Death Angel Multiplayer and VTES

I wrote some of this over the weekend after the games, but I'm currently swamped at my two jobs and decided to publish it. I apologize for any errors in the text.

I played several more solo games of Death Angel. I died a lot and lost. Gideon failed me both times. Goddamn Thunder Hammer isn’t reliable. I did win one game, with Lorenzo, Calistarius, and Caludio. I think that the "sweet spot" for single-player involves Lorenzo, Calistarius, and any other team except Gideon. I can say with certainty that activating the Door terrain often (when switching locations, kill a genestealer for each counter on the door, placed by activating) is actually a good idea all the time.

I then went out to play with friends. Eskimatt (Matt the Inuit) and Ray joined me for a three player game of Death Angel, and it went pretty well. Three player games move very quickly, because 6-10 genestealers spawn every turn on average. We had to keep our shit together to slap them down. We had all twelve marines, four to a player, in play.

Ray took to it as he always does to new games, with a lazy competence that slaughtered genestealers while still barely understanding the overall strategy of the game. Go brute force.

Eskimatt spent a lot of time each turn talking to me about what actions we should take as an overall team. We did pretty well, but every once and a while we had to just shut up and pick action cards.

We lost a few guys, but in the end we still had nine of twelve marines, and we got the “kill all genestealers in blip piles or in play” victory-condition card, which is middle of the road as far as difficulty goes. We were certainly going to lose some guys killing all the bugs, but then we figured out a way to pit them all against Sergeant Lorenzo, who I controlled, and then I played the Lorenzo-team Support card, which says every time you roll a skull on the die on defense (50/50 chance, 3 of the sides have skulls) you kill a Genestealer and the swarm rolls again to attack.

We piled like 5 support tokens on Lorenzo for rerolls and I used 3 of them to kill a stack of 7 with Lorenzo’s Support ability. It was fucking hardcore: Lorenzo stabbed over a half-dozen marine-killing Genestealers to death with his sword.

Good victory, though it actually felt a little easy.

Then we played some VTES, as Devin had arrived.

Game 1:

Ray (Cailean Wall)--->EskiMatt(Full Steam Ahead)-->Me(Bored of Directors)-->Devin(Melisande Soul Gem)

Ray got Mouse, Clarissa Steinbergen and Cailean. EskiMatt popped Vardar the Vardarian and Olugbenga. I got Lana Butcher, Joao Bile, and Elena Guitierrez. Devin got Melisande.

EskiMatt’s deck, which is actually my deck, is my (almost certainly worse) version of a David Cherryholmes deck concept I read about on the google group. It’s never quite run right for me, but every once and a while it scores. It tries to ignore its predator by ousting the hell out of its prey with Loss bleeds at stealth. It’s important to save the Khabar:Glory for the oust turn, but there are 6 or so in the deck, so the hope is that you can always play one every turn if you have two. There’s 14 or 15 Loss in there.

So I knew what I was in for. My Ventrue weenie breed/bloat/vote had a chance to handle it, but I drew into nothing but master cards after getting the ball rolling nicely. Lana was the Prince of Miami, I had the Sunset Strip and Headquarters in play, and Elena was the Justicar. I even called some early pool damage votes to hit Devin for 6 or 7 pool. Then I had three change of target and a bunch of master cards in hand. It kind of sucked.

Ray’s Cailean wall does as many wall decks do: it got a pile of cards on the main guy. Cailean got a Guardian Angel, a Flak Jacket, and a Raven Spy quick, and then a Laptop and an Eternal Vigilance as well. Mouse didn’t do much. Clarissa ran into Melisande.

Devin’s deck was interesting. He got out Melisande, Villein’d to get some pool back, gave her THA with a skill, and had her magic up a Soul Gem the first turn she could. Then he put a Palla Grande in play and bled with her. Clarissa got in front of it and Devin showed his hand. He’d gotten Melisande close to empty, and with her add-strike she was empty and played Burst of Sunlight. This gave Devin a fresh Melisande to act with. But now she didn’t have superior thaumaturgy, so the train would have to wait until next turn to roll again.

Eskimatt hammered me with Loss for two turns, getting me for 10 or 12 pool. It sucked. I drew into one Con Boon, but I was running out of pool and time. He jammed for a turn on stealth but I was on the ropes.

Devin and Ray mixed it up a bit. Cailean got another Bird. Mouse found an Army of Rats.

Matt bled me down to 4. I played a Hostile takeover, thinking that Devin might buy Vardar off of my predator and thereby get me another turn. I then bled with all my guys, hoping Devin would try and block each one with Vardar so that I could Change of Target. It worked. I drew 3 Master cards. Goddammit.

Then to top it all off, I left Joao untapped (he could have hunted after the bleed/CoT. . .), despite the fact that I knew Matt had a From a Sinking Ship in his hand, as he’d misplayed it earlier. Devin did some Melisande nonsense. Cailean’s team got Smiling Jack, the Anarch into play. Cailean got another bird.

Ray bled the table a bit with Smiling Jack, but Matt stole Joao from me (an Eye for an Eye apparently) and then bled me for one with each of his guys to oust me. Goddamnit again.

Matt then plowed into Devin with a Gambit Accepted as poolgain/bleed, and D actions to avoid the threat of Cailean.

Ray blocked everything he could for a few turns, but this left Cailean at one blood and despite Ray’s Hunting Ground/Blood Doll combo on Cailean, Smiling Jack was starting to really hurt him. He was down to four pool when Matt ousted Devin, and then to three with Smiling Jack pulling counters from him.

Ray and Matt did the stealth/intercept dance for a bit, but Matt had a Dreams in play by now and his Lost in Crowds was doing double duty on Cailean’s animalism intercept cards. Matt drew into an Elder Impersonation, and with the Loss he bled with, it sealed the deal.

EskiMatt 4 VP, GW

Game MVP: Loss, or maybe Khabar:Glory, which is sick.

Game 2:

Ray (G5=6 Baali vote/bleed)-->Me(Victim---G2-3 Internal Maleficia toolbox)-->Devin (!Salubri swarm)--> EskiMatt (Kyasid Ravager bloat/bleed)

The game broke badly, as four-player games often do. Matt and I, crosstable buddies, found ourselves in trouble early. Devin was swarming on Matt like crazy before his bloat could set up, and it turns out while Ravager + Hungry Coyote + a couple Vessel is strong, Hide the Heart still fucks it all up if the dude is empty when he does it.

I got out Dylan and a couple Caitiff, and then I spent most of the game going backwards. Ray got Annnazir and Arishat, the G6 voting Baali, and they proceeded to bleed for 3 per action, or call Reckless Agitation. I had a bunch of Evil Eye and super-Maleficia on Dylan, so I defended alright, but being infernal and being on the ropes really sucks. I got Sargon out, as I needed him to play Ruins of Charizel, but Ray had already beaten me down pretty hard. On top of that, Matt hadn’t been able to do much to Ray because Devin had gotten out every group 2 !Salubri and they’d also summoned a few Brothers in Arms, so he could bleed for 6 with his weasels.

Devin pushed at Matt relentlessly, and Ray pushed at me relentlessly. I got ousted first. Then Devin threw everything he had into ousting Matt, though I was telling him (kibitzing at this point, really) that destroying Ray’s fourth Path of Evil Revelations (I’d destroyed several already) was necessary. Devin ignored me; it’s usually a good idea. Turns out it wouldn’t have mattered much. Ray had enough pool to untap his guys anyway, and with two Reckless Agitation he ousted Devin quite handily. He also had two Horde in play by now.

EskiMatt only had a few pool by now, so Ray was able to oust him with relative ease.

Ray: 4 VP and 1 GW

Game MVP: Annazir. Guy is a beast.

Then it was late. Devin was interested in playing a game of Death Angel, and EskiMatt was hanging out still, so we played 3-player again. Things went so much worse for the marines this game. We lost a couple of red-shirt vanilla marines early, and then we got the Teleportarium for the middle location card.

The Teleportarium location has a control panel, and activating the control panel does this: All space marines must spend a Support token or roll a die, and on a 0 they die. Then all the blips in both piles are removed and the marines move to the next location.

We were having trouble, with extra blips being added to the stacks (event cards!), and we decided to activate the Teleportarium. This was a mistake, because we were probably gonna lose two marines on average. We lost Zael, the Flamer marine, and Leon, the autocannon marine. This was very very very bad.

Without heavy weapons we really only had Claudio and Calistarius to get multiple attacks, and we’d allowed a lot of bugs to accumulate on the board by this point. We lost another two marines in the 3^rd location, and more and more bugs started flanking our guys. We only had 6 marines, and we’d lost all the green (Gideon) team and purple (Zael) team by the last location.

The final location was the Launch Control Room. The win condition here is to activate the control panel and either put a support token on it or roll a die, and if the die is equal to or less than the number of tokens on the card the marines win.

By now there were bugs fucking everywhere. We lost another vanilla marine while putting a token on the control panel, and we were lucky not to lose more. Without the heavy weapons marines we had little chance of surviving the next turn or two: There was a stack of 10 genestealers marauding the Hulk by this point, and several smaller 3-5 bug swarms.

I looked at Devin and EskiMatt, and said, “let’s go for the control panel victory and hope we get lucky”.

We spent all our action cards on Move/Interact actions, and we managed to put two more tokens on the Control Panel. Then Sergeant Lorenzo, under Matt’s control, activated the panel and Matt had a 66% chance of winning the game for us: 0-3 on the die. EskiMatt was pissed about the pressure. There was some wailing and gnashing of teeth. The roll was properly dramatic.

And it was a 3! Victory with 20-odd Genestealers spawned around 5 marines! Hot.

We decided that the marines magnetized the Hulk and then opened the hatch to the great void, and watched the Genestealers get sucked out into space while they worked their life support systems. Lorenzo isn’t wearing a helmet, tho. No matter. Victory was ours, and it was properly dramatic. Nice.

Good times.

-Merlin out