The next stop is Bad Moon Cafe
This week, I went down to Bad Moon Cafe (BMC), located right in the heart of London. BMC is another one of the London crew's favourite spot to play Flesh and Blood, with events always firing. They usually run their Armouries on Monday nights.
Let's have a look at this trendy local game store, and talk about the games played!
The Journey
The journey should be quite easy if you are able to get to London Bridge, as it's a 10 minutes walk from there, or a tube ride and 5 minutes walk.
For the tube, take the Northern Line to Borough, then its a walk straight down the A2 road to BMC. I would recommend this route for those wary of travelling alone at night.
There is also an alternative walking route to the one I usually take that is just a walk down the A3 from London Bridge to near Borough station, then its the same walk down the A2 from Borough. I won't talk about this route as its a vey straightforward one, but it does take about 20 minutes.
The route I usually take isn't too much harder to figure out, and it saves time from being only 10 minutes. The easiest exit from London Bridge will be the one to St Thomas Street. Out of the station, turn left and walk down until you see this turn to Weston Street. It's then mostly just walking down this one street.
Near the end of Weston Street, Google Maps may point you to turn right into a weird cul-de-sac.
The path isn't obvious. Walk straight through the flat building's parking lot to reach the next section.
You'll then be on Tabard Street, you're very close once you see this building.
This is the building block where BMC is located, but the back of it. We need to walk round to the front. Take a left here, and walk around the building to its front.
The Store
BMC currently charges £5 per person for a table, this is a flat rate across all activities. It has been a very popular FaB destination for a long time thanks to Sean, Steve and the BMC team.
The store's support for the game is very good, being one of the few stores I know that has starter Ira decks. It also has boxes of chaffs that players and can use to experiment or fill in missing pieces for their decks.
We usually have a long table booked for FaB, and normal attendance is anywhere from 8 to 16 players!
The Event
It was Blitz Armoury this week, and we did 5 rounds!
My first round was against Arian Sultani and his trusty Dorinthea. My draws for this game was a bit awkward. A lot of the times, I just went in for a big swing without much disruption effect with my Pummels. So, most of the game was your usual back and forth. Arian's 150 IQ move was keeping an Ironsong Response in Arsenal and grind me down to low health. At 3 or 4 health, I was forced to block from hand, which enabled the Reprise effect. It was a really clean play, lots of respect for Arian.
My second game was against Mohammad Rafiq and his trusty Lexi. I lost to Mo at the Dark Sphere Skirmish, so I was a bit nervous going into the match. I think I got a bit lucky in this match. We were both down to low health and Mo had a Three of a Kind in hand. However, Mo did not draw many arrows as a result of playing Three of a Kind. Mo was only able to come in with an Endless Arrow, which I fully blocked to disable the turn. On my turn, I was able to go for the kill because Mo drew some non-blocking pump spells last turn. A good game nonetheless, and definitely a close one!
My third game was against Shen Ang and his trusty Kassai. Everyone played their mains. I also lost to Shen at the Rule Zero Skirmish, and Shen went on to top 8. So, I was also a bit nervous going into this match. The game started out strong for me with a fused Oaken Old, which really was more about the dominate effect to push damage through. I did manage to keep the tempo with big disruptive attacks. But, it did come with the cost of life total and letting Kassai get her copper tokens. We were both down to relatively lethal range, I was at 5 and Shen's at 6. Kassai had 6 copper tokens, and I was fairly sure Shen had a Blood on her Hands along with 3 other cards and no Arsenal. In my hand, I had an Endless Winter, Pummel (yellow), Sow Tomorrow (blue), Winter's Graps (blue). My two lines of play were:
- Play the Endless Winter fused
- Play the Endless Winter, not fused, with Pummel
I took a good 5 minutes to think about what the right call was here. If I played the Endless Winter fused, Shen could block with 2 cards, get 2 frostbites, and be on 3 health. But, Shen could potentially still play out the Blood on Her Hands turn and pop Courage of Bladehold, if he had a blue or yellow in hand. I would definitely lose on the next turn playing this line, as it's not guaranteed to turn off Shen's turn.
It took a while, but I did figure out that if I played the Pummel route, Shen would not be able to play out his turn at all.
Shen would have wanted to block with at least 2 cards for the vanilla Endless Winter, otherwise its lethal. Shen also saw me pitch my red Pummel earlier, so he's not worried about lethal if he blocked with 2 cards. But, the yellow Pummel on-hit would leave Shen with only 1 card, the Blood on Her Hands. Endless Winter on-hit would also mean he can't trigger Courage and play Blood, because of the Frostbite from activating an ability.
If Shen blocked with 3 cards, the Pummel would still take the Blood on Her Hands out as an on-hit.
If Shen wanted to overblock, he would need to block with his entire hand, so it would guanrantee me tempo as he would lose the Blood on Her Hands as well.
It was perfect.
Shen decided to block with 2 cards, my Pummel took out his third card, and indeed Shen admitted he had a Blood on Her Hands, but he can't play it. Mafs. On my turn, I lucky drew into a Macho Grande and swung for victory, one I'm rather proud of as I defeated a formidable opponent.
My fourth game was against Junkai "Kai" Zhu. Kai was a relatively new player in our group, but he is good. Kai beat my Oldhim deck with his Dorinthea deck on a Dark Sphere Armoury last week. However, this game was the one I stat everything into luck. My deck functioned smooth as butter. Turn one, I arsenal-ed because of Tome of Harvest in hand. Turn two, Tome of Harvest into an Spinal Crush. Turn three, Tome of Harvest into a reduced cost Spinal Crush. Turn four, a reduced cost fused Oaken Old. Turn five was a fused Endless Winter. You get the idea. This particular match was a bit one-sided. But, I'm sure we'll have more games where I can write about how good a player Kai actually is. Just you wait.
My final game was against the undefeated record for the night, Sean McCherry and his trusty Rhinar. In this matchup, I needed to have the same draws as the previous game, otherwise Rhinar would definitely be able to take me out before I do. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Sean's winning turn was an Alpha Rampage for 11, everything intimidated from hand. It was lethal.
Some really amazing games that night with an amazing group of players. If you're ever in London, definitely check out Bad Moon Cafe. It got a Road to Nationals event this year as well, so definitely one of the best stores in London.