Plenty of Bad Luck in 2015

Well it has been an eventful 2015. The blog has taken off and I've done some tournaments and expanded my Ten Thunders. I thought I'd do a quick year in review post.

2015 Ten Thunders

So much fun. I played games regularly. I switched from Mei Feng to Shenlong when he came out, but I also used Yan Lo quite a lot despite his many, many failings. Shenlong did all that I'd hoped for. Fun and complex, his condition switching was great, and having all those extra positive flips for focus and df really helped. I found him working well with Low River Style and Wandering River Style.  I really got to know Yan Lo almost back to front. I found he is just as bad as the comments say. He is so bad I wrote an article on him. I've had debates with the Abnormalifaux group about him. They say "yeah but Zoraida or Lucius are the worst masters in the game, and he isn't quite that bad." My view is that if a Master is in contention for worst in the game, then he/she has issues that need to be addressed. He is so far down from the mid tier masters it is not even funny. I keep running across the same hopeful posts from people who are convinced it he could just be played a different way with some secret combo, then he'd be great. He isn't. He is fun by the bucket load but he is a bad master.

So what about TT themselves? Well I've enjoyed them. I've played them at competitions and in countless friendly games. They are a solid faction with some real superstars. Sensai Yu and the Ten Thunder Brothers are stonking brilliant. Chiaki has always done well. The Katanaka sniper is well worth those 7ss and with Shenlong he is brilliant. Because he can take Focus as a (0) near Shenlong, he is able to move and shoot or with a peasant he can do 2 focused shots. That is usually too much effort. Him and a peasant are usually enough. Yin is great and I don't take her enough. Kang in the right list, being healed by Sensai Yu using Low River Style makes him into the Hulk. But overall I have been underwhelmed a bit by the TT in terms of flexibility and variety. Shenlong & Mei have impressed me, I've enjoyed Yan Lo tons and I'm looking forward to Lynch. The problem I've found is that the builds tend to end up a bit samey with some really interesting models always left on the shelf

2015 Tournaments

So I went to some great tournaments in 2015. Darkfaux and Septembers Curse were the highlights for me. I actually won a couple of games at Septembers Curse with Shenlong, came in the middle of the pack and had so much fun. I went to Crofaux in Croydon. So much effort goes into tournaments. John Burgess and Andy had worked really hard, but I was disappointed to draw a bye at Crofaux. I understood it and accepted it but it took the edge off the day a bit, especially as it ran late and I'd given up a day with the family to play Malifaux - hanging round for 3 hours between games due to the bye was a pain. So I think for me Septembers Curse wins the best tournament of the year - best terrain, best TOing, best goodie bags and a custom printed fate deck. 

2015 Performance

Ok, this is a difficult one to judge. On the upside I've played a ton of games with the TT. I really got to know Yan Lo almost back to front. Sadly I seem to be getting worse at the game. I think it is partly that the Anormalifaux and Darksphere players are really, really good. Insidious is in the Top Ten players in the UK and the others are really good. I've never pushed myself to work out optimum crew builds and learning the strategies/schemes by heart. So it looks like my New Years resolution will have to be to focus more and learn the schemes.strats.

All in all it's been a great year of Malifaux for me and I've really enjoyed it.