Learning the Game Play-Thru: Guild Ball

Learning the Game Play-Thru: GUILD BALL

Welcome to this semi-introductory play-thru of Guild Ball, a game by Steamforged Games, LTD. You can find their website at:

http://guildball.com

Guild Ball can be simply described as a tabletop medieval football (or soccer) game played in a fantasy world. In a normal game, teams are composed of 6 players who compete to score victory points either by scoring goals or by knocking opposing players out of the game. The rules for the game can be downloaded for free. The player cards can be downloaded for free. Steamforged even made paper-doll models that players can cut out to play the game with until they decide which guild to invest money in.

This play-thru will be focused on walking through the basic mechanics of the game.  It has two purposes:

1.  Offer new players a step-by-step example of a game in order to learn basic rules and game play flow.
2.  Walk myself through the rules to make sure I understand them better in order to teach our local community who are just starting to play the game.


To best visualize the game, I'll be using the fantastic VASSAL module which can be downloaded from the Steamforged website. If you haven't used VASSAL before, check it out at:

www.vassal.org

Victory Conditions and Rosters

A "Typical Game" of Guild Ball, per the rule book, takes 90-120 minutes, is played on a 3' x 3' playing area, and ends when one team reaches 12 Victory Points. Each team will have 1 Captain, 1 Mascot, and 4 Players. To create a team, a player chooses a Captain that determines the Guild the team represents. The player chooses a Mascot that shares a Guild with the Captain. Lastly, the other 4 spots are filled with players that may play for the same Guild as the Captain.

There are eight guilds, one of which is The Union. The Union can be played as a team just like any other, but its members are also able to be taken by other Guilds. If you've played Warmachine, the Union operates similarly to the Mercenaries/Minions faction. Each Union player (except the Captain and Mascot) will have a list of other teams they are willing to play for.

For this game, we'll be pitting The Mason's Guild against The Brewer's Guild.

The Masons

The Brewers

The point of this example game is to demonstrate the game system and not necessarily the best tactics or tricks. The nice thing about the game is that it seems very well balanced at this point. There's no "optimal" roster lineups. Unlike Warmachine or various other minis games, models in Guild Ball don't have a points cost. Every model is intended to be balanced against one another, although they have drastically different roles on the pitch. All the same, if you're looking for fancy tactics or advice, you probably won't find anything in this article.

The rosters for this game will be:

The Mason's Guild

• Honour (Captain, Central Midfielder)
• Marbles (Mascot)
• Harmony (Winger)
• Mallet (Defensive Midfielder)
• Flint (Striker)
• Tower (Defensive Midfielder)

The Brewer's Guild

• Tapper (Captain, Central Midfielder)
• Scum (Mascot)
• Spigot (Defensive Midfielder)
• Friday (Striker)
• Stave (Centre Back)
• Hooper (Attacking Midfielder)

The positions (Central Midfielder, Striker, etc.) have no direct impact on the game. They are suggestions for the role the player has on the field. Strikers are generally finesse players who concentrate on scoring. Midfielders are flexible and can play offense or defense equally well. Midfielders distribute the ball to strikers, can score themselves, and so on. Backs are defenders who can (but don't have to) play further back, protecting your side of the field. Goalkeepers, when they come out in Season Two, will also protect the goal by hanging out very close to it and using bonuses they get for doing so.

Rather than go over the cards now, I'll go over specifics as they are encountered in the game. However, the cards are available through a number of sources:

• PDF off the Guild Ball website
• http://cards.playguildball.com/
• Or on your smart phone or tablet (search for the Guild Ball Manager app)

With that, let's go into the Game Setup.

Game Setup

A normal game is played on a 3-foot by 3-foot table.  The "pitch" can have pieces of terrain on it, and probably should once you've played a few games to get used to the basic rules. Each player has a Deployment Zone that is measured 10" from his edge of the table and a Goal Line that's measured 6" from the table edge. Each player has a Goal Token that is placed in the center of his Deployment Zone with the front edge of the Goal Token touching the Goal Line.

The Pitch showing a center line, deployment zone line, goal line (dotted), and the Goal Token.
The half-circle arc near the Goal Tokens are just decorative.

There is a deck of 12 Guild Plot cards. Before the game, each player is dealt 5 of these cards. Each player keeps 3 and discards the other 2. The cards (and the discarded/unused cards) are kept secret until played.

The Mason's cards for this game are:

while the Brewers kept:

Cards can be played immediately after a requirement is met.

The players then each roll 1D6. The player with the higher result gets to choose who will receive the ball. The other player, the kicking player, gets to choose which table edge he wants based on the terrain. The kicking player then sets up his entire team completely within his deployment zone.

Sidenote: Completely Within versus Within

A model is completely within a given distance when its entire base is within that given distance. A model is within a given distance when any part of the base is within that given distance, including when it just touches that distance.

The Mason's Guild rolled a 5 and the Brewers rolled a 3. The Masons win the roll and choose to be the receiving team. Our pitch doesn't have any terrain on it for this game so it doesn't matter which side is which. The Brewers set up all 6 players within 10" of their board edge and one model is declared to be the kicker. That model is given possession of the ball (the ball marker is placed to touch his base).

The Brewer's Deployment

When you deploy your team, there are a few things to look at when you are first learning the game. The role (Striker, Midfielder, etc.) may give you an idea of where a player wants to be positioned. In addition, some players may have benefits while close to another player on the team. For example, Tapper (the team Captain) has a special Character Trait called Tactical Advice:

Tapper's Card (Front)

Pretty simple, really. During the Maintenance Phase (which takes place near the start of the turn) if he's within 4" of the team mascot Scum, his INF (Influence) stat goes up by +1/+1, making his INF 4/5 instead of 3/4. He becomes better when he takes advice from a cat.

Tapper also has a Heroic Play which can affect friendly guild models within 4" of him. We'll talk about Heroic Plays later, but it's just another factor that may influence where you want to play models to start the game.

Sidenote: Friendly versus Friendly Guild

There is a difference between a friendly model and a friendly guild model. Friendly guild models are models that have your guild symbol on the back of their card. Friendly models are friendly guild models and models such as Union players who are playing for your team.

Brewer's Guild Deployment

One thing to point out: You can measure any distance at any time. No guesswork when it comes to measuring in this game.

To keep things simple, Friday goes on the left flank. Spigot will go next to her because Friday has a Character Trait called Defense Support while within 4" of him. The Captain, Tapper, is placed in the middle of the field along with the cat. Next to him is the big man, Stave. Stave is on a 40mm base, as opposed to the rest of the team who are on 30mm bases. Far on the right flank is Hooper.

The ball is given to Stave for reasons we'll explain in a moment.

The Mason's Deployment

The receiving player then places his players in the same way. He gets to see where his opponent placed his players and which one is going to be the kicker.

I won't go into all the details of the cards at this time, but the Masons also have powerful combinations that require players to be near one another to benefits. For example, let's look at Honour, the Team Captain, and her sister Harmony.

More specifically, look at Linked on Honour and Family on Harmony. Linked allows back-to-back activations, which can be game changing, while Family drastically improves Harmony's stats.

The Mason's Guild Deployment

Flint goes out wide on the right. He's an absolute fantastic Striker and the Masons will probably want to give him an opportunity to score early. Mallet offers a bonus to KICK scores while near him, has a 3" reach during his activation (more on reach later) and can hold his own in a melee. Honour goes close to her sister and the mascot in the middle of the field. Lastly, Tower holds down the left side of the field all by himself.

The Kick-Off

After deployment is done, the kicking player gets to activate the kicker. It's not a full activation like it would be once the game really starts, however. The kicker will get to move up to his base-move followed by a kick-off action (which is just a kick into space that doesn't require any Influence to perform).

If the ball goes out of bounds (by touching or going over the edge of the pitch) or finishes within the kicking player's side of the field, the receiving player may give possession to any model of his team.

The reason that the Brewers chose to give the ball to Stave was to get him just a little bit further up the field since he's one of the slower players. You can tell his by his MOV stat of 4"/6".  The first number is his base-move while the second is his max-move.

There are other things to consider, as well. Stave only has a maximum KICK distance of 6". With a base-move of 4" and that 6" kick, the ball is only traveling 20" from the board edge at the most (plus the scatter). The ball will be that much closer to the center line (and closer to scoring a Masons goal) when the Masons get it. Some players may want to give the ball to a player like Friday, who can kick the ball much further up the field (6" move + 8" kick + scatter).  I think some of what you want to do will come down to playing for attrition/kills versus turnovers/scoring.

Regardless, Stave moves up and chooses to kick the ball just past the mid-line.  The kick sequence is as follow:

1. After paying applicable costs, the active model declares a target-spot within range of their kick distance. You measure from the closest part of your base to the spot you have chosen. 

You do NOT measure from the ball token. If the ball is in the possession of a model, the ball token is only being used to indicate that player has the ball. It's not an actual entity on the playing field for distance determination.  

With a KICK of 6", the ball could be placed within the following area:

Remember the difference between within and completely within. The ball could have been placed such that only the back edge of it was touching some part of the highlighted area.

2. Generate a dice-pool using the kicking model's base-kick. Later on we will talk about modifiers to this dice-pool, but they aren't applicable for the kick-off.

Stave only has a 1. He'll be rolling 1D6.

3. A Kick attempt is resolved as a [4+] TN (target number) check. Again, there can be modifiers to this but they do not apply to the kick-off and thus we will wait until later to discuss.

Stave rolls a 3 and the kick is unsuccessful.

4. Stave is kicking the ball "into space", which means he isn't targeting a player with a pass or the goal for a shot. The ball is going to scatter using the kick-scatter template (as opposed to the normal scatter template). If a kick into space is successful, the kicking player may choose to re-roll the entire kick-scatter once, but he must accept the re-rolled results. 

Successful or unsuccessful, a kick into space without a model as a target will scatter. The re-roll is the benefit from being successful.

We place the kick-scatter template facing the direction the ball was supposed to be going. 1D6 is used to determine the direction of scatter. Another 1D6 is used to determine the distance in inches.

Kick-Off Kick-Scatter

The Brewers roll a 6 for direction and a 6 for distance. The final ball is placed here:

Final Kick-Off Destination

Now here's a little "gotcha" that might affect new players: the path that ball took to get to that spot. This is particularly important for interceptions on missed passes. In this case, the ball did NOT go straight forward and then veer off once it made it to the original target spot. Instead, the ball actually traveled down a straight-line path from Stave to the final location. That single line is the path the ball travels for purposes of potential interceptions.

Turn One

A normal turn sequence looks like this:

1. Initiative Phase
2. Maintenance Phase
3. Activation Phase
4. End Phase

Initiative Phase (Both Teams)

In turn one, the receiving team automatically wins initiative. On other turns, both teams roll 1D6. If a team had any leftover Momentum Points (MP) from the prior turn, they would add that amount to the 1D6 roll. The team with the higher result chooses which player has initiative for this turn. Ties are re-rolled and any bonuses still apply to the subsequent roll.

Maintenance Phase (Masons)

The team that was chosen to have initiative is going to do all of his Maintenance stuff first, then the other player.  These steps are done, in this order:

1. Resolve all Conditions on friendly models. Conditions are things like knocked-down, poison, being on fire, bleeding, and the like. Conditions stay on a model unless they say otherwise (such as Bleed, which expires during this step).
2. If there is a model that has been knocked out of the game, it's considered "taken-out". You would place a Icy Sponge token next to that model.
3. The team MAY return to play any model with an Icy Sponge token on it. We'll talk about that later. If a model doesn't return to play, it will get another Icy Sponge token on it the following turn and could return at that time instead. You'd do this to heal up more before coming back onto the pitch.
4. Generate the influence-pool.
5. Allocate the influence-pool to friendly models.

This means it's time to talk about Influence. Let's look at Honour again:

Her INF stat is split into two.  The first number is how much Influence she will generate each turn if she is on the pitch. If she's taken-out, she won't contribute anything. However, you do get a chance to return models to play before Influence is calculated.

The second number is the maximum amount of Influence she can be allocated. She can never be allocated more Influence than this number. However (and this may be another gotcha), if a game effect says a model gains Influence, that can take the model above their maximum value. Allocating and gaining are two different things.

So the Masons player counts all the Influence on each of the six cards and comes up with 12. The Masons allocate each player between 0 and their max Influence. In VASSAL, this is show by little dots near the tokens.

Allocating Influence is probably one of the most important and trickiest things to do in Guild Ball as a new player. It is used for things such as running, charging, kicking the ball, attacking, and using Character Plays. It is a limited commodity and wasting it can mean an inefficient turn. So, in some aspects, you have to plan your turn out in advance, while also allocating enough Influence to be flexible depending on what your opponent does and what the dice may or may not do.

The thought process for the Masons is this:

• Mallet is just over 5" away from the ball. He wants to run to the ball and pass it back to Flint. Running takes 1 Influence and so does kicking the ball.  He'll need 2. A successful pass will generate an early turn Momentum Point.
• Honour wants to keep enough Influence for herself to threaten Stave if he moves up further to Lob Barrels.
• Harmony will want to do the same. In fact, if the opportunity arises she'd want to charge in first so she starts her activation within 4" for the bonuses from copying her sister's stats.
• Tower is probably just going to jog or sprint and hold the left side of the field.
• Marbles may want 1 Influence to use Tooled Up on either Honour or Harmony if Stave gets close, giving one of them additional damage.
• Then there's Flint...

Flint - He has good reasons to look this smug

Here's the thing about Flint: He threatens a LONG way and it's with very unpredictable threat vectors too. Without help from other teammates, he has an 8" sprint and a 8" kick (combined which would require 2 Influence). Then we can look at his Character Plays:

Super Shot could make that a 10" kick instead. It would cost him 1 Influence (see the COST column). Where'd They Go could be another 4" of movement, giving him a move of up to 12" for one more Influence. He is just over 21.5" away from the goal right now.

It can get even crazier if Honour gave him Superior Strategy:

That could be another 5" move before the shot, although in this case it's probably not needed and it would give the Brewers another activation or two to try to stop him.

Many Striker-type players who tried that kind of aggressive game play would be punished severely for it. The other team would probably be in a spot to charge in and take the goal scorer out. This is not necessarily so with Flint. He has above average health for a Striker (on the front of his card it's the bottom rows of circles), and an Armor (ARM) of 1, which reduces the amount of hits he takes. He also has Charmed [Male] which takes his Defense (DEF) up to [4+] against 70% of the current models in the entire game and 4 out of 6 of the Brewers models (Friday is female and Scum, male or female, just isn't going for Flint).

Sidenote: Warmachine Confusion

If you've played Warmachine, you know that you can't do anything after a Run move. You can't pop your feat, you can't cast spells, you can't attack. Nothing. Not so in Guild Ball.  If you Sprint, you can still spend Influence, Momentum, etc.

If the Masons are going to try this first-turn goal strategy, Flint will need 4 and Mallet will need 2. Marbles and Tower can get by without any. Honour can get 3, Harmony 2, and Marbles 1 in case he wants to use Tooled Up.

Masons Turn One Allocations

Maintenance Phase (Brewers)

The same steps are done in the same order. There are no Conditions on turn one. There's no one that's taken-out, either. We can go right to counting Influence and allocations.

The Brewers end up with 12 Influence, because the cat is close enough to Tapper to give him the bonus.  It's relatively obvious what the Masons plan to do since Flint is loaded up with 4 Influence. The question becomes is there anything that they can do to stop it?

To be able to shoot the ball at the goal, a team needs to spend a Momentum Point and you start every turn with zero. However, the Masons are going to get a MP when Mallet successfully passes the ball to Flint. So that's not an issue for them... unless we can make them spend that MP somehow before they can spend it on a shot.

We saw the front of Stave's card earlier, but now let's look at the back:

Now we've got something. Stave has a 6" sprint. He can Lob Barrel 6" away and it's a 3" circular area-of-effect (AOE) centered on a spot within that 6" range. Since you can always pre-measure in this game, we know that Stave has range to catch Flint in that AOE.  It will shove Flint away and knock him down.

Knocked-Down is a condition, like we mentioned very briefly in the Maintenance Phase discussion. You can't advance (jog or sprint) while you are knocked down. You can dodge and be pushed, but you cannot advance. To get up from being knocked down, you have a few options:

1. Forfeit your Advance to stand up.
2. Spend a Momentum Point during a model's activation to "Take a Breather Lad!", which can remove all status conditions on the acting model.
3. Spend 2 Momentum Points during a different model's activation to "Come on Mate!", which can remove all status conditions on a friendly model within 8".

Knocked Down will also mean the ball scatters away from the model that has it.  

While this Lob Barrel stuff is a plan, it's far from being guaranteed. To actually hit Flint with the attack, Stave would still have to roll some dice. For a character play with an AOE such as Lob Barrel, the procedure would be as follows:

1. Active model declares an AOE play and pays the cost (in this case Stave would pay 2 Influence).
2. Place a circular template with the center of that template within the range of the play (6" from the edge of Stave's base).
3. If the play was triggered by a Playbook result (we'll talk about this later), all models within the template suffer the effects of the play.
4. Otherwise, for each model within the AOE template, generate a dice pool using the cost of the play (in this case 2). Roll against the target model's DEF (if it's a friendly model you can choose to automatically succeed). If the TN check is a success, the model suffers the effects. Otherwise they don't.

Flint has a DEF of 3+, but it would be modified to a 4+ because of Charmed [Male]. Stave would have 2 dice and would need a 4+ on one of them: 75% odds. 

Those aren't bad odds so Stave is allocated 3 of the 12.  As for the rest of the team:

• If Stave isn't successful, Hooper is going to get his maximum amount of 3 Influence to potentially come up and make Flint pay (at least as much as possible).
• Tapper will get 2.
• Scum doesn't need any.
• Spigot will get 1 to enable him to sprint.
• Friday will get 3, just in case someone gets close enough she can use her Dirty Knives ranged attack.

Activation Phase (Turn One)

Mallet (Masons)

As the Masons have initiative, they will take the first action.  As we talked about, the plan is for Mallet to use 1 Influence to sprint, then another Influence to kick the pass to Flint.

When he sprints, Mallet has a movement distance of up to 6". Sprint moves do not need to be done in a straight line. When Mallet moves within 1" of a free-ball, he can choose to immediately take possession in a process called "snapping to". If a model starts it's activation or moves within 1" of a free-ball, it's the player's choice if he wants to snap-to or not. You can also snap-to if the ball token lands or is placed within 1" of a model. If multiple models are within 1", they roll off for it using 1D6 + KICK.

So Mallet moves up the field, gets close enough to snap-to, and then moves further upfield. He then chooses to make a kick attempt with Flint as his target. We'll walk through the kicking process again.

Sidenote: Line of Sight

Unlike other games, models in Guild Ball have 360 degree line of sight. You have line-of-sight to another model or object if you can draw an unobstructed line from any one point of your base to any one point on the target's base. Lines are obstructed by certain terrain types, other model's bases, or active effects that state they block LOS.

1. Pay the cost and declare a target spot within range. One thing to note, models count as being within their own aura so Mallet does give himself the +1/+1 KICK bonus. The cost for a kick is 1 Influence.

2. Generate the dice pool based on your KICK stat. Dice pools are reduced by 1 for each enemy model engaging the kicking model (ie. within their melee range and they aren't knocked down). Dice pools are reduced by enemy models NOT engaging the kicking model but who have any part of their base on the ball-path between kicker and target spot. Mallet has a KICK of 2 plus 1 from his Football Legend aura. He'll get three dice because no enemy models are involved in this attempt. 

3. Resolve the kick attempt with a [4+] TN test. If the target spot is not in LOS, add +1 to that TN (such as kicking the ball over a player or a piece of LOS blocking terrain). If there are enemy models engaging the target model (so if you're targeting a player with the kick) you'll get a +1 TN per enemy model.  Again, none of that applies so Mallet is just looking at a 4+ on 3 dice.

He rolls a 1, 4, and 6.  The pass is successful.

4. Upon a successful kick, if the target spot was a model, the model immediately takes possession. If it was an open spot on the field, scatter like we talked about earlier with a re-roll option. If it's unsuccessful, scatter without the re-roll.  In this case, Flint takes possession.

In addition, a successful passing of the ball between teammates generates a Momentum Point. 

Initial Ball Location and the pass to Flint

The Mason player didn't initially think of the threat range Stave presents using his Lob Barrel action, but he does now (either because it dawned on him or because he saw the Brewers player pre-measuring during setup). A 6" move by Stave, a 6" Lob Barrel range, and the 1.5" radius means that if Flint is within 13.5", he could be in trouble. A quick measure shows that Stave and Flint are separated by about 12.75".

There is an option for the Masons though: the Pass'n'Move. It uses a Momentum Point and it allows a model who received a pass to immediately make a 4" Dodge. A Dodge can be a move in any direction that doesn't count as an Advance. It will cost the Masons that MP that they need to get a shot off on goal, but they're going to spend it, move Flint out further to the side, and out of range of a Lob Barrel play. The activation now ends.

Scum (Brewers)

The Brewers had a good plan and it worked. Flint doesn't have a Momentum Point to spend so he's not going to be able to shoot the ball. In fact, the Masons may not have any way to get Flint a Momentum Point since the Brewers aren't close enough to attack. There are four ways to gain Momentum Points:

1. Score a Goal - Gain 1 MP or if you roll two or more 6s on the shot, it's a Screamer and you get 2 MP.
2. Pass the Ball - Gain 1 MP as we just saw.
3. Take Down - An active model that inflicts the taken-out condition on an enemy model will gain 1 MP for their team.
4. Playbook momentous results - The result of attacks that use the Playbook chart with a momentous result as a selected option.

So it's important for the Brewers to not put a model in a position where a Mason can attack and get a momentous result. With that in mind, the Brewers activate their mascot Scum.

Scum will get his 2" Dodge move from Shadow Like to start with and then move a further 6" up the field by jogging, which takes no Influence. He wants to end in a position such that Topper can get the Influence bonus again next turn but not so close that the enemy can attack him. This is where the concept of Threat Ranges comes in.

It's simple math to figure out the basic threat range of a model.  You take the max-move distance and add the Melee Zone value to that.

The Melee Zone appears at the top of the back of a card. The model may attack an enemy model if it is engaging the target, which means the target is within that Melee Zone distance. So, if we just looked at max-move and Melee Zone, Scum's maximum threat range is 9". However, we just saw that Scum can get a 2" Dodge at the start of his activation. That adds to the maximum threat making it 11". Some characters can give out movement increases to themselves or to other friendly models. All of those must be figured out if you want to see where you're safe and where you aren't.

For Scum, Mallet has activated so he can be probably be ignored (a model can usually only activate once). Honour has a Character Play called Quick Time, which can give a friendly model a 2" Dodge. She can target herself with it or another friendly model within 4".  Harmony and Honour both have an 8" max-move and a 1" Melee Zone. If one of them got that 2" Dodge as well, that could be a 11" threat. If Scum stays outside of 11" from Honour and Harmony, he should be safe.

Scum moves up.  Ignore that weird blue line on Flint. It's a VASSAL graphic artifact that won't go away. Mallet also shouldn't have the two Influence on him at this point.

The Brewers are basically spending an activation in which they do very little in order to see what the Masons do next. Activations in an alternating-turn game such as Guild Ball can be very important resources, especially once players start getting taken-off and one team gets more activations than the other.

If you look at the picture above, another option would have been for Stave to move up and Lob Barrel at Honour and Marbles. Harmony is just out of range. It would have the potential to knock two players down, but it would expose Stave to Harmony. He could also target Mallet, but Mallet has activated and that means that he'll be there later so no need to do it now.

Tower (Masons)

There is a way for the Masons to still get the Momentum they need this turn to take the shot on goal, but it's a big investment in resources. Earlier, we saw that Honour had a Character Play called Superior Strategy that gave a friendly guild model 1 Influence and an additional activation, but it cost 4 Influence to use.  Honour only has 3 right now. That's where her Legendary Play can come in.

During a model's turn, they can use their Legendary Play (if they have one). There is no cost to the Legendary Play but it can only be used once during the entire game. If Honour uses this ability, she can choose to give herself that crucial fourth point of influence, give her sister a third point, and the monkey would get a second. Honour could use that ability, target her sister with Superior Strategy, and use Linked to activate Harmony immediately after so the Brewers don't see it coming.

It would leave Harmony exposed, so it becomes a question of 4 VP from the goal versus potentially losing 2 VP and a player.

For now, the Masons instead keep this plan quiet and activate Tower who just takes a jog up the field.

Spigot (Brewers)

The Brewers are moving forward either unaware of the potential combo from Honour/Harmony or just willing to trade a goal for a player+legendary play. The Brewers still don't want to give up an easy Momentum Point, so Spigot activates.

A model can use Influence or Momentum before or after their Advance action, but not during the Advance.  From the rule book:

During their activation, a model may only make a single Advance action. While making an Advance, a model that spends Influence or Momentum or makes an Attack or Kick action, immediately ends its Advance action.

Spigot has one Influence on him. He uses Tooled Up, targeting Friday, and then jogs up the field.

The board after Tower and Spigot's moves. The circular area shows the 11" threat from Harmony.

Marbles (Masons)

The combo plan still looks valid, but there's no reason to trigger it just yet. The Masons are going to activate Marbles next. He also has Tooled Up, just like Spigot, and will use his 1 Influence to put it on Harmony.

The buff might give the Brewers player some idea that something is up, but Influence isn't saved from turn to turn. Even if there was nothing else going on, it wouldn't be unusual to use the Character Play just to spend the Influence.

Marbles then moves over to make himself available as a target for a pass from Flint just in case while also being far enough from Honour and Mallet to ensure a barrel from Stave won't hit two models.

Tapper (Brewers)

Tapper doesn't have any obvious moves this turn. He spends an Influence to sprint and moves up between Scum and Stave.  Tapper can be a beat stick of a player and he's in a threatening position now for Turn Two.

Honour (Masons)

The plan is a GO! By activating Tapper, the biggest threat to Harmony is out of the action for the remainder of this turn. Now it just comes down to picking the enemy model Harmony will go after and executing the back-to-back activations.

You might think that Scum is an obvious target for Harmony. Scum's a mascot, has fewer hit boxes and taking him out would reduce the Brewers influence pool. But if you scroll back to Scum's cards, he has Unpredictable Movement. The cat would just mosey on away from Harmony and she'd be left without a target to build Momentum off of.

Topper and Spigot are both tough SOBs, but Topper actually has Tough Hide as a Character Trait, which will reduce damage done by 1 per hit. Spigot it is then.

Honour activates first. She needs to end her activation within 4" of Harmony for the Family bonus while not blocking any potential charging lanes. Charge movements have to be done in a straight line.

Honour starts by using her Legendary Play and then spends all 4 Influence on Superior Strategy for Harmony. She then jogs up the field to position herself for next turn and uses Linked [Harmony] to allow her sister to take the first of her two activations.

Harmony is up to 4 Influence now. She started at 2, gained one from the Legendary Play and another from Superior Strategy. She will use her first activation to jog up to get within 9" of Spigot, making sure to stay out of the 13.5" threat posed by Stave's barrels but within 4" of Honour.  Her turn ends and the Brewers are up again.

Topper moves up. Honour uses her Legendary Play and Superior Strategy. Harmony aligns herself for a charge on Spigot.

Stave (Brewers)

There appears to be nothing that can be done to stop Harmony from coming up, getting a Momentum or two and enabling Flint to take his shot. The Brewers have Stave, Friday, and Hooper left to activate. It seems like it's time for Stave to come online.

As I mentioned earlier, Topper can be a beat stick. The Brewers are going to set him up for next turn (potentially) by using Lob Barrel to knock Honour down and move her around.

Sidenote: Push and Dodge Distances

It has been ruled or cleared up that Dodge and Push distances are up to the distance specified. The amount can be chosen by the player using the ability.

Stave uses 1 Influence to sprint up to 6". Then he uses 2 Influence to Lob Barrel, picking a spot within 6" for the AOE to be centered upon. Because Lob Barrel costs 2 Influence, he will be rolling 2D6 to try to hit. Honour has a DEF of 3+.

Stave rolls a 3 and a 3, so the attack hits. Honour is knocked-down and can be pushed up to 4" directly away from the center of the template. She takes no damage from the attack itself. If the Brewers had a point of Momentum, Stave could have chosen to use his Heroic Play Explosive Brew. Heroic Plays can be used once per turn at the cost of 1 MP.

Stave does a Lob Barrel attack which pushes Honour and knocks her down. The orange is the maximum range of the Lob Barrel play.

As a side-effect, Harmony is not within 4" of her sister now. Her stats are much worse without the bonus from Family.

Harmony (Masons)

Losing the benefit from Family hurts a lot. Harmony just went from a TAC of 6 down to her normal 3. As you'll see in a moment, TAC is the attribute you use when making normal attacks.

Harmony declares a charge Advance against Spigot. A charge costs 2 Influence, requires a target in line-of-sight, and allows a model to move in a straight line up to the max-move. After the movement is complete, the charging model makes an attack against the target with a +4 TAC bonus (4 extra dice in the dice pool).

Harmony has a max-move of 8" and a Melee Reach of 1".  We know Spigot is within 9" of her. The charge movement does need to be in a straight line, but it doesn't have to be directly towards the center of the opposing model. You just have to finish the move engaging the enemy model.

The attack sequence is as follows:

1. After paying applicable costs, the active model declares an attack against a valid target model. The cost for Harmony's attack was paid as part of the charge.

2. Generate a dice-pool using the attacking model's current TAC and apply bonuses or penalties.

Charging is a bonus that grants +4 TAC. An attacking model gains +1 to the dice pool for each additional friendly model engaging the target model (called ganging up). An attacking model loses 1 die from the dice pool for each enemy model (other than the target) engaging them (called crowding out).

No one else is involved in this fight, so Harmony has a dice pool of 7 (3 TAC + 4 for charging).

3. An attack action is resolved using the target model's DEF for the TN test. If the target model is knocked-down, they suffer -1 DEF.

Spigot has a 3+ DEF.

4. The number of hits generated is the total-hits for the attack.

Harmony rolls terribly. She gets a 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 6 which results in only 3 total-hits.

5. Determine the net-hits for an attack by deducting the target model's current ARM from the total-hits.

Spigot has 1 ARM, so the net-hits is down to 2.

6. The active model applies the net-hits to their Playbook to determine the result(s) of the Attack action.

This is a really cool part of the game, but it can be slightly confusing at first. On a character's card, they have a Playbook that looks like this:

Harmony's Playbook. Each character has a unique Playbook.

A Playbook consists of rows and columns with each non-gray circle representing a potential outcome. Each net-hit from an attack "unlocks" an additional column of options to choose from. With 1 hit, Harmony would get to choose one of the two circles in the first column. With 2 net-hits, she can choose from the circles in the first two columns. 3 net-hits would give her the option to choose from the third column and so on.

On Harmony's card, there are 6 active columns (columns that contain at least one non-empty circle). What would happen if she got lucky and somehow had more net-hits than active columns? The results would wrap and she would get more than one result.

Wrapping is a little confusing at first. The active model counts the number of active columns and chooses one result from all those options. Subtract the number of active-columns from your net-hits tally. You can now take another result from a column equal or less than the number of net-hits you have left. You can wrap more than once.

Let's say Harmony got 9 net-hits somehow. She has 6 active-columns. She chooses any result from those 6 columns and has 3 net-hits leftover. It doesn't matter which column she chose the result from. It still subtracts 6 from the net-hits. With the 3 net-hits remaining, she would take a second result from one of the first 3 columns.

What do the results in the circles actually mean?

• A number is Damage (DMG) - Reduce the current HP on the target enemy model by the number shown
• A ">" sign is a Push - The target model suffers a 1" Push for each arrow shown
• A "<" sign is a Dodge - The active model may make a 1" Dodge for each arrow shown.
• "KD" is knocked down - It can't be selected if the target is already knocked down.
• "T" is a tackle result - If the target model has possession of the ball, the active model gains possession. You can't choose a "T" if the target doesn't have the ball.
• The "GB" symbol is a Play-Icon - They allow the active player to "trigger" and pay for a Character Play on their card without spending Influence. Some plays require two "GB" symbols which need to come from a single result.

If the active player chooses a result with a circle filled with a color, it is a Momentous result and generates 1 MP for the team.

Harmony ended with 2 net-hits, unlocking the first two columns that contain a total of 3 possible outcomes: "1", "T", and "<". The "T" and "<" are Momentous results because they are in blue-colored circles. Harmony cannot choose the "T" result because Spigot doesn't have the ball. The "1" result wouldn't give the team any MP, which was the major point of this convoluted strategy. Harmony chooses the "<", so she can dodge up to 1" in any direction and the Masons gain 1 MP. She chooses to move closer to Scum (and potentially further away from a charge from Friday) but NOT close enough to take the crowding out penalty.

Tooled Up (the buff Marbles put on Harmony earlier) does not do anything. It only adds +1 DMG to DMG results.

Dodges and Pushes are not Advances. Scum, if you remember, has Unpredictable Movement but that can only trigger on an Advance.

Harmony spends another point of Influence to buy a second attack. She only has 3 dice now. Her roll is a 2, 3, 5. That's 3 total-hits which is reduced to 2 net-hits because of ARM. She chooses the "1" result for 1 damage. It is increased to 2 damage because of Tooled Up.

She buys another attack with her last point of Influence. She rolls a 2, 2, 5. That's one total-hit which gets reduced down to 0 net-hits.

Harmony charges. The second copy of her shows the location after the Dodge result. The arc shows her 1" melee range.

Friday (Brewers)

You can't charge over a model's base (friendly or enemy) but there's still enough room for Friday to charge 8" and get Harmony in her 1" melee zone. Friday has Shadow Like which allows her a 2" dodge at the start of her activation, but doesn't really need it. She spends two Influence to charge.

Friday Pre- and Post-Charge movement. The red arc shows her 8" movement bubble while the smaller blue arc shows her 1" melee.

We'll go through the attack sequence again:

1. Pay costs and declare the attack against a target model. Friday paid the cost as part of the charge.

2. Generate the dice pool. Friday has a base TAC of 4. Charging is +4. Spigot is engaging Harmony as well for another +1 ganging up bonus. She gets 9 dice.

3. Resolve attack using target's DEF with modifiers. Harmony has 5+ DEF.

4. Generate total-hits. Friday rolls 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6. That's 4 total-hits.

5. Determine net-hits. Harmony has no ARM so 4 net-hits get through.

6. Apply the net-hits.

4 net-hits will result in 2 results: 1 from the first three columns and then another from the first column. Tooled Up (which Friday got from Spigot earlier) affects each result, not just the cumulative total. Friday will choose to use the Momentous "2" and the normal "1". With Tooled Up, that results in 5 damage and Harmony is down to 5 health.

Friday will spend her last Influence to attack again. Without the charge bonus, she gets 5 dice needing 5+ again. She gets 2 hits this time and chooses to do Momentous "2" again for 3 more damage. Between the two attacks, the Brewers also have grabbed 2 MP.

Flint (Masons)

Well, it is going to cost them Harmony, but the Masons are in a good spot to score.  Flint uses 1 Influence for Where'd They Go, giving him a 4" Dodge to start his activation. He then uses Super Shot for a +1/+2" modification to his KICK stat.

He uses 1 more Influence for a sprint move of 8" and he's just within 10" of the goal. He has to spend an Influence for a kick action and a Momentum Point to shoot at the goal.

Let's walk through the kick sequence again:

1. Pick a target spot within range. Flint chooses the goal which is just within 10".

2. Generate the dice pool. Flint is just out of the reach of Tapper and there's no intervening models. He'll be at a KICK of 4.

3. Resolve a 4+ TN test. Flint rolls a 1, 1, 2, 4.

4. Resolve success/failure. Flint scores, but just barely. 

It's 1-0 to the Masons.  That's 4 Victory Points and 1 MP.

Remember back near the beginning when we dealt out Guild Plot cards?

The Brewers choose to play "Make a Game of It!" now.  They'll get 2 more Influence next turn.

Now we do the Goal Kick that takes place after a goal.  The process is:

1. The activation of the player who scored ends. If the goal was scored after a Snap Shot, the active player who passed the ball before the shot ends his activation.
2. The person who conceded the goal placed the ball token within 10" of the friendly goal-token.
3. The ball scatters using the kick-scatter rules. The kick-scatter template is oriented in the direction the ball is traveling away from the center of the goal-token.
4. The ball lands where it scattered to. It cannot be intercepted or affected by terrain while it travels.

The Brewers choose a spot within 10" of the goal-token, near Friday and Spigot. The ball will then scatter 1D6" in a direction determined by another 1D6 roll.

The ball scatters direction 2 for 3", further out to the left side of the field but not close enough for either Friday or Spigot to gain possession automatically using the snap-to rules.

Hooper (Brewers)

Hooper is the last player to activate. He's got 3 Influence and he's going to use it all to go after Flint. He first uses a Momentum Point to trigger his Heroic Play True Grit.

He doesn't have any conditions on him right now, but he's just trying to get the +2 TAC bonus anyway. He spends 2 Influence to charge Flint. Hooper has a 2" melee zone while Flint only has 1". This lets Hooper charge to a spot where he's engaging Flint but he won't be engaged in return.  There are multiple reasons this could matter:

• If Hooper knocks Flint down, Flint may have to forfeit his Advance to stand up, which means he can't move into melee to attack (unless he spends a point of Momentum to get rid of conditions at the start of his activation).
• If Mallet charges in on Hooper, there won't be a bonus from ganging up.

So far we haven't explained what "Sustain" means on a Character Play.

Hooper has two Character Plays with Sustain. If you look at both of them, you might be thinking that it would be great to spend a point of Influence to get Tough Skin or use a "GB" result for Smashed Shins on Flint.

Sustain plays, however, end at the end of the turn. The effects of sustain abilities do not carry over from turn to turn, unlike conditions.

Here's the step-by-step of the attack:

1. Hooper pays the cost (by charging) and declares his target.

2. Hooper's dice pool is TAC 5 + 4 for charging + 2 for True Grit for a total of 11.

3. Flint's DEF is 3+, but is increased to 4+ because of Charmed [Male].

4. More above average rolling by the Brewers results in 9! total-hits off those 11 dice.

5. Flint has ARM 1 so it's down to 10 net-hits.

6. Pick and apply results.

Hooper only has 5 columns so he's going to wrap around one time. All results from a single attack are considered to be simultaneous but are resolved as individual instances. Each result is subject to modifiers such as Tough Hide, but Hooper couldn't choose to knock Flint down to gain the Shove the Boot In bonus to a damage option to whatever else he selected.

Hooper is going to choose Momentous "3" and Momentous "KD" (+2 MP for the team).

He uses his last point of Influence to buy another attack on Flint. He'll have 7 in his dice-pool. Flint's DEF is 3+, because the knock down penalty cancels out the Charmed bonus. He gets 4 total-hits which is down to 3 net-hits. He chooses the "2" which will be increased to 3 damage because Shove the Boot In does kick in for subsequent attacks.