Who's in the box?

It feels like forever since I've written a blog post or played Malifaux. Now I'm back to blogging or at least trying to be. This isn't a "I burned out of Malifaux and I'm trying to recapture the love" post. I stopped playing Malifaux because I decided to put my house on the market and move out of London to Basingstoke. Various disasters have happened along the way and most of my collection remains in boxes in storage. I do have a crew packed in a KR multicase so hopefully I can actually get some games at a new club once I'm settled. This article is actually about why I chose  the only master I did to keep out of storage to play with. A "if you could only choose one master, who would it be and why?"

Monday Malifaux Musings: Strategy Fun Rankings

I thought I would try something different this post. Because I am the kind of person who likes to keep things organized (...sure why not) I've decided that I will organize all my crazy ramblings under the heading Monday Malifaux Musings. I was originally going to go with Madness' Monday Morning Malifaux Musings but I thought someone might charge me with excessive alliteration. 

Rather than focus on anything tactical I want to talk about FUN! Specifically about which Strategies I find lead to the most fun and least fun games. This was written before the new strategies came out for Gaming Ground 2015, but I will definitely do a part 2 next year including those strategies once I have played them all a few times. Thought I might as well combine this with my love/obsession with ranking things so therefore:

1)      Squatters Rights

Man I love Squatters Rights. It’s like all the good parts of the other strategies put into one. You have the fight in the centre from turf war (over the 3 middle markers), the need to have models that can function on their own like Reconnoitre (the outside markers), the need to take lots of interact actions (Stake a Claim), and the need to kill your opponent to stop them from doing all of these things (Reckoning I guess…). I also love Squatters Rights because I think it is the strategy that has the most tactical options open for it. You can try to win through speed by getting to the markers before your opponent can (especially the outside ones) through speedy models, From the Shadows allowing you to start deployed on the markers, or from utilizing pushes. You can win through manipulation (Doppelganger Don’t Mind Me, Chatty denying interacts, Obeying models off of markers so you can flip them, Lucius allowing all minions within 6” interact while in combat to name a few). You can win through killing power by just wiping your opponent off the markers. Every Master has a tactical way they can take on this strategy. I do believe it is the most balanced scheme by Master due to this reason and it is the most fun for this reason. There are so many ways you can go about the strategy (and denying your opponent his markers) that it leads to a great tactical chess match between opponents that I just love to see.