Humans v. Goblins

The goblins have been getting a lot of action in these reports, but this is the first time they’re controlled by me. My objective: to prove the worth of Vicious Midget, who has failed miserably to make an impact in almost all the games so far. Did I succeed? Read on and find out!


Humans
Baron von Fancyhat
Eric the Squire
Sir Hogswash (freshly painted!)
Flintlock
Friar Flavious
Dim & Dimmer

Goblins (me)
Vicious Midget
Goblin King
Mortician
Seasick Stu
Firespitter
Grub


The goblins win the roll-off and chose the side; humans have initiative. The initial set-up (minus a Fancyhat and Firespitter activation) looks like this: 

(You can’t quite see Grub, but he’s skulking about by one of those standing stones)

Turn 1

Baron von Fancyhat helps Eric to harvest the first moonstone. Firespitter harvests the one just next to him. Grub does his Wyrmhole to come out by the wall near Fancyhat, staking claim to the depth 4 moonstone and harvesting it down to a value of 2.

Grub in a rare display of courage

Dim & Dimmer draws a catastophe for his activation, wounding himself, before spending all his energy digging away at a moonstone. The Mortician also harvests.

In an effort to spice up proceedings, Flintlock takes aim at the Mortician. He draws a green 3 and does a whopping 5 damage to the goblin. Seasick Stu tries to make his comrade laugh it off, drawing him and the Goblin King in with Bawdy Jokes. He then gets on with harvesting. Sir Hogswash joins in, harvesting the moonstone in front of him from a 4 to a 2. Vicious Midget sees Eric, a squishy target, across the table and runs towards him with all his might. Friar Flavious finishes the turn by harvesting the moonstone.

A pretty standard first turn. Goblins lead 3 moonstones to 2, but the humans have a third within easy reach (right in front of Dim & Dimmer). The final one will be a fight-out between Grub and Fancyhat.

              Battle of the bellies

Turn 2

Flintlock targets the Mortician again, in an effort to finish off the hapless goblin. The cards are not with the human player this time, and he declines to play. Seasick Stu responds with humour, drawing in the Mortician and Goblin King again, and crucially giving the Mortician a second energy with which to heal himself. Much to the human player’s disdain, Stu then targets Sir Hogswash with Seasick, depriving him of the energy to charge then attack.

Now, back to the harvesting. Dim & Dimmer activates and draws a 1, enabling him to harvest the moonstone and move forward. Across the table, Grub harvests the final moonstone and runs for it.

Goblins lead 4 moonstones to 3.
 

With Fancyhat standing just there, can we really blame Grub for doing a runner?

Sure enough, Eric passeshis activation powering up Fancyhat, getting him ready for action. Firespitter is keen to make him think twice, though. He targets Fancyhat and reduces him to three wounds. Friar Flavious tries to heal him but fails.

Now is Vicious Midget’s chance! He dashes towards Eric and deals 3 damage with his first Groin Tickle. He uses the end step effect to move himself into base contact with Eric, the opposite side to Fancyhat, so he’s now engaged by only one model, rather than two. Fancyhat reaction steps to keep engaged with the goblin. That’s not enough to save Eric, who falls to the next blow, dropping his moonstone. With his restored energy, Vicious Midget then targets Fancyhat himself. The resulting combat brings both models down to one health each.

Has Vicious Midget proved his worth yet? Not nearly…

Sir Hogswash is up next. He gallops towards Vicious Midget, who counters Hogswash’s Falling Swing with a High Guard, following up with Groin Tickler, which is out of range to deal any damage, but it allows Midget to move into base contact, where he can. And, sure enough, he does – Midget deals a huge 8 wounds to Hogswash before being slain!

At this point, the human player concedes that Vicious Midget might have some value. But the game’s not over yet!

The Mortician heals himself 2. Baron von Fancyhat picks up his squire’s dropped moonstone and cowers behind Sir Hogwash.

As the second turn draws to a close, I decide that the play so far has not been crazy enough, by goblin standards. So, after grabbing the two moonstones from his fellow goblins, the Goblin King targets the Mortician with Rule the Roost, causing him two wounds in hope that he can heal himself enough to make up for the gamble. Fortunately, the Mortician draws a blue 2, so comes out one health better out of the bargain.

Goblins end turn 2 leading 4 moonstones to 3, with both sides having lost one model and with Fancyhat and Hogswash badly injured.

The scene at the end of turn 2. Flintlock is the only model out of sight, just the other side of the woods

Turn 3

The goblins win the roll-off. Firespitter targets Dim & Dimmer, dealing 4 damage. Flintlock responds, targeting the Mortician, desperate to one-shot the goblin with a green 3. Unfortunately for the human player, I had the green 3 in my hand, so I called his bluff and proceeded to blow up Flintlock’s rifle. It felt good! Undeterred, Flintlock draws his dagger and runs towards the goblins.

With his extra energy from the fallen Vicious Midget, the Mortician revives the little goblin. It’s more for psychological effect than anything.

Dim & Dimmer decides that he’s the scariest of them all. He draws a blue 3 on activation and proceeds to eat Seasick Stu. The Goblin King responds by ordering Vicious Midget to attack the giant. The poor goblin has just returned from the dead, only for his boss to reduce him to one wound, but he takes to his task with relish. He slays Dim & Dimmer (his third victim this game!) but the giant takes him down with him.

I’m not sure why Vicious Midget is facing the other way in this pic

There was an interlude at this point, in which we discussed a rules point – whether the end step effect of Dim & Dimmer’s Packed Lunch signature move would take effect, after the giant was slain. We concluded, and this was confirmed by Tom on Discord, that it did: basically, the giant fell, but not before stuffing the goblin into his lunch bag.
The relevance? Well, it meant that the Mortician didn’t gain an extra energy in turn 4, as Vicious Midget was removed from play, not slain.
(Actually, as I write this now, I realise that he was slain anyway, as he only had one wound when entering the encounter, so he would have been slain before the end step effect took place. I don’t think it really affected the game, anyway.)

Next up, Friar Flavious heals Sir Hogswash three health and moves towards the moonstone dropped by Dim & Dimmer. Then, Grub does the unthinkable (well, for the human player, at least): he disappears into a Wyrmhole, dropping his moonstone beside Firespitter and re-emerging next to the building, just behind Baron von Fancyhat. He dispatches the noble with Bug spray and succeeds in doing significant damage to Sir Hogswash too, thanks to two unsuccessful calls of bluff.

Turn 3 ends with the goblins well in the lead, 3 moonstones to 1 – and of the remaining three, one is safely the Firespitter’s, another’s right beside the Goblin King and the final is contested between Grub and a badly wounded Sir Hogswash. The human player considers resigning: he’s three characters to one down, and his only melee character is badly wounded. Still, never say never in Moonstone…

Turn 4

This is where it begins to go horribly wrong for the goblins. Winning the roll-off, Friar Flavious strides forward and does a horrific amount of damage to the Goblin King. Forced to chose between his life and the Mortician’s the Goblin King transfers the damage to his subject. The Goblin King retreats, allowing Flavious to pick up Dim & Dimmer’s moonstone.

Grub aims his Bug spray at Sir Hogswash. The noble’s Sun shield keeps him at one health the first time, so Grub has to use the ability twice, meaning he lacks the energy to pick up Fancyhat’s dropped moonstone this turn.

 

Then, across the way, it’s Flintlock’s turn to take on the Goblin King in melee. Two Falling Swings to a Sweeping Cut spell an end to the goblin’s reign of terror. Two moonstones fall to the ground.

Now, after two incredible one-hit slayings, the humans lead 2 moonstones to 1!

The Firespitter picks up the moonstone Grub dropped when he went into the Wyrmhole and he trundles slowly towards the rest of the action. It’s enough to take them to sudden death, and the game will be decided by a roll-off. Will Grub harvest his moonstone before Flintlock or Flavious get theirs?


Sudden Death

It sounds so dramatic, doesn’t it? This time, it isn’t. The humans win the roll-off and pick up a moonstone. Bang! End of game!

 

Post-game analysis

Where did it all go wrong?

We talked a lot about this one a lot, how the humans managed to grasp victory from the hands of defeat. Obviously critical were the two one-hit melees that took out the Mortician and the Goblin King. I didn’t expect either Flavious or Flintlock to reach the Goblin King, never mind take him down. Maybe I was a bit bold, moving him too far forward, but then again I didn’t want to leave him out in the open to be picked off by Flintlock’s rifle.

But there were other factors, too, like Sir Hogswash’s Sun Shield’s protection from magical damage, which meant that Grub had to use his Bug spray a second time to finish him off, meaning that he couldn’t pick up the moonstone in turn 4. Had I known that the game would be so close, I might have risked a melee. And who knows what would have happened then?

But one thing’s for sure: we will forever after respect the Midget. Three victims to his name and some serious damage to Sir Hogswash. It’s a small consolation but I’ll take it.