Malifaux! On a Thurday!

Thursday Night Game Night

                Good Afternoon all, hope you are having a happy Friday and are ready for the weekend, I know that I am for sure.  With the weekend approaching quickly today, I am hoping to get some blog posts up by the end of the weekend – as this post is my witness.  On Thursday night, we had our usual game night with the guys, which is usually the night for X-Wing in the land of Atlanta.  On this particular evening, my buddy wanted to break in his brand new Colette crew for Malifaux and learn how to play Malifaux proper.  We had played a game of extremely basic Malifaux, using henchmen and both of my crews – Zoraida and Collodi (Bad Juju vs Vasilisa for this game) – to play a very fast game.  That “very fast game” ended up being a 2.5 hour slug fest that was an absolute blast.  That was all 2 weeks ago though, and we actually got to play a proper game of Malifaux.

                For our game on Thursday, we decided that we should play an 80% real Malifaux game, setting up the terrain, flipping schemes and strategies, and various other book keeping things like that.  For flipping schemes, we decided that we should keep the minor objectives simpler for both of our sakes.  What I mean is that we flipped for schemes, picked the same two, and played with them revealed.  Our deployment, strategy, and schemes were as follows:  Corners, Turf War, Outflank, and Plant Evidence.

                These schemes worked well for the two crews that we were running, which featured a lot of movement tricks for both of our crews, dominating our activations for the most part.  Speaking of our crews, let me follow this up by listing them below.

Collodi Crew

Collodi – Fated, Threads of Fate, On Wings of Darkness

Vasilisa – A Friend to Talk To, Pact

Brutal Effigy

Marionettes x4

Colette Crew

Colette – Cabaret Choreography, (forgot the remaining upgrades)

Cassandra – Cassandra’s upgrade

Performers x2

Mannequin x2

                The lists, as you can see, have fairly simple strategies for them.  My Collodi crew is going to keep clustered together for the most part, using Collodi’s abilities to take the effect from the effigy (when you damage enemies, you heal a point of health) and distribute it to all friendly puppet models within a radius of Collodi, and therefore all of the crew will move towards the center in an attempt to gain the upper hand with the Turf War marker.  Vasilisa will go out to the corner, dragging one of the marionettes with her to the outside of the board with her A Friend to Talk To.  Colette had a very similar strategy, pushing Cassandra with her nimbleness out to the corner for Outflank, and then the remainder of the crew muscle their way forward to the center of the table and duke it out with the puppets.  With the mission and strategies pretty much determined, we set up to play out our little skirmish.

                The game went great, with the first combat starting in turn 3 with a bang – my Brutal Effigy took a shot in the dark at a performer, managing to drop the Red Joker, killing the model out right.  After that opening shot, the game descended into madness – and once again I failed to get anything more than take a single picture of set up, for which I apologize.  Colette and her crew managed to assault the Marionettes and the Brutal Effigy, while Collodi took a backseat just outside of the killing zone.  With the blood bath in the middle going, Colette sent out a strike force of a mannequin and a performer out to the corner where Vasilisa and the marionette were sitting, which lead to Vasilisa playing the showgirls like puppets, and sending them back their way, before Colette manufactured a mechanical dove that Collodi blew up over the performer and mannequin that were barreling down to Vasilisa.

                As the game progressed, Colette and her crew became more violent and my buddy began to finally feel the way his crew would work together and the combos that his models could bring to the table.  With that, the gloves started to come off on both sides of the table, and therefore the game exploded with violence.  Before long, a mannequin had died, 2 marionettes had died, and Cassandra had taken some damage.  The end of the game was fast approaching.  Collodi took advantage of his flight ability from his “Wings of Darkness” to fly to the opposite corner of the table, as Cassandra left earlier in the game to put the beat down on some models.  Vasilisa sprinted to the enemy side of the table to plant evidence in an old building, while the showgirls planted evidence all across my zone, at an alarming rate that I simply could not stop them.  And just like that, the game was suddenly over after 6 turns.  Colette and a performer stood gasping for breath in the center of the battlefield, surveying the destruction they had caused.  Collodi had thrown himself into the night air and was carried off to the musky forest in the north, plotting his next move from afar.  Vasilisa stood with her minion marionette that she had borrowed from her master Collodi.  She began to skulk off to the far wilderness, realizing that the battle had only just been lost. 

                The final game score was way too close for either one of our liking, but it made it a great game: 6-7 victory for Colette and the showgirls.  This elated my opponent, who was only playing his second game of Malifaux, but really only his first real game with his own crew.  He is effectively hooked on Malifaux for the time being.  So much so that he impulse bought the Rasputina and Kaeris crews, in addition to his Colette crew.  He is not the only one arming himself for the coming Malifaux explosion either – I have my Collodi, Zoraida, Tara, Colette (which I will probably sell or use as spare models), and now Viktorias crews all at my disposal, with plans to pick up Molly Squidpiddge and build a Wong Crew from scratch, which would leave me with a lovely assortment of crews and a good amount of crossover for tournament play – 2 Neverborn, 2 Gremlin, 2 Outcast, 2 Ressers – 8 variations of crews made from 6 crews.  Each with a solid amount of play styles:  Collodi with movement tricks and control, Zoraida with complete control, Tara with status effects, Viktorias with sheer damage output, Molly for summoning, and Wong for ridiculous explosions in all of the right places.

                Malifaux is an amazing game, with so much variation that it is impossible to come up with every flavor of every faction – but these crews that I am preparing to embark upon are quite frankly the best amount of variation I can get without going completely bananas, even though I may have already crossed that line by wanting to pick up 6 crews – 7 if you don’t count the Colette crew that I will most likely avoid using as a Colette crew.

                Whelp, that’s all I got for you guys – sorry that I don’t have any pictures for you.  At the time of posting this, I have played 3 other games of Malifaux with more pictures, but I will need some time to get them uploaded and some battle reports written up!  So until then, happy gaming!

Obsessions over Oblong Outmaneuvering

X-Wing:  The Obsession

                Hello all, glad to be back!  Today we are going to talk about the X-Wing Miniatures game put out by Fantasy Flight Games, a true powerhouse in the Board Game world – you’ve probably heard of them.  If you haven’t, you can thank them for X-Wing, Star Wars Armada, Android Netrunner, Star Wars Age of Empire, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, and many more renditions of your favorite entertainment as board games that are truly excellent.  I could talk to you for the next week about some of their awesome games, and I am sure that I will at some point, but today we are focusing on something that could be considered their flagship product:  X-WING.

SYNOPSIS:

There are few games that many people can agree are well balanced, engaging, have an actively supported community, and are awesome to look at on the table while they are being played.  Well, X-Wing covers all of that and more.  I’m sure many of you have already played it, seen it, or atleast know about it in some sense.  For those of you that haven’t heard about it, this is a game where you collect pre-painted ships from Star Wars canon (currently only the Original Series) and make a squadron out of some of these iconic vessels and pilots – such as the Millennium Falcon and Luke Skywalker piloting an X-Wing.  Each ship pack comes with an assortment of pilots, upgrade cards to improve your ships, and in some cases missions to be played out on the table. 

The core game comes with all of the tokens that you will need to play the game, as well as all rules that you need to play for 90% of the games you will play.  It also comes with all of the movement templates and range finders used for shooting at other ships.  If you get the core box – which comes with all of this and is an amazing deal for a starter box – you also get 3 ships to start!  You get two TIE fighters of the Galactic Empire as well as an X-Wing for the Rebel Alliance.  From there, it is recommended by many that you simply go out and buy a second core box, which will give you more than enough dice, tokens, cards, and a good amount of ships to build your first squadrons.

 

This is how I started the game of X-Wing, with a simple X-Wing going after a pair of TIEs.  I soon expanded my squadrons to have A-Wings, B-Wings, Y-Wings, the HWK 290, several Z-95 Headhunters, and the terrifying Rebel Aces.  I have yet to buy a large based ship, such as the Millennium Falcon or the agile YT-2400 Freighter used by Dash Rendar.  On the Imperial side of things, I have yet to expand past the original 2 TIE fighters, but I have plans to advance the cause of the Empire in the foreseeable future.

GAMEPLAY:

                Few games run as smoothly as X-Wing that I have found.  The mechanics for X-Wing are designed with beginners in mind, making it easy to learn, hard to master.  This is most likely why this game is so incredibly suited for tournament play.  There are good combos, but even the best combos will be beaten soundly by a competent player armed with a squadron they know well.  You would be hard pressed to try and find some ultimate win combo in this game.  This doesn’t mean that there are not subpar choices to take in a list – for instance, in the current meta of the game, it is not often that you will see Rebel players take E-Wings or Imperials take TIE Advanced, because both of these options – while amazing on their own – are simply too overpriced to take effectively and still be able to build a functional squadron around.  Does that mean that people never take these?  Not at all.  In fact, I have seen people take these options just for the challenge of flying with these ships. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of the game so that you can understand what makes a good player that can truly surpass others based on their skill, rather than if they have internet connection to get to net lists.

1.       Squadron Building

I know that I just said about an inch above this that we should get to the nitty-gritty of playing the game, but that honestly does start with Squadron building.  The choices you make here will determine how you fly your squad, and how they will act together on the table.  Let’s use an example from all wave 1 ships, just to keep things simple.  Most games will be played at 100 points – that means you and your opponent will each get to make a squadron with a value of 100 points of ships, pilots, and upgrades.  However, for this upgrade, we will make a 50 point list for both the Empire and the Rebellion.

Rebel Alliance – Yavin Squadron

X-Wing – Rookie Pilot: Proton Torpedoes, R5-K6 [27]

Y-Wing – Gold Squadron Pilot:  Ion Cannon Turret [23]

Galactic Empire – 203^rd Squadron

TIE Fighter – Howlrunner: Marksmanship [21]

TIE Fighter – Dark Curse [16]

TIE Fighter – Obsidian Squadron Pilot [13]

As you can see, there are many different ways to make a squadron, featuring lots of different overarching strategies that will impact the heart of the game and how each of the players will proceed.  The Rebel player will focus on attempting to stun ships so that the X-Wing can target lock and use the proton torpedoes to destroy the most important target – in this case Howlrunner.  The Empire player will attempt to get in close as quickly as possible, with Howlrunner giving his ability to Dark Curse at range band 1, allowing him to roll a mighty 5 dice in the attack phase.  3 for being short range, 1 for Dark Curse’s ability, and then 1 again from Howlrunner being within range 1.  5 dice have a much greater chance of causing lots of damage to the enemy, even one as tough as the Y-Wing.

A useful link to check out for squad building help.

2.       Deployment and the Board

As soon as you and your opponent have created squadrons of equal value, it is up to you to decide who has initiative.  In the case above, the two would dice off to see who would have the choice of initiative.  If one of the players had failed to reach the required 50 points, then the player with the least number of points would automatically have the initiative choice to be made.  The first step of the game on the table is to set up the playing area.  You will need a 3x3 table to play on, and all of your ships off to the side for deployment.  You will then need to have the 6 asteroids included in the core box and take turns placing them on the field.  After that, you will each place your ships in increasing Pilot Skill level.  From there, you will begin the game!

From the Cloud Cities on Bespin

To custom made LED tables

3.       The Game

As the game begins, you will use the movement dials – one of the coolest parts of the whole X-Wing game – to plot your movements in secret, and then you will move your ships in ascending Pilot Skill order.  After you move a ship, you will have the option to take any of the actions listed on your pilot cards, including barrel rolls, target locks, focus, or evades among others.  These actions are an important part of the game, giving the individual ships their flavor and making the game even more interesting.  These actions will allow you to either set up for combat next turn, or to blow some of the enemy to tiny pieces. When you get into the combat phase, your high pilot skills will get to shoot first, firing blasters, missiles, torpedoes, and more.  As you defeat ships, the game will move faster, culminating in the final turns as a rapidly played out, highly cinematic, tense game – if it is close.  If it isn’t close, don’t be afraid to call it and reset your ships for a rematch!

4.       Final Thoughts

There is not a game quite like X-Wing on the market in my opinion.  Several people will throw up their hands at this and point at Star Trek Attack Wing or D&D’s Attack Wing and look at me expectantly, but I really think that X-Wing is in a realm of its own.  There is no game that combines excellent miniatures, streamlined rules, tournament friendliness, and an IP that almost the entire world knows about to form this mega hit that is X-Wing.  You can find someone to have every walk of gaming life in X-Wing, from die hard repainters and converters to people who just want to “fly casual” and have a beer and pretzels game.  This is why I love X-Wing, the flexibility to play whatever type of game you want while simultaneously offering a competitive and supported game. 

Rating: 5 Blasters out of 5.

What to Expect Next:

The end of the weight of 40k around my neck, and the rise of new games to replace it!  Can I beat my rival at X-Wing!?  Can I finish painting all of my current Malifaux stuff by the end of the month?!  Can I paint Board Games miniatures to the same standard as my tabletop minatures?!  Tune in soon to find out all of this, and more!

COME-COME BACK SOON MAN-THINGS.  MORE-MORE TO BE SAID SOON!

Public Apologies and an Update

                Good morning all, I hope that you are all doing well.  It has come to be that time again where I apologize profusely for my lack of posting anything on here for some time again.  It has been almost 4 months since my last update on anything that is going on in the world of gaming or posting any reviews for games and miniatures.  I am sorry that I am not able to post efficiently, but life happens, and I will always manage to get a few posts in a year at the absolute minimum.

                This brings me to today’s post – we are here, so we may as well take advantage of the time we have to get some information out about what has been going on in my world of gaming.  Since the last time I was on here, I have expanded my Board Game collection by a good 4-5 titles, including Splendor, Dixit, Russian Railroads, Oddball Aeronauts, Istanbul, Yardmaster, Mice & Mystics, Tokaido, Twilight Struggle, and others.  My miniatures have also grown – now including the amazing Tara Crew for Malifaux, a good collection of X-Wing Rebel forces, and an old Colette Crew for Malifaux as well.  I am constantly researching new games to play still, attempting to drag as many people into the fold as possible.  So far, I have only been able to get games of X-Wing in with a group of guys at the local hobby shop – which is absolutely ok with me, because X-Wing is such an amazing game to get introduced to and to get weekly games in with. 

My usual builds for my X-Wing squadron includes:

-        -   Roark Garnet’s HWK 290 with Blaster Turret, Recon Specialist, and Moldy Crow title.

-         - Biggs’ X-Wing naked

-         -  Rookie Pilot X-Wing

-          - Jake Farrell’s A-Wing with Push the Limit, Chardaan Refit.

However, my next build will look like something similar to this:

-          -  Roark Garnet’s HWK 290 with Blaster Turret, Recon Specialist, and Moldy Crow title.

-         - Jake Farrell’s A-Wing with Push the Limit, Chardaan Refit, Decoy, and A-Wing test pilot.

-         - Airen Cracken’s Z-95 Headhunter with Expert Handling, Proton Rockets, and Munitions failsafe.

-         - Bandit Squadron Pilot in Z-95 with Proton Rockets and Munitions failsafe.

I have yet to try this build, but this coming Thursday I will be testing this build for the first time.  I am wary because it does not include my usual Biggs fest to keep all of my pilots alive for the first couple of turns.  This list does allow me to shoot first with a good portion of my squadron though, if I play my ships correctly.  I should be able to give Bandit Squad PS 12 at the beginning of combat, and then decoy Jake’s PS over to Roark so that the blaster turret can get a good shot off after the two Z-95’s have their shots.  This is the plan going into games of course.  If I am playing against any large base ships, this list turns into a “let’s see how fast we can get around behind them” kind of play style.  These ships are fast, minus the HWK, but eventually I will rectify that with an engine upgrade to the HWK, allowing it to boost without any issue, allowing the ship to get out of harm’s way or back into position after a bad dial phase.

X-Wing is a great little game that really lets me get my game on once a week for a couple of games in a very small amount of time.  It is for this reason, as well as the fact that the game is so popular and you can always find someone to play, that it has become my go to game at the store for the most part.  I am looking forward to the possibilities of adding to this experience by getting Star Wars: Armada when it releases, so that I can have a deeper gaming experience while still most likely having a great amount of players to game with.  The main thing that drives me to games is the number of players that are in the local and national level, so that I will have people to game against.  Plus the models for Armada just look dead sexy, with the added bonus of not having to lift a paint brush to replicate those amazing looks on the models.  I really enjoy the fact that the two FFG Star Wars games are totally pre painted and 98% ready to go as soon as you pull the model out of the box – minus punching out all of the card board.  This is a huge selling point to me, because I am not the best painter in the world, and I really don’t want to have to sink the time into painting another group of miniatures to game with.  It really makes it easy to get into the games. 

                My local game store has a few characters that are more than willing to try other game systems though, which is excellent for me, seeing as I have more than enough games for people to try that I could rave about for hours.  In this case, I have managed to convince someone to give Malifaux a try, and they even went out and bought one of the old metal Colette crews to try out.  This Thursday I will be giving him a demo of the game to run him through some of the basics of the game and to get myself back into the groove of things.  He has asked me to bring a selection of crews, so hopefully he has already assembled his crew and had them painted up.  If he has, we can use his crew against one of my two assembled crews.  I believe that I will let him proxy some of my models as his totem, to allow him to field a crew around 30 SS.  I will most likely field Spawn Mother so that he can see some of the crazy summoning rules and some of the interesting things you can do with a crew.  I will also take Silurids and Gupps in all likelihood.  I am really looking forward to getting a game of Malifaux in after so long, so this should be good.  Hopefully my buddy enjoys this game and will continue to play after this beginning demo.

                I want to wrap up this post with some information regarding where this Blog is headed.  I am a firm believer in the idea that change is good, and this blog will be good.  Over the next few months there will be many changes to how I approach this blog and to how the blog itself functions.  It really has no discernable form as of right now, and I would love to change that.  With the creation of Thursday night X-Wing I have a set tabletop game that I can atleast talk about every week without having to stretch too far.  And so I think that I will set up the blog so that there are updates every month about all of the X-Wing games that I have played, and then sprinkle in some editorials on game systems that I enjoy, some battle reports from other games that I have played over the month, and generally anything cool that is happening around the gaming world of Atlanta right now that I am experiencing.

What to look forward to next time:

Can the man in the computer screen keep his word and update this thing atleast once a month?  Can he win a game of X-Wing against his friends?  Is Malifaux going to make a comeback!?  Will there be a token mention of Skaven before this post ends?

Until next time, dear readers, I hope you win all your games and crush your foes.  Good luck and happy gaming!

WORK FASTER WRITER-THING!  THE MAN-THINGS WANT CONTENT!