Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from all of us at abnorMALifaux.

We will return to our normal posting schedule after the holidays are over and we have all settled back into regular life.

Hope you all have a safe and merry Christmas and that your stockings are full of crew boxes, I certainly hope mine are as I gave my in-laws a very wyrd (pun clearly intended) shopping list this year!

Ho, ho .... ho !!

The end of the league.

After twelve weeks and untold hours of malifaux based plotting and scheming the league is finished!

Last time I gave you a run down of the set up and how things were progressing up to week eight, so now I will give you a round up of the final few weeks and also let you know what I've learned along the way.

Winter's Touch

My first game with Tara was always going to be a tough one. I knew enough to do the Tara-Bomb and not really much else. I was also facing off against Pippa's Rasputina crew. I know enough about the ice witch to know that she can knock your face off, but is pretty slow.

This game was played some time back but I remember enough of it to be useful.

Scenario
Tara vs Rasputina 26SS
Strategy - Reckoning
Schemes - Tara (break through and make them suffer) Raspy (Assassinate and ?)
Standard deployment

Crews:
Tara + Knowledge of Eternity and Obliteration Symbiote
Izamu
2 x belles

Rasputina + improved ice mirror upgrade
Ice golem
December acolyte
Ice gamin (or 2?)
Wendigo

Terrain
We were playing on an outdoor themed table with a relatively large forest just off centre on my right flank. There was a pond on the left flank just outside Raspy's deployment zone. I had a building near mine and various other walls and small forests.

Rasputina was deployed on the left side of the board to navigate round the pond. She had wendigo near her. The gamin and golem were set up to run down the right side of the forest and the acolyte hid behind the building.

I decided to stay as far away from Raspy as possible. Figuring I could score break through and make them suffer on the golem side of the board.

Sweet Dreams Part Two: Dreamer Base Card

Welcome to part two of the Sweet Dreams Tactica where we start delving deep into the rules and tactics of Dreamer. You can find Part 1 here. This article will cover everything on the Dreamer’s base card, so prepare for a long read. Let’s start with his stat line. Dreamer’s statline is all over the map. He’s got a fantastic Wp of 7 and an amazingly fast Wk 7. However he has no Cg value, a terrible Df of 4 and the lowest wound count of any Master in the game with 6. He is also height 1, which is both a blessing, in that he is easy to hide from enemies, and a curse, in that it is very easy to block his healing aura and defensive trigger targets with things that normally wouldn’t affect a height 2 model (such as low fences). I have since been informed by more knowledgeable players that I have interpreted the rules incorrectly. Apparently as long as the model in question has line of sight and is in range the aura still works. Thanks Joel Henry for the correction. Makes dreamer even better than I thought. Mwahahaha. What this leaves us with is a Master who is incredibly fast but very delicate (at least until we look at his abilities).

The Waking Condition and Pleasant Dreams

Before I go over Dreamer’s abilities and actions individually, it is important to cover the Waking Condition, the ways it can be increased/decreased, and what it means for Dreamer. The most important ability on Dreamer’s basecard is Release Nightmares which explains how the Dreamer/Chompy mechanic works. Note that Chompy and Dreamer can never be in play at the same time. Whenever Dreamer reaches Waking 4, Chompy is summoned anywhere within 6” and LOS; Dreamer is immediately buried and removes all conditions from the model (including Waking). The Waking condition may not be removed through the actions of other friendly models (Note that enemy models can remove Waking; watch out for Johan if you are trying to bring Chompy out). Dreamer increases his Waking by 1 every time he summons a model (either through Daydreaming on the base card or with Manifest Nightmares from the Dreams of Pain upgrade summoning). If he has the Restless Dreams upgrade Waking also increases any time Dreamer damages an enemy with a SH attack. The only way you can actively manipulate Dreamer’s Waking condition, outside of summoning Chompy when you hit Waking 4, is with is with the (0) tactical action: Tucked In, which reduces the Waking condition by one. Knowing when to lower this condition and when not to is important; Waking is a balance between summoning models, including Chompy, and having a stronger healing aura through Pleasant Dreams.

Scheming in Malifaux

Hello to all, just a quick article here from me regarding scheme, strategies and the change in mind set Malifaux requires for someone new to the game.

As a new player coming from the traditional army v army style games I was blown away by the fact that every single one of my models could die horribly and I could still win. Now clearly having models on the table is going to preferable but it was a viable situation and something that required a massive mindset change for me, it took a while for me to fully realise the potential of this.

After 20 years of trying to keep my models alive, that unit or so of fodder aside, it was a real switch in thinking that I could, and at times should, charge  model x or y into their certain doom for the good of the cause. You realise after a few games that even a model as important as your leader may die and it may not matter in the overall picture, it might even help as long as your opponent didn't have Assassinate of course and if they had Deliver the Message you are actually denying them 3 VPs!

Insidious plans for AbnorMALifaux

Hello everyone! I wanted to start out with the introduction to Dreamer post since that is a better example of the kind of articles I am planning on writing for the blog. However, I still wanted to write a shorter, broader post on what my personal plans are concerning the blog. The main contribution I currently have planned is the Sweet Dreams Dreamer Tactica. I have already posted the first part of this but wanted to talk about my plans for the tactica. I currently have a 6 part plan for Sweet Dreams:

Part 1 as already posted covers Dreamer advice for beginners

Part 2 will cover the Dreamers base card. This will be a substantial article as I want to go in depth into some of the important actions/abilities on Dreamers basecard as they are obviously hugely important to running him successfully.

Part 3 will be on the Restless Dreams upgrade and Chompy. I feel like it is important to cover the two limited upgrades separately since they lead to a vastly different playstyle for Dreamer. Also I find many articles/posts on Dreamer kind of gloss over Chompy and the Restless Dreams option which I don’t really think is fair. Although Chompy comes into play without the Restless Dreams upgrade, he is not as central to the playstyle of Dreams of Pain dreamer and therefore I thought it was worth covering him here.

Achievement league

At the club where I and the rest of the abnormalis play we are currently running a slow grow league and as the club henchman it's my job to keep it ticking along, so I thought I spend some time talking about setting up the league and let people know how it's progressing.

First off and as with most things I can't take full credit for setting up the league. The group of players at the club are great and are always keen to do something new. So when the idea of doing a league came up I had load of offers for ideas and help. 

The original idea was to run a small escalation league to attracted some new players and add a little competition, this then evolved to include painting achievement points and then gaming and some fun achievements for people to try. I also added in some story encounters which have been a fun challenge to write and to try and balance (with mixed results).

"Switching up"

Well this is my first article and I feel all excited about our shiny new blog.

Malifaux seems to be on the up at the moment. The awesome 2^nd edition has become well established, the tournament scene is buzzing, there are new models and the fabulous Crossroads book. In the spirit of shiny newness, I thought I’d write a few words about starting new crews. Not a new crew in particular, but starting new crews in general. With the new models, strategy and scheme decks what better time to start a new crew?

Now let’s be honest, most of us will end up collecting a ton more models from various factions than we could even use. Malifaux is a fairly cheap game so building up a collection is easy and my bank a/c doesn’t seem to bleed in the way that it used to when I played 40k or fantasy. In those large games, jumping between armies could require a major investment.

There are a lot of articles out there for people getting into the basics of Malifaux, but once you’ve learned the rules the possibilities for expansion are endless. If you are a beginner, I’d recommend getting a crew that looks good and that you like the back ground for, then play as many games as you can without changing up the list too much. Learn the basics and the schemes.

Sweet Dreams: Starting the Dreamer

Hello everyone! Welcome to my first proper blog post. Today I will be talking about the Dreamer. This will be the first in a series of articles covering the greatest master in game. First an introduction: The first time I heard of Malifaux was also the first time I saw the Dreamer box. When I learned the backstory of him, a child who controls monsters in his sleep and inadvertently murders people, I knew that Malifaux was a game I wanted to play. I bought the box shortly after and fell in love with the rules and look of the game. Sadly I never managed to get into version 1.5 as I was still committed to other games at the time. However, with the onset of M2E I threw myself into the game and got the box set painted and ready to go.

Whenever people ask for advice on what crew to start with they will often be met with responses of Lady J, Seamus, Rasputina, etc. This makes sense as they are more straightforward masters and easier to grasp while learning the game. However, I think that a person can start with any Master if they are willing to put the time and energy in to learning their crew. My advice would be: pick whichever master you think is coolest and then study their cards.

For this article I will be going over how I learned to play Dreamer and what I would suggest as keys to focus on when learning the Dreamer. This is specifically written for newcomers to the game, but could be useful for newcomers to Dreamer as well. I like lists, so expect to see them a fair bit in my writing. 

5 Tips for Starting Dreamer

Dead of Winter: Introducing Tara

Back in the beginning of 2013 there was an international Malifaux campaign called Dead of Winter. Players anywhere could submit the results of their games and achievements and the results would be tallied. I was finishing up a work project in Nigeria at the time so I could not participate as there was no local gaming community. I am an Arcanist player so I was obviously cheering for them. The characters participating in the story were introduced at the beginning. I don’t recall of the details, but they were out in the wilderness investigating some powerful magical forces. Pieter, the Arcanist had definite potential and many were hoping he was introduced at the new Arcanist master in M2E. It was not to be though, as it was an Outcast victory, with Resurrectionists in second.

The characters were descending upon a cave where the magic seemed to be emanating from. Tara, a self-determined and headstrong mercenary was the first to enter the cave. There she met Obliteration, some form of Tyrant that sucked the life from the world. She survived the meeting and rescued Karina from the Labyrinth, an alternate dimension where time passes differently, died and was resurrected by Karina. She now has a connection to Obliteration that allows the Nothing Beast to exist in Malifaux as personification of Obliteration itself.

I was hooked. I loved this sarcastic, gun-slinging, fast talking and dangerous lady called Tara.

So when the opportunity to pick up her nightmare (and only) set from Gencon, I jumped at the chance. And then she sat amongst my other models unassembled for some time. Now that I have her on the table I need to figure out how to get her to work.

Entering the Malifaux world

So I thought it would makes sense to have my first post about why I chose the first faction I did and what got me into the game.

In short several people at my gaming club wouldn't stop raving about Malifaux and while I watched a couple of games all the cards and counters put me off, as I'm from a Flames of War background I wasn't used to all that extra 'stuff' on or around the table.

The local players set about gathering new players and started a slow grow campaign. The slow grow concept made it very easy to get into the game, a lot less overwhelming to start with and allows you to slowly absorb the rules. It also helped a great deal in getting to know the various models, a key component on Malifaux. One additional handy limitation they added for the early rounds was no upgrades were allowed, and while that may take out some of the flair as a new player it was golden, I knew who I was playing as per their card and that was it. This really helped reducing the information overload and as a new player I really appreciated it.

Welcome to AbnorMALifaux!

Welcome to the abnorMALifaux blog, a collaborative project about table top gaming in the Victorian Horror cross Steam Punk world of Malifaux.

The majority of us are new players to the game having only started in the M2E era, some as recently as the last 6 months. A couple of our group have played a few games in the 1.5 days but ultimately we are new to the system and others to table top gaming as a whole.

With that in mind our blog will more than likely, at least initially, suit the beginner player however many of us are veteran gamers from many others systems and hope to bring articles on tactics, modelling and gaming in general that should suit gamers of all levels and interests.

We primarily play in London at Dark Sphere near Waterloo, about 10 minutes walk for those interested to pop by. We generally play on Tuesday evenings although there are often games going on other nights and the weekend.

We have asked all our contributors to write a little introduction of themselves for the first post of the blog that you will find below that hopefully gives you a little insight into who we are, what we play and our plans for this new blog!!

Into the Breach!!