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.