One of my Things for the New Year (I'm avoiding calling them Resolutions) is to get much fitter, and one of my friends is a personal trainer, so I decided to pick his brain about all this Health stuff, and he cunningly suggested we get in a game of Malifaux at the same time. We sorted a suitable time and booked a table at Dark Sphere.
Spinning up the Bad Things Happen app, it generated a Standard deployment, with the Strategy Ply for Information and the Schemes Surround Them, Undercover Entourage, Show of Force, Take One For the Team, and Vendetta.
I selected Undercover Entourage and Take One for the Team while unbeknownst to me, my opponent selected Show of Force and Vendetta.
There were all sorts of interesting new folk with the Guild, such as The Jury and some Monster Hunters.
Meanwhile, I had my usual crew of meddlesome puppets. The plan was to send a few sacrificial models up the right, while Collodi made a push up the left side for Undercover Entourage.
To start off the annoyances, the Mysterious Emissary left some Hungry Land right in the way of the Guild advancing into the centre.
A ?Thallarian Queller? put down a marker that gets rid of your built in suits on your stats. I don't like this new Guild stuff, it seems good! ;-)
Push Teddy forward just a little, trying to tempt the Guild towards him...
Then send a little Marionette Fast and send it careening into a Monster Hunter. The first hit causes some solid damage.
The second hit gets a massive hit, with a double positive damage flip, and . . . black Joker. No damage at all. Bother.
He manages to destroy the Marionette in revenge, while Collodi Slows him up and a Changeling gets ready to mess him up next turn.
The other Monster Hunter is somehow failing to kill my Marionette with Take One For the Team on it, and is annoyingly scoring the Strategy. (White stones are the models who've scored the Strategy, while the clear stones are my opponent's activated markers.)
Francisco and Justice head into the middle... I believe they are scoring for Show of Force at this point. And then it all gets a bit frantic! We rejoin the action a little later...
Justice rushes the left flank and starts pureeing poor innocent puppets!
A Wicked Doll poisons her from range, teleports into close range with her and Interacts to score the Strategy...
The Monster Hunter gets healed up a bit and makes a break for the centre, while the Thallarian Queller tries to deal with the Changeling - both scoring the Strategy strongly.
Collodi comes out and pulls his party trick of "become Slow and your action belongs to me". The Jury potters over and removes the action theft condition, because The Jury hates Fun.
Meanwhile, the struggle on my left flank means that the Monster Hunter on the right is activating late and losing the Strategy. I try and bait them into killing the blasted Take One For the Team target, but no dice!
The Emissary swings up in to the centre, and Teddy pulls right to Hug his friend the Brutal Effigy. Then his puppet friend from the Guild gets all tired and needs to have a long lie down... (I'm trying to bait some more models to come over to nearer the Schemed Marionette so it can become a convenient target of opportunity.)
The Monster Hunter Stalks Teddy and puts him down, revealing his Vendetta against the monstrous child's toy.
Meanwhile, I'm properly, properly bogged down on the left hand side and need to get Collodi free.
Pulled this way and that by his puppets, Collodi is pulled up the board...
Before finally managing to shoot up the board by going Fast, and suddenly the penny drops as to what one of my schemes must be...
I was all set up to remove the Strategy condition from The Jury when it goes and makes the Emissary Slow, so I can't get into range and complete the condition removal. Curses! Foiled!
Justice chases after Collodi, but can't quite take him out. He Runs Away Home into the deployment zone to end the game...
In the end, I lost 8-4. We scored the Strategy 2-1 (with the 2nd turn tieing, me grabbing a point through sneakiness and weasel, and the Guild getting two points through appropriate application of force). Meanwhile, the Guild scored the full 6 off their schemes, while managed to mess up Take One For the Team badly (I'm usually excellent at Frame for Murder-like schemes) though I did still score the full 3 for Undercover Entourage.
I was pleased to do so well given how long it's been since I've last played. It loved that we both played with fully painted crews and it gave me a lot of enthusiasm both for getting some more Malifaux in and also for getting more of my stuff painted!
So the loser has to do 50 press ups?
ReplyDeleteI'm not daft enough to pull that! Firstly, I can't do 50 press ups, and secondly, he's a much better Malifaux player than me. :)
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