Facing off this time it’s a 9lvl Battle for the Block: End Zones game, Heroes vs Jade Cult.

The Hero team has Dark Solar as the Lvl3 Leader taking The Hero Leader Card, 2 x Lvl1s (Skyline and Stalker) and 2 x Lvl2s (Stone Hawk and Ace of Wraiths). They’ve also got Kitty Cheshire as the Lvl1 reserve Supreme due to Strength in Numbers on the Hero Leader Card



And they bring with them some Lvl1 Cops and some Lvl2 Vigilantes



The Jade Cult are all proxied from my Anima Tactics collection, just to see how they play ☺. I’m using the hooded bloke with sword out as the Green Emperor Lvl3 taking his Orient Express Leader Card, the girl with the 2 swords tip-toeing on the fence as the Green Serpent Lvl2, the bloke with the huge mechanical arm as a Terracotta Warrior Lvl2, the girl with the claw on the gravestone as Shadowmask Lvl1 (and she has a twin! ☺) and the fat smiley bloke as Tanuki Lvl1



And they have even more Minions, 9Lvls in fact!!! (+4 from Leader card, +2 Green Emperor, +1 Green Serpent, +1 Tanuki, +1 Shadow Mask) They’ve taken a Ninja Sensei, some Ninjas, 2 Attack bots and June Summers



The Heroes deployed first, infiltrating with Stalker and Skyline meaning Stone Hawk and Ace of Wraiths could both infiltrate with them using the Hero card. Dark Solar and the minions patrolled their end zone. The Jade Cult then infiltrated Shadow Mask and Green Serpent as close to the Hero’s end zone as they could get, and also pushed the Ninjas forward with their master to take on the rock man and the cat.

The scene is set:




Turn 1: Heroes generate 12AP while the Jade Cult generate 17AP. Jade Cult win the start roll and Shadowmask immediately bounds over the pipeline into the Hero’s end zone and Strike’s a cop who goes down not knowing what hit him!



She then attempts to summon her Shadow Double but her powers fail her.



Meanwhile, June Summers begins Braodcasting Live, focusing in on the strange little creature Tanuki…



Dark Solar flies across the ruins and looks down at the enemy infiltrators, soaking in his own Dark Solstice, while the remaining cop withdraws and lays down fire (forgetting his blaster bonus!), wounding the Shadowmask.



Enraged, Shadowmask pushes up to engage the fleeing man in blue and successfully summons her Shadow Double…



…who immediately moves in and strikes the officer but misses hopelessly (even with momentum and mobbing!).



Dark Solar, trusting in his hand picked vigilantes to take care of the Shadowmask, focuses in on the bigger threat of Green Serpent, flying in and unleashing a Sun Ray, adding his Dark Solstice power die (but forgetting the bonus die for Touch of the Dark Sun…). Green Serpent mysteriously evades the natural beam though.



Will the copper, seeing his Leader is in the fight, moves again and fires on the Shadow Mask, again scoring a wounding hit, leaving her hanging to consciousness.



Tanuki, after sharing his Fortune with the Terracotta Warrior, moves towards the chem pool and looks for the Spell for That, but only gets back what he spent.



June then focuses her Broadcast on the Terracotta Warrior.

Relentlessly Dark Solar Rays the Green Serpent again, this time burning her with a severe hit.



The lion man vigilante sees that the Shadow Double’s back is turned and puts his hockey stick to good work, sending her back to the otherside.



Leaving tin man to move up in support, ready to jump Shadow Mask



Seeing her ally being surrounded, Green Serpent makes her move and Shuriken’s lion man, fatiguing him and confusing tin man into uselessness!



Skyline takes this moment to jump down and move towards the Jade Cult end zone



Clanking up towards Tanuki, the Terracotta Warrior unleashes a Homing Rocket with Ace of Wraith’s name on it, juicing it up as much as he could and delivering a heavy wound.



One of the Attackbots follows that lead and moves in to Beam Skyline (forgot Size Matters bonus die), who takes a flesh wound.



Skyline Throws his staff back at the robot, smashing armour but not destroying the menace, and then runs for the cover of the piping unit





Green Emperor senses the problem that Skyline poses and calls on the Dragon Scale to grant him the Spirit of the Dragon and he then blinks towards the caped hero.





While the rampaging Attackbot moves in and delivers a bigger and even more damaging Beam to Skyline’s back, leaving the hero struggling



Ace, realizing he’s too far up for his gun to be of any use, turns himself into the Wraith and floats safely down to the first story of the old ruined factory





Blinking in to engage the hooded hero, the Green Emperor ignores Skyline’s Inertial Repulsion and delivers a punishing Power Smash, finishing off the hero. (It wasn’t until later we realized the Green Emperor should actually have been Spectral and none of this exchange should have occurred because that is an “and” SFX along with the Spirit of the Dragon!)





With Skyline going down, Kitty Cheshire joined the fray and immediately blinked into Shadowmask, delivering a raking Scratch that took her out.




Green Serpent, now operating alone, moved in silently like a good Shadowy Operator and Power Lunged at lion man, taking him out.





While the Ninja Sensei Watched his young protégé…

Kitty, being the territorial type, attempted to Walk the Otherside with Green Serpent but the Jade Cultist was to nimble for her



Tanuki then gave Stalker some Bad Luck, as the big cat suddenly got splashed with corrosive slime and wounded!



With their master now watching on, the ninjas made their move, springing over the pipes and flinging Shuriken at Stone Hawk, but failing to slow the big fella down.




Kitty tried one more time to take Green Serpent on a Walk but again failed to grasp her, so she jumped away.




Tanuki tried sending a bit more Bad Luck Stalker’s way but this time the Cat wasn’t so unlucky.



Having failed with their ninja stars, the young students moved to their swords and knives, striking hard at the rock man but again failing. Master will not be happy…




Ace loaded up his pistol and unleashed a Ghostshot at Tanuki, hitting him and ricocheting shrapnel into the Terracotta Warrior, who shielded Tanuki at the last minute.



Knowing that Ace will need to reload, the Terracotta Warrior moves forward…



…as does the other Attackbot



Ace takes up a better firing position…



…leaving time for Tanuki to push back to within shielding distance of his bodyguard



The forgotten Attackbot pushes even further forward…



…which was exactly what Stalker was waiting for and he dashes forward at double pace into the Jade Cult end zone…



…followed swiftly by the big chief Stone Hawk.



End of round 1 and here’s how the cards look:

Heroes


Jade Cult


Both teams gain 1 AGP for having Supremes in the opponent’s end zones (Hero end zone on left):

TURN 2: Heroes generate 13AP and the Jade Cult generate 14AP. The Jade Cult again win the starting roll so Green Serpent takes the initiative and Power Lunges at the tin man vigilante taking him down.



Attackbot alpha rounded the corner at the same time and lets off a Beam at Stone Hawk and Staker, laying a heap of damage on the rock man (5!!!) as the big cat used him to soak up the incoming fire.




Kitty once again tried to Walk the Otherside with Green Serpent but to no avail, so quickly blinked out of harm’s way.




Will then opened up at close range with his police rifle but the Serpent was two elusive to hit, so he moved further out of harm’s way also




Pushing her advantage, Green Serpent dive’s forward and Power Lunges at Will, taking care of the last of the Hero’s minion.



Attackbot alpha repeats his last successful Beaming and again severely lays the hurt on Stone Hawk but misses Stalker




Ace of Wraiths sees the right time for the Queen of Blood and unleashes a barrage on the Terracotta Warrior and Tanuki, with a massive 5 damage delivered to the TW via Tank.


TW retaliates by loosing a Homing Missile that slams into Ace and then moving forward, ever closer to the end zone.



Taking his opportunity of Tanuki being isolated, Ace targets him with Ghostshot but misses, so he quickly ducks back into cover.




Tanuki, realizing his venerability moves back up to his robot mate and tries to give Dark Solar some Back Luck, but lucks out.



Master Ninja moves in to guide his students, Watching them.



Dark Solar, irritated by the laughing man, turns and unleashes a Sun Ray, burning up the Terracotta Warrior and Tanuki alike, leaving TW almost KO’d, and them he flew away to deal with Green Serpent’s threat.





Green Emperor moves to rejoin the fray…



…and Sensei moves closer to the Stone and Cat.



Swiftly flying in, Dark Solar delivers a Power Smash to Green Serpent, knocking her out of the battle.

TW’s long march continues…



…and the Ninjas follow their master’s lead.



Getting nervous with the enemy closing in, Stalker uses his wallcrawling abilities to seek the safety of higher ground.



Leaving Stone Hawk to face the Ninja assault alone. He fights off the first assault…



…but the second lands a clean two blows!



Realizing he’s surrounded, Stone Hawk resolves to go down swinging and Tomahawks a Ninja, smashing him.



Green Emperor focuses his Dragon Spirit on his Dragon Scale hoping to again call on the Spirit of the Dragon, which he does, becoming Spectral and blinking up to the second level of the building.




June swings her camera around onto the Leader, Broadcasting Live.



Kitty blinks up into position to pounce on the advancing enemy


Liking the publicity, Green Emperor again calls on his Dragon Scale in front of June’s rolling Broadcast.




Stone Hawk goes Rock Hard, ready for the onslaught.



Green Emperor again uses his Dragon Scale and orders Attackbot beta to advance on Stone Hawk.




Finally, Stalker Prowls.



Here are the cards at end of round 2:

Heroes:


Jade Cult:


and a KO’d Green Serpent



The Heroes take 3 AGP this turn (2 for no enemy in their End Zone and 1 for friends in the enemy End Zone) for a running total of 4-1 to the Heroes.

TURN 3: The Jade Cult are down to 10AP this turn, with the Heroes again gaining 13AP. Jade Cult win initiative again with a 6 and take an 11th AP for their Master Plan SFX.

Tanuki starts off by sharing his Riches with the Terracotta Warrior, then Zen Focusing all of TW’s defenses into his , then finding the right Spell to give himself Defend 1 and finally pushing forward.






Attackbot alpha moves in and Beams Stone Hawk, finishing off the big unit.



Sensing the big play, Ace of Wraiths loads up Queen of Blood again and fires down on Terracotta Warrior (who had regenerated thanks to the Leader Card) but failing to get through his Zen Focussed armour.



But even with all the good luck on his side, Tanuki went down to Ace’s pistol who had better good luck!



TW moved over the pipe and fired his 3rd Homing Missile at Ace, striking the shooter again.



Ace tried in vain to big the TW down with a Ghostshot but again the Zen armour is too strong.



TW then moves into the Hero end zone.



Dark Solar, seeing this impudent push into his turf orders Will to follow him to take care of TW.



Green Emperor attempts to use the Dragon Scale but this time it’s power deserts him.



He orders the remaining Ninja to deal with the cat problem by moving up to engage it.



Dark Solar directs Will to fire on the TW but the bullets rain of his hard shell.



Leaving the leader to finish the job, flying in and unleashing a devastating Sun Ray that reduces the TW to dust!




With only Green Emperor and a bunch of Minion left on the Jade Cult side, and Stalker about to wall crawl over the back of the building to safety and 3 more AGP for the Heroes it’s game over halfway through the 3rd. Heroes comfortably win on AGP although it felt closer while playing through ☺

Very nice! I love these battle reports.

You kinda make me want to take tanuki out for a spin again...

Brilliant Bat Rep!


I really cannot get enough of these.

Sounds like a good game. Any further thoughts. What I'm seeing is that those Ranged Level 2 Minions are WAY powerful. What did you think?

Cheers guys, good fun to put together.

So those Attackbots are good but I'm in two minds about them. They were perfect for this mission as the Heroes came to them, meaning they're slowness didn't matter. They also picked on slower Supremes (Skyline and Stone Hawk) which meant a few good hits. But as an opponent you can just about ignore minion and focus on taking down Supremes cause no supremes=no orders. So even though the Jade Cult still had 6 models to 5 left, they had 1 supreme to 4 so lost the game. I had the same experience in the last game with Heavy Metal, Felds just ignored and put up with the Minion and ko'd supremes.

So I think they're about right really, effective against slow supremes but if they were targeting quick blokes they'd struggle.