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!!