Ahhh, welcome younglings - 'tis I, Sinscaptain! Back with another Malifaux Thursday battle report update, a Brewmaster spotlight (or atleast initial impressions), a project my gaming group is getting ready to work on, and some rumblings and thoughts on the Age of Sigmar for Warhammer Fantasy! Lots to get through today, so lets get started.
So yesterday I was able to snag our regular weekly match of Malifaux. Unfortunately, I have already broken the streak for taking lots of pictures, and the other members of our gaming group were occupied giving demos or playing, so there is a lack of pictures this time that is unfortunate as we had an absolutely lovely table provided by Matte to play on.
50SS Standard/Gaining Grounds Encounter
Strategy: Headhunter
Schemes: ALitS, Plant Explosives, Vendetta, Assassinate, Breakthrough
Flank Deployment
Sinscaptain's Drunken Company
Brewmaster [3SS Cache]
+ Binge
+ Hold Their Hair Back
+ Running Tab
Fingers
+ Drinking "Problem"
+ Dirty Cheater
Moon Shinobi
Moon Shinobi
Moon Shinobi
Apprentice Wesley
Merris LaCroix
Wild Boar
Sinscaptain's Schemes: ALitS (Revealed) and Breakthrough (Revealed)
<AUsome Friend>
Pandora [~ Cache]
+ 2-3 upgrades
Candy
+ upgrade
Baby Kade
+ upgrade
Teddy
Sorrow
Sorrow
Poltergeist
<AUsome Friend> Schemes: Assassinate and Plant Explosives
My thoughts on taking this crew for these schemes was that Fingers and a Shinobi would be able to run off and throw down some markers wherever the enemy wasn't headed, while the other Shinobi, Brewmaster, Merris, and the Boar were meant to stop any kind of schemes from my opponent, as well as go after any heads they can get.
Game went great! Since I was just learning Brewmaster and my opponent was playing his 4th game of Malifaux, we only got to turn 5 before we called it. He did manage to kill both Wesley and Brewmaster so that he earned his full assassinate points before turn 4, but not before Brewmaster threw down 6 poison on Pandora and brought her down to a single health so that she'd die to poison. I only managed to snag 2 heads the whole game, but that was about the same as Pandora and Co. Plant Explosives ended up being difficult for Pandora to get since I spread my crew out quite a bit, while I managed to sling both a Shinobi and Fingers through the middle - while laying scheme markers for LitS - and get to the deployment zone for some Breakthrough goodness on the last turn. With all of that, I managed to snag 8 points in the game to his 6 - he had 2 heads, full assassinate points, and a single explosive marker go off.
Like many headhunter games, it was more cat and mouse than anything this game, which means there usually isn't much killing. Had I been playing Collodi or Zoraida, there would have been more pulling and luring to get heads. However, Matte has been painting Brewie up to look beautiful on the table, so I had to give him a try - and I love him. Probably the most cinematic point in the game was Brewmaster and Pandora going at it, which I imagine would have been Brewmaster smacking Pandora around with his bamboo pole while she tried to summon up sorrows to defend her and attack Brewie. Overall, a great learning game for both of us. I am really looking forward to getting some more games in with Brewmaster to get the hang of him completely.
Brewmaster.
A Gremlin from beyond the misty mountains, Brewmaster has risen in prominence among the denizens of the Bayou for his many variety of Moonshine that he brings with him. His loyal band of Drunken Kung Fu masters follow him out of sheer alcohol dependence and loyalty. Many of the other Bosses know that to stand against the Brewmaster would be foolish, as their own boys might turn against him in order to get some of the Brewmaster's glorious 'shine.
This guy is dual faction Gremlins and Ten Thunders with key words "Gremlin" and "Tri-Chi", which is what all of the models from the Closing Time box set are at this point. Brewmaster is an amalgamation of control master and condition distribution master. His main condition is of course poison, which he can dish out a kegger of to everyone at arms length. He also has means to reduce the enemies effectiveness with abilities to make negative flips to all duels for an enemy. His upgrades give him a slew of other options for dishing out conditions and ending the effectiveness of enemy models through paralyzed.
I really think that the main focus of a Brewmaster crew is to shut down an enemy and make sure that your models can get where they need to go so that they can complete schemes and strats while the enemy deals with negative flips, poison, and paralyzed. This makes him a master that, from now on, probably wont see action in many of the killing strats (reckoning, headhunter, or collect the bounty) just because his crew really isn't as good at dealing strait damage to people. They are great for running around and having schemes, but for the most part I think that killing still belongs firmly in the camp of Ophelia for my Gremlins.
For what to take with Brewmaster, I will probably always take Fingers and Apprentice Wesley - being able to come back from death makes Wesley invaluable, while Fingers is a premier scheme runner and can hold his own against those that would take him down. He is a little steep in the SS department, weighing in at two and a half piglets in cost, but I think that he is well worth the cost. Other than that, I really do enjoy the Moon Shinobi, who can deal a respectable amount of damage with the right modifiers since they make all negative flips positive flips and vice versa. Merris was a great addition to the crew for her Flaming Bottle attack and the fact that she can discard a card to drop a scheme marker. However, I may drop her and definitely the Wild Boar in favor of taking Sammy LaCroix with Brewmaster's fourth upgrade and then having left over SS in the cache. I will have to give that a try the next time the schemes look like they would favor something like that.
Like I said at the beginning, this is a very cursory first play through thoughts on Brewmaster. As I play him more, these thoughts will become more refined. I have to master the path of Brewmaster after all.
As we wrapped up our game yesterday on Matte's gorgeous Secret Weapon Miniatures Tablescapes with Angry Mojo Games Graveyard MDF Terrain my girlfriend expressed an interest in building her own table, and had been for a few days. At this point, we began to map out everything that we needed to make for this table - which was decided would be a detailed Bayou board (as it could be home to my Gremlins and most of my Neverborn models, but that is just a happy coincidence)
So, we set about making plans. It will be a 3x3 board, perfect for Malifaux or getting skirmish games of Warhammer Fantasy in. It will have about 1/3 of the surface covered in water (and thus severe terrain for Malifaux). We will build tree bases, stilt buildings, huts, a broken down airboat, alligator nests, and other such swampy things. We are all extremely excited to get to work on it, and I am sure that both Matte and myself will be posting many updates concerning our table in the near future. Below are some images that we really liked and will use as inspiration.
And finally, to wrap up this post, something that I hold near and dear to my heart:
WARHAMMER FANTASY
WHF is near and dear to my heart. When everyone else wanted to play with Bolters and Chainswords, my imagination was captivated by the ideals of wizards literally pulling comets down from the heavens, ratmen swarming over the Old World, giant lizard people riding atop dinosaurs, desperate men firing round after round out of their muskets at advancing undead legions, all while mighty heroes ride their massive beasts of war and hurl eldritch blasts at each other as they close in to strangle each other with their bare hands if need be.
Desperate struggles of average men in the face of terrifying odds armed with nothing more than a shred of armor, cloth, and maybe a half rusted sword against foul daemons of the warp and massive tidal waves of greenskins always seemed more moving then armies of super humans with nuclear warhead bullet machines mowing down X, Y, or Z. That game was always about the lighting fast mobility of tanks and bikes clashing with each other in huge explosive collisions and titans blasting each other from across continents - but this is about Warhammer Fantasy.
I have 2 Skaven armies - a themed Asian Skaven army that is WIP and an almost entirely Plague Skaven army. They were the first models of any that I willingly and excitedly painted. I had named characters in my army that I had come up with. I scoured around to find old metal models in FLGS to complete my army, or converted up models to match my mental image of what they should look like. Long story short? I love Skaven and I love fantasy.
And then End Times came out. Nagash, Glottkin, Khaine, Thanquol (woo!), and Archaon. All in a line. Gorgeous models and ridiculous rules abound. Exciting times for all, and an apparent revival of Fantasy.
And then Boom. All gone. CNTR+ALT+DLT.
You can imagine how this made me feel. Then rumors swirling about huge simplification of the rules, removal of whole factions, armies maxed out at 50 models, ROUND BASES, and other things.
This is not what I signed up for. I signed up to push units of 60 puss riddled rats down my opponents throat while cackling gleefully and shooting my own models with guns that were just as likely to blow up in my face.
I have been salty to say the least.
However, I have been swayed, mostly due to Matte talking me off the ledge repeatedly, to maintain cautious optimism for the future of my gaming love. Malifaux is my main game - I would be lying if I said otherwise. But Fantasy was my first car. It didn't run all that well, it smelt kind of stale, and it's been used and abused for 30 years before my time, but it made you happier than anything else. It is all warm fuzzy memories and good friends and simpler times. So, here are the rumors that I have read that actually sound like they could be slightly true - gathered from various sources around the interwebs.
++SALT SHOULD BE USED++
- Age of Sigmar wont be 9th edition, it will be a set of Skirmish rules that are meant to get people into the game.
- The box is supposed to be Empire/Holy Knights/"Good Guys" vs some amalgamation of Chaos - some say there will be daemons, some beastmen, others say just Chaos Warriors.
- There are rumors that this will feature round base fantasy models that can go in skirmish formation, loose formation, or blocked up like we currently know with all sorts of benefits/set backs for each of these formations.
- Rules - or atleast 4 page starter rules - will be available for free online as a download when Age of Sigmar releases. Personally, I think this is the most BS. I saw the pictures of GW's website, but I am still not going to believe it.
- All factions will still be playable to some extent.
- There will be an ungodly amount of releases for something along the lines of 6 weeks - supposedly - with the Big Rule Book coming out at the very end after everyone has spent all of their money on Age of Sigmar stuff.
- Alternate Rumor states that Age of Sigmar IS 9th edition, and we will see this game scalable up to army level games.
- A lot of people are saying that this will be similar to an upscaled Lord of the Rings game that GW made/makes.
As of this morning, new models have been spotted for the Age of Sigmar starter box
And with that bombshell, I hope you all have a great day.
Peace,
Sinscaptain
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