nino and fransico

Used these two Guild minions for the first time last night in a successful game against Ramos.  I had Line in the Sand strategy, which I wasn’t looking forward too, but in return Ramos had to kill Lady Justice so I was fairly happy that he wouldn’t achieve these.  Schemes wise he had schemes which additionally targeted Taelor and The Austringer (the second one of these would be very achievable if he could get into contact). My schemes involved being in touch with a piece of scenery in his side of the table and to steal a treasure off Ramos ( a decent scheme to take if Ramos was going to try and kill LJ).

Diagonal deployment and I set up with my ranged minions (Francisco, Nino and Austringer) on the left hand side and LJ, her totem (scales of Justice) and Taelor on the right, nearer to the Line in the sand.

I wont give you a blow by blow account but the end result was my opponent conceded early in turn 4 or 5. And Francisco and Nino were key to this.  I also had much luck, winning initiative at key times, flipping a red joker on damage to take a Steampunk Arachnid Swarm out.

In turn two I took out an Arachnid Swarm, I’d left all my ranged attacks until last and had good cards in my hand so I activated the Austringer, moved, attacked and then delivered orders to Francisco who moved shot and then used his family connections to activate Nino who used his In my sights on the Swarm, shot, triggered Trigger happy and on the second shot the Swarm was dead.  Very happy with Francisco and Nino here, family connections worked nicely and in addition In my sights and trigger happy were awesome.  Nino still had another activation point and another shot remaining.

Later in the game another Swarm attacked Nino, I held my breath and he survived, with only one wound left but never the less alive and unactivated, so, he flurried and wiped the Swarm out, with help from a Red Joker, but it only took him two of his 3 attacks, very impressive.

Overall I was very impressed with these two.  Francisco is useful at range, although I didn’t get to use Fanin’ and a demon in close combat it seems.  Nino’s long range of 16” and useful traits of In my Sights and trigger Happy can potentially make him deadly.  Admittedly he doesn’t have a high casting value so he can soak up cards if you really need to get In my sights off and cheat to get the trigger Happy trigger off but the potential can make it worth it.

At the end of the game, when my opponent conceded, I had flipped 3 markers, and was very confident of being able to be in touch with the piece of scenery.  Meanwhile he had nothing left, I’d killed a solitary spider, 2 swarms and his Soul Stone Miner leaving him with Ramos, one spider and his totem..

An unusual game that I didn’t expect to win with my experimental crew and Line in the Sand strategy.  I got lucky when he flipped his strategy and he deployed wrongly having misunderstood how Line in the Sand worked.  Not sure how much I learnt but was happy in how I used my ranged attacks and learnt the my two new Guild members can be deadly.


(Originally published elsewhere Sept 2011)