The General's Handbook Experience

So it is finally here.

The stars are finally aligning so that we can play the Season of War Campaign for Age of Sigmar.  The General's Handbook is but a few fleeting moments away from all of us.  The Sylvaneth ride at the forefront of this new and glorious revolution for the Age of Sigmar and the Realm Gate Wars come to a close with a not a whimper, but a cacophony of sound. 

Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war...

If you can't tell, I am more than a little excited for the direction that AoS is headed here in the near future.  Nothing is more exciting than the new Battletome Sylvaneth, General's Handbook, and the Summer Campaign.  

I finally got to experience two of the new items coming to us in the General's Handbook the other night, in the form of two excellent games against quality opponents.

Sinscaptain's Skaven vs Quintessential Hipster's DEATHstar

It had to be decided how nuts we could go with the points system to see if there was balance in some of the named characters now.

Short answer:  Nagash and the Mortarchs are still absolutely ridiculous.

In a 2000 point game we had the following armies.

DEATHstar

Nagash (900)
Arkhan (340)
Morghast Archai - 2 models (240)
Morghast Archai - 2 models (240)
Morghast Archai - 2 models (240)

This list is simple, small, fluffy, and absolutely brutal.  Because Morghast become battleline if you play all Deathlords, it was absolutely disgusting.  The matched play rules allow you to resummon dead models and units, as long as you don't go over the original starting points value of your army.  So, having (3) units of super bodyguards and Nagash pumping out 4-5 spells a turn plus Arkhan giving Nagash Mystic Shield (his one job the whole game as it turned out), this is a mean list that takes a lot of umphf to get through.

Sinful Skaven

Verminlord Corrupter (240)
Plague Priest - Staff (80)
Warlord (100)
Plague Furnace (220)
Arch-Warlock (140)
Clanrats - 20 (120)
Clanrats - 20 (120)
Clanrats - 20 (120)
Plague Monks - 20 (140)
Plague Monks - 20 (140)
Plague Censer Bearers - 10 (120)
Plague Censer Bearers - 10 (120)
Plagueclaw Catapult (180)
Doomflayer Weapon Team (80)
Plaguesmog Congregation (80)

This hodgepodge army comes from having to pull from other subfactions of the Skaven in order to make it to 2000 points.  My original intention was to try and make it all Clan Pestilent, but having to pull from other things meant that I had to take a Clanrat tax.  I could have taken only (30) clanrats total, but I figured that it would be a pain to only have a few small units on the table that were going to get eaten by Nagash in one turn.  We were playing the 3rd scenario from the GHB I think.

As it turns out, everything that you hear about Nagash is true.  After 2 turns, I was down to 40 Clanrats spread throughout the table and a Warlord.  Against his entire army still as he'd managed to bring back the (2) Archai that I had killed in one turn with a massive Plague Monk charge.

Word to the wise - if you are playing against Nagash, bring something that can kill Nagash.

He managed to cast hand of dust(?) and roll all 12 wounds off of my verminlord.
This game may not be the best example of a balanced point system, but it did let us put a bunch of models on the table that we though *maybe* might be balanced through the points?  Great game, awesome table, good times and good rolls.  But man alive Nagash hits like a freight train!

GAME 2

Quintessential Hipster's Silly String Skeletons vs Sinscaptain's Putrescent Hordes vs The Knights Who Say Nee

So this was a much, much better game, that lasted the full length (5 turns) of the game that we were playing.  We decided to have a three player game, using the king of the hill type scenario from the General's Handbook (# players - 1 points for holding the center, 2 points for the most wounds dealt, 1 point for the second most wounds dealt, and finally 1 point a HERO killed).  We used the matched play points again, and the allegiance special rules.  Army lists were as follows:

Quintessential Hipster's Silly String Skeletons

Vampire Lord
Necromancer - mounted
Grave Guard - 20
Zombies - 10
Zombies - 10
Zombies - 10
Hexwraiths - 5

Sinscaptain's Putrescent Hordes

Verminlord Corrupter
Plague Furnace
Plague Monks - 20
Plague Monks - 20
Plague Censer Bearers - 10
Plague Censer Bearers - 10

The Knights Who Say Nee!

King Louen Leoncoeur
Paladin Standard Bearer
Knights of the Realm - 8
Men-at-Arms - 16
Field Trebuchet

As I mentioned above, this was a much, much, much more balanced game than fighting against the DEATHstar.  The game did seem to get a little long in the tooth towards the end - I'd recommend having a full day to play anything more than about 4 players (supports up to 6!!!), but it was great.

Some of the 10,000 foot flyby of the game include King Louen killing the Vampire Lord, and then the Vampire Lord being reborn thanks to his magic item that he had from the artifacts section, and then the High King running him down a second time.  The successful murder charge of one of the Plague Monk units to have four(!!!) attacks on the charge, rerolling to hits and to wounds, lead to the successful destruction of the Grave Guard.  And then the successful destruction of the Men-at-Arms when they tried to take the hill at the center from them.

The Verminlord Corrupter is as bad as ever, but I adore that model so it will continue to see the light of day in my Plague Army.  He did manage to hold up the entire unit of Knights of the Realm AND the Paladin Standard Bearer for almost 3 turns before finally succumbing to its wounds that were well earned. King Louen managed to slay his way through all (30) Zombies over the course of 3 turns - with the help of the Zombies tearing down the Plague Furnace and the other unit of Plague Monks.  The Plague Censer Bearers did what they always do and shotgunned up the board to try and nuke the Vampire Lord and Necromancer.  Managed to get the VL down to a single wound before he drank from his blood chalice and healed up - only to be chased around by King Louen.

Game ended after 5 turns, resulting in the following breakdown in points:

Skaven - 15 Points
Bretonnia - 9 Points
Death - 7/8 Points

Knocking Death off of the center of the table fairly early made it easy for the Plague Monks to just grind whatever came close to them and have their way. Zombies provided the Bretonnian player with plenty of fuel for his VP generation, and the Grave Guard and Knights of the Realm gave the Rats the edge they needed, plus plenty of hero kills!

Great games held all around!  I really recommend the General's Handbook to everyone when it comes out.  It is basically Age of Sigmar 1.5, and it should be the standby book that every fantasy gamer has for the rest of their gaming days.  Can't wait to get my grubby mitts on the Global Campaign, as I've already ordered a Virulent Horde to bolster the ranks of my Skaven Pestilence Army...  Soon enough it will be time to go toe to toe with Nagash again...

Looking forward to the rest of the Summer of Sigmar.  Until then, happy gaming!

Bayou, Banjaxing, and Bloody Sigmar

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++

1. Age of Sigmar wont be 9th edition, it will be a set of Skirmish rules that are meant to get people into the game.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. All factions will still be playable to some extent.
6. 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.
7. Alternate Rumor states that Age of Sigmar IS 9th edition, and we will see this game scalable up to army level games.
8. 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

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.

Return of the Old Guard

Hey all,

Hope everyone has been doing well in the time since my last post - a little under a month ago.  Today I just have a few updates, as classes are well underway, so I haven't had all that much time to play anything but a few fleeting games of Malifaux.

First up, I did get a pair of demo games in with a friend of mine from my 40k-ing days.  He has been interested in starting Malifaux since we ran a few sessions of Through the Breach with him last fall.  So, he supplied the terrain and I threw some models on the table and we had a couple of go-rounds between the two of us.

First mission was a slightly modified Henchman Hardcore, which was 4 models at 20 SS each, Turf War and assassinate.  No second scheme, as in regular HH, but I decided it would be better to use Standard deployment and still start scoring on turn 2, rather than use close and score on turn 1.  Below are the crews I brought for him to use:

Sinscaptain's Spider Lair:

Widow Weaver
(2) Wicked Dolls
Teddy

<AUsome Friend> House of Gremlins:

Francois LaCroix
- Dirty Cheater
- Team Work
Bayou Gremlin
Burt Jebsen
Raphael LaCroix
- Team Work

Game went swimmingly.  He really got to enjoy using all of the amigos to run rampant over me.  He managed to knock Teddy out with a bang top of the second turn with Raphael.  Generally, it was a pretty standard game.  My dolls ran up, got shot.  Francois got into combat with the WW, and hacked her to bits before turn 5.  Called it a 5-3 win for the Gremlins.

He was hooked at this point, but wanted to try an actual game with a master.  So, I made the following lists for a 35SS game:

Sinscaptain's Traveling Troupe:

Collodi
- Bag of Props
- Strum the Threads
(3) Marionettes
Brutal Effigy
Beckoner
Teddy

<AUsome Friend> and the Kin:

Ophelia LaCroix
- Dirty Cheater
- Jug Rocket
- My Threatenin' Gun
(3) Young LaCroix
Francois LaCroix
- Show Off
- Team Work
Rami LaCroix
- Dirty Cheater
Raphael LaCroix
- Team Work

Strategy: Squatters Rights
Scheme Pool:  LITS, Distract, Murder Protege, Breakthrough, and something else.
Selected:  Because this was his second game, we played Distract and Murder Protege revealed.
Deployment:  Standard

This game was much more intense.  Playing a small point game with Collodi is not something that I don't have much practice with, and so that made for a rather interesting game against a list I designed for this point level in the Gremlins.  Teddy and the beckoner were quick to run up the board towards an exposed Raphael, who was promptly reduced to 1 HP thanks to a couple tugs at his strings.  Collodi and his blob of marionettes slow rolled up the board, sticking to LOS blocking terrain, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.  Collodi managed to get a slow off on Raphael and steal his first AP, forcing him to walk towards my horde of minions - and getting distracted by them.

Francois was about tired of Teddy being scary, and blew him off the board with some dumb luck and a red joker.  The lovely beckoner was quick to follow.  This left the rest of my crew in the hands of Collodi - who can easily handle a few models - and a couple of puppets, who get knocked down to a light breeze in my experience.  I was hanging tough at this point however, keeping the game 2-2, until he managed to nuke off all of my hitting power.  He managed to keep me off of the Squat markers, and then rack up some points for Murder Protege against Teddy.  We ended the game after Collodi was beat down by Francois and a vengeful Raphael.  7-2 win for Ophelia and the Kin.

Overall, my friend who I was running the demos for was really excited to get into the game, and has since picked up a Pandora crew - with a likely expansion into Lilith not far behind.  Mission accomplished!

A few days later, we decided to host a Malifaux night at one of my friend's place.  He was actually the guy that got me into Malifaux in the first place, but he hadn't had a game in over 6 months, so he was out of practice and asked for a re-introduction game, as I have been able to get many games in since I last saw him.

Sinscaptain's faction/master:  Neverborn - Collodi
Cricketmaster faction/master:  Guild - Perdita
Size:  50SS
Strategy:  Interference - Gaining Grounds 2015
Scheme Pool:  LITS, Bodyguard, Protect Territory, Outflank, Frame for Murder
Sinscaptain's schemes:  Protect Territory (revealed), Frame for Murder (Widow Weaver)
Cricketmaster's schemes:  Outflank (hidden), Frame for Murder (Papa Loco)

Sinscaptain's Carnivale of Pain

Collodi [4 Stone Cache]
- Bag of Props
- Strum the Threads
Widow Weaver
Teddy
(3) Marionettes
Brutal Effigy
Beckoner
(2) Depleted

Cricketmaster's Perdita + Death Marshals

Perdita [3 Stone Cache]
- Trick Shooting
Francisco
Nino
Papa Loco
Judge
- Flames of the Pit
(2) Death Marshals
Enslaved Nephillim

This was a crazy reintroduction to the game for CM.  Right off the bat we were going at it, with Depleted making a run for the informant.  Collodi stayed back with Brutal and a pair of Marionettes - who started putting out markers for Protect territory next to some hard cover, so they could focus up and let Collodi leech it off of them.  Teddy slunk around one edge of the table looking for a vector to get to the center.  Another marionette ran off on his own into a building, hopefully to be forgotten by my opponent so that he could sit there on a marker for the whole game as a back up plan.  Widow Weaver leapt forward into the middle of the table to paralyze Papa Loco, and then get shot to pieces by Nino, Perdita, and Francisco on turn 3, bagging me 3 points.  Perdita and Nino had set up shop in a building with great firing lanes over the center of the table, making the center a meat grinder for my crew.  Fransisco and Judge walked up the center of the board to try and get points off of the informant.  The Death Marshals ran off to go plant outflank markers.  Collodi managed to snipe a Death Marshal running across open space and kill him in a single go.  As the game began to come to a close, my center began to fold, after Papa Loco detonated himself (my opponent didn't realize that would not give him the points for Frame for Murder) and took my depleted down to one health each.  Nino and Perdita cleaned them out.  After trading silly moves back and forth for half a turn, Teddy ended up getting nuked by Francisco in a single activation.

For the rest of the game, a Death Marshal managed to kill the hidden Marionette, I kept summoning a stream of marionettes to defend my last few markers, and then a marionette made a mad dash in the last activation to get away from a load of combat and plant a second protect territory marker.  Game ended with that activation - thank goodness.  8-6 win for Collodi, if only thanks to grabbing all of my points from both schemes.  I managed to drop one of his outflank markers before the game ended, which saved me a point.  If I hadn't have been careful around Papa Loco, CM would have won 9-8.

Looking forward to getting much more Malifaux in over the summer - or as much as the semester will let me have.  If I only get a few more games in this summer, there is always this coming semester where I will have the weekly Malifaux group in Atlanta.

I am, as usual, looking for the next crew to get onto the table.  I am torn between picking up Somer Teeth Jones, Brewmaster, Lynch, or just grabbing some blisters for my existing crews - namely Merris LaCroix, Slop haulers, Waldgeists, and the new Widow Weaver.  More than likely, I will wait until Brewmaster is common to get by the end of the month, and picking up the new Widow Weaver and either Merris or Waldgeists to go with my crews.

Also, more than likely I will be participating in a slow grow 40k league - probably just repainting some CSM and letting them ride.  No way will I be buying any new models to go with them.  I am waiting with much trepidation for the next edition of WHF to come out, as are many people.  My Skaven are too large to have to deal with much change in the new edition, and I don't know if I really want to deal with that much change.  I have a solid system in Malifaux, which manages to scratch all of my current wargaming itches very easily.  We will see.

Until next 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.

Weekly Update #4

Hey All!

Hope y'all have been having a good week so far!  So, lots to talk about and not very much time I'm afraid, so lets get started:

1)  This weekend I had the chance to play two excellent games of Uncharted Seas with the Spartan Vanguard in Georgia.  Both were 550 points, where I ran the starter box plus destroyers in one game, and then in the second replaced one of the cruisers with a heavy, and used a big glob of 4 frigates instead of 2 groups of 3.

The first game was against his Iron Dwarves, and was a crushing victory.  My Mages put a hard pounding on his fleet and took out everything but a single crippled cruiser, while I was left with my Battleship (undamaged) and a single frigate.  In the last turn, just to make one last jab, my frigate whizzed up the table and took a range band one shot on his - at the time - second crippled cruiser, and caused something like 14 hits on it.  It was too far away from anything to cause explosion damage, so we just removed it from the table.  One of the keep moments in the game was when I disabled his Battleship's steering and he ran into a hard island, knocking 2 hull points off his already wounded ship, bringing it up to 6 lost HP.  Good first game for the Shroud Mages!

Second game was against his Elves.  This game went by much quicker, as the shop was closing in an hour.  Same points values.  My Shroud Mages fared much worse against the Elves, but still managed to drag the game back to a draw - although he was 10 points ahead of me thanks to a frigate he managed to prize towards the middle of the game.  Probably the most exciting moment in that game was a pair of destroyers stern raking his battleship, only to get torched by his dragon after causing a single hull point of damage.  His dragon died valiantly on the last move of the game as it made an attack on my battleship - letting my entire fleet shoot at it as it attacked.  It managed to put a point on the battleship, but didn't kill it and win the game for him.  I was faced with a similar situation when my heavy cruiser and cruisers lined up full range band one broadsides on his already crippled battleship.  I rolled well, but I just couldn't manage to knock that last hull point off and win me the game.  An honorable draw after a fun and fast paced battle.

2)  I mentioned in the Monday sneak peak that I had some Firestorm Planetfall rumors and news.  It is supposed to play similar to Dystopian Wars Armored Clash, and they are pushing with Firestorm to eventually be able to go directly from Firestorm Armada to Planetfall in campaigns.  Now this is just rumor and I haven't seen any evidence, but thats what I know.

3)  I have an eBay problem.  I'll be the first to admit it.  I love eBay and think it is awesome.  So I have some new stuff coming down the pike for myself in the coming weeks.

A new fleet for me means demo games and more painting and just a fun time in general.  Variety is the key to happiness and I like variety.  So I bought some Bone Griffons.  The starter set and a blister of Destroyers to be exact.

These beauties to be exact.  Love these models and they are going to be a blast to paint.  I'm thinking kind of a ghostly Greek feel to them.  I'll have to do some research, but I think that would look really nice myself.

4)  Painting update is that I haven't had time to paint anything this week unfortunately.

5)  Finally I get to break out some Dreadball and some Fantasy again!  I have a friend that goes to the same college as I do, and he has literally been chomping at the bit to play Dreadball and he just ordered a lovely Brettonian Army that should be here this evening.  So my rats will get to taste fine Brettonian steel... and they get to eat plague magic.

Final thoughts for this week are that I will be inspecting his fantasy army tonight when he gets them in, so I might be posting picks later this week of them, plus we will be playing a starter box game of Uncharted because he just purchased a huge bundle of orcs this weekend at the store.  So, wish me luck, and until next time...