Adventures in Necromancy: Part 2

As promised, in my previous article, I have had some more games with my Sepulchral Guard. I have tweaked my deck slightly and am mostly happy with it for now. More testing may result in further modification, but a bigger change is likely to come from Nightvault.

I managed to play three more games, bringing my total experience to a mighty five games. This is reinforced by discussions with my fellow authors, but take my conclusions with a pinch of grave dust. My two games were against Zoran, who was using the Farstriders. In a clash of masses of Underworlds experience, he had had no games at all with his Farstriders verses my two games with the Guard.

Zoran won the first board roll off and I opted to start with the lightning board. I was taking a gamble that he would be playing aggressively and I was hoping to be able to knock some of his aggressive Stormcast into the spark traps. This game plan was thrown off when Zoran chose to place the boards on the long diagonal, a little used set up in my experience, which allows a small warband to very tightly control the tempo of engagement.

After positioning myself to score Supremacy, Our Only Way Out and Hold Objectives 3-4 on turn one, on the assumption I would be able t0 earthquake my way on to the objectives I was caught flatfooted be a well played No Time which left me scrambling to catch up. Fortunately, I was able to score these in the second end phase and with that glory I was able to equip a swathe of keys in the third end phase to end up ahead with 18 glory to Zoran’s 9.

For the second game, I won the roll off for board placement and decided that I would be best off with a standard long edge to long edge deployment. A vicious and protracted struggle later and I had just manged to claw my way to a second victory through the use of keys in the last phase ending 16-15 in my favour. I learnt that attacking with the Sepulchral Guard is not an easy feat, especially not when it’s into a withering hail of bolts.

The third game was a multiplayer game against Zoran’s Farstriders and Magore’s Fiends played by Keefer. This was my second multiplayer game of Shadespire and my inexperience showed. I ended up deployed in the middle of the other two warbands and unable to properly hide my key models from them. I advanced to present a united front to the Blood Warriors, to try and deter them from charging in with the threat of being swamped. Unfortunately, this meant that I had left an avenue for the Farstriders to slip behind my mob of skeletons, using them as a screen against the Khornate fanatics.

The game was fun and though I didn’t win, a cruel focus on keeping the Fiends away from my troops, plus five glory for having the Champion stood on Objective 2 equipped with The Formless Key, A Destiny to Meet and The Shadowed Key and Chosen Champion in hand allowed me to come a close second with the score 14-13-9.

 

The deck list I am currently using is:

Objectives:

• March of the Dead
• Tireless Commander
• Well-Guarded
• Ploymaster
• Chosen Champion
• Escalation
• Supremacy
• Our Only Way Out
• Tactical Supremacy 1-2
• Tactical Supremacy 3-4
• Hold Objective 5
• Determined Defender

Ploys:

• Great Concussion
• Earthquake
• Mischievous Spirits
• Shifting Shards
• Confused Priorities
• Sidestep
• Distraction
• Inspired Command
• Quick Advance
• Hidden Paths

Upgrades:

• Great Strength
• Incredible Strenght
• The Hallowed Key
• The Shadowed Key
• The Blazing Key
• The Dazzling Key
• The Fractured Key
• The Formless Key
• A Destiny to Meet
• Hero’s Mantle

My broad strategy is to try and hold the objectives in my half of the board, if I only have two then I will attempt to get a fighter onto the objective closest to the board edge in my opponent’s territory using Hidden Paths. My power deck is built around pushes to keep my fighters on objective and my opponents off them, and ideally to limit their ability to engage my fragile warband.

My upgrades are entirely about maximising my turn 3 glory. I will put keys out on fighters near objectives and hope that I can push them into place in the last turn. Ideally the Warden will be stood at the back of my warband, Well-Guarded and ready to Meet his Destiny, suitably attired for my Chosen Champion in his Hero’s Mantle and carrying a couple of Keys to the city.

I have forgone Hold Objectives 1-4 in favour of the two Tactical Supremacy cards, as they offer the same total glory whilst also allowing me to fit in a couple of extra passive objectives to help smooth out my scoring.

Tomorrow I am taking my fighters to MOAB to compete in the last Shadespire only rules tournament. I hope to stake my claim to the Mirrored City then.