Malifaux Monday - Football Practice?!

Yeah, sadly, no Malifaux Monday for me...I coach little kid football: 5-7 year old kids. It's like herding cats!

I did get a few games in with Jacob Lynch, but I took no pictures or notes. So, business as usual for me, right? :)


I got in a 50ss game on Vassal. The deployment was Corners. The Strategy was Reconnoiter. The Schemes were Spring the Trap, Assassinate, Breakthru, and Vendetta.

I really wanted to do some fun Luring along with Spring the Trap. I figured I could walk up, throw down some Schemes, have Beckoners and Doppel Lure his Leader in, SPring the Trap, then kill him next turn.

So I went with:

Jacob Lynch (Woke Up With A Hand, Wanna See A Trick?, and Endless Darkness) (3 ss pool)
Hungering Darkness (maybe Addict, not sure, don't remember :) )
2 Beckoners
Doppelganger
and 3 Illuminated

He took Sonnia, Brutal Effigy, 2 Guild Guard, 3 Guild Riflemen, Witchling Handler, and Captain Dashel

I was pretty familiar with how the Riflemen and Dashel work together, but honestly was far too lazy to look at anything else. Even Sonnia I had no idea what she did. Her model has her with a sword, so I assumed she was a melee fighter...great for me!

So some highlights of the match...what my poor opponent had to explain to me 20 times before I finally got it through my head was that Sonnia doesn't allow Ca actions to use their Suits, so my Lure would never work as it needed two suits...both normally on the Ca. I literally played until turn 3 before that finally got thru my head.

Moreover, as real Malifaux players no doubt already know, she's a shooty person. I set up a few Scheme Markers (lazily disguised in a half-assed fashion as LITS) and hid around corners hoping to get her to come over...but of course she wouldn't. I ended up spending half my forces messing around with two Guard that were running Schemes and interference for her Sonnia as she took shots at things.

The other half of my forces did better. I was able to Lure Dash out a bit, get Hungry on him, but he survived. The Witchling charged Hungry, but he survived too. Next turn Initiative would be critical, and the combination of free cards from Woke Up With A Hand and hand-improvement from Mulligan set me up with a nice hand with which to cheat initiative, I won it, and Hungry killed both Dash and the Handler!

Then, an ignominious death to Riflemen. Sigh.

I had two Illuminated over there to deal with the Riflemen too, but one was shot down before he could get close, and the other spent three turns engaging two riflemen and failing to even injure one of them. Fail.

After figuring out she was un-Lure-able I moved Jacob up to threaten and got an Illuminated on her. With my hand stacked from Jacob's tricks the Illuminated was able to take her down to two wounds...but then she activated and healed back up AND got to draw cards to stack her hand. Jacob never quit got close enough to really threaten her (because I'm super hyper-conservative with him!) and I don't think I scored a single point for either the Strat or Schemes!


Sunday we played an awkward three-way battle at 35ss each at Gamers Gambit. I had my Neverborn, James was using his Ressers, and a newish player Ben was proxying some of my models as his 10-Thunders Misaki box that's on backorder. :)

We didn't have the Chronicle available that details the 3-player game, so did some off-the-cuff thing where one person was stuck in the middle 6" of the table while the other two were on the table edges. James with his Ressers drew the short-straw and was stuck in the sandwich.

The Strategy was Turf War, the Schemes available were Assassinate, Bodyguard, Entourage, and I believe Spring the Trap.

I figured Hungry with Bodyguard and Entourage along with Rising Sun upgrade would be pretty awesome (correct me if I'm reading it wrong, but the Bodyguarded model is Buried and that same model comes back 'in to play', right?)...so I took:

Jacob (Rising Sun, Woke Up With A Hand, Wanna See a Trick) (3ss Pool)
Hungry
3 Illuminated
and a Beckoner

I figured Illuminated with Jacob and Beckoner help would be great for holding down Turf War and Illuminated could just sneak off on his own and hide in buildings across the table. Boring, but effective! I revealed Entourage on Hungry.

I'm not super familiar with what the other guys took, but roughly:

Misaki, Ototo, 2 Torakage, Thunder Archer, and a lot of Upgrades. No revealed Schemes.

Seamus (He had the Big Hat, but not sure of others), Sebastian (Those are not ours!), 2 Belles, a Nurse, and Bete Noire. He revealed Bodyguard on Sebastian, and Entourage.

Seamus set up along the centerline. A Belle, Bete, the Nurse, and Sebastian all piled in to a building right near the Turf War marker. One door, one window. Hard to get in to kill Sebastian, and hard to stop him from getting Turf War. Bummer.

So no details here other, just highlights...

Seamus used Back Alley 3 times in a row on first turn to get deep in to my deployment zone. I considered committing Jacob and Hungry to killing him...stopping him from getting Entourage would be great, they might think I have Assassinate, I felt the Illuminated could hold Turf War ok for a few turns. On the other hand, it wouldn't be that hard for Seamus to Back Alley away when he saw me coming, and even if he didn't he's so damned hard to kill!

So I opted to just sneak around with Hungry and Jacob and did a lot of nothing first turn.

Some Ninjas ran up and made smoke clouds, Misaki ran like crazy to mid table, and the Ressers (other than one Belle that was just lurking around near the Misaki side of table) had a nice quiet afternoon tea in their little building!

Turn 2 got hot quickly, as Misaki was able to move then Charge Jacob! Guess he chose Assassinate! I'd drawn a really good hand with Woke Up and Mulligan on turn 1, so was able to Cheat like crazy and burn stones to not die to Misaki's Assassinate, ending up after two attacks Stoneless and with 6 wounds remaining. A damned near run thing!

But that left Misaki's ass hanging in the breeze, as they say...first the Beckoner hit her with the Brilliance, then an Illuminated too giant chunks out of her, then Hungry ran over to finish her off! Ben was disappointed, but we all learned a lesson about exposing key models too early! Realistically he had a decent chance to kill Jacob, I just had better cards to cheat with and wasn't afraid to blow thru all my soulstones to minimize his chances.

The rest of the game revolved around the Torakage and Illuminated skirmishing around the Turf marker while the Beckoner, Hungry, and Jacob (along with one Illuminated 'shooting' in to the room thru a window!) tried to thin out Sebastian's protectors and kill the little bugger!

To try to stop me from getting Entourage, on turn 4 the Nurse popped out and gave a bunch of drugs to the Hungering Darkness (the rich irony was not lost on me!), and he ended up Paralyzed! This complicated things...I ended up Luring Hungry closer to the other side of the table and out of the fray with the Beckoner, but I'd really needed her help to clear the way in to the room to get Sebastian!

As it turns out, though, Jacob is a ridiculous badass. Turn 4 he killed off the Nurse and a Belle (both having been damaged already) with a combination of shooting, discarding 'medium' masks to get Brilliance, and 52 Pickup.

Turn 5...if Ben wins initiative Ototo would be able to engage Hungry and I'd lose out on Entourage. But no, Ben flipped his third 2 in a row for initiative, and I just ran Hungry safely thru some walls out of LOS and out of danger (except the festering Poison from the Nurse, but that wouldn't kill him until much later!).

Beckoner and Illumianted had to clear out some Canine Remains that were popping up all over from Corpses, and I had one last Hail Mary to get to Sebastian...who was cowering in a corner behind a Canine Remain and Bete...

...Jacob calmly walks in the room, shoots the dog dead (discarded a Ram for +2 damage on the Weak damage flip to kill), shoots Sebastian (discarded a Mask for Brilliance), and does 52 Pickup with 3 Aces for 6 damage, and dead Sebastian!

James was grumpy. Sorry, James!! :)

We totaled up the points, and it was super duper close! James had 7, I had 7, and Ben had 6! A great game, some exciting action, a great finish, and good friends!

Thanks guys!