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.