So I played against Freeborn’s Forcemaster with my Warlock yesterday. It was a highly interesting match, for various reasons.
I was playing my “Lordlock” again that tries to lead two or three of the following big-bads into battle: Dark Pact Slayer, Dark Pact Slayer, Goran, Malacoda, Magma Golem.
First turn, I opened with a step toward him and two mana flowers. He played a forge and an enchant and decided to stay in his corner. My second turn saw me equipping a hawkeye and placing a forward forge into his center tile. I wanted to start hardcasting the next turn.
He got Moonglow out of the forge, that turn, then Summoned a brute and enchanted it.
Change of plans, then. No creatures. Dark Pact pierce is useless against Brutes, as is the bloodthirst from Goran and a Bloodreaper. I’m not dumb enough to summon a Magma Golem or Malacoda against a force master. I summoned my second forge and tried to gear up for a) cheap curses with moloch and b) more dice on my fire attacks and rerolls for range. I gave myself regrowth and kept chains of Agony for final QC because it’s a pretty neat curse against zombies. He got a force-snake out and revealed redistributed power on his brute.
Next turn, he deployed a dispel-wand and immediately got rid of the Chains of Agony. Wary of a forcepush into a melee-buffed brute, I changed my forge-plan into some defense. Little did the brute care, because it rolled a six-crit attack, ignoring whatever armor I build up. That’s when I started retreating. I put enfeeble onto his mage, without revealing it and I threw an Agony onto the brute to save one of my forges. He attacked, it survived. Then he dispelled the agony. When he was in the left center-tile, together with my first forge and I was in C3, right next to my spawn corner and below my second forge, he halted his charge and refused to walk into my waiting crumble for two turns. I really wanted to get rid of his Wand.
After I shot an 8-dice Fireball into his brute, dealing 4 normal and 2 crit damage and then rerolled that into 7 normal damage (At least I got two burns), he exclaimed “ah, now I see why they’re broken” and proceeded to summon another one. That one also got some power redistributed from a force-snake, as well as the mage.
When his mage and one of the brutes finally destroyed my first forge, I had two leathers, a shadow cloak, and a vet belt. I also had both Warlock rings, precision gloves and Moloch. I felt battle-ready. One of the brutes obliged and walked into my zone.
To hit me with a roll that dealt 11 damage.
I had a guard ready and a firestream, leaving that brute with 8 dmg and 2 burns. I then walked into the right center zone to be with my remaining forge, as well as the forcemaster and the second brute, dissolving the wand.
The burns killed that first brute, now I had to face the second one, as well as a melee+5 Galvitar-Equipped Forcemaster. I’d saved some mana, so I equipped a demonhide armor, played a debilitate onto the forcemaster and, after getting tanglevined in QC, blasted the zone with a ring of fire. Tangle took 6 dmg and two burns,
Forcemaster took 4 dmg and two burns, brute took some normal damage and no burns. At least I rerolled that into a bit of critting. The forcemaster then proceeded to enchant me, instead of hitting me with a debilitated doublestrike into 4 armor and a vet belt, then hit me with the brute, bringing me up to around 21 damage. The demonhide did some work and put 2 more damage onto the brute.
The next turn, I finally activated my regrowth and teleported into my spawn corner, two tiles away from the enfeebled mage and the lumbering brute, thus dropping the tanglevine and guaranteeing that no melee would hit me that turn.
I spent a bit of damage to kill the brute, he spent some mana to de-curse himself with dispels and to try pulling me towards the brute. During all this time, one of the burns from the ring of fire stayed on him. The brute died and we found ourselves back in the forge zone, my demonhide dispelled and my movement somewhat restricted by a force crush. Since I didn’t really fancy getting hit by 9+4 dice, I’d spent my dispels on his bear strength and his Distributed power, and also gave him an Agony. He poisoned my blood and ate a flameblast in return, bringing him to around 15 dmg and a second burn.
Seeing as his melee attacks were rather useless, he summoned a stalker. Stalker got one attack in, got a friendly enchant and brought me to a dangerous point, since poisoned blood and force crush were ticking just as the burns on the forcemaster were. I decided to throw my other two flameblasts into his face, then gave him a ghoul rot and lesser teleported out of the zone in final QC, his ini. At this point, he had Ghoul rot, Moloch damage and two burns to fear in his upkeep, with only a regrowth to help him survive. He was at 29 dmg
In the end, after all automated dmg was applied, he had one hp remaining. My plan had been to use another lesser teleport in order to get out of range (forcecrush preventing a pull) and then just betting my luck on a fireball against his dodge.
Screw the plan though, I killed him with Moloch instead.
Well played, freeborn. That was an enjoyable match.
Things of note:
If all of your creatures either get countered by forcemaster or feel rather useless against brutes, you’re gonna scratch your head a bit when a forcemaster starts summoning brutes against you.
I usually name it a weakness for brutes that it’s hard to buff them. Distributed power kinda circumvents that. Then again, one of the big strengths of a brute is that he doesn’t really need buffs anyway. So while the book idea is an interesting one, I’m not quite sold on it being a smart one yet.
Personally, I’d have tried to use force pulling a bit earlier. In Freeborn’s defense, I usually expected a pull and positioned in ways where one pull would not be enough to get me into real danger. When I finally gave him a chance to pull me, it would have put him out of his forge range to do it and cost him an action because he was already enfeebled.
While his defense protected him from me even attempting a fireball, it didn’t help against my flameblasts. I had three of those, with 2 additional dice, 1 pierce and a reroll. He really needed an answer to that, but once he forcecrushed me, there wasn’t really any mana for a forcefield.
Generally the most fun thing about the match was the way he forced me to completely abandon the plan I had for my book and go back my curselock-roots. I wouldn't confidently say that I can beat that Forcemaster with my other books.
