Hope this post finds you all well, or as well as you can be given all of the craziness that is going around right now, with GenCon hype starting to heat up, E3 going strong (anyone else pumped for Sword Coast Legends?), and of course all of the Malifaux that anyone can take!
I'm your dedicated and desiccated host - sinscaptain! I'd just like to take a moment here to welcome a very good friend of mine to the blog, who will be posting from time to time regarding some other games, painting, terrain, etc. We haven't really figured that out yet, but I am sure we will get an intro post out of the way eventually! Without further ado, please welcome my good friend Matte Varnish to the Captain's Log! Trust me, this guy knows what he's talking about - minus the whole "Guild are the best faction in Malifaux" thing - but hey, we all can't see the light can we?
Anywho, most of you signed up here to look at some battle talk. Well, have I got a treat for you today - PICTURES. Thanks to having another set of fine hands in Matte Varnish, I managed to get a whole games worth of pictures from my most recent game against <AUsome Friend> who will eventually get an actual name on here.
We will actually go through all of those lovely steps that we as players are supposed to go through when we game.
1) Determine and place terrain
As you can see, we played with two large structures flanking the centerline, a good number of trees for LoS, and a good amount of scatter terrain. As a side note, all of that lovely MDF terrain is from Angry Mojo Games. They specialize in Big Box terrain for $50, which is usually enough to fill a 3x3 table. Check em out!
2) Define encounter size: 50SS. This is the size we generally play. It also preps us for tournaments
3) Announce Factions:
sinscaptain - Neverborn
<AUsome Friend> - Neverborn
Oh Boy
4) Deployment - Standard
5) Generate Strategy and schemes:
Strategy - Recconoiter
Schemes - ALiTS, Breakthrough, Protect Territory, Murder Protege, and Spring the Trap
6) Hire and Reveal Crews:
Sinscaptain - So, I have - for the most part - learned up some Collodi for myself. I feel extremely comfortable putting him on the table for just about any game, and now it is time to learn some other masters. I have recently dropped both my Tara crew and the Viktorias in favor of going green with Gremlins. I was considering taking Ophelia, but I decided in the end to go with Neverborn Zoraida to try and learn her again. With the scheme pool, I knew I needed to make my most expensive model Bad Juju with Eternal fiend. Obey from Zoraida can pretty much complete the rest. I knew that I wasn't going to go with Spring the Trap against my opponent, who was getting his first game in with Pandora. So I went into the game debating between Breakthrough, ALiTS, and Protect Territory.
For that, I ended up with the following:
Zoraida [4 SS]
+Animal Shape
+Hex Bag
+Hexed Among You
Bad Juju
+Eternal Fiend
+Fears Given Form
Beckoner
Gupps
Gupps
Iggy
+Depression
Pere Ravage
Wild Boar
My thoughts were that the Wild Boar could tie up atleast a few models at the beginning of the game with its "From the Shadows" ability. Gupps could go around and find a nice place to hide and drop markers all game with leap. Juju would run up and smash face, and then come back. Zoraida could go and claim a corner or a breakthrough point on the last turn with Animal Shape, because nobody kills Zoraida. Iggy would help burn things. And Pere Ravage would help Iggy burn more things.
<AUsome Friend> and the Box of Tricks
Pandora
+upgrades
Candy
+upgrades
Baby Kade
+upgrade
Teddy
Poltergeist
Sorrow
Sorrow
Sorrow
My buddy was just trying to figure out how Pandora ran with things, and so he took the base box, with upgrades, and had enough to throw in my Teddy for fun and shenanigans.
7) Choose and Reveal Schemes
Sinscaptain - Breakthrough (unrevealed) and Protect Territory (revealed)
<AUsome Friend> - Murder Protege and Breakthrough (unrevealed)
Had we been paying more attention, we would have realized that my friend had taken Murder Protege with Eternal Fiend Bad Juju on the table, making it extremely difficult to get off and not let me still get points from my Gupps and Boar. However, the schemes were what they were, and we got ready to hit the game.
8) Deploy Crews
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| View from Zoraida's table edge |
For Zoraida, going left to right: Pere Ravage and Iggy are behind the building, Gupps are behind the Masoleum at mid field to the left, and Wild Boar is behind the tallest tree in the upper left hand corner. Behind the smaller Masoleum in my deployment: Zoraida, Juju, and the Beckoner chill. Next to the burnt out church is the second Gupps base.
For Pandora, going left to right across the top of the image: Baby Kade, Sorrow, and Teddy hang out together behind the thicket of trees. In the opposite corner, Pandora, Candy, Poltergeist, and two more sorrows hang out by the ruins.
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| View of Pandora and her Friends |
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| View of Zoraida and the crew |
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| Pere, Gupps, Iggy, and Hookers oh my! |
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| Wild Boar (Graves) comes out to get on after the sorrow |
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| Movin' on up *whistles* Movin' on up! |
Turn two is when things started to get fairly interesting. Boar managed to sneak into a sorrow and tie it up, along with Kade. Now, I realize that Boar against Kade is NOT a good idea. But the point was to use the Boar, which can do work, to really tie up that flank. It succeeded marvelously. Until Kade ran off to Teddy, who was barreling down on my enclave of Iggy, Momma Z, and the Beckoner.
And then? Mistakes were Made. I thought to myself "Oh dayum! I could pull Teddy closer so that I can hem it, and then put like burning 12 on it so that it dies!" Only one of those things happened. Word to the wise. NEVER PULL A TEDDY CLOSER.
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| All he wants are HUGZ |
So that happened. Teddy was on my end of the world by the end of turn 2. I had managed to block him up with the voodoo doll, or so I thought. I really needed initiative turn 3 to get myself out of this mess.
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| Pandora's enclave marching up the side of the board |
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| Wild Boar gettin' turnt |
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| End of turn 2 |
Turn 3 initiative - a tale of sorrow, desperation, elation, and utter devastation.
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| My initiative flip, plus stoning for a card after he flipped a 9! I WILL SURVIVE! |
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| ARE YOU SHITTING ME. AN 11?! |
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| Look at him. Look at the face of pure evil |
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| "This is bullshit" face |
Needless to say, my opponent then - with great care and cunning - moved Teddy just so through all of the bases and staying in engagement area, to have Iggy, the Beckoner, and Zoraida all exactly where they absolutely did not want to be.
 |
| Shit |
So, with Teddy down my throat, it was up to me to movement shenanigans my way out of that mess. Zoraida animal shaped away to go grab some points, beckoner "not that kind of girl" out of dodge, and Iggy flipped like a boss ass bitch against the one attack Teddy got to make. All in all, not so bad - but a lost turn for me where I had to spend flying every which way to get out of the situation, allowing Pandora to grow her points. AND he killed Juju (buried him rather). At this point, the score was tied up at 3(?) with just Strategy points going off. This was also the turn that the voodoo doll hemmed an open and exposed Baby Kade to have Pere Ravage light him up with his breath fire attack. Both died in flames, as the pig had already put some damage on the butcher baby.
Speaking of the pig, it died this turn... and let Bad Juju out in the corner. Who then proceeded to smash the sorrow with a Red Joker damage flip.
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| After escaping Teddy |
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| Pandora and crew spread out scoring - what I deduce - Breakthrough points |
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| Juju smash! |
Turn 4, its all down to start scoring points. A couple of Gupps run around dropping markers as best they can. Pere Ravage sneaks back into a corner to establish it for me, and to discourage any sorrows from coming over to get burned. Candy ran all the way home with her bury ability. Pandora, cut off from the rest of the table really, slunk back into the corner from where she came from. The only way for Pandora to pull out a win was to kill Bad Juju to get some Murder Protege points.
Turn 4 was rather uneventful when compared to the craziness of turn 3, but I did manage to NUKE Teddy with Pere. As a tangent, Pere might make every list with Momma Z from now on. So good. So very good.
After that, it was pretty much down to Candy vs. Juju in a prize fight for the ages. Not really. I have never played against Pandora and crew, so I won initiative, activated Juju, and targeted Candy with the first activation of the turn. DOH! Paralyzed Juju right of the bat. However, Momma Z was still able to animal shape up into a corner to deny points, letting me grab a few more and ending the game with a 9-7 victory for Momma Z and the swamp kiddies.
Phew! What a game! That was an absolute blast, and <AUsome Friend> really enjoyed Pandora as a crew too. He's really looking forward to getting more into the game. If I could change anything, I would have gone ahead and played with my schemes revealed. I don't like scrambling for points at the end of the game because I played unrevealed. Other than that, and Candy being dumb to Juju, I would do it all again!
GenCon Wyrd-os and Faction Toss Up
So, with a game under my belt for the week, and another minion added to the pool of players - I went home thinking all was well. Then, I realized that I was never in a million years going to get to Outcasts with Vikis and Tara. I love the models and the crews, but I just have no interest in really playing the Vikis, or honestly Tara. However, I had just picked up Brewmaster and have had Ophelia. So I brokered a trade with Matte Varnish - he can have the Viktorias, Nightmare Tara Crew, and the Death Marshals I bought to go with her for painting my Brewie and Ophelia crews. Plus Merris and Burt Jebson. So, a fairly even trade that was a win win for both of us. He gets more practice and hype as a commission painter, I get some crews that would never get enough love to someone who will gladly play them, and I get two painted crews out of the deal.
What does this have to do with GenCon? Well, Wyrd always has a big presence at GenCon, and so this year is the same. They announced a bunch of super sexy boxes and models: Colette, Jack Daw, Wong, and a Nightmare Edition "Dark Carnival" Crew to use as Colette. All of them look absolutely gorgeous, so I am very much excited to get my mitts on some of these things. Mostly some of the effigies, book 3, Wong (ooooooooooh yeahhhhhhhh), and probably some of the Emissaries if they come out too (looking at you Lucky!) So, this changes my plans a little bit for expansion of my factions.
Neverborn: Collodi, Zoraida, Lilith (pre GenCon), Lucius (post GenCon)
Gremlins: Ophelia, Brewmaster, Wong (GenCon), Mah Tucket (eventually)
Other Strong Possibilities: Lynch, Ulix
Completist: Pandora, Somer, and the Dreamer (bleh!)
Of course, this is before all of the new masters drop for Wave 3, or any of the Avatar models.....
But, until then my pretties, take care! (Bonus points for you if you've made it this far, dear reader)
Sinscaptain signing off.
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