was able to take them both down. His Miner was able to move up and exact revenge against both of them. The watcher basically flew as far and as fast as he could into the back corner of the board. I ended up with a 2 VPs for Line, 2 for Gurdge and 2 for Steal Relic (Hoffman stole it before Detonating scrap to kill her). Bill ended up with 0 for Turf War, 2 for Sabotage and 2 for Kill Protege. Which means I was able to get a legit 1/3 of the way towards removing the Skill-less moniker with a 6-4 victory!

Woot!

In other news, I think I am really starting to get the hang of Hoffman. I am still a little inefficient in the beginning, I am not sure what to do with Hoff Turn 1, I think I waste 1-2 actions each time. I heard about a neat trick of having the Guardian Protect Hoffman, then Hoffman Protect the Peace Keeper. This keeps the PK alive long enough for the Guardian to catch up. That being said, the crew is not very survivable with its low defense if the enemy bypasses armor. It seems in my last 4-5 games that every major attack bypasses armor. Probably sticking in my mind because they are the ones that hurt the most but still.

Hoffman is good overall, I think he has quite a few good tricks and can really move around the board well, when taking advantage of the Drawn to Metal ability. That leaves him able to Machine Puppet the Peace Keeper left and right, taking advantage of the paired ability. Very deadly, damaging combination.