first pandora outing

Had a game last night, well, part of one, and got to use my Pandora crew for the first time.  My opponent was using his C. Hoffman crew for the first time too and as we didn't start until late thanks to my wife cooking us a lovely Curry, we only got two turns done.. But, they were fairly interesting turns, turn two in particular.
Here's an overview of how it went down.

20SS Game

Pandora
Kade
Candy
2 x Sorrow

vs

C.Hoffman
2x Guardian
Watcher
Mechanical Attendant



Strategies  Pandora - Turf War, C. Hoffman - Deliver Message
Schemes Pandora Bodyguard & the one involving being in opponents deployment zone, C. Hoffman Kill Candy & 1 other I can't recall.

We'd set up our small crews virtually opposite each other, there wasn't a huge amount of scenery, 3 trees and 3 ruins, but just enough to ensure it wasn't quite a straight run accross the table.
The Hoff was set up in a gaggle with everything in base with the Hoff.  Pnadora set up with both sorrows in base, one each side, Candy in base with one of them and Kade off on his own a bit to my left.

Turn 1, not a lot happened.  Hoff won initiative and moved a guardian up dragging Hoffman with it.  I activated a sorrow to link to Pandora, he moved up his other guardian. I moved Pandora, tried to use Incite (or Pacify, I can't remember which) and failed, managed to cast Self Loathing on Hoffman for a total of 4 wounds, failed everything else.  Not much of significance happened that I remember that turn, my deck was week with a solitary 9 being my only remotely high card so couldn't force much.

Second turn was more interesting.  I don't recall the exact order of everything but some of the highlights were, Pandora getting off my first sequence of wounds/moves caused by Pacify/Fading memory, pulling it off 3 times causing a wound to Hoff, 2 wounds to one  Guardian and 3 wounds to the 2nd Guardian (multiple wounds thatnks to Sorrows Emotional Stress) whilst also triggering Mental Anguish that saw one Guardian falling back to within a few inches of my table edge.
One sorrow bought it as did Kade, eventually, after successfully using backstab on Hoffman, only to see his damage limited by borrowed armour.  A Guardian cast a spell that put all my casts within 6" on  -ve flip, which is nasty, luckily it was the guardian I sent packing so impact wasn't too sever.

That was it really, no objective points scored, however he'd killed two of my models and I'd got Hoffman down to 4 wounds both guardians damaged and one of them a push away from being off the board.  Could have gone either way, with a good hand next round I think I'd have had him, but I was low on soul stones (though I wouldn't have used my penultimate one had I thought the game was going to continue).
had some bad luck, twice using Soul stones to add to my casting value or dual value only to flip a one, and had some good luck, he flipped black joker a couple of times.

Great game, if a bit slow, both crews more complex than we're used to.  So nice to play something different.
Got a good idea of the power of Pandora though :-)   great fun when it comes off, but Soul stones and good cards are important I think.

(Originally posted elsewhere October 2011)