Posts Tagged ‘Malifaux’

Ok, let’s get this out of the way. I failed in my hobby challenges. Completely! But I had a great year, attended some conventions, went half way around the world to play toy soldiers and painted stuff I had lying around for years. I’d call that a moral victory.

  1. The Rainbow Award. Play all 7 factions at 7 Malifaux events. Well that didn’t happen. It started well enough placing 2nd and 3rd in my first 2 events using factions I rarely play – Arcansists and Neverborn. I followed this up with another 3rd place with a faction I have never played before – Outcasts. I ended the year with 2 more events both of which I used 10 Thunders for. So that leaves Ressers, Guild and Gremlins for 2016. I did however increase my rankings position this year and finished in the Top 20 at the UK Nationals in November. Finishing 46th in the UK I’d call that a result!
  2. Play a game a week. Well let’s just say I played games whenever I could. I updated my year of gaming banner with every game I played. Don’t think I reached 52 weeks of 1-a-week gaming however.
  3. Paint 2 3,000 point forces for Epic. I got a significant amount done with my Eldar but my Space Marines are sorely lacking. I will get final numbers for this. I did manage to get to a gaming club while I was in Australia and witnessed a truly epic spectacle of Epicness – 48,000 points of Heresy Epic in a mad game.

Going forward I aim to get more Epic painted, more games played – I’m looking at you Guild Ball – and trying some new games – Mayhem 10mm, Of Gods and Mortals and Warmahordes as well as slot games at wizardslots with my wife and daughter.

It’s going to be a good year!

First artwork from the infamous ‘Boondoggle Seven’ or whatever name they settle on for the new band in malifaux. Each member of the band belongs to each faction and 1 member is lead singer and can bring the others together to form a crew. The crew members are also Tormented meaning Jack Daw can be the front man for a spin-off group! Oh Yeah \m/

I present Gluttony

#Malifaux Colette Preview

Posted: February 23, 2015 in Hobby
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Just hot off the presses. Colette and a mannequin. Looking great!

So Sunday seen my first tournament of the year and the beginning of my year of #Rainbowfaux. Deciding to get the Arcanists out of the way as the crew I have least models for I thought I would also use it as an opportunity to try new models. Deciding to run Mei Feng (my favourite Master) all day it gave me a good grounding for using new models with unique abilities in the games.

Game 1: Turf War vs Hamelin

Mat was playing Hamelin for the first time and I was facing Hamelin for the first time. With a buried Killjoy and Ama no Zako in his crew I knew I would be in a tough spot from the outset. With the amount of rats and stolen he was summoning I was soon on the backfoot for activations. Knowing that I would be ok if I could survive past turn 2 I concentrated on my schemes – Breakthrough which was easily achieved with a strike from the Mechanical Rider and Frame for Murder on Willie who exploded on Turn 3. Ignoring Killjoy by feeding him Hard to Kill models I was able to lock Hamelin down and deny him scheme points. 9-3 victory

Game 2: Reckoning vs Seamus

Myk is an expert at all Ressers and taking an unusual lineup of 4 belles meant I had to avoid any and all lures. Mei can put up a great aura for negative flips to all casts keeping my guys safer. A small elite crew meant that I was denying Reckoning points and effectively we danced around each other. I scored a VP for Vendetta while he scored 3. That was the key difference. 7-4 loss.

Game 3: Squatter’s Rights vs Tara

Another tough matchup that would decide final rankings. I was on the backfoot but knew I was fast enough to achieve Power ritual so I announced it. Taking Glen by surprise I had the Mechanical Rider in his backfield in turn 2. He kept the flank busy pooping out constructs for the rest of the game which was enough to swing activation order to me denying Tara her ability to reactivate. Cursed Object was handy to take with large Melee ranges denying the opportunity to remove the condition. 10-8 victory.

With the results in somehow I managed to come second. Chuffed with that. Gunsmith, fire gamin and Mechanical Rider are all now firmly in my good books.

#Malifaux #Reckoning Somer vs Somer

Posted: January 7, 2015 in Gaming
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Last night was another gremlin v gremlin for control of the Bayou. We flipped and got Reckoning with Line in the Sand, Bodyguard, Assassinate, Entourage and Make Them Suffer. Quite a lot of killing was anticipated, expected and resulted from the ‘Killing Zone’ table layout.

I took:

  • Somer
  • Lenny
  • 2 Warpigs
  • 2 Slop Haulers
  • Skeeter
  • 2 Bayou Gremlins
  • Entourage (Revealed) and Assassinate

while David had:

  • Somer
  • Lenny
  • Gracie
  • Burt
  • 3 Bayou Gremlins
  • 2 Slop Haulers
  • Bodyguard (Gracie) and Make Them Suffer

David started quite aggressively having Somer ‘Git yer Bro’, healing around him and Lenny throwing Gremlins up the table followed by Gracie saddling Lenny up as well. I summoned Gremlins but with scenery was forced to either hug cover or risk getting exposed in death valley. I ran the warpig on the right up in preparation for a pig charge in turn 2 and the pig on the left ran to the mouth of death valley and got shot off the table early turn 2. My skeeter landed in the middle of the alleyway to cut down some shooting but not enough.

Turn 2 earned both of us Reckoning points as the warpig destroyed a lowly gremlin and in return Gracie walked in and took 4 wounds off the pig. Lots of shooting and David declared Make them Suffer as he shot a poor gremlin off the table.

Turn 3 David continued to whittle my forces down earning another Reckoning and Make them Suffer. Somer shot Burt away but I couldn’t get the slop haulers to land any damage to earn the Reckoning point. Somer had positioned himself over the halfway point and I knew I could get to the enemy deployment zone for the full 3VP.

Turn 4 and Lenny smack David’s Somer who had no soulstones left. A cheated severe took the 5 wounds needed to put Somer out of the game for Assassinate. Gracie and the other Lenny charged my poor slop haulers who were mauled. David declared Bodyguard on Gracie who was also healed by the slop hauler.

Turn 5 seen my Somer take a shot at a slop hauler, missing and judging to be just out of single walk range of the enemy deployment decided not to shoot again and double walked behind a wall.

With a failed card flip to see if the game continued or not we called it. 8-6 to David. Great game.

#Malifaux Inter-Club Championship

Posted: June 1, 2014 in Gaming
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Tomorrow sees the second annual International Tabletop Day. We will be at our local club, Dragonslayers at Queens University. Our plan is run some demo games of Guildball and Malifaux before getting into a meaty game of Arkham Horror.

Check back throughout tomorrow for updates.

In the last 24 hours I have put some serious thoughts into running Henchmen as leaders in smaller point games. Typical games in Malifaux tend to be either 40 or 50 soulstones with your leader being free. This leaves the entire amount of points available to spend on models to tie in with the Henchman and that can grab you scenario points.

Downsides?

With a henchman you have access to a less powerful model than a master naturally. You also give up a valuable AP as only Masters have 3AP generally. Masters will generally also have more synergy with more models than a henchman.

So what’s the upsides?

Well as most people generally take a Master you can have a surprise advantage of only throwing down a henchman. This could lead your opponent off his game from what he was expecting to face. As all models are simply pawns in your grand scheme (or they should be) you should be able to adapt your overall plan to cope with the loss. The upside can also be for introductory games and playing against opponents of different levels to you. Purposefully handicapping yourself can provide a quick way to level the playing field. And if you can pull out a victory with a Henchman led crew against an opponent running a Master, well then victory tastes that much sweeter.

Conclusion

I think there could be times when it is fun to run a henchman-led crew. It could be for a story encounter or in conjunction with a campaign. Regardless the open playstyle and crew composition of Malifaux 2.0 allows many different combinations to be tried, tested and enjoyed.

Bob.

A while back someone mentioned on the Wyrd boards about using the Malifaux city map as the basis of a map-based campaign. Malifaux itself does not lend easily to a campaign system unlike Necromunda or Mordheim from Games Workshop.

Essentially with campaign games you are linking your games in a structured way with other gamers to evolve your crew/warband/bunch of rats/whatever and tell a narrative of how they came to be. Not only does each crew member get better they can also receive serious injuries and get worse. It might be easier to just kill them off (and then sell the body to necromancers for some gold!).

So how can we translate this to Malifaux? The Wyrd Chronicles released a campaign system where each crew member could get better or worse but I think this might be a more difficult way to go with Malifaux.

My thoughts, compiled yesterday morning over a coffee, boil down to this:

  1. Start with 30SS fixed crew and master
  2. Start at a point on the map
  3. Get an objective from that location (collect items from locations)
  4. Each round you decide where you need to go
  5. Draw a line from starting point to end point
  6. Each player flips a card, highest resolves his path first.
  7. If his path intercepts any other player’s path he can decide which player to do battle with
  8. The lead player will decide the story encounter that will happen (from a list)
  9. If his path does not cross another player he WILL be investigated by the Guild at the location he ends up.
  10. Guild patrols will be 30SS squad led by a Guild Sergeant, controlled by the GM.
  11. Each battle a player wins earns him 2SS
  12. A player who loses will be deducted 2SS for the next battle only.
  13. The core crew of the player cannot change but extra earned SS will allow extra recruitment to the crew.
  14. During a battle the player with the lesser SS total will get bonuses
  15. At a location the player can select another objective or get given an item.
  16. Once a player has the items required for an objective he must get to the destination to score campaign points
  17. Once a player earns 20 Campaign points he wins the campaign.

Essentially it’s a treasure hunt with brawls along the way. Win a few games and you have an advantage, lose some games and you are hampered for the next round. If you win yo will be building up a bigger crew to help you win the campaign. This can be tied in with new players who wish to expand their forces.

I’m still debating whether the items at each location are randomly given or a player can select from a number of items from the top of the deck. Maybe players can exchange/barter their loot or maybe the winner can steal some loot from the loser.

If anyone has any thoughts on how to progress this I would be very interested.

Slayers This week

Posted: February 7, 2014 in Gaming
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So this week at Slayers we seen a great game of Malifaux – Wong vs Perdita 50SS match up with a victory going to the Ortegas. With Nino controlling line of sight to every Squatters Rights objective if was difficult for Wong to score points early on. The star of the show was perhaps the Rooster Rider, going reckless to get 2+ve flips on attack and damage and being allowed to (1) rooster charge out of combat seen him kill Nino, a witchling and death marshal in a single activation.

On another table there were 4 games of Bushido run during the night. 30R games of Ito vs Prefecture see a split in victories. Good times and a great start to our Bushido campaigns on a lovely bespoke board. We discovered that shooting can be devastating but nothing is better than a quick kill with a skillful sword strike.

D.