Seamus and friends visit Croydon

So I have been testing a new Resser master finally. And it is the fearsome Seamus. And I figured what better way to test him out than to take him to an event. Prior to this event I had managed three games with him, so figured this would be a good chance to see how he held up.

Connor and the Too Much Infaux guys were running April Faux and that was perfect. Grant turned up to collect me nice and early. We arrived at the venue way before kick off and had breakfast next door with Connor.

Then off to the venue, the Croydon Conference centre. This is a great venue with plenty of space, a load of good quality terrain (many of it supplied by the TMI gang) and a bar.

We were due to discover the S&S as the games were to kick off so not too much I could prepare for...

Molly goes to Hockley

2016 was not a great year of gaming for me. I managed to play at Warboar towards the beginning of the year and maybe a handful of games the rest of the year. This was mostly due to real life and work getting in the way. The plan is for 2017 to be more productive on the gaming front.

So I signed up for a few events, discovered a fellow resser that lives pretty close to me and scored a lift to Snowdown in Hockley. Here begins the recap of my first tournament for 2017.

The morning began with two of the Croydon lot arriving to give me a lift. The driver, Grant has set his satnav to speak like Mortimer. A rather thematic beginning to the day. We arrived with plenty of time to spare and picked up some breakfast at the Sainsbury's. Then the general greetings as all the folk started shuffling into the venue and complaining about being awake so early on a Sunday.

Game 1 - George (McCabe)

George admitted that this was his tournament with Guild as he was normally an Arcanist player and apologised upfront about needing to repeatedly read his cards. I assured him that this was not a problem as I was pretty rusty myself. So that set the scene for a game that was always going to be laid back in attitude from both of us.

The board had little rivers and bridges everywhere and a few buildings, trees and ruins. We decided to make the rivers hazardous.

George dropped McCabe, Francisco, a lawyer, executioner, Lunar and a million dogs.

I ran:

• Molly with her spirit upgrage, take back the night. 
• Sybelle and bleeding tongue
• Izamu and decaying aura
• Datsue and my little helper
• Phil and my little helper
• Dead doxey

Turn 1 Molly and Sybelle were near the centre with a dog. Izamu had been pushed up by his friends and he charged in and murdered the executioner. 3 points for me and 2 for George (Quick Murder and Frame for Murder). Phil was cycling cards at the back. Datsue was heading for my right stash marker.

The lawyer was a real pain this game and kept paralysing Izamu. I think my hyper aggressive Izamu fooled George into thinking he was framed for murder - he wasn't. George was brave and ran a sword wielding Lunar into Datsue to try remove my right marker. Datsue survived and turned Lunar into a Gaki. This through George's plans for scoring claim jump as his corner dogs were now mostly useless.

This was a fantastic game with each of us doing our best to delay activations to try figure out what the other was up to. Although I started with less I managed to remove a few of his early making it much closer. Final activation of the game (in round 3 or 4 - we were slow) I had one marker down for the trap. I attempt to summon a drowned with Molly to leave another with finish the job (this would have bumped it to a 3 VP scheme) and I flip the black joker. Meaning I only scored 1. Bollocks. This left the game at a 5 all draw. Which I was still pleased with. Fun game. Great opponent.


Round 2 - Joe Wood (Collodi)

Typical. In 3 of my last 4 tournaments I have faced Joe.

I can't actually remember the fifth scheme, but no one would have picked last stand so it works.

This game had 2 ponds either side of the centre and we elected to make them hazardous. I had some windmill thing in front of me in the centre. Joe had a bunch of crates in a similar position on his side. I hate playing against Collodi. Joe had Collodi with things, Widow weaver, 3 stitched, an insidious madness and a bunch of the marionettes.

I ran:

• Molly with her spirit upgrage, take back the night. 
• Sybelle and bleeding tongue
• Izamu and unnerving aura
• Datsue and my little helper
• Phil and my little helper
• Dead doxey
• Grave spirit

This was quite a bloody game in the middle. I cycled cards with phil and pushed Izamu forward with Datsue and the doxey. Sybelle took Molly for a lift. His marionnettes wasted time. Izamu wiped a stitched off the board and then got hit multiple times and flipping  a bloody 7 with gamble your life. Bye Izamu.

Second turn Collodi and the stitched and thrown more damage around. But I managed to wipe the last two stitched from the board. Joe started dropping claim jump markers but I managed to engage a marionette with Datsue to stop him scoring. I picked up some points for hunting party, but think Sybelle went down. All the dead stitched and models had dropped enough scrap and corpses for the weaver to bring out a Teddy.

Turn 3 is when it really started turning against me. I was running out of enough models to really prevent Joe's plans. In the end it went 9-4 to Joe. I had picked up a few points for claim jump and hunting party. I managed to block at least one of the accusation points (would've been two if I had won initative on the last turn).

All in all it was still a fun game.

Round 3 - Grant - my lift home (Nicodem)

I can't remember the fifth scheme on this one either so chose one at random.

I was a little nervous going into this game. Interference is not my favourite, Molly is ok at blocking it, but not so great at scoring it.

Grant ran Nicodem with the card draw upgrade and the muhahahaha one. He had a carrion emissary (MLH), phil, Mortimer (MLH), necropunk and a nurse.

I ran:

• Molly with her spirit upgrage, take back the night.
• Sybelle and bleeding tongue
• Izamu and decaying aura
• Phil and my little helper
• Dead doxey
• 2 crooligans

The board had a few forestsand big buildings and some ruin thing in the middle.

I decided that I would try hide some crooligans for claim jump and take a sneaky show of force as I thought it would go uncontested.

I hid my crooligans behind a building. His nurse and emissary ran down the flank towards my right. And the rest stayed in the corner feeding Nico cards and corpses. I sent Izamu, Sybelle and Molly towards the emissary. Phil and the doxey did some card draw shenanigans. Turn 1 I brought out a hanged and knocked some wounds off both the emissary and the nurse. Nico then summoned a hanged and a shikome.

Turn 2 Grant went first and using MLH managed to toss up a massive wall to block Molly from seeing him and killed the hanged. I could see the shikome aiming for my crooligans. So I activated Molly she used her (0) to give Izamu a walk and then he charged across and murdered the shikome. Izamu never left that spot. Grant kept bringing out punk zombies to harass him. I think must have murdered three over the course of the game. He was also in the 6" bubble and not scoring interference but he did net me 3 for show of force all on his own.

At this point the vulture moved into the middle and gave Nico huge range and he created a massive amount of zombies and a few punk zombies.

Molly was basically pinned into that corner for the rest of the game and fended off quite a few rounds of zombies and hanged. But ultimately her and sybelle went down. Both annoyingly to paralyse and being eaten by a flesh construct. I wont forget that one. That gave Grant 3 points for Eliminate the Leadership, we both thought it was less for being after round 3, but we were out of date on our schemes.

Phil quickly removed the vulture with his shooting action from that (0) upgrade he desperately needed! This forced Nico to venture forth from the corner and waste valuable AP. At one point Grant tried to drop schemes in my half for leave your mark, but Phil turned those into corpses. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea against Nico, but figured he wasn't short of corpse markers so what the hell.

In the end we both picked up 3 for the strategy. I netted a full 6 on my schemes and he could not get any for leave your mark. So 9-6 and a potential walk home. Another great game.It had been a while since I had played against Nico...MLH and the emissary have been fantastic for him.


I was happy with the day. My opponents were all great. I finished middle of the pack. George went on to pick up best Guild player, Joe picked up best Neverborn and 4th overall. So the games where I dropped points were against strong players. Looking forward to the next tournament, which for me will be 1 April in Croydon.

The Full English GT

This is my write up of the recent English GT held at Wayland Games in Essex.

Before I start I will warn you this is not for the faint of heart or for those with a nervous disposition. There will be graphic references to playing very, very poorly along with gratuitous sulking. To help people avoid this any sulking and/or whining will be marked out in red.

So my first ever two day event and also the event I'd chosen as my gaming target this year. I wasn't feeling too confident going in due to being really out of practice, work and illness has meant that I've hardly played for the last few months.  So determined to give it a shot and have a couple of fun days of gaming I headed off to Sunny Hockley Saturday morning.

No hassle getting there and even time to run over to the cafe for a tea before standing about outside Wayland chatting to all the regular faces and a couple of new ones as well.

The doors opened and we all rushed in to join the queue (very British) to register with first time TO Stuart SNEZZLEY Snares and his better half Claire. We all received a very snazzy English GT bag containing our score sheets and some sweets. At which point people split into two groups. The people who think its OK the eat haribo for breakfast and the people who are wrong.

So onto game one.
Turf War
Me vs Graeme Nicholls
Molly vs Mah

So first game of the GT I'm facing gremlins on a table that has planets across it (I was beginning to think there was more than sugar in those sweets).
I was confident to start throwing Molly across the board for a turn one summon or two then some punk zombie action. It was all down hill from there...
The swarm of rooster riders sprinted down one side of the board to tie up my rogue necro and phil & nan while Molly and sybelle tried to hold the centre and scheme run at the same time.
Stupidly I tried to score Convict with 2 marker with in 3" of the centre line instead of vice-versa.
I got a couple of points for my necro being roostered to death but not much else
Finished 4-10. Really fun game and despite the loss I was almost happy with how I played.

Lunch! Wayland special. This time I opted for a cheese burger over the hot dog (I'm not sure if it makes any difference) Quick, easy and filling and then its back to the action.

- Quick run back to the cafe area for a top up of tea.

Game two.
Head Hunter
Me (again) vs SNEZZLEY. (TO pulling double duty as ringer)
Seamus vs Lucius

As relaxed of a game as you are ever likely to get at an event. Seamus shot things, Bete slashed things , Nekima tore through everything... Lucius wondered around looking posh and getting in the way. (He really is the David Cameron of Malifaux)
Finished 8-5 in my favour... I could say I played great but Stu was running Lucius if I'd lost I should of been handed the spoon there and then. Always a pleasure to play Stuart and it was nice to score some points.

Game three.
Collect the Bounty
Me (still) vs Anthony Fenton
Seamus vs Tara

Always a game to look forward to, I'm fairly sure Ant is my most played opponent this year facing off at about three Wayland events.
It started well Seamus took out a void wretch, necro punks got some markers down and student of sinew was in a position to flurry next turn...
It turns out that would be all I would succeed at this game. After Seamus and a shikome failing to make a mark on the nothing beast then the nothing beast vaporising the shikome and a necro punk.
Tara managed to be an effective scheme runner and also keep my models pinned down with slow before Sybelle killed then.
To sum up this game Anthony had no hand left Seamus took a shoot and two Ca at a belle, not a single one hit. the all missed by 1.
Final score 1-10 and a well deserved win for Tony and Tara.

End of Day one. Lots of sad farewells and wishes of good luck for those risking a night out in Southend, to be honest I didn't expect all of them to survive.

Day Two (I've never had a day two of an event before I'm very proud of myself for this mediocre achievement)

Starts off with a repeat of day one. Tea, chatting outside, a bit of a queue etc.

Game four.
Reconnoitre (my least favourite strat)
Me (just about) vs Kai Young
Molly vs McMourning

The plan here was to hold back use Molly and Datsue to swamp one side of the board while McM came to me... What is the first thing I did? Run Molly and Datsue off in different directions spreading my crew out too thin to do much of anything. (I'm a bloody genius)
Kai (Mr ranking himself) Did a great job of keeping his models in just the right position to score and other than me killing McM he had the upper hand the whole game.
Great game right to the end despite my inability to score points.
3-10 to Kai.

Lunch!!! Once again a copy of day one but this time I also spent some money in the shop and put my crew out for the painting comp.

Game five. The Final
Extraction
Me (I think) vs The one and only Ben Panzer Harris.
Molly vs Hoffman

I knew going into this game that it would be brutal, neither Panzer or Guild are known for their subtlety.
But the the power looped burning train of death that is the rail golem smashed into Molly turn 2. I quickly soulstones keeping her alive (barely) The come back never quite happened due to an inability to draw a crow or any card above an eight.

went through all my
It was great to finally get to play Ben, even if it meant being destroyed. (not unexpected really)
Finished up 1-9 to Mr Harris.

And that was it five games over two day done. There were prizes given out but I have no idea who won what if you really want to know pop over to the rankings and the results will be there somewhere.

I have to say it was a great weekend and really well run by Stuart (more likely Claire did all the hard work)
I learned a few lessons, mainly pay attention to whats happening, choose schemes you actually think you can do and remember the bloody plan.
Also whine about cards and luck less (this maybe a separate rant in the near future) and realize earlier that because of a dodgy tooth you've been spitting when you talk all weekend and you really shouldn't be allowed out in public.

Thanks to everyone for the games and the chat and everything else I've forgotten.
I think it's time to put away Molly and Seamus for a while they've had a good run this year. Next up will be some Nicodem with a bit of Marcus thrown in for variety.

If you liked the sound of this remember there is a Scottish GT coming up that you should all check out and plenty more events to try out as well.

Bringing Molly back from the dead

I have been somewhat absent on here of late. I do not get much time to do much gaming at the beginning of the year due to work. Plus my second daughter was born in December, so I have been juggling work and child rearing duties rather than gaming.

Boarfaux was my first tournament in 2016 and before the weekend I had actually only managed two games of Malifaux. Of those only one  was with the new GG2016 schemes. Nothing better than learning in a live situation though.

As usual John ran a great event. Between him and Warboar there were some fantastic tables and the Warboar staff were great. They even brought us drinks during games...apparently their booze license is in the works so hopefully next time I will have a couple of beers to improve my gameplay. This was their first Malifaux tournament at the venue and I am looking forward to the next one. It was also the biggest in London to date at 32 players.

I was keen to get Molly back on the table after such a long break. It was also good to go into the tournament with no expectations other than to learn more.

It was a great day and I managed to play against four fantastic opponents - none of whom I had ever played before. So how did it go?

What's (Lost) love (4) got to do with it.

Second tournament of the year for me, once again down at Wayland Games in Hockley. Lost Love 4 the annual event run by Dave "Mr TO" Brown. For those that haven't been Lost love is a 45ss fixed master event with a 70ss hiring pool.

I took the plucky young reporter Molly with a pool of horrors and spirits. As I take a fairly static list with Molly the pool restriction wasn't an issue for me. I took my usual horror Molly list with a few spirits in the pool in case I wanted to run Spirit Molly (something I always want to do but never get around to). I also put a few Belles in the pool so people would think I was cool and knew what I was doing but I didn't hire one all day.

I really enjoyed the event last year despite taking home the (very handsome) wooden spoon. So I was keen this year to use Lost Love as a test to see how, or if I've progressed.

So after a quick tea it was time for registration, this may have taken a bit longer than expected due to a last minute surge in tickets there were 33 of us there excited to push some toys around. (Odd number meant there was a buy but you can't have everything)

So once registered we got to got to see what we were working with... GG16 the new tournament scheme set for the year. I'll get my GG16 review out the way now, despite not really understanding most of them I like the changes made to the schemes and I think they should have a positive impact on the game.

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:

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

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...