Probable end to this blog...

Never say never... or so the saying goes.

But, chances are this blog will be on an indefinite hiatus.
Sadly, all but a few people at my LGS have stopped playing Malifaux for whatever reason(s).

I was really hoping I could continue to learn Misaki and was also looking forward to trying out several other Masters that I had not gotten around to building the box sets yet, but it's difficult now to find a pick up game.

I had hoped this blog would have offered more and better information for people just starting Malifaux, but I've also learned that I'm just not that good at this game. I still enjoy it a LOT though. But I consistently find myself on the losing side of things. So I don't find myself in a good position to offer any advice or tips on actual gameplay.

I hope that the folks at my LGS will eventually regain interest in Malifaux, and I can get more games in, but the way it looks now, I'm not hopeful. Perhaps, I'll still be able to get a few games in now and then, but until things pick up, this blog is officially on "stand-by". :)

Thanks to everyone who took some time to comment and read my posts. I know some have benefited from a few of my posts, so this experiment does have some positives.

Hope to be back at some point.
Thanks!

Misaki vs Yan Lo and also Pandora

A bit late in posting this as the details are fuzzy now, but just throwing up this quick post...
This past saturday our LGS had "Pizzafaux" (come in to play some malifaux games, and get some free pizza!).
Wasn't a huge turnout, 6 in total, but still a good time was had.
I got to play two games, one against Pandora and one against Yan Lo.
The game against Pandora was a fun one. We actually ended up with a 8-8 draw! It was also funny because we each chose Line in the Sand and we each had 4 markers out. To see 8 markers on the centerline was something I'd never seen before.
I might have won that one, had I remembered to use "Distract" as my other scheme, I didn't remember until it was too late, and I couldn't get my last two models into melee range.
My opponent got me paralyzed 2x at the end of the game too, and that REALLY hurt me. I also was really having trouble dealing with the Terror Checks. I had to burn through my hand just to get my attacks to hit.

My second game was against Yan Lo. It was a little difficult for me, because I had not ever played Yan before, and most of his models were new to me. My opponent was fairly new to the game too, and I think he got me a couple times where he announced his trigger *after* I decided not to cheat. I told him once, but then let the other times slide. I ended up losing that one (7-2 I think?), mostly because we had the Flank Deployment, and were in melee attacking one another on turn one! I help my own for those first couple of turns, but then around turn 3, things started going south for me. Eventually, I didn't have enough models on the table to do anything, and we called the game at the beginning of turn 5.

Both games, I got to use 2 TT Archers as well, and I liked what I saw. Not TOO overpowering, but enough to cause a bit of damage that helped me out.

This weekend starts our second "Slow Grow" league, and I'm worried that the turnout won't be there. The players at my LGS have fallen away it seems for one reason or another. But, as long as I can get some games in, I plan on having some fun.

My absence...

Sorry for the lack of recent posts.
The players are my LGS have all sort of wafted away.
After the last tournament there was nothing officially planned, and I think people's interests have been pulled in other directions. I include myself in that as well, as there is a renewed interest in FFG's "X-Wing" game.
We'll see what happens though. This Saturday is the first official informal gathering called "Pizzafaux" and I hope some players will show up for that.

And in case you were wondering... my last game that I played against Rasputina with Misaki was another brutal beat down. Raspy did her usual... moved one time on turn one, up behind a wall, then proceeded to arc spells down upon me, as well as some heavy hitting attacks from Snowstorm. To give you an example... I brought Ototo as my "heavy hitter"... he was dead on turn three, and never even made it into combat.

I've since bought some Archers, in the hopes of countering some of those arc spells. Problem is, I also have to be within 12", which puts me within range of the arc spells too. So it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

My first Malifaux Tournament - 4-5-14

I played in my first Malifaux tournament yesterday... and had fun.
I was on the fence as to whether or not I was going to join in, up til the last minute. But when I walked into the game store and saw a group of folks ready to play, I knew I wanted to just have fun.
Don't get me wrong... I went in with the expectation of losing (hoping I might win once), and that's exactly what happened. I even lost to a guy who picked up David Lynch's crew the night before.
But again, I just went to play the game, and enjoy a Saturday afternoon at the LGS.
I met/played with two new guys, so meeting new people in the world of Malifaux is also a positive thing.
Now that the Slow-Grow league is officially over (I placed last in that too, not counting the people who signed up for the league then dropped out after a few games)... And having competed in the tournament with Seamus, only because they were timed games, and I didn't want to slow the games down by starting a new crew. I'll be putting Seamus on the back shelf for now and will look forward to trying out a new Crew (or two). I definitely want to try out Misaki again, and I'd like to assemble McMourning next. I'm hopeful that maybe I'm just not grasping the subtleties of Seamus' crew, and that once I find the right Master/Crew, I'll be able to win more games.

I should add... During the tournament I also helped my opponents win. I'm not sure many people would do that in a tournament setting. My first opponent was familiar with Malifaux 1.5 edition, but either he was rusty, or some of the rules changed in the 2.0 version, but when he was doing "Line in the Sand", he was just dropping markers "near" the centerline. I corrected him towards the end of the game (where he pretty much tabled me), and said you had to drop the markers ON the centerline. The last game, my opponent had the plant explosives, and after dropping the scheme marker, he announced his Scheme. I corrected him, and said, you have to announce that at the end of the Turn. Now, I still had a model yet to move, and could have moved away from his marker, and denied him a point, but I decided that wasn't in the spirit of things, and so I stayed within his radius so he got the extra VP. I'm not sure he even knew I did that on purpose. Maybe I'm just not competitive enough for tournaments? :)

First game with Misaki!

Well, after finishing out my last Slow Grow league game last week, I was able to play a game tonight with a new master = Misaki from the Ten Thunders faction.
It was a casual game, and my buddy Joel was kind enough to play a game tonight while I stumbled my way through reading all the new cards and models.
I ended up winning the game (7-6), but it was close, and had it gone one more turn, I think I would have definitely lost.
After playing Seamus and his crew for a while now, the biggest difference between the crews, was that I kept looking for some sort of "defense" with Misaki and crew. Several of the Resurrectionists have things like "Hard to Kill, Impossible to Kill, Hard to Wound, etc..." But most of the Ten Thunders I played tonight were just straight forward. There were some adjustments and tricks, but not that many.

Overall, I liked the way the crew played. I didn't really see any great synergy yet, but I'm sure with a few more games I'll find some. I look forward to learning more about Misaki and the Ten Thunders.

PS> My final total for the league was 2 wins and 6 losses. Of the people who actually finished all 8 of their games, I came in last place. No real surprise there. :) So yeah... it's time to look at a new Master/Crew and then I'll come back later and revisit Seamus.

PS2> This Saturday is our LGS' first tournament. I still have not decided if I'm going to play or not. It will be 3 games of 35ss, which at this point sounds grueling to me. I'm not sure if my brain can handle 3 games of Malifaux under a tournament setting. I may volunteer the be the "ringer".

Seamus vs Ramos - oh my 3-22-14

Mini-battlereport!

This past Saturday, I went up against Ramos. It was technically my second game vs him, but in the first game we didn't have time to finish, so it's difficult to count that one.

We played a 50ss game.
Turf War = Strategy
I chose: Distract and Line in the sand
My opponent chose: Murder protege (target Izamu) and Protect Territory.

First the disclaimer, it turns out after the game, my opponent misread the card, and was summoning more spiders than she was allowed (only once per turn can you summon). So there is a slight chance that I could have had a better scoring game. Also, on one or two occasions, she moved the spiders over a "climbable" wall thinking that the spiders ignored it, but later we both learned that spiders only ignore "severe" terrain. So with those couple mistakes, I ended up losing 10-0.

Basically, Ramos started the game first and moved his crew into position, gaining control of the center of the table quickly (not good for Turf war).

Then starting turn 2, I knew I was in deep trouble. Ramos had already summoned a handful of spiders, and started moving them in to engage several of my models. My opponent also targeted Izamu on turn two and nearly killed him with Howard Langston. She also tore through my cheat deck and SS by using decapitate... which now I'm reading that, and either she had two lucky flips, or was incorrectly using an SS's - which an Enforcer can not.

It was an incredibly long game (approx. 3-3.5 hours), and I have to admit that by turn 4, I had pretty much given up on winning, and was not cheating when I could have in order to end the game sooner.

The only highlight for me, was that Seamus on turn 2 failed miserably at hitting Howard Langston (both times with the upgrade), but then at the beginning of turn 3, he hit once, then pulled the Red Joker for the damage flip. That felt good.

Seamus vs Rasputina 3-15-14

WOOHOO!!! A WIN for Seamus today against the dreaded Rasputina!

After being beaten by Raspy in the past (and rather severely too), I had sworn off playing Raspy until I figured out how to defend against her. And then I realized... about a third of the players at my LGS have chosen Rasputina, so if I wanted to play Malifaux, I better figure it out fast.

I posted to forums, and asked for advice, and basically in a nutshell, the key to Raspy are the Belle's and their Lure capability. Raspy can "arc" through a model, but only if they are within 10" of her. So by using the Lure capability, I'm able to break that strong ability of Raspy.

I've played 2 games now, where I focus on luring, and it's been working out ok.
Today, I managed to pull off a 7-3 win. It was a rough start, My opponent had placed 4 Line in the Sand Markers by the end of turn 2, but I knew I had the rest of the game to try and remove them. After lots of back and forth, I managed to bring his total markers down to 2, which only gave him the one VP.

I also paid attention to the Strategy which was "Reconnoiter", and that, I think is basically how I won the game. I also managed 2 VP from "Cursed Object".

Overall a fun game, with strong tactical play on both sides. There was not a lot of model killing.

One of the downsides though... approx. 4 hours for a 50ss Game! We are both kinda new players, so we obviously took our time, as well as asked a lot of questions, but man, 4 hours of thinking like that had turned my brain to mush at the end of the day. Good times!

Seamus vs Raspy

Just a short 'battle report' today.
Saturday, I played a new person in Malifaux, and it was against my nemesis Rasputina.
A week ago, I swore off playing Raspy until I was able to come up with some sort of defense. But, just my luck, 3 of about 10 players at my LGS are playing Raspy. So, I decided to lift my short lived ban, and dive in with a new tactic.
It wasn't complicated at all. Basically, I brought 2 Belles, and concentrated on Luring the gamin away from Raspy, so that she could not arc her spells through them. For the most part, this did work. It was a much closer game than the ones I played in the past (10-0 and 9-1). (It was also a different opponent, so that may have had something to do with it also). I still lost, it was 9-5, but at least I didn't get  stomped on - AND - I feel like a win was within my grasp at the start of turn 4. I had surprisingly taken out his Ice Golem AND Snowstorm! Both were quite the achievement if you ask me.
But, my opponent was clever, he used his Wendigo and Raspy to cast 2 Ice Pillar spells, which severely hindered my ability to get to the squatter's rights markers (not to mention blocking LOS for other attacks). But, I think the game was won, towards the end of turn 4... I was definitely up in model count, but my opponent was able to successfully cast Paralyze on 3 of my models, and at the start of turn 5, I was pretty much frozen, and unable to move. I didn't have the cards in my hand to cheat those paralyze spells away, and I believe that's what cost me the game.
So while it was still a loss, I enjoyed the game very much as it was close all the way up to the end, and the tactics my opponent played I enjoyed defending against, because it was clever.

Seamus vs Wong

Played a game the other day with Seamus vs the Gremlin's Master Wong. It was still a loss, but I managed to get a decent amount of VPs (6), unfortunately, I could not prevent my opponent from scoring 9VP's.

It was an interesting game, and I had fun. It was my first time facing Wong (and his assistant), as well as 3 little pigs that go boom. I had to laugh when my opponent told me about the pieces... the one model that I have the hardest time with (Pere) the one that explodes, my opponent basically built an entire army that explodes.

As usual, I made a bunch of "mistakes" with this game.
In my defense, I was faced with several new models that I had never heard of, so it was a huge learning curve. My biggest problem, was that Wong tore up my models on turn 2! He had some ability (or the assistant did, I can't recall), that brought all models within 6" into base to base contact with my Izamu. At which point, he unleashed a series of about 5 attacks that all did 2-4 damage to everyone. At first, I thought, 2-3 damage isn't too bad, so didn't bother cheating to defend against, but then I found myself cheating on the damages, whereas I SHOULD have cheating on the 'to hit' instead. I think at the start of turn 3, most of my faction was destroyed. All of those back-to-back small damages added up quickly.

Another mistake (I think?) is that I realized after playing this game... almost all of these games that I'm losing are against ranged attacks. I'm finding that I'm usually able to move 1-2 models up to half the board (to get schemes/strats), while the rest of my models are usually within 6" of where I initially deployed them. I think the two games where I won (against Lilith) were when I was actually engaged in melee more often. There's got to be a connection here - am I playing too reserved? should I concentrate more of getting my models further up the board? That sounds dangerous to me though, because basically, I too have a ranged army.

Lastly - a bit of good news... I FINALLY got my hands on the new full sized RULEBOOK!!! It's taken months of patiently waiting, but it finally arrived via UPS last night. NOW, maybe I can start to learn more about what my opponents are capable of and can think a bit more as to how to defend against them.

A demo and a loss

Yesterday was a fun day at the LGS (Local Game Store).
I managed to give a demo to a potential new player, only because our henchman was running late. I think it went well overall, and my opponent picked up on the rules pretty quickly. Hopefully I'll get some good Malifaux Karma for helping a new player. :)

Then, it was followed by a second game, with another brutal loss to Rasputina. It was basically an exact repeat of the last time I played her (same opponent too). I believe Raspy walked once, then remained there the rest of the game, and cast her spells/attacks through the gamin.
Turn one, I lost one belle, and took a lot of damage on Izamu. Turn two, I raised the belle, only to lose her again, and lost Izamu and Copycat. Turn three, I lost everyone except Sybelle and Belle.
At this point, The score was 7-1, and there was no hope. I literally just ran my two remaining models to their deaths in the hopes of ending the slaughter sooner, rather than later, and didn't even bother looking at my hand to cheat. Final score was 10-1.

Raspy is now on my list that I will not play against at this point, until I learn how to defend against her.
Couple of comments; Raspy's ability to turn a Black Joker into a Red Joker... During the 4 Turns, my opponent played I think a total of 6 Red Jokers because of that. Seriously? 6!?
The second ability that absolutely crushed me, was Raspy's ability to cast her spell/attack at least 3-6 times during ONE activation. Apparently her trigger let her re-cast the same spell more than once, and with a broken soulstone, that was easy.

I've heard several times now, that most starter boxes are "balanced". Um, I'm calling "horse-pucky" on that. There's no way that Raspy's 6 Attacks compares to Seamus' ONE attack. AND, one of my defenses is that Seamus and Sybelle have "Terrifying" - Which Raspy's entire crew ignores.

My only hope next time, is that I MUST use the belles to lure the gamins away from Raspy as early as I possibly can. I'm still not sure if that will help though... because at some point, I'd still have to face-off against "Snowstorm" who just sounds brutal by itself.

A turn for the better!

I really should have posted this sooner, but it's been a busy week.

On Tuesday night, there was a shout heard around the Breach... I had won my first game of Malifaux! After a series of back to back losses (approx 15 games), I finally managed to pull out a win. I owe credit to several sources... To Chris M, who (after beating me with Ophelia several times), suggested that my Crew needed a model to both take damage, and who could deal it out. Chris recommended that I check out the dual-faction model called Izamu. A week or so went by, and then I saw Izamu on my local game store's shelf, and after seeing the model, knew I had to pick it up. Also, because I have since made the decision to also play Ten Thunders as my next Faction. In addition of people to thank... the folks at the LGS who have given me the other losses (learning experience), my buddy Joel R. who always plays a competitive game, and his partner Tre R. who read over some of my Upgrade cards and suggested two options that I had not looked into (Sinister and RedChapel). As well as posting my woes on Facebook, where I received a bunch of encouragement and advice, and also the Wyrd Forums as well. As you can tell, I reached out to a lot of people.

But yes, I give a huge amount of credit to the model of Izamu himself. He is a beast for sure. He can hit really hard, and has a melee range of 3"! Izamu also has +2 armor which really helps him stand up to my opponents heavy hitters (such as Lilith). I decided to remove one of my Belle's from the starting line up (which leaves me with two), and that makes room for Izamu's 10pts in a 35pt SS game.

Hmm, it just now hit me, that both wins were against Lilith. I'm not sure if that's a coincidence, or not. I did lose to Lilith once before as well (My first game using Izamu).

I'm scheduled to head into the LGS tomorrow as well, to try and get one (maybe two) more games in. I don't expect to hold this winning streak for long, but I'm very glad to have finally won a game.

Malifaux Shang Tail

So guess who is assembling a new Crew?

Yep... I picked up Misaki - Ten Thunders.

I went on the forums and several people comment that I might have some better luck with Misaki - and since I like the sculpts and look of Ten Thunders anyway, it didn't take much convincing.

I looked on the Wyrd website for assembling instructions, but oddly could not find them listed anywhere. (I also had a very difficult time even finding the assembly instructions on their website... here's the link incase you end up on this page searching for it: http://wyrd-games.net/community/files/category/12-plastic-build-instructions/ ).
(update: You can also find build instructions here: http://malifaux.com/instructions.php)

So I had a hard time figuring out how the two tail pieces of Shang fitted together. The image on the box did not help either. So I did a google search and managed to find this image (below) - it helped me so I'm reposting it here. Again, the link originally leads back to the Wyrd forums, but since they redid their website the link was broken.

The piece in Red is actually one solid piece and the other piece sort of fits OVER top of the red piece. Hope this helps.

Line of Sight and Cover issues

Hey all! I made this graphic, to help myself (and others) understand some of the more common examples of issues that may arise when talking about 'Line of Sight' (LOS) and Cover (both Hard and Soft).

I don't intend this graphic to represent "official" policy! In fact there are a couple instances on this graphic that has stirred up some debate in both the Wyrd Forums and the Facebook Wyrd Forum. But, after reading the debates and getting lots of good input, I believe this graphic solves most of the issues.

I also showed this to our local "Henchman" and he agreed and also clarified the "lower left" situation.

I hope this may help other beginners like myself. Feel free to share this image.

(click to enlarge)

Hopeful...

Well, after getting quite a bit of helpful tips on running Seamus via forums and friends at my LGS, tonight's game, although still a loss, felt like it *could* have gone my way.

I played Lilith for a 35SS game.

My opponent one-shotted Sybelle with a Red Joker Cheat on Damage on turn two. So I had an uphill battle from the start. But thankfully my new model (Izamu) really held his own against Lilith. Were it not for Iz - I think I would have been stomped on again. I'm also aware of a few mistakes I made, so hopefully next game I can correct those mistakes.

AND I also picked up the Misaki (Ten Thunders) Crew tonight for when Seamus needs to be put aside for a bit.

So in spite of yet another loss, I'm feeling more hopeful that a Win is within my grasp soon. Fingers Crossed.

Discouraged...

I wasn't sure how to continue or even start this blog post, so I'll just dive right in.

This past weekend (Saturday) I played another 2 games at my LGS. The first one was really fun vs Pandora. We had a real chess match going with both of us trying to strategically get our schemes and Strategy.  I believe the final score was 4VP vs 3VP with me losing. I'll post a short recap of a fun moment during that game in just a bit...
The second game was against a new Master that I had not faced before... Lady Justice.
Yes, a big part of the reason I lost this one was because I was completely unaware of what Lady J (and her crew) were capable of. There were a few attacks also where I asked my opponent what the damage was, and he would say something like, "2, 3, 4" at which point I felt that wasn't too bad, so I didn't cheat it... but then was surprised that there was MORE than just damage happening - like some sort of harpoon attack that drug my model into base contact with one of his heavy hitter, and another one which put one of my Belle's in a pine coffin for the entire game! Had I known, I would have tried harder to prevent those attacks.

But as of Saturday evening and into Sunday I was completely discouraged with trying to play Seamus. I have yet to win ONE game (out of about 15 I think). I mean, am I really that bad? Can I simply not comprehend this game of Malifaux?! And - other than 2-3 games, where the results were at least close in VP, most of those games were me getting stomped on (like 10-1)! Sigh.

So, since then, I've managed to get a lot of new advice from the Facebook forum, as well as suggestions on switching Masters to see if I can't find one that either 1) better fits my play-style* and/or 2) is easier for me to learn. I'm currently thinking of switching over to Misaki of Ten Thunders (and/or Yan Lo).
I also picked up a new model called "Izamu" - in the hopes of bringing a stronger melee model to Seamus' crew.

Now that a few days have passed from the sting of continually losing, I've managed to regroup and I'm anxious to try again.

* play-style: Someone asked me in the forums what I play-style was... I laughed... I don't have a play-style, because I've lost every single game. :)

>>>

Finally - here's the brief recap of a pivotal moment during my game with Pandora:

I was playing Seamus vs Pandora. It was a really good game, with lots of strategy going on and not so much killing. It was down to Turn 5, and I had a Belle engaged by "Candy". My belle also had the "distract" condition on her, but since she was engaged, 1) she could not remove Distract and 2) could not drop a marker either to gain my 4th Line in the Sand marker. Candy HAD to go! So I activated Seamus first - shooting into combat was the risk I had to take. Luckily I flipped a 12 for my belle, and an 11 for Candy! whew, that was close. I had an excellent had too (11, 12 and two 13's). Bang... his flintlock goes off. I cheated the 13 in for a definite hit. I ended up with a Single Negative Damage flip... I flipped a 12 and a 13!!! Awesome - 8pts! 8pts would have killed Candy! So My opponent decides to mitigate damage by breaking a SS. Can you guess? He flipped a Red Joker! NO Damage!!! (Head on table slam). I ended up losing the game - but it was a good battle. :)

<Shakes fist at FATE!>

Slow Grow - Game 2 - Seamus vs Ophelia

Yep, another battle against Ophelia and loss for the record books. In the second photo, you can see all the corpse markers!

I only got about 4" from my deployment zone with most of my army. I did get ONE VP at the end of the game for the "Squatter's Rights" Strategy. I used Seamus' "Back Alley" to get into a good position to claim two markers.

Unfortunately for me, I chose my other Scheme of "Protected Territory" BUT I totally mis-read the victory conditions! In fact after the game, I still had to have the wording explained to me by another player because I didn't get it. The book said something like, "Marker must be dropped at least 6" from deployment area". I interpreted that to mean it had to be "within 6", but in fact it meant it had to be 6" away from deployment area. Sigh.
So I managed to score 1VP against Ophelia who scored a whopping 10VP.

Two fun games, but I have to admit I was/am frustrated at the continual losses.
I managed to post on the Wyrd Forums, and used their new CHAT feature on their newly revamped website, and I have picked up a few tips on maybe changing up my model selection. But I was also told that Seamus is difficult to learn, AND that Ophelia is a REALLY good Master, and that even if you play Seamus perfectly, Ophelia can still win, with just a few good flips.

Side note: I'm trying to figure out a good way to record the card flips for each player. I'm hoping that I can look at the flips, and maybe see if I can blame my losses on bad cards. So far, I've not thought of an easy way. I'm considering buying a video camera too, so as to try and do a proper battle report. But right now, I have too much going on in game to worry about a video battle report!

Slow Grow - Game 1 - Seamus vs Rasputina

First game of our LGS' Slow Grow league! I faced off against Rasputina (played by Tre R.). I believe the other models in her list were the Ice Golem, 3 Ice Gamins, and a Wendigo.
Maybe you've already figured this out but looking at the photos, that Rasputina's crew was not fully assembled/based. The league rules were relaxed to start with since most of us starting the league are all new players.

I'm just going to give the short version here of a battle report... I lost. Big time. I basically have not learned how to play Seamus yet. Raspy, started just behind the building (photo 2), and on turn 1, walked up abt 4" behind the wall, and then proceeded to stay there the entire game. She basically just arced spells through the Ice Gamins and destroyed my entire crew.

Seamus vs Pandora

(Pandora)

Fun game tonight. I faced off against Pandora for the first time (not technically true, we tried to play a game on Wednesday, but the store closed before we finished, so hard to count that).

Around turn two, I was feeling pretty good about my placement and had already dropped a well placed scheme marker, but then I lost a model. Turn Three, things went down hill even more. By turn four, it was looking really grim. Turn five confirmed the grim feelings, as the score ended up as 7VP Pandora vs my 1VP for Seamus.

I felt like I just couldn't get any damage to stick at all. Pandora did heal at least 2-3 times, which didn't help at all. My luck at drawing bad cards also played a large roll - again.

Trying to re-think what it could be that I'm doing wrong. I tried to really focus on the schemes tonight, but just couldn't get em done. Oh, and the Strategy was "Reckoning" - I only managed to kill one model from Pandora's crew the entire game.

Lastly, what really hurt with Pandora's crew was the failed willpower tests within 6" range of 3-4 of his models. Most of my models only have a WP of around 4.

--- Tomorrow also starts our LGS' First Ever - Slow Grow League! Looking forward to getting more games in, and learning more. ---

Rumors: Release dates for new models FEB-APR

I again emphasize that this is a "rumor" based off of an internet website.
Prices also subject to change depending on your location.

>>>

FEBRUARY

McMourning Box Set: Body of Evidence, $45

Nicodem Box Set: Open Graves, $40

Perdita Box Set: The Latigo Posse, $45

Nurse (2?), $15

Witchling Stalker (3?), $18

MARCH

Ophelia Box Set: The Kin, $40

Som’er Box Set: The Bayou Boss, $45

Dawn Serpent, $15

Flesh Construct (w/ Victim), $15

Fuhatsu*, $30

Killjoy, $18

The Lone Marshal*, $35

Monk of the Low River (3), $21

Teddy, $18

Brown 30mm Bases (10), $5

Brown 40mm Bases (5), $5

Brown 50mm Bases (3), $5

Orange 30mm Bases (10), $5

Orange 40mm Bases (5), $5

Orange 50mm Bases (3), $5

Clear 30mm Bases (10), $5

Clear 40mm Bases (5), $5

Clear 50mm Bases (3), $5

APRIL

Brewmaster Box Set: Closing Time, $45

Bete Noire, $11

Bishop, $11

Convict Gunslinger (2), $16

December Acolyte (3), $21

Doppleganger, $11

Guild Guard (2?), $16

Hans, $11

Hoarcat Pride (3), $15

Punk Zombie (3), $21

Samurai (3), $24

* These models were scheduled for January originally.

Game 5 - another loss

Blech. Another loss with ol' Seamus facing off against Ophelia again.
I feel like this game was a bit close though so maybe I'm making progress in figuring out how to face Ophelia. Lesson learned today... don't try to kill those pesky little Gremlins, but concentrate more on using Seamus movement, and the Belle's lure, to gain better placement for the Schemes.

Another lesson learned today is that you can only "cheat" one time. I've confirmed this by doing a search on the Wyrd forums, but I still can't seem to find it in the rulebook. I was under the impression that as long as you are "losing" the battle, you were allowed to cheat... but apparently this is incorrect.

One thing I miss from the Warmachine days... on the Privateer Press forums, they have something called "Infernals" that are sort of the "last word" on any rules question. It seems that Wyrd, at one time, had a similar status, but they decided to eliminate it. Instead, you have to depend on the community of people answering.

In spite of the loss (again), I still enjoyed the game, and I think we also made it through by only referring to the rulebook about 4-5 times. I think I'm slowly learning the rules!

Game 4 - Seamus vs Ophelia and TYPO!

Yep, I had another game with Chris M. and his Ophelia/Gremlins crew.
I won't go into the details, but lets just say I was shot up again like swiss cheese. :)
I was able to get one of my Schemes so the VP points were a little closer this time around (7-3), but just couldn't prevent him from gaining points via the "Squatters" strategy.

I NEED to figure out how to mitigate all the ranged attacks in some way. I brought a Punk Zombie to try out for the first time, and he was shot up to only one health point left by the 2nd turn. Never even got him into melee.

Wow! Perry (the exploding one) is brutal! I've GOT to start being mindful of his 6" range and keep my models farther apart.

Still a fun game.

Oh... AND... I might have actually had a better score. I discovered there was a TYPO in the mini-rulebook! I had a Red Joker in my hand (yay!) and had saved it up for Seamus' pistol attack onto Lenny. My intent was to cheat the Red Joker, to guarantee me a hit, and a "Severe + Weak" which would have killed him. But come to find out, the chart on Page 52 of the mini-rulebook is incorrect. Turns out, the Red Joker ONLY guarantees a HIT on the attack phase, and you then still would have to flip for a DMG. I posted to the Facebook group and confirmed that this was a typo. Someone from FB has also re-posted the question on the Wyrd Forums, in the hopes of getting an official comment.

Lastly, our game this time around only lasted 2 hours... we were able to shave a full hour from our time, as we both are getting more comfortable with the rules.

Game 3: Seamus vs Ophelia

(Ophelia Lacroix - Gremlins)

Another game in the record books!
I met up at the LGS and played Chris M. in a 40SS game of Malifaux.
As usual I had fun (even though I lost with a 7-1 VP score).

Chris played the master known as "Ophelia" as part of the Gremlin Faction. It was a little easier for me, in the sense that Ophelia is VERY similar to Perdita's Crew (I've played Perdita 2x now).

In a nutshell, the game went similar to my last Perdita game, in that, Turn 1, my opponent ran/moved/pushed his crew pretty far up the board. I then cautiously moved up a little bit and attempted to Lure Ophelia from the center of the table. In hindsight, I may have helped his placement.

Turn Two, the battles started. I noticed this with Perdita as well, that once Perdita, and Ophelia get their models in place, the battle basically turns into a shoot out, with very little movement anymore.
I used Seamus and Copycat to try and take shots with their pistols, while Chris' Gremlins returned fire.
Also similar to Perdita, he has a model (I forget the name) that is like "Nino" (I think that's the right name), who basically is a walking ticking bomb. I made the mistake of getting my models too close to one another, and his model walked in and exploded, doing quite a bit of damage to 3-4 of my models. On the next turn (or two) when I killed his model, it also exploded upon death, which did another 4-5 points of damage to the same handful of models.

The shared Strategy was "Reconnoiter", which I had not played before, and was a little confused on how it worked (I understand it now). Because Chris had the board pretty well covered, he kept me from scoring any points under that Strategy.

My two Schemes were: Line in the Sand (only because I'm familiar with that one), and then I chose "Murder Protege" and Chose Sybelle as my target, which I scored the one VP point for her.

All in all, it was another learning game, and I enjoyed some of the Gremlin "shenanigans". Chris really dealt a lot of damage out, which I was able to resist fairly well, but in the long run, it took it's toll and I ended up losing most of my models by turn 5.

I'm wondering too... I may not be taking advantage of Seamus' movement shenanigans. I'll need to concentrate on that in the future and look to see how I can make the terrain work the best for my plans.

(Also, the 40SS game took us almost 3 hours to complete, because we are both new players and had to refer to the manual quite often to look up rules and conditions).

Pizzafaux part 2

(lousy photo - sorry)

Well, game two of my adventures into Malifaux is in the books. It so happened that I was able to play my buddy Chris again (with his Perdita list). We had a bit of a slow time (again) setting up and getting started, but once we got rolling things seemed to move along.
I found the setup process a bit tedious, only because we had to keep referring to the manual, but I think we did everything correctly so that's a good sign. As soon as time allows, I hope to make a small cheat sheet for the setup process, along with a listing of the Shared Strategies, and the Scheme lists.
While I'm not intending this post as a detailed "battle report", I will just mention a few highlights (or lowlights depending on which side of the table you're on).

We each picked the same Scheme (murder protege), which was kinda funny, because we both were not familiar enough with our opponents army, so we had to look at one another's cards, in order to pick the model with the highest SS cost. So, we both decided to "announce" that scheme as well, since it was obvious.

I chose for my second Scheme the default "line in the sand" - which again, I thought was obvious once I started measuring from the edge of the table to plant my markers, but lucky for me, Chris didn't catch on, until I placed my last marker.
I posted this question in the Wyrd forums, about how to go about this scheme without measuring, and received a couple good tips.
*I'm confused on the wording of this scheme... It says if you reveal, you get an "additional 1 VP" if you only have 2 markers at the end of the game.
Additional? Meaning you get a total of 3VPS for having 2 markers? or you only still get 1VP for Two markers, then 3VP for having all 4 markers.

First turn, yep, you guessed it... walking and running.

Turn 2, we started to see some action. I chose his Francisco model and he chose Madam Sybelle, so we had a couple good volleys there. He ended up taking out Madam Sybelle first, and then on either turn 4 or 5, I managed to get Francisco.

He had a model (I forget the name - Nino?) who was able to be placed on the table at the start of the game, so he chose the high ground for a good sniper position. That caused me several problems in trying to figure out a way around that.

Also, he took out Seamus by hitting him twice, and using a trigger called "Headshot" that forced me to discard 2 cards (or 2 soulstones)... on the second hit, I didn't have enough cards or soulstones so he killed me outright. I think that was the key to winning the game there.
He also has one of the "Assassinate" Schemes to which he chose Seamus, so he got a couple more VP's there.

As mentioned before, I did manage to get all 4 of my markers down for "Line in the Sand", and could have tied the game, but I got a sense that Chris had forgotten one of the rules... that lets an opponent pick up a marker. So, being a good sportsman, I reminded him, and he was in fact, able to remove one of my markers, thus denying me the VP's. It was all in good fun of course.
So, if memory serves I think the score was 8-6 for him.

Oh, I should have mentioned our shared Strategy was "Turf war" and that's how Chris was able to score more points than myself. He was able to remove TWO of my Belle's when his one model blew himself up with dynamite! I tried to resurrect one with Seamus, but failed the attempt.

All in all a fun game, and I look forward to more games in the future. This Wednesday we're going to try and get more players together at the LGS, so maybe (time permitting) I can get another game in then. From what I saw, we had approx 5-7 people show up for the Pizzafaux event (sadly, I don't think everyone got to get a game in, due to the times, and odd number of players.)

A big thanks to our local Henchman Jim for getting this organized, and for some good pizza too.

PS> I hope to have a some better photos, if so, I'll post in another post, or update this one.

Pizzafaux!

I have to admit... I'm really looking forward to tomorrow (1/12/14) for our first official Malifaux event at my Local Gaming Store (LGS)! They've called it "Pizzafaux" in order to tempt new players to showing up. If you play a demo game, you get some free pizza!

At this point, I think we're going to have about 5-7 players show up (I think almost all of them, but 2 are beginners like myself). So it will be great to start a game with a handful of people all at the same basic skill level.

At this stage, I've pretty much read the mini-rulebook cover to cover, but obviously it's a lot to absorb. I've also been posting some of my questions in the Wyrd Facebook group (which has been an awesome experience - usually within a matter of minutes the questions are answered by multiple people). In addition, I've been posting questions on the official Wyrd Forums, and I've been getting great responses there too.

So I'm sure there will be lots of questions after tomorrow. Even so... I'm still looking to get some fun games in, meet some new players, and hopefully start a solid foundation of other Malifaux players at our LGS.

Seamus = done

(click to enlarge - to see all my mistakes)

What better way to spend a cold winter afternoon than painting a miniature. I'm still not sure I like the green base color, but I'm going to look at it for a few days to see if I'll keep it that color.
Other than that, there are only a few tiny spots I want to touch up, but basically I think I'm calling this one done.

Malifaux scale

I've been thinking of making some very simple terrain pieces for Malifaux. Our local game store does have terrain of course, but the pieces are all sort of jumbled and mismatched from different sources. They also don't provide a lot of terrain choices in regards to levels or height. I like some of the photos of the "Terraclips" that I've seen online (also sold by Wyrd). I like the various levels with ramps and stairs, doors, etc... My hesitation in buying the Terraclips is that it looks like it would take a long time to assemble, and that it's rather pricey for a bunch of cardboard (they do look nice though). I also learned you pretty much have to buy TWO packs in order to cover a standard 3'x3' playing area for Malifaux.

So, I've been thinking of something simple, that I could transport easily back and forth to the game store, and that would take only a few minutes to set up. While I haven't actually attempted this yet, I'm thinking of either one or two solutions (or a combo of each).

Option one: a bunch of wooden blocks (approx. 1.25" sq.) - along with some wooden strips to provide walkways or ramps. The strips could just be thin balsa wood and or maybe "plasticard".

Option two: foam core. Somewhat easy to cut into irregular sizes (like building footprints). So I'm thinking they wouldn't have to necessarily be to and actual height. They could just represent a 2" building or platform.

Obviously I'm still thinking this all through, and not sure which option would be best.

The last thing I wanted to post, was regarding the issue of scale. IF I wanted to build a small simple building and yet keep it somewhat to scale, what would that look like. After a bunch of web surfing, and a post to the "Wyrd" Facebook group, I've determined some basic numbers. Malifaux is a 32mm scale game (It actually says that on the back of the mini-rulebook). But what does the 32mm mean!? According to different web posts, this is where it gets a bit confusing. 32mm equals 6 feet tall. But there is something called "heroic 32mm" and there is also a standard in relation to miniatures where the actual measurement is supposed to be from the feet to the eyes, because of hair, helmets and hats.

So long story short (too late for that)... Malifaux = 32mm = 6' tall... with the understanding that it's not a precise measurement.

New Blog, and post for beginners...

This blog post via "GMorts" is very helpful to a beginner in understanding the basic mechanics behind the "Duels" in Malifaux.

http://gmortschaotica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/m2e-for-beginners-basic-opposed-duel.html

It looks like there is a LOT of good information on the blog - I encourage you to check it out.

http://gmortschaotica.blogspot.co.uk