Momma Z and P.Diddy - Malifaux Game Night 6.11.15

Hello again my flailing and gesticulating readers!

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

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.

View of Pandora and her Friends 

View of Zoraida and the crew

And with that, the game began in ernest.  Typical of most Malifaux games, we all started out with the glorious "lets all move together" first turn.

Pere, Gupps, Iggy, and Hookers oh my!

Wild Boar (Graves) comes out to get on after the sorrow

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.

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.

Pandora's enclave marching up the side of the board

Wild Boar gettin' turnt

End of turn 2

Turn 3 initiative - a tale of sorrow, desperation, elation, and utter devastation.

My initiative flip, plus stoning for a card after he flipped a 9!  I WILL SURVIVE!

ARE YOU SHITTING ME.  AN 11?!

Look at him.  Look at the face of pure evil

"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.

After escaping Teddy

Pandora and crew spread out scoring - what I deduce - Breakthrough points

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.

Game Night 5.6.15 and an Update

Hello All,

Hope that everyone is doing well.  I have some good stuff for everyone today I think – since our last talk anyway.  It has been a busy week with gaming and life in general, what with Mother’s Day and all this past weekend.  So, let’s get down to the nitty gritty of what happened since last post.

Thursday – 4.30.15

The day after last post’s subject day, I went down to the other local games store like I usually do, armed with nothing more than Twilight Struggle.  My friend and I sat down to play it as he had never been able to play the number one game on BGG for a few years running (at this point in time).  We had an absolute blast, and the fickle hand of fate dealt me my losing hand that game.  We were forced to score both Central and South America in one turn of the game – separate rounds of the turn, but same turn – which caused my opponent to win on turn 6 or 7.  Rough way to end an otherwise very tense game.  I almost had complete control of Europe, I dominated Africa, and had a foothold in Asia, but the control of Asia, scoring almost all of the points for S.E. Asia, and nearly dominating all of the Americas meant that the U.S.S.R would go on to win the day.  An absolutely fantastic game, and one that every collector should have in their library.

At some point in the future, I will run an article in the game play of Twilight Struggle and some of the awesome things that can happen, but that will have to wait for another day.

Down time – 5.1 through 5.5.15

The time between game days always seems to mesh together in an amalgamation of work, painting, working out, and talking to friends and family.  This week, it was much of the same.  However, I did manage to get my (2) Beckoners, Doppelganger, and – FINALLY – finished painting my Brutal Effigy.  I am very excited to have that model done with – probably my least favorite model I have painted for Malifaux out of all of them.  The most important happening for tabletop came in the mail sometime during this period – and a new addiction came with it.  I have really been wanting to get back into playing Zoraida lately, as she is a really cool control master.  I like how she can take various “dumb” models of WP 4 or lower, which lead me to think “hey, aren’t gremlins, like, all WP 3?”  The answer is no, most of them are not.  But Pere Ravage, Raphael LaCroix, and Rami LaCroix are.  And so The Kin and Burt Jebson were ordered with haste.  And now I have Gremlins, just like that.  I would be lying if I told you that I wasn’t excited to get my grubby mitts all over those models.  However, I haven’t been able to get them build and primed due to time constraints lately, but I will get to them eventually.  I was hoping to have them done for a tournament this coming weekend, but it seems that I will not be able to attend the tournament, so it went down the list of importance by a few pegs.  I think wrapping up the last few Neverborn models takes the cake as the next order of business for my painting days – which I may not have time for as school is getting ready to start back up again.  Iggy, (3) Depleted, Ama No Zako, and Lazarus are on the short list of things to get done in the next few painting sessions, and then trying to get some paint on all of the models that I can use with Zoraida – Pere, Rami, and Raphael.  After that, the final things to paint will be the Viktorias, Tara, and the remaining Ophelia box set.  I think that it will be time to grab Jacob Lynch after that, and then Brewmaster and Lucius will be on deck at some point.

Game Nights – 5.6.15 and 5.7.15

All of this brings us to game nights.  Wednesday Malifaux day was a huge success as always, featuring something along the lines of 4 or 5 games going on at once.  We recently started a henchman hardcore league, where you must take 4 models – including your henchman – for 20SS, and run through games with nothing but modified turf war and assassinate in the pool.  I ran against my Arcanist playing friend, who brought Cassandra, Angelica, Willie, and a Blessed of December to the game.  I brought Bad Juju with eternal fiend, Mr. Tannen, Mr. Graves, and a base of gupps.  Honestly, it went terrible.  Graves and Tannen got beat down in the first turns of the game, and then Bad Juju put the hurt on until he was killed and buried.  And then we called it because my opponent wasn’t going to kill the gupps to release Juju again, and there was nothing I could do to score points.  6-1 Cassandra over Bad Juju.

The real Malifaux game of the day was what ended up being the highlight of the night.  I played against my buddy again, only this time I brought out Collodi against his Colette.  We were playing a Gaining Grounds 2015 strategy – Informant.  Basically the moving Turf War.  I took cursed object and power ritual to accompany it.  My crew consisted of:

Collodi

-          -  Props

-          -  Strum

Widow Weaver

Teddy

(2) Marionettes

Brutal Effigy

Lucky Effigy

(2) Depleted

Beckoner

The plan with the crew was to run the depleted up the board with the beckoner and take the informant, and then have Teddy and Widow Weaver play bodyguard against whatever came towards them.  Collodi, the effigies, and the marionettes would run around and claim power ritual and cursed objects.  My opponent took:

Colette

Cassandra

Angelica

Mechanical Rider

(3) Doves

(2) Soulstone Miners

Game ended after turn 4 – shop was closing and we had to roll out.  It ended 7-6 Collodi.  Great game that just seemed to fire on all cylinders.  Collodi didn’t even do much aside from chase off some doves.  Mostly the game came down to management of models and not getting carried away.  The depleted and beckoner stood around the center of the table with the informant and dared anyone to come and take it away from them.  Teddy was one attack away from eviscerating Cassandra in one go.  Widow Weaver went around and paralyzed a soulstone miner and handed it a cursed object.  A mechanical dove swooped in and blew up the soulstone miner.  A single marionette survived the mechanical rider and a summoned metal gamin attacking it in one of my opponent’s corners for power ritual to go off.  All in all, we had a great and close game.  It came down to the wire, and we had to count up VP three times to make sure we got the result right, as it looked like Colette had won.  Managing the central objective for the whole game, plus getting a revealed Power ritual off, and a single point for cursed object all game against his full point breakthrough and full point power ritual was all that separated us.  If he had gone for the central objective instead of worrying about dealing with my Teddy, depleted, and beckoner in the center, he would have won the game.  However, he admitted that he didn’t have the tools to effectively deal with that mosh pit.  His only heavy hitter was really Cassy, and she was busy chasing after Widow Weaver, so he avoided the center rather than force his way into the center without the proper tools.  Great game over all, and really looking forward to getting models on the table with my buddies here in Atlanta for the last time until this August. 

Thursday signified board game and chill night.  My buddies ran some people through some X-Wing, and we set up Five Tribes to run through, but didn’t get a chance to.  We did get to play Hanabi with some new folk, Yardmaster – finally after owning it for the better part of half a year – and Bang! The Dice Game.  That was a good time.  All of those are great little pocket games to keep around with you while you are out and about or in the car so that you have something to do if you are ever bored.  All in all it was a good night of board gaming fun. 

Since then, there has been non-stop action in the form of Shaky Knees Music Festival, Frank Turner Concerts, Mother’s Day, and getting ready to hit the dusty trail back to Auburn for summer classes.  This week will mark the last Malifaux Wednesday and Board Game Thursday until this coming August, and so the posts will more than likely slow down here in the next few weeks as school ramps up into speed mode.  So, if this is my last post until August, I hope that you all get some great gaming in and have plenty of hobby time.  Happy Gaming!

Game Night 4.29.15

Hello all, 

Happy to be here again with another set of ramblings concerning how my Mali-Wednesday went.  Managed to (barely) get two games in yesterday at Wasteland games in Duluth, GA.  It was a hopping night for Malifaux, with 8 players showing up getting games in.  Our local group has a very diverse group of players:

-          (2) Arcanist only players

-          Ressers and Ten Thunders player

-          Neverborn and Ten Thunders player

-          (2) Gremlin only players

-          Guild player

-          Outcasts player

-          And myself with Neverborn and Outcasts.

I know that adds up to 9, but one of our players is on vacation and couldn’t be with us doing nerd stuff.

So, first game comes up.  I pair off with the gentleman who plays Ressers and 10T.  We are in the midst of doing a league where you try and complete all of the strategies and schemes from both the rulebook and GG2015.  We ended up playing Recon, with distract and breakthrough for both of us.  I had a lovely crew with Props and Strum Collodi, (4) Marionettes, beckoner, Vasilisa, Widow Weaver, brutal effigy, stitched together.  I was up against Molly, Phillip, Nurse, Chaiki, Rogue Necro, Madame Sybelle, and a rotten bell.  Game was a blood fest.  Highlight was probably when Collodi went apeshit on Phillip and the Rogue Necromancy (after pinging the rogue for a few the previous turns), nuking both of them with 4(!) Pull the strings.  In the end, Widow Weaver ended up being the star of the show, distracting Sybelle, the Belle, and a summoned Punk Zombie and locking them all in combat over two turns.  Turn 5 ended, and the game ended 9-8 in favor of Molly. 

Some thoughts on the crew – Vasilisa is entirely situational.  She spend the entire game getting stuck between 2 Punk zombies and then getting cut to ribbons.  For her same points cost (11 with her upgrade) I can take a Teddy or Ama No Zako and have something that is really terrifying for the enemy to face down against.  I am becoming less and less excited to take Vasilisa as a result.  I can do everything Vasilisa does with a beckoner and Collodi, for 2SS cheaper.  She just seems like she would do better in larger games.  In a 75SS game, she would probably fill an excellent niche.  But for 50SS games, she seems like too much of a point drain.  I will have to try her in other roles on the field.

Molly was a lot of fun to play against, especially with all of the craziness that she can dole out in the form of summoning and the models that she synergizes with.  Rogue was really cool, but not a crazy.  I would have a blast painting Phillip and the Nanny, and he was a pretty decent support piece during the game.  Nurses are the craziest things in the universe of Malifaux.  Being able to heal something completely for paralyzed, and then being able to pull paralyzed off with condition removal is what kept the Rogue Necromancy alive past turn 2 – Collodi had him down to one single wound before the bastard managed to heal up all the way.

All in all, I would gladly play against Molly again.  It was a blast of a game to play, and very close all the way to the end. 

Next up, I paired up against out resident outcast player to take on his Tara list in a game of speed-faux.  We had an hour to play Stake a Claim, Murder Protégé, and Vendetta.  He had Tara, Karina, Nothing Beast, Rusty Alyce, (4) void wretches, and a guild autopsy.  I had Props and Strum Collodi, Teddy, (2) stitched together, (3) Marionettes, Brutal Effigy, Lucky Effigy, and a Silurid.  It was meant to be an extremely fast game of Malifaux, and it was indeed.  Stitched were the absolute heroes of the game, and murdered Nothing Beast in one shot after shields, and butchered Rusty in a single turn as well.  Managed to grab 6 points off of those two kills alone, and then snag 2 points from Stake a Claim – my new absolute least favorite strategy to play.  Tara managed to grab two points after the heavy hitters in the crew were dropped.

Tara was an awesome master to play against, even though it was one sided.  My opponent had only played Tara once or twice before, and we only had an hour and a half to get a game in, so we played like absolute shit on both ends of the game.  Like I said previously, Tara is an awesome master.  Playing against her made me extremely excited to build my crew – which is still sitting on the back burner.  She has way too many tricks to try and launch into on a whim – I would really have to prepare before I play Tara.

Things that went well for Collodi this time?  Flips for Gamble your life – they were amazing.  Killing Nothing Beast and Rusty Alyce with stitched togethers was insane.  Other than that, being able to out activate and whoop on Tara’s crew in the time limit was about all that happened.  Good game, wish that we had time to play it all the way out to the end.

Aside from that, I got nothing.  So – hope you enjoyed the quick read.  No pictures as we were strapped for time.  Next week we will slow down and take some pictures.  Take it easy everyone.