Sunday, February 23, 2014

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.

4 comments:

  1. Hey, with the trouble you are having with Rasputina, are you and your opponent making sure the cast on spells bounced off frozen heart models has -1, and that the model they are bouncing off are not engaged? Also, unless your opponent has the Shattered Heart upgrade, she can't get triggers through bouncing her spells off frozen heart models, and if she does have the upgrade, they have -2 cast.

    With the black joker thing, wow, your opponent got super lucky.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the heads-up Giles. I don't recall my opponent mentioning the negatives to cast, but she may have. I do know she 'cheated' a lot to bump her attacks up to 17's or higher... I think I only missed a few attacks, everything seemed to hit. Thanks for the info, and I'll try to remember for next time. Another frustrating part of playing the game without access to the large rulebook, is that I'm learning what my opponents do, while on the table, it's all a surprise, and hard for me to come up with any sort of tactical defense while on the fly. :)
    Appreciate the comments.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Couple of points:

    What's the terrain density on your table looking like? If Rasputina can stand there and blast with impunity and you have nothing to hide behind, it's not dense enough. There should almost always be some way to approach her under cover of terrain. Three pieces per square foot of board is a reasonable guideline, but it depends on your collection.

    I wouldn't get hung up on Raspy's 6 potential ranged attacks vs Seamus' 1 (and she would have to be very lucky to hit that trigger consistently - or deplete her entire soulstone cache or blow her hand on a regular basis). At the end of the day you're not going to win a ranged firefight against Rasputina, so the best advice is to make her play on your terms rather than hers. Stay out of sight until the last minute and strike from the shadows. Seamus isn't just his Flintlock. With Back Alley and Bag O'Tools (and as you say, Sinister Reputation is less useful vs Frozen Heart) he can get up in Raspy's face, stop her from shooting at all, and then stab her twice with a spread of nice triggers. Alternatively, use him to pick off any Ice Mirror targets that get exposed, preferably while remaining out of sight himself.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the reply Mike3838 (sry for late response). Yes, I think we're playing with enough terrain, though on this particular game, I think I got the short end of the stick, in that there were only 2 buildings on my side of the table (on opposite sides too) which made it not optimal for 'back alley'. and while my other models were ALL within one inch of ether soft or hard cover objects, my opponent managed to find just the right spot with the gamin, so as to clearly see the model with no obstruction. crazy. Perhaps I wasn't as meticulous as I should have been.
    Yes, that's exactly what she did, was use most of her SS on turn 3, where she eliminated Seamus with 5 attacks. :(
    I'll have to look at the 'bag o trick's' again when going up against Raspy then... thanks for that tip.
    As always, I appreciate ANY advice. :)

    ReplyDelete