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.