Malifaux Battle Report - Plant Explosives, Viktorias vs Molly

 

It's been a whole while since I played Malifaux, so decided to grab a game to remind myself of the rules. One of the London players volunteered to help out and brought a Resurrectionist Molly crew to face my Outcast Viktorias crew.

We were playing Plant Explosives so I yeeted Bishop up the field, pulling Taelor some of the way to get a marker down.

Archie charged in and smacked Bishop pretty hard. Taelor then swung in but couldn't quite finish Archie off. The next turn, Archie smushed them both, taking out two of my heavy hitters...

I didn't have much left that could threaten Archie or the Rogue Necromancy so mostly ended up with my scheme runners (ineffectively) running away from them.

One Vik got taken down, while the second went to go shank up one of the new Molly crew models, but found them a tough nut to crack.

Teleporting Crooligans were dropping scheme markers all over the place, and I was falling further and further behind in scoring.

My Prospector and Ronin made one last brave attempt to get some scoring down, but my numbers were low enough that markers were just getting taken out faster than I could put them down. We called the game there with a solid win for Molly.

I definitely don't really know what I'm doing just yet, but it was good to get a game in. I enjoyed the game itself even if I did get a kicking. There's some more figures I need to assemble, and a bunch of painting to be done...

Malifaux Battle Report: Viktorias vs English Ivan: Turf War

 

Before I cancelled my ticket to the UK Malifaux Nationals I managed to get in a practice game with a friendly volunteer down at Dark Sphere. We ended up with the Turf War Strategy, a Flank Deployment, and a Scheme Pool of Spread Them Out, Research Mission, Vendetta, Bait and Switch and Claim Jump.

I was running the Viktorias while my opponent was practicing for a tournament that weekend with English Ivan. Not noticing English Ivan was a Summoner, I didn't take Taelor, but did bring a newly assembled (ish) Vanessa and a Ronin.

I deployed half my crew first, pushing the Viks up front, with the Student of Conflict and a Prospector further back. I'd forgotten that you can't make Masters Fast which is why you have practice games before you go to tournaments.

My opponent deployed everything in a little clump all together, explaining that Ivan works by pulsing out loads of Distracted markers which then act as a bonus to his crew rather than a penalty.

Johan was placed to let her move in either direction to remove conditions from people as needed, Vanessa was positioned to head for the centre line and do her magic shooty thing, and a Ronin skulked away from everyone with a job of going and getting Scheme and Strategy points.

My plan was to get Spread Them Out and Research Mission, with the former being relatively easy with the speedy Viks crew, and the latter relying on my opponent to put out too many of their weird shadow markers to be able to pull them back once they realised what my Scheme was.

The spooky shadowy dodgy people put out loads of shadowy markers, starting to build up their Distraction levels.

Near the end of my second turn, I pushed a Viktoria right up in front of  Ivan's crew. I was willing to stone for initiative and was confident he couldn't single activation kill a Master, and with Servant of Dark Powers on both Viks, they'd heal up easily by killing targets.

This had the added bonus of being intimidating as all get out and the hope was to draw models away from winning the mission to try and slow the Viks up.

I discovered that after you move away from one of the creepy Daeva minions, you've got to win a Move duel or it then places into base to base and gets a free attack. Super annoying.

Operation "Do A Murder" then happened. Twice. Closer Vik activated, pulled her sister up, then killed the Daeva who was bothering her before charging into Eva Havenhand and murdering her to death. Finishing the first Vik's turn, I then immediately activated the second Vik's turn, and had her run around some woods and obliterate Gibson De Walt.

This is the first time I've really had the Viks go into someone hard, and it was very satisfying to turn three enemy models into a fine mist in short order.

Vanessa was on the centre line, and had started getting bothered by Daeva at the end of the first turn.

Vanessa managed to fail to blow up Corvus and friends, and very quickly gained a lot of friends as she got injured and baddies got summoned into base to base with her.

Johan and the Student of Conflict joined the fray to kill the Daeva, but Rook and Mr Mordrake joined the fray from the Explorers' side.

Rook then went to prove how mean the Department of Ungentlemanly Affairs are by trying to kill the Student of Conflict. His first attempt was unsuccessful due to some very unlucky card draws.

Unfortunately, it didn't last long, and Rook added to his "ruthless baddy" tally by beating a teenager to death. What a rotter!

I noticed that the big spooky boy that had been summoned when Vanessa was attacked had an aura that stopped Demise abilities, that would mean that Big Jake would stay dead rather than popping back up again, so he legged it away as best he could.

Unfortunately, I was running out of models in the places I needed them while the DUA had been reinforced by enough summoned shadowy creatures that they still had plenty of actions, and the tide started to turn.

While I managed to deny a few points through sneaky play and violence, and we ended turn 4 on a 4-4 draw, I was just out of models, and Ivan was able to score a couple of points to earn a 6-4 win in total.

Overall, I was super happy with how this went. I definitely made some "not played this game in forever" mistakes, but Ivan is widely reputed to be one of the stronger new crews in the Explorers Society, and I kept the pressure on for a lot of the game.

Really, there's not too much specific I'd change, once you exclude "get the rules right". I'd definitely bring Taelor instead! The Ronin was excellent and I can see why people bring them. I think the rest of my lessons were around crew placement, and who needed to be near who to make the synergies in the crew work. I also want to try a few other Versatile models to see what they can add to the crew.

Plenty to think about while I work on getting more models assembled and painted . . . 

Going Out Out

 

Yesterday, I made my first trip to HATE club since the pandemic started. We're having a Meatspace League to get people used to going out again a bit. The club has social distancing and mask rules in place, and everyone's being super careful. I had a great game, and I'll write it all up separately.

With the world starting to open up again, I've signed up to a tournament at the start of October run by the Fast Panda YouTube Channel. It's up north but should be relatively easy to get to. Not sure what I'm taking yet, but I'm thinking that Dahshat Company is the most likely.

I've also signed up to the Malifaux Nationals in November. I don't have a painted force yet, but it's far enough out that I should be able to get the necessary models done - it's longer than I had for the OP at home challenge, and I managed that.

All in all, the world is opening up again. I'm definitely taking it very slowly and carefully - and recommend everyone else does too. It was good to get a game played in person, and talk about nerd stuff at an actual place. Here's hoping the situation can continue to improve.

November: Plans and Progress

With a long weekend off work, I've been finishing up some half done things I had lying around. First up are these two civilian types by Bad Squiddo Games. (You can find them as "Beer Maiden and Scholar" in their Amazons range.

They come across to me as quite generic fantasy medieval, which I believe is intentional so there's plenty you can use them for. They also remind me of an awful lot of "generic LARP costumes" I've seen over the years.

Thing is - they're absolutely great for that. If they were super period specific or fantasy setting specific, they'd be of much less use. As generic fantasy civilians of a bookish or tavern persuasion, they're excellent.

 

Next up on the docket is getting my Viktorias crew painted. You can see the nearly finished Caliban off to one side who didn't quite make the photo shoot section for this blog. I've since started getting base coat colours down on one of the Viktorias, and goodness, they are fiddly models, and it's weird putting down grown up base coats and not Contrast paint again!

Malifaux Slow Grow League Game 3

For the last game of the Dark Sphere Malifaux Slow Grow League, I was up against the Swampfiends. It was up to a full sized game, returning to "Plant Explosives" as the Strategy, with a pick of "Harness the Leyline", "Search the Ruins", "Outflank", "Detonate Charges" and "Take Prisoner".

I knew Zoraida had way, way too much activation control to risk either Detonate Charges or Take Prisoner, and "Harness the Leyline" looked like a bit of a faff, so I picked Outflank and Search the Ruins. I'd later discover my opponent had gone for the exact same schemes.

Bishop got into an early punch up with the First Mate, and my opponent brought in Bad Juju to tie him up and then had the First Mate leap out of the way.

Big Jake had run up one side to drop his Explosives and score an Outflank, but the Grootslang jumped out of it's lair there and turned him to mush.

Going into the second turn, I drew the Red Joker and a face card Crow. Bishop has an ability to cause damage if he is attacked in melee and successfully defends using a card with the Crow suit. Bad Juju swings, I cheat in the high Crow, then draw well for damage . . . Bad Juju swings again, I cheat in the Red Joker, and Bad Juju dies. He has a once per turn resurrection that he uses . . .

. . . but that's the end of his turn and my surviving Victoria kills him and moves on to the First Mate, who desperately uses his defensive abilities to run away at speed rather than meet the same fate.

The Prospector and a Will o the Wisp have an ineffectual slap fight on my left flank . . .

Meanwhile, I have nothing left on defence and the Neverborn are happily scoring all their points for Detonate Charges and Plant Explosives.

Zoraida desperately tries to Obey Taelor into a bad position for scoring . . .

I get my move order ever so slightly wrong and fail to score Outflank in Turn 4 with my Prospector, trying to set up my Detonate Charges for the end of game. As you can't score both points for Outflank at the end of the game, but I could have done my Detonate Charges the following turn.

I also mis-positioned Big Jake's return, costing me another victory point in turn 5, leaving the final score as 8-6. I did practically no scoring defence, but in doing so was able to move around the Swampfiend crew and score most of my points.

That I was only two rookie mistakes off the spectacularly implausible 8-8 win made me both a little sad and very proud of how I'm picking up the game. I've signed up to a couple of Malifaux tournaments now (the London Grand Tournament and the UK Nationals) as I'm definitely enjoying myself and would like to get some more games in.

Dark Sphere Malifaux Slow Grow League Round 1: Mercenary vs Foundry

I've been putting together a Mercenary Outcast crew for Malifaux 3rd edition for a bit now. When the local Henchman announced a short six week slow grow league, I was definitely in. Conveniently, I even had just enough models already assembled.

For the first round we designed a crew as if for "Henchman Hardcore" which requires you to have only 4 models at 30 soul stones. (Soul stones are the points for buying models and the leftover points become an in game resource.) There is usually a standard mission set for Henchman Hardcore but the league organiser wrote an alternative format as well, and we flipped a card to see which we got.

As it was, we got the standard rules, so we deployed in a wedge shaped deployment zone. We could score up to 4 victory points by placing explosives in the opponent's deployment zone, up to 2 for injuring then assassinating the opponent's leader, and up to 2 for fulfilling a vendetta between a model we selected and a model on the opposing crew who wasn't the leader and was worth more points than yours.

My crew was led by Taelor, and with the rest of the crew being Bishop, Johanna and the Student of Conflict. I was up against Kang, the Metal Golem, a Rail Worker and a Metal Gamin. I set Bishop as having a Vendetta against the Metal Golem, and started off.

Johanna is notoriously slow, so I used Student of Conflict to grant her fast, then had Bishop push her further up the field with Chain Gang before having her charge into the Rail Worker and punch it back  further into the Foundry deployment zone.

Bishop then ran over and punched out the Metal Gamin, with me hoping to charge into the Golem the following round.

The Metal Golem then used Rail Walk to jump to another scrap marker to get further away from Bishop and place a bomb.

As the Student of Conflict has Armour Piercing, I had her charge in and stab up the Golem, although her low attack and it's high defence meant a few attacks bounced off. Meanwhile, Taelor and Kang got into a scrap, and it turned out Taelor's hammer (and my cards) were better than Kang's hammer (and cards) . . . picking me up a couple of points over a couple of turns.

Meanwhile, I was able to get some bombs down in various parts of the table to keep scoring Plant Explosives.

Bishop then charged in, pulling the Student out of the way and landing enough of a blow to score the first point of Vendetta.

With the Rail Worker turned to mush by Johanna and more bombs down, I was up to maximum points on Plant Explosives and the Metal Golem made a break for it with a final rail walk, getting another bomb down for a second point for Foundry.

But Bishop and Taelor were able to charge in and finally take him down, scoring the final Vendetta point, leaving the total score at the end of the game 8-2.

Huge thanks to my opponent, who was very gracious, particularly at an obscene run of luck on my part, with several card duels won by a single point as I drew a lucky card. My first impressions of Malifaux 3rd edition are very positive, with plenty of thinking to do and lots of interesting interactions between models like the tricks I used to catapult the normally slow Johanna up the board. I'm definitely looking forward to getting more games in.

Hobby weekend - Bad Things Happen

I've been away from the blog a little while as I had a couple of weekends away LARPing. But this weekend was a good opportunity to catch up with both housework and a little bit of hobby. I focused my time on getting three more figures for Malifaux assembled - Big Jake and 2 Desperate Mercenaries.

As with most Malifaux plastics, the builds are a bit of a pain, with multiple fiddly parts. But once put together they look absolutely excellent.

The reason behind the assembly rush is that I've signed up to a short, 3 round slow grow league for Malifaux at Dark Sphere. I had a "Henchman Hardcore" game - my first game of 3rd edition Malifaux - earlier in the week, and for the second round I needed a few more models!

I got a little distracted starting to assemble some Wargames Atlantic Halflings. I just got to a point in the evening where I didn't want anything complicated, and the fit the bill.

I've also finished painting my first miniature of 2020 - the Undead Spaceman by Diehard Miniatures. I experimented a bit with a light drybrush of light blue over the entire miniature to provide a different kind of highlight, and make him seem a little dusty. Definitely something to play around with again.

That's almost all of the Diehard Kickstarter done - just the Undead Centaur left to go, but I'll need to get him assembled.

I also started picking up the paint jobs on my Shasvastii again, starting with the Nox Troopers.

I picked up the White Dwarf Tech Priest model in a trade, and while I was in to Dark Sphere I grabbed the Hulang Skirmisher and Libertos with Light Shotgun for my Dahshat. I'm sending them off to my commission painter alongside the Qapu Khalqi I've had hanging around for ages.

As far as painting goals go - 16 models painted, 3 purchased. Currently on track to not buy more than I've painted.