Intro to Guildball (Quick Review)


Having owned Guildball since early may, and not even having assembled all the models until the last week or two, I figured it was finally time to find out if I would actually be completing the models, or taking them back to Carronade to sell (like too many of my usual impulse purchases!).

After the jump I will take you through a couple of pictures of my opening game, although as a sneak peak - this game is worth playing!




So here we have Greg the pundits guildball mat, all setup with the models from each side deployed for our 3 v 3 game. 

With the mat its pretty straight forward as you have lines that show you were to deploy, but Guildball has been designed (with its movement in Inches, not boxes / hexes) to allow you to play on any table top surface. 

You just need the lines for distances, a halfway line and your goals to be able to do so! 



In the picture above I am facing off against the Fishermen of Greg's, we are basically using the starter box set for simplicty. 


Speaking of Greg, he is a regular feature on this blog, so here are another couple of pictures of him just before our game started! 


So the mat Greg has (that you can purchase as a player, if you wish) works for a 3 v 3 or a 6 v 6 game, which are the two game sizes. 

Playing the 3v3 means you only use the grass section, playing the 6 v 6 means you use the whole 3' x 3' mat. 


A couple of activations in (yes the game goes you go, I go, model by model), and you can see Velocity (the model with the green marker) has moved forward, the model on the other side of the pitch furthest forward is the kicker.

Each model has a stat called Influence. They have a number representing how much they bring to the team, and how much they can be assigned at any one time.

Typically this might look like 2 / 4. Meaning the model brings 2 to the team, but can be assigned upto 4. 

Similar to warmachine the Influence is assigned at the beginning of each turn before any model has activated.

Planning what you are going to do with your influence is key, and several  times I managed to assign too little to the one player that i actually needed to have it. 


Influence allows you to do things like Passing, Running, Charging & Tackling (although Tackling is a very tame word for what actually happens here!), it also lets you use abilities that are in your characters playbook (see below)


Below you can see a couple of activations in and nearly all our models are up close and personal, not something my ranged team should really be doing, but as its my first game, hopefully you will give me a pass. 


In the following turn, and with a fw more activations gone you can see that the ball has moved from my Captain (Ballista on the far right) to Velocity. 

This wasnt my choice and happened because Greg had one of his players tackle me and take the ball away, then throw the ball to the player next to velocity, who then managed to steal it back in the following turn. 


The dice mechanics are pretty straight forward for most un-opposed tests you roll a number of D6's requiring 4+'s. Get one and you have succeeded. This includes passing the ball and scoring. 


Successful passes cannot be intercepted (which is nice), although if you fail to get a success it might be intercepted. 


Opposed tests (as I am calling them), where you target an opponent are again you roll a number of D6, vs an opponents DEF rating. Each dice you get that equals the DEF rating counts as one success.

You lose one for any armour points the enemy has, and then you get to consult your playbook to see what this allows your player to do. 

Below you can see an example playbook, each success allows you to count upto that many columns in the playbook, and you then can choose one result from the total columns. 

So, if Honour scored 3 successes, she would have 5 potential results to choose from, she only gets one, but she does get to choose. 

If she scored 7 successes she would get to pick one of any of the results presented, and pick one of the two presented in column 1.

This means you get to do a lot of cool things with you tackles. Some of these are damage (the numbers), dodges (arrows to the left), pushes (arrows to the right), Knockdowns (KD), Tackles (T) and more. 


In essence you can tailor the result of the tackle to the situation you find yourself in.


Below we can see that the ball has once again changed hands, and the fishermen are moving out to the flank now. 


In this shot (one or two activations later) you can see the ball is sitting on the scoring post as I managed to successfully, steal, via a tackle (1 INF), and then successfully pass (1 INF) to Salvo who moved (free) and the shot at goal (1 INF & 1 MP).

MP is a momentum point and the key here is that you cannot score without using a Momentum point. They are generated from successful scores, successful passes, passive benefits & from the solid colour results in the character playbook. 

Momentum points build up in a turn and are reset at the end of the turn, their main use is allowing you to shoot for a goal, and allowing you to add 1 dice, per Momentum point to a dice roll, be it a pass, shooting attempt, character play or tackle (similar to Coaching dice if you play Dreadball).


Following up into the next turn and you can see the Fishermen are down to only two players, while I still have three, this is because I managed to reduce one of them to 0 HP.

When this happens, barring any special abilities the player is removed from the field, and gets given an Icy Sponge, they then get to come back on the following turn, or stay off the pitch and get a second

When returning to the field your health track is restored to number on it that equals your Icy Sponges, so you can throw them onto the pitch with less health if you need them quick, or save the player for a little longer to have more health when they return. 


So how do you win the game? Well in 3v3 you play first to 8 points and in 6v6 you play first to 12.

You get points two ways, 4 points for goals scored, and 2 points per player Take downs (i.e when they have to leave the pitch). 

In my first match I somehow snuck a 10-0 victory (Goal, Take Down, Goal).

The setup below is game two. This time I swapped out Salvo for Colossus (the big base)! Each model within the team is interchangeable with all the others there are no points so you can have a lot of fun picking and choosing the best players to take to the field!



Very early on in this game my players were throwing themselves forward, I think I got the synergy right for how they interacted (at least for this game), and pretty much managed to lock down Greg's Fishermen in the opening turn. 


As you can see Colossus was right into the action up close and personal smacking an opponent around. 


The second game was a lot faster (which says a lot as the intro took less than an hour all up, game 2 took less than 30 minutes. I managed to win by the same method, goal, takedown & goal for another 10-0. 

Not too sure how I will do facing the other factions, but it has spurred me on to paint these guys up, look out for them later this week on the blog! 

Comments

Unknown said…
It's about time I was back in the blog. Good write up John, glad you enjoyed it.