Fauns v. Humans

This was an opportunity for me to field a painted Old Calders, Billy and Wendigo for the first time, and to try to get myself liking Fauns. Did I succeed? Read on to find out…

Fauns

Boris
Chubs
Wendigo
Jackalope
Brother Daniel

Humans

Fritz
Billy
Old Calders
Sir Hogswash
Eric the Squire

Humans win the roll-off and choose the side – which turns out to be a bigger advantage than I’d thought when deciding whether or not to call mulligan: three moonstones right by their deployment zone and another two (at depth 3) within easy reach.

Turn 1

The turn begins as a harvest-fest, with Billy, Eric, Jackalope, Old Calders and Brother Daniel all harvesting and moving towards the enemy. Chubs uses Rouse on Boris, giving him the energy to summon two bunnies, which bound forward towards the moonstones in the centre of the board. Meanwhile, Fritz stakes a claim to the others. I’ll leave you to decide which is the most convincing.

   

Who would you rather be up against?

Wendigo uses his Mind Control to inspire Fritz to attack Old Calders. The wily gent manages to fend off the mercenary, countering his two Rising Attacks with a Low Guard.

The turn ends with Sir Hogswash digging away at the nearest moonstone.

Humans lead 3 moonstones (Billy, Eric, Old Calders) to 2 (Daniel & Jackalope).

Turn 2

Wendigo tries again to get Fritz to butcher his allies. This time, Sir Hogswash counters 2 Rising Attacks with a Low Guard. Still, I elected to upgrade Fritz’s attack to his signature move, making Old Calders receive collateral damage – 4 slicing damage, reduced to 3 thanks to his quilted armour.

Desperate to prevent the humans harvesting the moonstones around them, Wendigo moves in and uses his final energy (donated by Daniel at the beginning of the turn) to attack Fritz. Bad move. Two Rising Attacks against two Falling Swings sees Wendigo perish and Fritz come out of the encounter badly wounded.

Wendigo stalks his prey

Eric sets about healing Fritz, restoring the mercenary up to almost full health, thanks to some excellent Arcane hands. Chubs vents his frustration by shooting Fritz with his bow, dealing a decent 4 damage, but Calders is there to patch him up. Fritz is taking quite a beating!

Bunny attack! Summoning a third murder bunny, Boris sends them to generally interfere with the harvesting. One is even bold enough to attack Fritz, doing a bit of damage. Sir Hogswash still manages to harvest a moonstone, before attacking a nearby bunny.

The Jackalope hops in, hoping to finish off the wounded Fritz. Fritz reaction steps back, so the Jackalope instead gores Old Calders, taking him out of play.

Fritz then yell “Stand Back” to clear his friends out the way, before dispatching two bunnies and dealing two collateral damage to the Jackalope with his signature move.

The turn ends with Billy ramming Boris, drawing a pink 3 to deal 4 damage.

Humans lead 3 moonstones (Eric, Billy, Hogswash) to 2 (Daniel & Jackalope).

Turn 3

Daniel gives Chubs an extra energy, which he abruptly uses to fail to shoot Fritz or heal the Jackalope. Eric shows him how it’s done, healing 5 on Fritz, before spending his remaining energy harvesting a moonstone down to 1.

Daniel heals 1 on Jackalope and Boris, before hitting Billy with his placard. Boris only manages to deal 2 damage, but takes 6. Melee is really not going well for the Leshavult this game! Billy finishes off Daniel by ramming into him.

The Jackalope attacks Fritz, perishing in the exchange, but taking Fritz down to one wound. This causes Fritz to step back when a bunny moves in, as he has no desire to finally be felled by a bunny! When the bunny pursues him, Fritz decides to go for it, and steps, countering the bunny’s attack and slaying it.

Next up, desperate to fight back, Boris attacks Billy. Two thrusts, and the presence of Billy’s goat, mean that Boris deals a decent amount of damage, reducing Billy to 1 wound. Sir Hogswash charges in, but that means that Boris now has 2 animals around him, dealing two damage to the knight.

The turn ends with the humans leading 3 moonstones (Eric, Billy, Sir Hogswash) to 0 (Jackalope and Daniel having dropped theirs) With only two models in their name and three moonstones on the human’s laps, things are looking bleak for the fauns. But there’s hope: both Fritz and Billy only have 1 wound remaining!

Turn 4

The Fauns win the roll-off and Chubs begins by shooting down Fritz (finally!) and slaying Billy in melee. The humans only have 2 moonstones now. But, hang on, Eric harvests another two moonstones, in the aftermath of the carnage in the middle of the board.

Boris and Sir Hogswash fight it out, with Boris hoping to slay the knight and deny the humans a moonstone. It’s a bloody encounter but ultimately Sir Hogswash is victorious. He celebrates by picking up Daniel’s dropped moonstone.

Humans win 5 moonstones to 0.

Conclusions

Well, I’m not coming out of this game wild about the Fauns! Their abilities still seem to have too high a points cost, for my liking. I understand that you don’t need to reload a bow, to that merits the 3 energy, but I’d much rather have the flexibility to shoot, use two points for another ability, and reload the next turn.

Still, I did make some tactical errors. I was much too bold with Wendigo, for example, who would have been much better hanging back and being a menace with Mind Control, forcing the Humans to come to him. That’s where the Moonstone placement was quite unfortunate for the Fauns, as it forced them to move forward quickly to prevent the Humans from harvesting.

So, there’s hope yet. With each battle, we learn…