Sunday, December 17, 2017

Guildball Batrep #2 – Blacksmiths vs. Brewers



  We got next to no feedback on the previous Battle Report, so clearly we're meant to do more.  Or we enjoy it more than you do and your feedback is impervious to our pats on eachother's backs.  Either way, we're back.  Still Adam and still me, JD.


  Today's matchup is Adam playing his Butchers if he can assemble them in time, or another crack at the Blacksmiths.  I'm going to swing into the Brewers and try to bring something different today instead of my beloved Farmers or Union.  There's been no great changes to the Brewers, but occasionally I have to pull them out again to remember that they make me mad enough to put them back.  I don't feel like they're that far out of the game.  Certainly not enough to create a meme page on facebook with triple digit contributing members just to bemoan their hilarious inequality to the rest of the game.  We'll leave that kind of failure with other games.


Brewer rant, be forewarned

  The Brewers just don't seem to have it in this meta though.  It feels like a gameplan issue.  The players that are successful with Brewers have molded them into a playstyle identity they enjoy and have a consistent strategy with them.  Pat, with the great, highly recommended podcast "Strictly the Worst", is a prime example of this.  Most Guilds, you really already know what the strategy is.  The Brewers have lost that identity since S2, specifically during the "All score, all the time" period.  The Brewers are something of a bashy guild, but not as bashy as the Butchers and not as good at scoring as... even the Masons.  Morticians, Hunters and Butchers are really the only teams worse at scoring.


  Used to, the Brewers and Masons had this "Adaptability" identity.  They both could bash and they both could score.  The idea was to score better than bashers and bash better than scorers, with Brewers better at bashing, and the Masons better at scoring.  The game hit bashing really hard though in season 2 and it became very difficult to do well consistently with a fighting team.  It's only been very recently that fighting has kind of come back, and mostly due to the Shark/Siren/Midas/Vitriol nerf.  Those two teams could win 3-0 very quickly, and the only way to keep up was generally scoring.  Now that they've been set back a little bit by the errata, fighting has a shot. 


  The Brewers are still struggling though.  They've been outpaced it seems.  The recent two acquirements are PintPot and Lucky.  Both are very good, but it still seems to struggle with not having a Captain that can really lead a team in.  Tapper struggles to put a model down without his old heroic and Esters has an extremely poor INF > MOM conversion rate that really just leaves her as a support model while you hope Friday, Spigot1 and PintPot can carry the day.  This also leaves them with almost no 2'' melee, so you almost have to bring Tapper to deal with many problems.  Or Hooper, who is a set of his own problems.  So lets talk about lineups.  Enough ranting. 


JD's lineup.

  First and foremost, I'm a Tapper guy.  His non KS sculpt is the sculpt that got me into the game.  He will most certainly be my main Captain.  I will bring Esters because I think she does have game into a few lineups.  Specifically Fillet, Smoke, Burnish probably, and other condition heavy games.  But that's about it, and I don't like her.  Against Butchers, I'd probably go for a scoring game, at which Esters is possibly better than Tapper.  Against Blacksmiths though, I probably need to bash since I don't have any good ways to keep a ball against the likes of Cinder. 


  I'll also bring Scum.  I think Pat has ruined Quaff for most people even though I used to play him exclusively.  The cat missile has become a Brewer staple though, and is the best way to pick up momentum turn one.  If you're not aware of what it is, hopefully I can demonstrate but the gist of it is that Friday, at some point while she's forward, calls the cat to her.  The cat then hopefully makes use of "Sic' em" if you have it and charges some model within 11''.  At TAC7 on the charge, the cat has a chance of wrapping once, maybe twice, and if you put influence on the cat, you can get a few more attacks in for momentum.  It's not uncommon to see four momentum from Scum.  This is before any buffs like Commanding Aura, Tooled Up, crowdouts, any such nonsense.  If you're super lucky, the cat uses the momentous push on column 2 like four times to push a model within range of a basher and then the game is really on.


  Required models are pretty straightforward.  Spigot1 brings too much support to leave home without.  I don't often get Tooled Up on Tapper because Tapper is a perfect first activation, but Tooled up is great on other models like PintPot or Stoker.  Friday is my nearly only striker, and she is fantastic at it.  She also enables the previously mentioned cat.


  I think Hooper is required, unfortunately.  I dislike him, but he has 2'' melee which is necessary for certain matchups.  Unpredictable Movement, lots of 2'' melee (Fish, Farmers, etc) and he's ok into the condition game.  In every way but Melee range/threat though, he's outclassed by Stoker who has a far better toolbox and doesn't require a heroic to get a useful TAC.  The Brewer GIC helps with this but still.  So Hooper and Stoker are coming.


  PintPot is also coming.  Between PintPot and Stoker, Hooper really struggles to see the table in my games.  PintPot is also amazing for INF efficiency.  Easily one of the best rulesets in the Brewers.  In an Esters lineup, PintPot is doing the work. 


  Mash is coming.  He's really not a striker, but more 2'' melee, and against some teams an ok ball holder.  Against real scoring teams, they have the dodges to deal with him and he has no close control.  Close control and we'd be talking, but no.  He does bring 2 INF though.


  That's 9 models.  This leaves me with a fun model spot, which is Lucky, Spigot2 or Stave.  I haven't played Lucky yet, but I'm kind of itching to put Spigot2 on the table too.  However, I've played Spigot2 a bunch (believe it or not) and not my nearly painted Lucky yet, so Lucky it is.


  Tapper, Esters, Scum, Pintpot, Stoker, Hooper, Mash, Friday, Spigot1 and Lucky.


Adam's Lineup - So I've come to this conclusion that there is no way you wouldn't want Alloy and Hearth in a line up. No matter the guild I'm playing these two add so much to the blacksmiths kit. I can't wait until I have the second box so I'll actually be able to use the models. Going into the Brewers, and knowing they like to smack people, I have this plan in mind that I want to play ball. I haven't really decided how well the Blacksmiths can hang in a scrum with the Brewers at this point due to inexperience. I've said it in my last rep with these guys, and I'll say it again here, the pressure that Cinder, Hearth and Alloy put on a ball is insane. It's an incredible good set up to take the ball off someone on one success from 14" away. I'll always be taking Them with me, into every line up.

  This also adds Furnace into the mix, who I think is a solid master as well. The brewers aren't the fastest moving team, and the ability to remove armor, and limit more movement speed with burning is great. My next choices are Ferrite and Iron. They play ball together really well, and who doesn't like a momentous 7 damage? Ferrite also has one of the best legendaries to me of this squad, especially for scoring goals. She's also great at just debilitating players. Which comes into play later on as well. My Final 4 picks are Anvil and Sledge, since they do allow you to shift to a more fighting team if you wish, and the potential with Hearth, and Anvil, to allow Sledge 5 net hits on his way to a momentous 7. And Lastly I end up with Farris and Cast. Cast has this great ability called Shield throw that allows me to knock the ball off someone without having to tackle at all. Farris has a huge amount of movement and seemed like a nice addition to a ball heavy team. I need to spent more time with some of these other models to really know which ones should make it into a ten man team.


JD - Against Blacksmiths, I feel like I can't outball them with Brewers.  At all.  So Tapper, and Scum are my Captain/Mascot pick.  Adam picks Ferrite/Iron.


Adam - I don't really want to fight the Brewers, so I pick Ferrite and Iron as my captain and apprentice. The flexibility of a captain pick is really nice here, especially when that model gets to have an extra two influence it can be allocated. As well as her legendary changing giving everyone hobble on top of a move buff. Any time you damage someone when you have hobble this gives -2/-2 movement to them. This with the Burning can really hurt the Brewers in my opinion.

The Rolloff - I roll a 2 to Adam's 4 and he elects to receive.  I do swap board edges, as you'll notice in a few pics.  The side I chose was more open, and I generally need that for slow Brewers and their desire to scrum.


The Draft.

  Adam leads off with Hearth (Granite).  I take Friday, both of us leading the draft with obvious, non-telling decisions.  He picks Alloy (Mist), I go Spigot1, he picks Furnace, I pick PintPot, he takes Cinder and I take Hooper. 






  JD - I hesitated a lot on Hooper, but I decided I needed his 2'' melee against Cinder's UM and the other three 2'' models in the list (Counting Alloy).  Otherwise, I like my lineup.  I debated hard between Hooper, Stoker or Lucky, and I think either one is better than Hooper except for the 2'' melee. Mash, even with his 2'' melee, was right out.  I normally like him against semi-bashy teams to hoard the ball with his 2'' Unpredictable Movement, but Cinder's ability to just ignore that whole thing with Hot Shot means Mash has no place in a fighting list. 


  As far as Plot Cards, I have Good Marker (Fairly important for Brewers I think), Heroic Landing (Also important), and Match Fixing (Less important, but I fully expected a goal kick from Cinder so I felt like it was a decent card to have).  There was no Knee Slider or Sic' Em in my hand, so I expect Adam got them but since he's playing Blacksmiths, Sic' Em goes to discard.  What a waste.  I expected Knee Slider though. 


  My GIC is Another Round, for the free heroic, the main thing I wanted to try in the Brewers this game.


Adam -  My Line up is fairly linear. Like I said earlier, Hearth and Alloy go great, especially with Furnace and Cinder. They all lead into each other in my opinion. Hearth is my big support key here being able to hand out 2" melee to people and giving plus two net hits on playbook results is a huge deal for me. I was satisfied with who I took overall. I put a lot of thought into if I would take Cinder or not, I debated between her and Cast. Especially since Cast gets extra damage from burning and could be tooled up, so she could hit pretty hard. However it really came down to this idea, that I wanted to play the ball here more than fight.

   My plot cards for this one were, Knee Slider, Wingback, and Brace for Impact! Knee slider being a really big deal to me here, because I don't know if you if you've seen Iron and his ridiculous movement capability, but a 10" slide back to safety is incredible. I had a feeling I was going to get the hurt laid on me at some point, and with the Apprentices being super squishy, Brace for impact seemed like a solid choice. Wingback seemed helpful in theory, but never really saw use.

JD - Holy cow, you had Wingback? Was neither Alloy nor Ferrite in range of Wingback all game? Or when you were considering a charge with Iron early on? I'm surprised I didn't see that one come through.

 Adam - Yeah, I thought about using it for awhile but no one really needed to charge.

  My GIC is Tough as Nails, which allows me 5 healing and +1 arm on a friendly guild model who is knocked down for the turn. Most of my models have 2 armor, or three if they are by a master, so immediately removing 3-4 dice from the equation was really nice

The Kick - Friday moves up, kicks.  She walks the full 6'' and tries to put it way over and does ok.  Enough to force Alloy to retrieve which is something. In the future, I may try to force Iron to receive to prevent him being the first turn goal scoring model, but either Iron does it, or Alloy does it.  Both are very capable.


  On that note, Iron gets 4, Ferrite 1, Furnace 1, Cinder 2, Hearth 1 and Alloy 3 I think.


  Pintpot gets 1, Scum gets 0, Friday 4, Tapper 4, Spigot 2, Hooper 2. 




   Alloy acrobats up, sprints to the ball, back and kicks to Cinder.


  Spigot uses the GIC for his heroic and gets Time's Called down, affecting Friday, Tapper and Scum.  He tools up scum, the cat with no Influence. 


  Cinder moves up, passes to Ferrite and shoots Friday for 1 damage and Searing strike.


 Hooper sprints up and into cover, trying not to block his charge lanes.  I wanted to get Tough Skin onto Friday, but it was more important to be farther forward for better charge lanes on round 2 than it was for Friday to be 5/2 near Spigot.


  Furnace tools up Iron, moves forward and drops his AOE on Cinder, very aware that Cinder is a prime target for Friday since Hot Shot is 6''.  Even on fire, Friday can walk there.





  PintPot sprints forward.


  Hearth moves up, uses Instruction on Cinder.  This was disappointing to me because it guaranteed Cinder a double dodge counterattack on Friday.  However, both of us had forgotten at this point that Cinder has Unpredictable Movement and Cinder was safe from Friday anyways.  Instruction on Cinder actually benefitted me since I changed gears and began looking at Hearth instead.


  On that note, I've decided it's Friday's turn due to some order of activation issues.  Iron is coming to town, and I kind of want Tapper to go into him after scoring. There's two problems with this.  A) Tapper needs to go before the cat so I can Ol' Jakes 2 INF onto him, and I have no momentum for that heroic, and Tapper can't produce any in his position.  B)  I'm pretty sure Adam has Knee Slider, so even if Tapper goes last, I'm quite likely to have wasted a perfectly good pat cat activation on a gamble that Tapper will be in range of Iron.  It's not worth the bet so I activate Friday.


  Friday shadow likes forward, calls Scum up and charges Hearth.  Adam camps the momentum, so no counter attack and Friday does a two non momentous damage and two momentous pushes over the course of the charge and two follow up attacks. 


  Ferrite moves forward, calls Iron up and successfully kicks to him. 





  The surprise in all of this is that Friday's two pushes are enough that Hearth is in range of Tapper, thanks to "Time's Called" on Spigot.  This is unexpectedly fantastic news.  Tapper heroics 2 INF onto Scum, and charges Hearth.  He declines the KD because of Sturdy, and ends up just doing 3 momentous damage twice and a push.  I pass on Commanding Aura since the only benefit would be on the cat and it's not really worth it.  3 momentous damage is as much or more than the cat would accomplish.  Right?


  Iron looks long and hard at trying to get a momentum off of PintPot or Spigot, but the counter attack potential is too great on both, so he wastes a few INF.  He just uses Impetus, sprints an kicks for a goal, making it handily. 




  The ball bounces out and lands right on Tapper who declines to snap it.  Iron uses Kneeslider and disappears off to my left.


  Scum shadow likes forward and walks into Hearth.  I'm a little worried about positioning and blocking up Tapper for what I have in mind, but I'm pretty sure Hearth will be out of the way quickly so I don't worry about it.  Scum hits Hearth twice, wrapping both times.  I opt for a Momentous 2 and non-momentous 1 both times, which with Tooled Up, takes it to a 2 and a 3 for a total of 10 damage.  This easily puts me ahead on momentum, no competition, and I will go first.  The score is 0-4 Blacksmiths.


 




  Tapper gets fully loaded, so does Spigot.  Hooper gets one, Friday two and Pintpot zero along with the cat.  Originally, I had planned on snapping the ball to Tapper, but it occurred to me that my first activation would be Tapper into Hearth, and even if she couldn't survive, it was worth her counter attacking for control of the ball or KD, so Tapper left it off of himself.  In four hits, Tapper kills Hearth and triggers Commanding Aura.  I want the next attack on Cinder, but I need to sprint to get into goal range so I use the last two INF for that instead, finally snapping the ball, and score for a 6pt activation.

  This is good news for me since I've now got Commanding Aura up on two apprentices and Instruction is off of the table.  Of all the Masters to bring down, Hearth with 2'' melee on a stick, free 2'' melee for Alloy and 1 INF cost "Instruction", she's the one to bring down.  Furnace is nice, Ferrite is great, but Hearth is really the Apprentice's Toolbox. 


  As expected though, the ball bounces out to Ferrite.  I use my Match Fixing plot card to reroll the perfect scatter and Adam gets another perfect scatter.  Both snap onto Ferrite.  She immediately sprints and scores, taking the score to 8-6 Blacksmiths.  She slides back to cover.



  The Goal scatter poses a problem.  I need to hide the ball here, but I can't go too far to the right and forward because Alloy can pretty easily move an score.  I have him blocked in with Friday and cover but he can still move around quite a bit.  Even worse is Cinder with a 14'' tackle against Brewer Defense.  I try to put the goal kick to my right corner.  Far enough forward it can't scatter behind my own line, and far enough to the right to put it out of reach for everyone.  It scatters six inches to the one, right into the cover near Hooper.  Right where either Cinder can pick it up.

  If I leave the ball, Cinder picks it up, kicks to Ferrite and scores.  I can't kill her because she's got Unpredictable Movement and Hooper only has 1 INF.  Hooper ends up walking around the cover to pick up the ball and using Tough Skin on himself.  I feel ok about this.  Cinder is engaged by Tapper, and Hooper is a 3/2 now, plus cover.  Cinder needs two successful hits for this to work.  It has to be Cinder because Alloy is locked up.


  Furnace moves up, puts 2 damage into Tapper, KDs him and puts the crowdout AOE on Cinder, but not himself since he wants to help Alloy kill Tapper.  With Tough hide, it's pretty sketchy but still in the realm of possibility since he's a 2/0 now against Alloy.  

  Friday calls Scum to her to block Alloy's path and dodges into Cinder to ignore Unpredictable Movement.  I need one more momentum to stand Tapper up, and Friday gets it with a nice push that tucks Cinder into the pocket with Tapper, Furnace and Friday. 


  Cinder counterattacks, dodges away.  Friday stands up Tapper, hits Furnace for another momentum and walks into range with Cinder, causing her to unpredictable movement away.  This is what I want though, so now Spigot or PintPot can kill her. 

  Cinder has other plans.  She moves within 6 of Hooper, bonus times the shot up to TAC6, back down to TAC5 because of cover.  She needs four out of five successes to tackle the ball and gets it.  She also gets a successful kick to Iron who dodges back out of 8'' of PintPot.

  Spigot activates.  I can't get PintPot to Iron to disrupt him from a top of 3 score, but I might could use Spigot's heroic to boost him.  However, I can't be within 4'' of Tapper for Commanding Aura on Cinder, and be with 4'' of PintPot for Time's Called.  I decide to try to kill Cinder because I don't think I can get it done without Commanding Aura.  So he moves into CA, kills Cinder in 3 hits (KD, wrap and wrap.) and wastes an INF.  Score is 8-8.

  Alloy moves through Scum's area, producing Unpredictable Movement there, hitting Friday for damage and Dirty Knives.  He almost ends his activation but remembers back to the Shadows at the last second and does it, putting him out of PintPot's range.  Which is good, because I think under CA, PintPot kills him. 

  Pintpot really needs to go into Iron though.  If I could get there I could KD him, and the ball scatter would either come back to PintPot or better yet, go off the edge of the board and I win, but I can't get to him.  So I go into Ferrite, KD her and do incidental damage because Adam remembers his GIC and gets a third ARM for the activation, taking her to a 2/3 against a TAC5 model. 


  Iron sprints into the corner, staging for Round 3 and my cat idles.


    I win the rolloff pretty easily, ahead by 3 momentum.  I decide to go second, forcing him to fight for momentum and give me a chance to damage a model or something.  He activates Ferrite, standing her up, hitting Pintpot with a momentous Disarm, who Counter attacks and gets a push, barely at TAC4 now.  Ferrite's stuck there, acrobats away but Adam clocks before he can call Iron up.

  This is game.  Tapper goes for the kill on Furnace, knocks him down but Adam does his GIC again and Tapper just can not get up his columns enough to get CA down until the fourth hit, at which point he hasn't done enough damage at all.  Iron scores, taking the game to a 9-12 Blacksmith win.



Thoughts on the Game

  JD - I actually enjoyed getting my Brewers out again.  These are some of my favorite models, I love their sculpts, I'm happy with how I painted them, and I enjoy the playstyle.  I really did enjoy this game.  I also have not changed my position on Brewers and the main reason they are out of the bag is for batrep variety, and so Adam can play Blacksmiths into a team that's not the Farmers, or the Union I've played religiously for a year.  Despite the meta swinging back from the straight up ball game, I still don't feel that Brewers can kill faster than the other team can score.  This is further excacerbated by the Blacksmiths where hiding the ball is almost impossible.  That said, I made some errors here that cost me the game, while at the same time, it's evident that Adam is learning his Blacksmiths quickly. 

  Pros are that I got an ok cat attack off, never went second, killed Hearth and really felt like I was keeping up until the goal kick scattered into Hooper's turf.  After that, there was very few ways to keep the ball away from Cinder and Alloy.  I think Hooper was the best decision, but it didn't feel like a great one.  I could have kicked it away with Hooper, but the odds of him failing the kick, and putting the ball closer to Alloy, or into the backfield were somewhat high and I couldn't risk it.  At 3/2 in cover, I felt pretty safe, and even Adam was pretty concerned about that roll he needed for the tackle.

  The Cons of my decisions come down to a couple.  Tapper probably should have kicked that ball off into the backline rather than scoring.  Let them spend a few activations trying to get it back into play, and waste Alloy's activation.  Maybe.  I don't feel like I played horribly there as I needed the Goal influence.

  I still dislike Hooper.  I didn't need the 2'' melee as much, or it wasn't relevant.  Lucky or Stoker would have been a far, far better option.

  The two big problems were the Spigot and PintPot activations.  I got greedy, and wanted to use Commanding Aura against Cinder for the kill.  That wasn't necessary, and in fact it was overkill.  I should have stayed closer to PintPot for the heroic and put PintPot into Iron.  That was the far better decision. 

  Secondly, I didn't realize PintPot actually has dodges.  He's only one of two Brewers to have dodges (Spigot2 is the other).  If I had known that, I would have charged Ferrite, dodged out and gone into Iron for the KD, or at least pushes.  At least be engaged with him, but with 3 attacks it should be ok to get the KD.  And with PintPot's heroic where he ignores the next attack, Iron can't do anything about it.

  Lastly, I should have gone first on the last turn.  I knew the game was over and was curious what Adam would do going first.  I don't think it would have changed anything, but I should have gone first. 

  Adam - Going into this game I didn't feel like I was going to just end up kicking and scoring repeatedly. My thought process in my line up was just to play solid ball and be able to get a couple kills in between. The allure of a momentous 7 damage and a non momentous 5, really make me feel like I'm gonna do some fighting here. However, more often than not, I found that challenging these guys is a bad idea, and I really needed knockdowns instead of damage to ensure I wasn't put in the dirt. I don't thing that they're bad at fighting, but, I definitely feel like they smash ball teams, with how weak they are in the fighting game a lot. I think they have a real leg up on teams that play the ball personally.   I have really enjoyed the Blacksmiths so far, and I've actually had a hard time with what models to bring, other than alloy and hearth anyways. I can't wait to paint up my my team, and get the next set of models so its completed. 

  Something I can't stress enough when playing this team, is deployment positioning. It's so important and something I talked about last rep Jd and I did. Changing the way I deployed, changed the whole game to me. Putting Alloy on the left wing, and Iron on the right wing, with Cinder in the middle, give me a ton of ball threat wherever this ball goes. Not to mention where the Masters deploy being equally important. Hearth being within 6" of alloy and cinder, allowed both of them to get the benefits I wanted. Furnace, still is able to be by Cinder, and Ferrite by Iron. Depending on your line up, dictates how you deploy and where these models go. Positioning is key with this guild, and I can't stress enough how important it is for the deployment of this team. They all feed off each other. I should have changed Iron and Ferrites placement. So I could have gotten two inch melee on Iron, and not wasted an influence

  I left Hearth alone when the attack came and I really shouldn't have done that. I didn't expect that cat to hit like a truck, and he just evaporated my health. I was really confident in her large health and armor. Which comes back to hurt me in the second turn, especially since it took away instruction, and all of Alloys extra abilities. I felt really good about the second turn goal however. It went about as smoothly as it could. Match Fixings was terrible here though. I couldn't have had a more perfect roll, and I had to do it again. I also didn't expect to get the tackle off on Hooper with Cinder and put myself in position to score The roll was dicey, but I felt like I had to take the chance or else Cinder was going to get obliterated before she could take the ball. Which she does right after she finishes her pass. I also should have taken the full dodge after the pass to iron, to get him way out of Pintpots range. If he would have had the speed buff I would have been in a really rough spot.

  By the time the third turn rolls around I just load up Ferrite and Iron and stop caring about anyone else, Ferrite gets easy momentum, but I miss the clock time and don't get far up enough to make sure I can get Try hard off, which would have given me a goal, on 2 or higher dice roll.

   One of the things I was happiest about during this match was remembering a lot of my abilities I forgot about last time. Back to the shadows saved Alloy's life, and My Gic made a lot of my characters tough to kill for sure .

   All in all I've come to really enjoy what I've played with the team so far, and I'm definitely enjoying them. Until I play Thresher again anyways, and he just turns me into his personal harvest. The Blacksmiths feel like Masons in a way, but they seem much more ball focused to me.


JD - Again, I really enjoyed this game.  For all the issues I have with Brewers, this game was pretty close and could have gone either way at a few points.  I do feel that as Adam gains experience at the Blacksmiths, I won't see opportunities to exploit his mistakes with them nearly as often.  Things like Alloy being strung up behind cover, or over extending Hearth and allowing me to get both Tapper and Scum into her.  Or leaving Iron within range of a buffed Pintpot and I just didn't take the opportunity.  I don't see many great ways to hide the ball in Brewers though maybe just tucking it onto Scum and sending the cat into the far corner is an option.  I don't know.  Again, I don't think the Brewers hide the ball and kill players faster than any scoring team can score.  This is still true against the Blacksmiths who possess the widest array of ball retrieving tech in the game.  The Apprentices go down easier, but fast enough to stop them from scoring? It's sketchy. 

  The next question is if it's a Blacksmith problem or a Brewer problem.  I don't know that it's a Blacksmith problem.  It's very good, but I need to see it against Union or Farmers some more before I have an opinion there.  Brewers have always struggled to control the ball, and when Shark was running the roost was the period I put Brewers away because they just couldn't stop the scoring.  So you have a very, very good team in the Blacksmiths going against a low tier team like the Brewers.  There's no room for error.

  Adam's Butchers are in, and nearly assembled so I'll be surprised if I don't see them across the table next Batrep.  I will likely hold off on my Union or Thresher Farmers for that game.  After reading some of Vincent's ramblings, I might try a Smoke team for kicks and giggles, even though I detest Smoke's gameplay.  With the recent OPD change, I'm going to play Grange more, and may be up for playing that into Butchers.  Is there any matchup into Butchers that would interest you guys? Or any matchups in the future you'd like to see? Possibly not even Captain specific, but a certain player combo you would like to see into a matchup.  Curious about a Hunter team into Blacksmiths? Obulus into Thresher? Throw your suggestions our way and if something piques our interest we may pick it up and give it a shot. 

  Thanks for reading, and enjoy your week!  Merry Christmas!



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