Those left behind.

As usual this isn't a post about the mechanics of Malifaux or even the joys of painting. This time I'd like to

take some time to say thank you to the real rulers of this community and hobby, the Governor Generals to our homes, the mothers to our monsters and logistics to our salvage. Of to put it in a way most of us understand the gaming widows known as She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Malifaux seems to fall in that social gap between sweaty boys in black tees playing with robots and rockets and last of the summer wine extras recreating someone's last stand. Because of this there are lots of Malifaux players with my partners and kids. (Huge insulting generalisation aside you get the point)

Malifaux Nationals - Saturday

This is going to be a very general overview of my 2 days at the Malifaux Nationals - the biggest event I've attended since starting this game. I'll be giving overviews of my game but I leave the more detailed battle reports to other members of the blog - they're far better at it!

I'd been wanting to go to the Nationals since I'd heard about them the year before. I wasn't able to go to the 2014 event for a number of reasons so I was determined I was going to go this year, finances and travel be damned. To help out with the former, I'd managed to wangle space for myself and Bob (my travel buddy and a good mate) to stay in a house share with some of the guys attending. None of whom I had ever actually met in person before. But this is one of the things I like about the Malifaux community - so many people are very quick to offer friendship, advice and help. None of these guys had met me or Bob in person yet they were kind enough to let us stay with them.

I was actually really really nervous in the week leading up to the event. Sure I'd been to tournaments before but there were usually a lot less people there. This was 88 people, including some I had spoken to on social media, some I knew quite well and would call friends, and still some others I'd never spoken to at all. The idea of walking into that room and being faced with such a large group of people was quite intimidating; although I was looking forward to meeting up with people and putting some faces to Twitter handles!

Loudest thunder: my top 10 Ten Thunders

Well it’s a rainy day so I’ve been thinking about Malifaux and decided I’d do a run down of some of my best and worst in faction models. I’m going to start out with Ten Thunders

To make the list, the model in question must have either a great card, or a great model, or just great character. So a model that embodies the faction can make the list even if it isn’t too good!

10 Railworker.

I just love these guys. For 5ss, you get a tough little bugger that doesn’t drop corpse markers. He counts as a scrap markers. Nice and tough with armour and a neat df trigger on tomes. Plus the models look great and they hit quite hard in melee for a 5ss model . As a bonus, Mei Feng can Railwalk using them. Pair with Kang against Ressers and spread around some pain.

9 Mr Graves

Yes he looks like Mr Potato Head, but he is a really great model and has nice fluff. His “Show ya the door” is sweet and gets him round a bit faster. He works well in nearly any TT crew so gives you plenty of options and he pairs well with Mr Tannen. He is actually quite tough and hits well too. A great package.

8 Yan Lo

Yes he sucks on the table (see my previous blog posts, and most of the internet), he’s a tank that no one cares about because he is useless at everything (or there are other cheap models that could do the job instead). But his mechanic is so much fun and his model is one of the most characterful that Wyrd have done. Boy does he suck though. Worst master in the game? Not quite but he is in contention!

An Introduction

I'd like to thank the Academ....no, wrong speech. Erm...ah! Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togede...dammit! That's not it either. This is why you should never let Gremlins do your filing. I'm going to have to wing this one then....

Hi! For those of you who don't know me (and if you don't, then you should. I'm kind of awesome.) my name is Eless and I'm not an alcoholic. But I am a Malifaux player. Using "player" in the loosest possible term here. I generally push pretty toys around on the table and try not to lose. Sometimes that goes better than other times. 

I started playing Malifaux in 1.5 edition and it was my first ever wargame. I'd been aware of Warhammer and 40K but never really felt the urge to play. A friend of mine introduced me to the Malifaux miniatures and I fell in love with the Viks. 2 awesome women with huge swords? Sold. After a few games and a bit of reading around the game I discovered the metal Ophelia boxset and this set about my chaotic flailing into the Gremlin crews.

After spending most of last year throwing rats at people with Hamelin, I've decided that 2016 is probably going to include throwing a lot of pigs, roosters and Gremlins at people. It'll be a nice change of pace and I hope I can share some of the 'shine with you all. Not the cake though. That's all mine. Om nom nom.

A bit on the side.

We've all been there, sometimes you're at the club or looking online and you just want to say fuck it I want something new and exciting.

It can be the realisation you really want to have a go with your mate's (if you're lucky he'll try yours as well). It could be an embarrassing one you know your friends won't agree with.

Whatever it is sometimes you just can't  help picking up a new game.

I try and focus on one game at a time as I tend to be a bit all in when it comes to games. But even I can't resist the lure of a new game when the temptation is great enough.

After repeatedly putting it off I finally gave in and picked up Guild Ball which for those still resisting is a brilliant game.

But this does now give me the problem I was trying to avoid, how can I fit in all the gaming I want to do. Malifaux is by far my favourite game and I try and get a game in whenever I can but my best efforts I can only play one night a week.

So I'm looking at around four games a month, which is great but we can knock one of those off for demoing usually so we're down to three games a month.

If I add Guild ball once a month I'll have two faux one ball a month. And I don't think that's enough to justify the cost of either game.

If I was a good player or even an okay player this would probably be workable but as anyone who has played me know I'm a bit shit, even the most basic of tactics take ages to take root and then there's no chance I'll remember it during a game.

100 Malifaux Players in one space

Actually 88 players in one space. Which is a very lucky number for the Chinese. Also for Insidiously Mad as he...Spoiler alert....came 8th! I was also very lucky in getting to play 7 great opponents plus me = 8 great players ;)

So more on the positives, I won two games on day two which came down to the wire. Basically as both opponents took assassinate against Ironsides and she managed to survive by one wound by leading a merry dance around the board (not so proud of running away but nonetheless). I know had we reached 5 turns it would have been a different story. Often having to cut the game short to fit the 2 hour tournament window negatively impacts on some schemes, notably Bodyguard as that can only be achieved on turn 4 onwards. I know most players are amazed that I rarely reach turn 4 but I play unbelievably slowly. I don't like it either.

Having the 10 min deadline for crew selection was good for me, stressful...but good. It meant I chose similar crews more often. The Blessed of December saw the table a lot for its leap ability and reasonable toughness. I took Seize the Day as often as I could fit it in (I think once I took Arcane Reservoir instead and proceeded to forget I had it until my opponent noticed). And took Snow Storm, coz SNOW STORM with Raspy is the best mix. It made me realise that there are some popular pairs for master and henchman. Francisco is almost always found next to Sonnia and Perdita. I used to think henchmen could go off on their own, but it seems to work best when they have combos with close proximity to the master. Obvious in theory maybe but nice to see in action.

We Made it to 100! (Posts that is)

Rather than just post up a normal content today, since it was going to be our 100th post we decided it would be appropriate to have a few of the contributors post their thoughts about the blog in general and the year + of Malifaux we've had since launching it.

Insidiously Mad: Well I can't believe the blog has been up for over a year. I assumed we would have failed for sure by now. Despite a rough patch of missing content for over a month recently we have done a pretty good job of consistently putting out a couple posts a week for the past year. The process of running the blog has been interesting, and all the discussion it has lead to between the contributors has been very interesting as well.

2015 was quite the year for me from a competitive perspective as I had only played in 2 events in 2014 and have no climbed all the way to the top 10 in Rankings and am going to be heading to Masters in January. I will have some more posts coming up soon about my competitive year in review, how I did on my New Years Resolutions, and my plans for next year, but I am hoping we can keep the blog going strong for 2016. 

Metalhed: 2015 was a reasonably successful year of Malifaux for me. I painted up my Resser Tara collection apart from a few extra horrors. I managed to put in a decent showing at a couple of tournaments and generally played quite a bit of Malifaux. I'm looking forward to getting in quite a few more Molly games. I've made a decent start with and am really enjoying what she brings to the table.

Looking back on the year I started off with a bang on terrain work and that completely fizzled out. I'd love to make some real progress on my Victorian streets table for home gaming.

I've got my second child arriving imminently. So I imagine the next few months will be less productive than I'd like from a Malifaux perspective. That means I'll have to make up for that by being super efficient with whatever free time I get.

As new masters go I might finally get around to adding my third resser lady to my crews.

Rebels & Rioters - Stats.

The results from Rebels & Rioters were sitting about so I decided to see what information I could pull from them.

I'm going to put up the charts with minimal comment (minimal not none I like prattling on too much for none). This is so that people can use them to draw their own conclusions.

The figure are fairly simple but twenty players is a fairly small field to draw any real averages from.

First up is the breakdown of faction.

Molly heads to Croydon (well more Sidcup but hey)

CROFAUX II

Going into this event it had been 6 or so weeks since I had last played a game of Malifaux. So I was a little rusty and I had only given Molly about 4 games. So I was mostly looking forward to a long day full of Malifaux.

By this stage I had reflected a little on my last few games and had trimmed Molly of her Gorgon's Tear and was running Datsue Ba lighter on upgrades. Sybelle, Izamu and Grave Spirit were my core crew with Belles featuring quite regularly.

Overall I came 15th out of 29, which I was fairly happy with. And given some of my opponents I felt I had done well. It also gave me some great insight into things I wanted to try out more. In particular the game with Joe highlighted how useful Phil and the Nanny could be.

Onto the games:

Rebels & Rioter - Recap

Saturday I ran Rebels & Rioters a small friendly tournament at Dark Sphere in London designed to give the players that couldn't make nationals something to do.

The podium was full of local players first place Marcus Rose , Second place Borja Fontes and third Ian Johnston.

Best painted went to James Henley

Best sport went to Andy Bradshaw (which is a huge achievement when you run THREE rooster riders)

Well done to everyone for making it a great day and thank you all for coming and not asking too many rules questions.

Other than the main event there was also a small side competition. Rebels versus Rioters at registration players were split into two teams and the strategy points from each team were added up to give us a winning team which was the mighty Rebels.

Later in the week I should be able to upload some stats and facts from the day. Also some points that I'd enjoy discussing from the day.

Taking Molly out for a spin

Here is the summary of my first few games with Molly. This is a follow up from my Gorgon's Tear post.

Highlights:

• The Madame Sybelle delivery service is amazing for Molly. It allows her to skip spending AP on needless walking and also gives her an incredible threat range for summoning even in turn 1.
• Izamu and unnerving aura just create a massive threat range. If you can tag the grave spirit in there too Izamu won't be giving up space soon. Molly's zero action can be great to make Izamu use his heal out of turn.
• Onryos are great little summons. They are dangerous enough in combat that they need to be dealt with. Plus on their way out they give even more WP tests for slow AND hand out Adversary. This is fantastic.
• Shikome and Hanged are terrifying summons and can have a huge impact on the game, particularly if the Onryos have done their Adversary duties.
• I think I have mastered Molly's summoning actions, but I need to not forget her other actions. Whispered Secret can ruin a model's life.
• Molly is so card hungry. I was running out of cards so quickly. As a result I found that I was not really able to take advantage of her reactivate (0) action. This really calls into question my original thoughts on Tear of the Gorgon...for the turns you can do this it is fantastic, but they turn out to be loss common that I'd like. I will try dropping this in future.
• If your opponent bunches up you can really punish them. 

Detailed game analyses:

Battle Report Molly v Shenlong (Both players views)

It should be clear by now that the Abnormalifaux lot like a good club game as well as plenty of tournaments. We all thought that we do plenty of tournaments write ups, but not so many of our club games have been written up on the blog. To change that, here is a battle report from both players perspective.

Pre-game

We pre-flipped our strategy and schemes

Strat: Turf War

Schemes: Breakthrough, Distract, Spring the Trap, Take Prisoner, Line in the Sand. 

Molly view

Turf War, fantastic! This is a strategy that Molly loves. You know that your opponent is going to need to bunch up near the centre. This increases the effectiveness of her summoned models and creates a larger zone of black blood death. There is nothing additional that I will need to pack for this.

The schemes though are a much more difficult prospect. Breakthrough is an obvious choice and I have no shortage of scheme runners if needed, but I was unsure where else I could pick up 3 VPs. Distract can be a good choice in some games, but I play Molly very aggressively and with all the black blood splashing I may end up killing distracted models, so that’s probably out. A line in the sand, hell no. So that really leaves spring the trap or take prisoner. I have never had much success with either of those schemes. 

I was 90% certain that I would be facing off against Shenlong, I don’t know much about him, but I do know that he can be an absolute tank to take down, so I figured that going in I would probably be aiming for spring the trap.

So who to take? My Molly build has been leaned down quite a bit over my last few games and I am almost happy with where I am with her. The new addition today was Philip and the Nanny. I have avoided her recently as I am building her a scenic base and didn’t want her out without it. I have been struggling with card draw though, Molly really hogs cards and I always find myself short. So Phil was shoved in. This left me with:

Molly: Forgotten path and take back the night

Madame Sybelle: Bleeding tongue

Philip and Nanny

Datsue Ba: Spirit Whispers

Izamu: Unnerving Aura

Graveyard Spirit

Rotten Belle

6 soulstones

Jacob Lynch After Five: Part Two

Disclaimer: Any master can do any strategy/scheme if you play well. But if, like me, you want to play a multitude of Neverborn masters competitively (I aim to have all 7 masters playable in tournaments) it is important to find the strengths/weaknesses of them so you can decide when to use each one. One thing I will not be covering in these articles is things like terrain tactics or which masters are counters for which factions etc, as these are much deeper tactical questions that I am nowhere near experienced enough to answer with these masters yet. I do hope to do a longer article (or several) on my competitive neverborn bag in late 2015/early 2016 after I have had some more events with masters other than Dreamer. If you have not read part one, it can be found here.

Strategies I like him for:

Collect the Bounty: This is the strategy I really see Lynch being a great choice. He tends to take a bunch of tough minion in his crew (specifically illuminated) and his henchman can’t give up points in this strategy as long as Lynch is still on the board. That is the one downside though, Lynch is not that tough to kill and if he goes down you are in trouble as you lose 4 collect points for your master, Huggy is no longer immortal and you’ve lost a ton of your hitting power. But as long as you are careful with Lynch his crew is great at this strategy.

Guard the Stash: Lynch’s crews have a load of models that are fairly independent and can both deal quite a lot of damage and are fairly hardy (with self-healing on Huggy and the illuminated). Graves, Doppelganger, Huggy, and beckoners can also move around the opponent’s crew. Since Lynch’s crew doesn’t rely on a buffing bubble (like Collodi/Pandora) or auras it is a great killing crew for splitting into two factions

Reckoning: Lynch likes to kill stuff dead. Huggy also won’t give up Reckoning points as long as Lynch is alive. Huggy can also obey around your opponents heavy hitters. Furthermore, Illuminated are tough, killy and relatively cheap so make up the core of a good reckoning crew. Would probably leave the beckoners behind in this crew as they are an easy kill, but other than that the crew is changed very little by Reckoning compared to the crews I run with other masters.

Rebels & Rioters

While most of the Abnormalifaux gang are off to nationals in November I decided to run a small event for all of us that can't make the trip up to the biggest Malifaux there is.

As always I'll be holding it at Dark Sphere in London, it's three rounds with extra time between rounds for chat and general socialness.

The Dragon goes to Septembers Curse

Wow what a cracker of a tournament. This weekend (27/09/2015 - for all you future readers, or time travellers), I went to Septembers Curse in Bournemouth, Dorset. It has to be hands down one of the best tournaments I’ve been too. 

So this might be a long article - I guess I might split it down into a section on the tournament at the beginning, then a section on my games.

The venue was a spacious social club in Tuckton. I actually went to school round the corner (the long gone Homefield). It was a bit strange travelling from London to my home city and being an out of towner! Still the club venue was perfect. Lots of space for tables, plenty of light, modern and no strange smells (often tournaments are in some dank and funky places). The TO’s did a great job of prizes, raffles, mugs, sweetie bags, and even free water and a new fate deck for all players. 

Aren't we all just GREAT

Okay you'll know how this works by now so I'll just get straight into my ranting trousers and get going.

I'm going to start by holding my hands up and admitting that I'm as guilty of the issue in today's rant as anyone and up until now I thought I was in the right.

The malifaux community. This is a phrase you'll hear a lot on forums, twitter, Facebook and podcasts and we'll all agree it's great. A great groups of players, great events and great support. All just GREAT!

But I've started to see our little malifaux commune mirroring issues from the wider world and it isn't making me feel quite as warm and fuzzy as it used to. It feels like it's getting toxic.

Jacob Lynch After Five: Part One

Introduction and Initial thoughts:

I’ve actually played 7 games with Lynch rather than 5 but played several in such close succession that I hadn’t had a chance to write this until now. As this is the first article I’ve posted on this topic I thought I should give a quick blurb on my idea for these posts and what you can expect in the future. Note: This is not a review of the master and his abilities, there are tons of those out there in podcast and/or blog form. Rather, this is my feelings about how I have been/will be using the master and my thoughts about him/her. Due to the length of the article, and the long-windedness of my writing, I am going to split this piece into two parts. Part One will cover the upgrades and models I have used in my 5 games with Lynch. Part Two will cover Strategies and Schemes that I like/dislike him for and where I view his place in my Neverborn collection.

Lynch was one of the Masters that I was most eager to pick up for my Neverborn and was actually the third master I ended up purchasing after Dreamer and the Viktorias, and my first plastic kit. Despite this, I only started playing him relatively recently and have still not fully finished painting his crew (although I have currently banned myself from painting any other miniatures until I finish Lynch, Graves, Tannen and my second beckoner, which would finish off all my Darkened models). Lynch particularly appealed to me because of his cool fluff and his card/hand control. I found Dreamer so card hungry that the idea of playing a master than has so much control over his hand very appealing. Also despite the model being very silly, Hungering Darkness looked like a ton of fun to play. Finally, Lynch’s crew has incredible killing power and as the killing strategies and schemes are not the ones that I tend to dominate with Dreamer, I thought he had a potential role in my competitive case as an option in killing scenarios.

Up the painting ladder

After a few big ranty post I thought I post up a quick progress report on my current painting progress.

So some people may have read a post earlier in the year where I said I wanted to improve my painting, just raise the average standard a step or too and I thought I'd share my attempts to do this

Before I get into my current painting progress I'll give you a quick run down of my painting history (don't worry it won't take long) I started painting about four years ago after picking up a reduced GW paint set in a Hobbycraft while my wife was shopping for something. thought it would be fun to do on a rainy Sunday. This led to me picking up a few more and watching a few youtube videos and eventually actually playing and painting models to go on a table as well.

My first Malifaux models were Perdita and family about two years ago and I was incredibly proud of this paint job for a while.

Book him Danno

When I'm not gaming or painting I like to read, and with an hour each way on the train to work each day I get a fair amount of time to do it. So I thought I would take a few minutes to give brief rundown of books I think fit with the Malifaux feel and style.

First up is the Shadow Ops series by Myke Cole.

A series of books that get progressively better this series takes place in a near future earth magic has been reawaken and people are starting to find that they have new powerful abilities. This also leads to the discovery of a new world filled with monsters, demons and gremlins. The books take themselves quiet seriously to start with but the combat is great and characters make a real impact.

Battle Report: Rasputina (Pippa) vs Lilith (InsidiouslyMad)

Introduction and Lists

Squatter's Rights (Close Deployment)

LITS
Assassinate

Protect Territory

Make Them Suffer

Plant Explosives

My List:

Rasputina
The Captain
Joss
2 Ice Gamin
Silent One
December's Acolyte
Arcane Effigy

Upgrades: Shattered Heart, Cold Nights, Seize the Day on Raspy
3 Soulstones

Insidiously Mad's List:
Lilith with Beckon Malifaux, Aether Connection and Wings of Darkness
Primordial Magic
McTavish with Hexed Among You
Bad Juju Fears Given Form and Eternal Fiend
Doppelganger
2 Waldgeists
7 Soulstones

I decided that I wanted to have more models than my opponent as it is so rare for me to have activation control. This seemed a bit silly with Make them Suffer in the scheme pool but I thought the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages of having lots of minions. My main plan was to keep Raspy back and shoot through the cheaper Frozen Heart models (when is that not the plan?). I would use Joss to hit him on the flank and then charge towards the centre, murdering and sweeping 3 squatters markers along the way.

Wherever you game you're doing it right.

By now if you are a regular reader you may have realized that while my Abnormalifaux colleagues post clever blogs about the wonders of Malifaux, I rant and moan like a crazy man shouting at squirrels in the park. Well that's going to change today I going to write a clever well thought out tactica explaining exactly how to.... Actually no I'm still going to write rant but it's just not going to be angry, ok not as angry. (Baby steps)

First let's work on the assumption that if you are reading this you play Malifaux. Maybe not as much as you'd like to but you play it and enjoy it. The question today is where do you play and whatever the answer the answer I'm going to tell you it's the right one if it means you get to play.

Let's start with the staple of gaming cult(ure), The games club. Gaming clubs whether they're in church halls,

the back room of a pub or in vaulted subterranean chambers lit by gaslight ( I haven't found it yet but I'm sure it exists). These clubs are the soul of gaming culture, games can be made or broken on whether or not the right people at a club decide to play them. A lot of clubs have the air of the classic old boys clubs you see with any institution, wary of change and run by a group of old mates who are keen to keep their way on top (like the Met in the 80s). But in between and underneath these pockets of old school clubs are the gems the groups that drive the hobby and pull in new members and reignite the passion in the tired old gamers. Both of these types of club exists and there's a range of levels in between them but thanks to a few hard working people at each and everyone of them they battle on and keep opening their door every week or month they can. Never underestimate the work that goes into keeping a club alive no matter the size or type of club the fact that they put the work in deserves respect and if you play at a club you are part or something you should be proud of. 

Henchmen Hardcore Recap

On Tuesday night, our typical Malifaux night at Dark Sphere, Peter ran a Henchmen Hardcore event which ended up with 10 players. I was going back and forth between two lists but decided to go with Neverborn rather than Outcasts. For reference, the Outcast list I would have gone with was Taelor, Bishop, Johan and HodgePodge Effigy. Instead I went with Hungering Darkness (Aether Connection and Addict), 2 Illuminated and a Depleted. The plan was for the depleted to tarpit and/or just sit there going defensive and scoring the strategy while Hungering Darkness put out Brilliance for the illuminated to take advantage of. With Aether Connection and a 5 soulstone cache Huggy could tank really well, especially against non-casting actions. There were four games each and my first game was against again fellow blog contributor RelaxedDave.

Punk (rocker) Zombies

I've decided to have a go at writing a tactica / review. Now as I'm not the greatest of players I've opted out of writing anything about masters or henchman as that would make my head hurt, so I've decided to try and keep it simple and talk about a minion, but a cool minion so it's okay.

Punk Zombies

First off before I get to the card I'll give a fluffy run down of the punks.
Punk zombies fluff comes in two flavours either they are the still blood hungry corpes of killers or they appeared in Malifaux after the Three Kingdoms began to settle on the fun side of the Breach. Clans like the Ten Thunders included highly skilled warriors and swordsmen (not highly skilled enough to stay alive but still good). As with all corpses sooner or later a resurrectionist had a crack at reanimating one of these warriors and was pleasantly surprised to find that these zombies retained a bit of their martial training. This made them a popular choice for strong necromancers to practice their art on. I lean towards the second description as the better of the two but the first does give you some leeway on swapping out the weapons and them still fitting the fluff.

Throw some London at it.

Warning this is the exact oppisite of my usual rant this is positive so may shock people coming from me.

Earlier in the year I spoke about my the state of the Malifaux scene in London and my hopes that it would grow.

 "If you've looked at the Malifaux event calendar or live anywhere near London you'll know that for such a major city it has an incredibly poor competitive scene. This is something I aim to change. 

London is lucky enough to have several gaming clubs that play malifaux and plenty more just outside it's borders. I wouldn't be exaggerating to say you could round up a hundred plus players within an hours journey of the centre of London. So that is my second plan for the new year, bring together the London clubs and players. I obviously don't mean a hostile takeover but I plan to set up a platform for the various London clubs to communicate, get to know each other and build the London community.

So with that in mind the first step was to set up Wyrd Capital a facebook group for London Malifaux players - Wyrd Capital"

Willpower in Malifaux (Wave 1 and Wave 2)

Willpower in Malifaux (Wave 1 and Wave 2)

The follow-up to my previous article, Defence in Malifaux (Wave 1 and Wave 2).

Defence in Malifaux (Wave 1 and Wave 2)

Defence in Malifaux (Wave 1 and Wave 2)

In response to my recent article, a couple of people wanted to see my findings in a chart.  Of course, I was going to oblige!

Please note: these figures are taken from the DF numbers printed on the Malifaux model cards from wave 1 and wave 2; abilities and upgrades are not included; there are crossovers due to dual-faction models such as the Guild Pathfinder; models you cannot hire on their own like the Ashen Core and totems that are tied to their masters are included.

The Gorgon's Tear

Seamus gazed into Molly's lifeless eyes and bowed his head over her,whispering "You are a lovely one, aren't you?"

Seamus Crashes A Funeral, Wyrd Chronicles, Volume 2

I still need to the OSL and water effects on the minis above.

I have been dying to play Molly for some time, but I was quite caught up with my Tara experiments. Then I managed to pick up a few of the old metal spirits plus the new plastic Molly box and here we are. Much like Seamus I have fallen in love with Molly. And with only one game with her under my belt at that. Hopefully after reading this you will begin to understand why.

Let us begin with her card...

Broken Thunder (pt2)

This is part two of my Yan Lo review. Please have a read of part one if you haven't already.

So what is the best case Yan Lo

Well I have assumed you’ve taken his three specific upgrades (although Wings of Wind or Misdirection or Recalled Training can all be swapped in with some use). At full power you get Yan Lo with Chi +3, with Ash, Spirit and Bone Ascendant attached. This gives you a casting 8 master with a Df/wp (Tome Trigger) to get his Df/Wp from 5 to 8. He will be impossible to Wound, Incorporeal. He will be able to summon back dead ancestors and able to lunch a Hung Po Assault with Brutal Kharakhara (and make a Melee attack against each model in range with a positive attack and damage flip). You will be able to heal, hand out armour +2 and position assaults with Lightening Dance. You can drop Terracotta Curse to cause enemies damage when they walk/charge.

Wow Bad Luck and Blood, that sounds great. I can’t believe you are moaning. He’s awesome and you suck. Hear the internet scream with rage.

Defence and Willpower in Malifaux

I like averages; generally not minute details, but overarching themes that are easy to remember.  I decided to do some research into the defence (DF) and willpower (WP) of models in Malifaux and the attack actions that are resisted by them.   These statistics are for the wave one and wave two models across all the factions.  There are crossovers, however, due to dual-faction models.  Please be beware I haven't taken abilities or upgrades into account, as this is only a brief glance at defence and willpower.  Hopefully you can use these somehow when building your crews or facing another player.

DF5 and WP5 are by far the norm in Malifaux, which are followed by DF6 and WP6 in second and DF4 and WP4 in third.   The Voodoo Doll, Ashen Core and Pigapult all have the lowest DF in Malifaux of 1, while The Nothing Beast and Void Wretches have the highest (artificial) DF of 9 and 8 respectively.   Lenny has the lowest WP of 1 and the Electric Creation, Zoraida and Pigapult all have the highest WP of 10.

The Guild:

DF5 is most common in The Guild.  There are roughly an equal number of models that are DF4 or DF6.  Perdita has the single-highest DF of 7.  Almost all of the models are either WP5 or WP6.  The Guild are typical of the average DF and WP in Malifaux.

Resurrectionists:

There are a higher number of DF4 Resurrectionist models than in any other faction.  As a result, they have fewer models that are DF5, although there are still a reasonable number of DF6 models.  Bete Noire has the single-highest DF of 7.  The majority of models are WP5.  Resurrectionists generally have lower DF and WP than the average in Malifaux.

The Arcanists:

The majority of models are either DF5 or DF6.  The Arcanists have the highest number of DF6 models in Malifaux. Myranda has the single DF of 7.  WP5 and WP6 are common across The Arcanists, but there are still a significant number of models that are WP4.  There are no models with WP7 or above apart from the Electric Creation which is WP10.  The Arcanists have a higher average DF in Malifaux which makes them stand out.

The Neverborn:

DF5 is most common in The Neverborn, followed by DF4 and DF6.  Lilith, Baby Kade, Vasilisa (and effectively Pandora) all have DF7.  WP5 is most common in The Neverborn, but there are a significant number of models that are WP7.  The Neverborn are typical of the average DF and WP in Malifaux, but they also have some models with very high DF or WP.

Outcasts:

Nearly half of the available models are DF5. WP5 and WP6 are most common in Outcasts.  Like The Neverborn, Outcasts have a significant number of WP7 models.

Gremlins:

Most Gremlin models are either DF5 or DF6, yet there are a lot that are DF4.  Gremlins have the second-highest number of DF6 models in Malifaux.  Skeeter and Sammy Lacroix both have the highest DF of 7.  Gremlin WP is evenly but roughly split between WP4, WP5 and WP6, although Zoraida and the Pigapult each have a monstrously high WP of 10.

Ten Thunders:

DF5 is the most common, followed by DF4 and DF6.  What makes Ten Thunders stand out is the higher than average WP of 6.

Attacks resisted by DF and WP:

Even though the majority of models in Malifaux are DF5, the most common Ml, Sh or Ca stat across all factions that is resisted by DF in an opposed duel is 6.  This clearly means the attacker has a clear advantage over the defender.  Interestingly, Resurrectionists and The Neverborn have the lowest number of attack actions that are resisted by DF, although they by far have the highest number of attack actions in Malifaux that are resisted by WP.  For example, Resurrectionists and The Neverborn have 31 and 28 attack actions respectively that target WP, while The Guild and The Arcanists only have 11 and 8.  Like attack actions that are resisted by DF, those resisted by WP are most-commonly Ml, Sh or Ca 6.

Defence and willpower in Malifaux – some thoughts:

Take these stats with a pinch of salt; it’s not possible to look at them so crudely in Malifaux due to good/bad luck, the ability to cheat fate, buff or debuff models and so on.   Nevertheless, it’s still worth considering when building your crew or facing a particular faction.  Some thoughts: expect more DF4 models in Resurrectionists and more DF6 in The Arcanists; take models or upgrades that can buff your models’ WP if you’re facing Resurrectionists or The Neverborn; is it worth attacking with a Ml4, Sh4 or Ca4 model in an opposed duel? And watch out for those Ml7, Sh7 and Ca7 models!

Broken Thunder

I thought it might be time to do a detailed review of Yan Lo now that I’ve been playing him for a good 6 months. I picked him up because I loved the model and fluff. I’ve run him in a ton of causal games and also at a couple of tournaments. I feel I’ve got enough of a handle on him to give him a review.

Now this is my own view, other opinions will vary! As a start point, I’ll put my cards on the table and say I am not a very good player. I have won a few games, even at tournaments with Yan Lo but I will never crack the top half of a tournament. I usually push my opponents quite hard to win, but it rarely troubles their scores. Having said that, I think I’ve picked up enough and played enough to evaluate Yan Lo. As with nearly every model made by Wyrd, Yan Lo is perfectly usable. With a few very rare exceptions (like Oiran) there aren’t really any completely non-viable models in the game. However, just because a model can be used and even win, it doesn’t make it good. 

Also, I’m not going to settle for “but you could add this model and then he is fine because of the great synergy” If a model has synergy great, but it shouldn’t have to be used to simply make a Master more viable. If it is specifically designed that way, that's different (e.g. Nicodem and Mortimer). I do know that Masters don’t exist in a vacuum but other models are only considered where the Masters skill is making them better, not where they have to make up for the short comings of the Master. I’ll bend that rule slightly for the Viktorias as they are a package as is Dreamer. I think you get where I’m coming from. 

In part 1 I’ll give a run down of the various things he can do. In part 2 I’ll lay out the various roles I think Masters can fulfil. Finally I’ll look at Yan Lo against those roles and see how he fits and his overall effectiveness. 

T.O you T.O me.

I'd like to write a short post about T.Oing events.

Now I'm far from an expert at Tournament Organising but if I can bumble my way through it anyone can. So I thought I'd write a sort of idiots guide to running a tournament for any of you who fancied trying it yourself.

First things first. As with all things have a plan and stick to it but don't be afraid to adapt it as things change. So if you have want a big mega competitive tournament but only a handful of people sign up think about relaxing things or if no one can make it on time think about pushing back the start time. Simply put don't try and fit a square peg in a round hole and thing will go a lot smoother for you.

List Building at Dark Faux

As my full-sized report on Dark Faux is dragging along and still not ready to be published I thought I would post some more specific musings that wouldn't be covered in the main tournament report. Namely, I want to talk about list building. List building in a very short period of time is one of the most underrated skills in Malifaux. You have to have some idea of what all your models do, when to take them, and when not to. Also you have to be able to consider the strategy, schemes, terrain and scenario. Obviously knowing the strategy in advance you can think of some combinations that would be useful but until you have all the need information you can't make any final decision (or at least you shouldn't). This is also why pre-releasing schemes and pre choosing lists is problematic as you are still lacking in intel, not knowing your opponent or the board itself.

Due to the importance of list building and the fact that I have been talking about it a lot recently with other Abnormalifaux members, I thought I would go through my thought process on the lists I built for a couple of the games at Dark Faux. This will not be completely in-depth but will touch upon the main considerations I made. Also keep in mind that Dark Faux was a fixed master event so it is slightly different from games where you won't know the opponents master when building your crew.

Game 1: Squatters Rights (Corner) vs Maria

LITS
Assassinate
Distract

Plant Explosives

Vendetta

Beg, borrow and deal. The art of buying Malifaux.

Once again I'm going to have a bit of a rant. Buying Mali-crack is something we all do. (I'm assuming you do other wise you're just reading this for my charm and wit). So if you buy it then you've at some point had a decision to make as to where to buy you're faux.

Now I'll say again this isn't a guide it is a sad angry man having a rant so don't base any major life decisions on what I say.

The choices for buying new toys is greater than ever. You have the official store, various online stores, eBay, Facebook groups, friends who aren't as big of mini hoarders as you and of course if you are lucky you have a friendly neighbourhood game store.

So how do you decide where to buy and why are you wrong?

New Years Resolutions: 6 Months In

Well, here we are. The first 6 months of 2015 are over and gone and I thought it would be a good time to see how I was doing on my resolutions I posted back in January when the blog was still in it's infancy. I have put the original text from that article in purple and my commentary in the usual black font to keep it obvious what is what.

1) End the year in the UK top 50 (Malifaux Rankings). People needed 4 solid showings to make the top 50 this year. Think it will be even harder for 2015 so will probably need to end in the top 3rd of 4 events (just a guess, hard to say in advance). Also now that their are faction rankings up I would also like to end up in the Neverborn top 10.
Well it turns out I am stronger player than I thought I would be when I wrote this (having only done two tiny events in 2014). I had this goal locked up by the end of February which is pretty cool. Currently ranked 14th overall and 3rd in Neverborn. The current goal on this front is to qualify for Masters, which means I need to finish in the top 15 at the end of the year. I think I've probably got 4 or 5 more events this year I will attend and I likely need two strong finishes to qualify.

What's the story McMouning glory?

A brief post about Malifaux not as a game but as a story.

Once upon a time, on a train ride far far away.

Now for a lot of people the story or fluff if you're that way inclined, is as 

much a part of the game as the models or the rules. For some people the story is just an excuse to have a heavier rule book.

There's plenty to enjoy in the story of Malifaux, the existence of Though the Breach RPG is proof of that.

We all know the basic story, a group of Paul Daniels wannabes open a steampunk stargate to a strange and dangerous world full of beasts, monsters and gremlins ( no not Australia, it's not that bad).

Cricket or Gladiators in the Arena

A flurry of recent Facebook posts has really struck a cord with me.

The first was a post about how the lack of a competitive scene was harming the Malifaux community and stopping it growing. The second was from a player who was irritated that a tournament had limited summoners to models in a list of a 100ss models for the day in line with other crews.  He felt that he was being punished for being an experienced competitive player.

As always in Malifaux, the posts and discussions were well thought out and the debate remained civil. At one point it was suggested that the 100ss model pool kept things fair for beginners. One poster opinioned that if beginners wanted that kind of thing, perhaps they should go to a beginners tournament. He had paid for his collection, spent time building and painting it, and should therefore be able to actually rock up and use it in a legal crew if he wanted.

I found it a little depressing. I don’t know if community would grow if it was “more” competitive or not, or whether the model limit is a good idea or not. What really struck me was that there is a upcoming challenge for us as Malifaux players. That challenge is the growth of the game and how to steer a course between ultra competitive and too laid back.

Hardcore fun.

So we recently had the first of the bi-monthly hardcore henchman nights at Dark Sphere and I thought I'd do a quick right up of how it went.

First off for those that don't know henchman hardcore is a mini version of Malifaux, there are a few different tweaks to the rules played but the basic is 20-30min games 20ss henchman led and four models per crew. The strategy is usually turf war (I went for extraction instead but I'll get to that later) and the only scheme is assassinate and finally its close deployment. That gives you the idea, the rules I use are here.


So I went for extraction over turf war as this meant the game wouldn't just stick to a single point. In such a quick game it wouldn't make a huge difference but in third or if quick fourth turn it the marker moving 3 inches could mean someone has to decided weather to go with it or maybe hold their ground and fight.

A sea of grey and black

This post is kind of a personal ramble. I’ve had a really good look at my collection and decided I have a hobby problem. Finally all the years of plastic crack has drained my bank a/c, filled every nook and cranny in the garage and left me with a mountain of painting. 

I had a long weekend so it was time to take stock. Deep breath, I can’t really buy more Malifaux until I’ve cleared out some stuff, assembled all my boxed Malifaux models and done a lot more painting. I also need to sell off my old Warhammer Fantasy and 40 Stuff. I can’t see when I’ll need a Grey Knight army any more, or 6 Inquisitorial Chimeras with Forge World decals. I won’t ever dust off the Sisters of Battle or the Chaos “Naughty Marines.” I don’t know if Wood Elves will even exist in the latest Warhammer Fantasy Reboot. 

Summer Showdown Tournament Report

Well after almost 3 months since my last event (name it) I finally was back in a tournament. This was also the first tournament I had done since finishing painting Zoraida and Pandora so for the first time I was going into the event with more than just one master (Dreamer) to choose from. Was really looking forward to the added tactical choices this entailed. Also since the strategies weren’t pre-announced I would have to be making quick choices. My goal for the day was to use at least two different masters and get four good games in. After not being in a proper event in a while I was too rusty to worried about placing (although obviously I was hoping to do well)

Game 1: Reckoning (Standard) vs Lee Walstow

LITS
Bodyguard

Breakthrough

Plant Evidence

Deliver the Message

Deployment

My List:

Pandora with On Wings of Darkness, Fugue State, Box Opens

Primordial Magic

Nekima with Fears Given Form

Coppelius with On Dreaming Wings

Doppelganger

Silurid

7 Stones

Tara visits Croydon

Alas it has been too long since I have had the opportunity to gush about my love for Tara. Work and real life have been getting in the way. That is not to say I have not been getting games in though. After about a year or so of playing with Tara I feel that her and I are starting to click nicely.

Two weeks ago I took Tara along to Crofaux - a 50ss fixed master event at Croydon Gaming club. It was a small event being run by John as a dry run for future events. It was my first time there and it was a great little venue...plus I had a bus that took me basically to the front door so it was super easy. That convenience, the bar and the great crowd mean that I will definitely be back.

So with only 8 players and fixed master it did not take long to find out which masters were there:

• Pandora
• Jakob Lynch (Neverborn) - Andreas, one of my Dark Sphere colleagues
• Gremlins Zoraida
• Perdita (there is always one)
• Mei Feng (Ten Thunders) - read Bad Luck & Blood's post on this very blog for more
• Lucius (Neverborn I think)
• Jakob Lynch (Ten Thunders)
• And lastly my Resurrectionist Tara

The Doctor is in.

As in theory McMourning is my main master I thought I'd share some picture of my crew (not just as blog filler I promise) I do run a few different list with McM but this is my core.

First up the super surgeon himself. I have a plan to re do the paint job on him as its not great but that will wait until later. (also a very bad picture sorry)

Mei I kick some ass?

Ok this is my write UP of Crofaux. It was a nice 50ss fixed faction, fixed master 1 day event held by the lovely guys at the Croydon Gaming Club.

I’ll start off with a quick good and bads of the day and then do my game by game write up.

Good stuff

The TO was really lovely and eager to please. Great players and a relaxed atmosphere, with some of the Croydon boys recovering from hang overs (too much time in Tiger Tiger or the Goose).

The event was well organised and ran early and finished early. That meant breaks were well spaced and there was free tea from the kitchen.

The venue was a great size, and the big round tables meant that there was actually plenty of space of put cards, tokens, tape measures and rules. Larger tables are def a plus.

There was free parking at the (slightly) hard to find venue and it was a fairly serviceable games hall rented from the Rugby Club so there was a working bar.

The terrain was decent and well balanced. Sadly Mei didn’t get to try out the Asian themed table. Still my black undercoated Torakage looked the business on the Black Sand table.

Summer Showdown run down.

A really brief write up of my trip to Summer Showdown recently, before you get excited I didn't do too well in terms of points but I was funny and charming so I'm taking the moral victory ( I do that a lot it's the only win I tend to get )

So we'll start with the beginning I drove down to Wayland games and made it despite the best efforts of my sat nav and other drivers trying to kill me. I even got there early enough to have a cup of tea.

My first game was slightly delayed due to my opponent reading the start time off the website not the forum (true story) which meant I had time for tea #2 before facing off against Conrad and his resser Yan Lo. I ran resser McMourning all day. Even with the slight delay we managed a solid four turns and a lot of back and forth resulted in a 4-4 draw

Break for lunch and tea #3 before back to the action.

Neverborn: my painted collection

After completing #TOMB2 and uploading photos of my finished crew, I decided I should do a photo of all my painted malifaux models since I haven't had a big photo of everything together yet. I spent a weekend doing touchups on all my metal models, varnishing them (since I hadn't done that the first time), and painting all the base edges black (since many had paint splattered on them). The process was quite fun as I got to see how much I have improved from my earliest models (Dreamer crew) to the most recent (Bishop, Nekima).

Here are a couple shots of all the models I have currently painted. For anyone who is curious, 21 of the models are metal and 27 are plastic (as you can see I am not at all opposed to the old metals like some people are). Just a note that their are two models in here that I didn't paint as they were given to me by other players (thank you guys!). The Brutal Effigy was painted by Mike Marshall and Lazarus was painted by Joel Henry.

Cards or Dice & Chancing to win (not lose)

One of the key differences for Malifaux that every player notices is, of course, no dice and a deck of cards in its place. There must be endless articles on this fact but I thought I would muse on a few things over the matter and a brief take on playing the odds.

While many of the other elements of the game of Malifaux, Schemes & Strategies or building your crew 'on the fly' are also quite unique and go a long way to make Malifaux the amazing game that it is the use of cards, for me, is the real big separator from other systems.

Country Mouse and City Mouse Death Match.

Once again a slightly rambling post which has a tenuous link to gaming (I feel tenuous and rambling is my niche in Malifaux so I’m sticking to it.)

Following a recent chat about prize money at tournaments and how I’m very against it. This got me thinking about why I’m so against having cash prizes in Malifaux, and I think the main word to sum up how I feel is community (not the TV show).

One of the best features of Malifaux in the UK and I hope the rest of the world is that it attracts a great community feel. I’m going to liken it to a country village, you know everyone or at least you know someone who knows them. You may not all be friends but we all work together and do what we can to keep things nice.

Now I know this might be a bit of a rose tinted view of the Malifaux scene but from the what I’ve seen and from the people I’ve met I’d say it’s true for me if not for everyone.

Riding the pain train

Well, the first half of the year has been a cracking one for my Malifaux game. I’ve kept with the Ten Thunders, mostly Yan Lo but have just switched to Mei Feng

The difference is night and day. I really love the fluff of Yan Lo and turning him into a nearly indestructible spirit by the end of the game, but I’ve noticed he isn’t the most powerful of masters. He is solid, tough and lightning dance has won me the game on positional play. Then I switched to Mei Feng for the recent league at Darksphere. My gosh, but she is awesome. The movement game with the constructs and the pure hitting power of her crew combined with some ridiculously tough models, a great totem and the utility. She has rapidly become my fave go to master. I’ve loved her flexibility and then there is the awesomeness that is the MIGHTY KANG!

#TOMB2 Month 4: This is the End

Month 3 Catchup

Before I get into all the fun month 4 stuff, since I hadn't finished month 3 in time I thought I would include some photos of my month 3 model Nekima here now that she is completed. Nekima ended up being a very long process but I am quite happy with the results. Went for Grey skin like Lilitu and gave her Red Clothes and Blue wings (keeping with the Grey,blue,red colours used on Lilitu/Lelu, my only other painted Nephilim) Also tried putting a gloss coat on the sword to see if I liked the shine (it's fairly subtle but I think it adds a little bit. This was my first attempt at proper blonde hair and it ended up being a bit more yellow than I'd planned. Since it isn't on a human though it's not a big deal. Nekima has been a blast to play even though I haven't come anywhere near to getting her rolling at peak effectiveness yet. It is great to get her up to min damage 6 from the Nurse and watch her attack 4 times in a turn (3 in her activation, once from obey). Will definitely be trying to get some more playing time as the competitive community seems split on how great she is.

End of the League.

Short post as I have tournaments to plan. (make sure you've got your ticket to Dark Faux in July)

At our club we have just finished a short league. The idea was a quick fun league that would be good for new and old players alike.

What I came up with was a 5 week escalation league that covered all the rulebook strategies and all the schemes. All the Strats and schemes were pre announced so that everyone had time to think about how they wanted to build their crews.

 There was also a ranking system in place to help balance the experienced and newer players. This seemed to work as most of the games were very close.

Spirit of the game.

My most recent Malifaux master is Kirai. I picked up her box set along with Izamu and Yin.

I really enjoyed painting these as for a resser player it was a nice change from zombie flesh tones.

First up was Izamu the Armour in the style of a terracotta warrior.

Learning Lynch

I could be wrong but I think Lynch might be the master everyone wants to play but often feels he (or they) come up short when it matters. Who doesn't want to be a card shark in a card game!

So, as I am currently 'learning Lynch' myself, from the Neverborn angle I should point out, I thought I might do a bit of a spiel on what I have discovered so far.

Quick disclaimer, I'm no pro, I have played 4 games so far only with Lynch, these are my initial thoughts on Lynch and I hope to post additional musings and tactical genius (hah!) as I go along!