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.