Kickin' Balls

Hi Folks!

Met up with Will last night for our first full game of Guild Ball and thought I'd share it with ya'll.
This wont be a true blow-by-blow match report as I honestly cant recall each and every turn. But i'll give an overview and my thoughts on the game proper.
(photos are courtesy of Will)



I was rocking the Morticians, something of a jack of all trades team, capable of dealing decent damage and also playing the ball, but their main strength is messing with the opponent. Forcing them to do things in a sub-optimal order, forcing really tough decisions and even taking control of opposing players.
Will was playing his Engineers, primarily a ball playing team with some good ranged abilities.

We opted to avoid using any cover for this game as we figured there would be enough to think about already.

As you can see from the snapshots, we didnt actually make a whole lot of use of the entire pitch, I think thats probably going to be team, player & matchup dependant as the passing, attacking and special play ability ranges dont often seem to be huge.
As for how the match played out, we got stuck in pretty early on after a cagey first turn. I took an early-ish lead through my striker Bonesaw making a charge at Wills defender and scoring off the back of it.
Will scored soon after the ball was returned to my half of the field and his mechanica took it down the wing and fired home.
All square at 4 a piece.
It then got very messy in the centre of the pitch with a number of take-downs occurring. We reached a point where i was leading 10-6 and my captain had possession of the ball roughly in the centre of the pitch. Wills captain, freshly returned from getting patched up off the field, strode forward and bolted Obulus in the face, knocking him down and sending the ball bouncing roughly towards the mechanica that had scored earlier. I had no players that could reach the ball with the following activation and Will eventually managed to work another shot to try and level the scores at 10 a piece, but despite having 4 dice to throw it he fired wide!
The ball rebounded back along my back line, in the ensuing melee to try and grab the ball I lost another player to take it to 10-8, and Will eventually managed to work another opening for Hoist to put his earlier miss behind him and slot home for victory.
Final score 12-10

Looking back over the game afterwards I do feel as though i made a few mistakes, and I'm sure Will feels the same. But there are so many decision trees involved on a turn to turn basis that i dont think its worth beating yourself up over it at all. Hindsight is always 20/20, if you spot any real gaming-throwing mistakes, learn from it and move on.
The one thing i definitely took away from this game is how tactically deep it is, it can lead to you spending a lot of time thinking through a turn, but even having said that I never felt like the game was dragging, despite it taking a few hours. Thats definitely one of the advantages of having alternating activations.
All in all a thoroughly enjoyable session and I'm looking forward to playing again soon (once my team are painted.)