Guild Ball: Fishermen (Me) vs Butchers (Youngest) Paperdoll Edition

Seeing as the Guild Ball kickstarter was coming to a close and I've after much thought gone for the Guild Insider pledge, I felt I'd best get a game in before I had spent my £500 on getting everything. With the public release slimmed down basic rules and paperdolls in hand (well on the table) I scanned the house looking for an opponent. Wife at work, Eldest out a shops...... Bang Youngest volunteers.

We opt to play with just 3 of the released characters each.

THE LINE UP

Butchers	Fishermen
Ox – Team Captain	Shark – Team Captain
Boiler – Attacker	Angel - Attacker
Brisket – Midfielder	Greyscales - Midfielder

Setup is rather easy. Roll off a D6 each, winner picks who's kicking or receiving. Goals are placed, receiver 1st. Teams are placed again receiver 1st, then the ball is placed within 18" of the kickers goal with the requirement that on kick off it is in the receiver's half. Roll to see if it lands on target then begin.

Play is alternated with each player activating one model in initiative order using influence to move/attack etc or to activate individual plays off their character sheets (referred to as play books). Influence is allocated to each model at the start of each turn and can be used to bluff players at times as to which player will be the key to each of your turns.

Our game started with myself receiving the ball. Greyscales quickly snapped up the ball with Angel and Shark taking their turns to head up the field. Leaving Brisket to guard the goalpost Ox and Boiler headed toward the fishermen players.

Turn 2 saw a win of initiative for me and a run of passing to gather momentum and resulted in a goal for the fishermen. The game progressed from there with myself using the fishermen abilities to move in and out of combat via combat results (and also gaining momentum at the same time) meant I could keep control of the combats fairly well while leaving players free to score and move the ball around. Youngest managed to highlight the danger of the Butcher play style managing to deal damage equal to 2/3 of Greyscales health in a single activation via a heavily influenced Ox, and take several large chunks of health from both my other players in single massive hits. I did manage to pull down Brisket but it took the combined effort of 3 turns and all 3 players in vary degrees to pull this off.

All in all I'm very happy with the way the game plays out and will be getting in another game or two over the course of the week with any luck. I'm feeling perfectly justified in the outlay (happy the the Wife is in for half along with me) and I'm looking forward to all the perks that my pledge will bring. (Involvement in ongoing development discussions, further testing of the other teams, the 8th retail-only Engineer team and every model in the kickstarter in resin{That being said the production metal miniatures are some of the best I've seen}).

There's currently 17 hours and if anyone is sitting on the fence or looking for a new game there's still enough time to download the rules and get a quick game in then throw in for the 2 team pledge and make a decision from there if you want any additional add ons post kickstarter. Link