More Blood, Sweat & Cheers

 Catherine and I played some more Blood, Sweat & Cheers this evening.

In our first game she took Sabrata the veles, whilst I took Alumnus the hoplomachus.

I got in my one-off spear-throw action on the first turn, but missed and ended up tripping over. This pretty much set the trend for the rest of the fight, as Sabrata chased me around the arena and I failed to organise any kind of meaningful counter-attack.

Once again we were joined by cats. Catherine was assisted by Miller ...

... whilst Pandora feigned interest on my side of the table.

Eventually the veles downed the hoplomachus to give Catherine her first Blood, Sweat & Cheers win.

The second bout saw Catherine using Valentinus the retiarius against the crupellarius Victor. 

Pandora swiched sides.

Valentinus dodged around the arena, getting on one failed net-attack. Neither gladiator got the better of the other for a long time.

We had both spent the game carefully managing our hands. When Valentinus fell, I saw my chance. I had two Glory cards in my hand, ready to make an epic attack, plus special cards to give me all kinds of bonuses on it. Stacked up these things would give me a huge combat advantage ...

I rushed in confidently, only to have Valentinus stand up and reveal the cards he needed to throw his net. Instead of glorious victory I found ignominious defeat. Once in the net the lumbering crupellarius was easily finished off.

Another win for Catherine.

In our final game Catherine took the dimachaerus Herminia, whilst I used the whip-wielding Rodan (and used the cestus stats and moves).

Thigs started off well. Herminia has a powerful attack, but the cestus has the highest speed of any of the gladiators, and I dodged them easily.

Catherine launched her signature two-sword attack, which allowed her to roll two dice and select the best. Double one!

Fate got its revenge. My high speed meant a low defence. So a handful of Guard cards were totally useless to me. That's four Guard cards and a Roar of the Crowd card which can be used as a Guard card.

Anyway, a series of very poor hands saw Rodan unable to mount either an effective attack or effective defence. Once the wounds started stacking up his speed dropped, and a couple of phases knocked down and unable to stand up were the beginning of the end. It was a long fight, but eventually Herminia was triumphant.

So Catherine got three wins to make up for her three losses on Saturday. I inflicted one wound in three games. One wound. We had the measure of the cards and gladiators a little more this time, plus some rules clarifications from the author helped a lot as well.