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.