ITC: Abnormalifaux Rises!

I haven’t had much time to write lately, but I really wanted to cover ITC because it was an amazing event and has really reignited my interest in Malifaux (even if it felt like there was a NB support group there about how crap out waves 3 and 4 were… but I digress). Before I get into the actual games I would just like to thank Mike Marshall for running yet another amazing event. Mike has now run two of my three favourite events I’ve ever been to (Daffcon 2016 and ITC 2017). The third one was in Canada, though I’m sure Mike would’ve run it even better. Also thanks to all the judges and other volunteers who were great and looked like they were having a blast. I’m still unsure if we will get a team together for next year or not, but if not I definitely plan to volunteers as a helper/judge. Finally thanks to everyone at Element games. Wow, what a venue. So far the only other venue I’ve been to that compares is Firestorm in Cardiff. Also it was lovely that they noticed me eating a salad I bought elsewhere on the Saturday as I couldn’t eat the provided sandwiches (which I am totally okay with) and offered to get me a salad for the next lunch, which they did. So props on that, they really went over and beyond my expectations. Finally, having an on site bar is fantastic and the late hours were great too. Honestly one of my favourite parts of the weekend was drunkenly playing Dom Westerland and James Reeves in Guildball (borrowing James’ Masons team) and trying to explain to some of the Finnish team how the game worked. 3 Games of Malifaux (and several pints) during the day and still was up for some Werewolf (Paul Butler is always a werewolf…) and Guildball (and more pints) at night. What an awesome time. Other big highlight was just chatting with a bunch of new players. Was great seeing Elinore, Martin and the rest of their team again as I had met them at Nationals 2015 and had faced Martin in Daffcon Frostgrave event. Also was great chatting with the Americans who were just excellent blokes. Also props to Team Trump Card for winning the event and for embracing their role as the heels of Malifaux by dressing up in super American gear. Loved it. Anyway, enough gushing let’s get on to the actual games.

Arran (Metalhed), Francois, Pippa, Me, Brad (Mechanical Dove)

So I lied… before we get on to the games I want to talk about my team. Abnormalifaux brought a team! That’s right we were repping the blog. Though only 4 of the 5 of us have actually written for the blog, but still, we are a true team and I was really excited to see how we would do. Also nervous though as I think we had played a combined 4 games or fewer of malifaux in the previous 1-2 months (I’ve been playing a lot of Guildball and a few other guys have been as well or were just generally busy) and one team member Brad (Mechanical Dove) was forced to play a different faction and ended up using a Master he had never won a game with (hamelin) for the whole weekend. For simplicities sake Brad went fixed master Hamelin, Francois went fixed Nellie, Philippa went fixed Ironsides except one round where she dropped Raspy, so it was really only Arran and I that were swapping Masters, and both of us only ended up using 2 of the 3 we brought (Sorry Tara/Pandora).

A statistical look back at my Malifaux games in 2016

So last year I did a statistical breakdown of my 13 tournaments. This year I only attended 6 events AND I actually decided to track the details of all my games, not just tournaments. In the past I only tracked my W/L record and which master I was using. So here is an article that is gonna look at my factions/masters, which schemes/strats I took, what my opponents ran, etc. I also will make some comparisons to last year (mostly in what I ran). Hopefully this is interesting for someone other than me, but I always quite enjoy the statistical breakdown pieces anyone posts.

First off I'm gonna start with a little comparison between the factions/masters I used in 2016 compared to my first 1 1/2 years of Malifaux (2014-2015). Prior to 2016 I'd only played a handful of games outside of Neverborn (all with Viktorias). 2016 I failed at my goal of getting the rainbow badge, but did branch out of Neverborn more than every before. In 2014-2015 I used Neverborn in 95% of my games. In 2016 that was wayyyy down to 58%. Even I was surprised to see that Gremlins was my 2nd most played faction, but there ya go. 

Welcome (back) to Malifaux

Well after too long an absence, I've finally had a game of Malifaux. I thought I might jot down some reflections on how it felt after a 6 month break. Luckily my good friend Francois stepped in to give me a game. He ran:

Shenlong

Sensai Yu

The Shadow Emissary

The Lone Swordsman

Wandering River Monk

A peasant

A TT Brother.

The strategy was extraction.

The first thing that struck me was how rusty I was at crew selection. I went with Pandora as my go to Master. She is just so good and super fun to play. Plus people get nervous when you activate her because he actually has an impact on the game. Just the threat of know she can activate is worrying for an opponent. 

I took 

Pandora (The Box Opens, Wings of Darkness, and Fears Given Form). I like my girl to be up and hurting people.

Widow Weaver

Waldgeist

Doppleganger

Primordial Magic

Nekima

Terror Tot.

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?"

Pandora Bites Back; Tournament report of Bitefaux April 2016

Wow, another tournament. I can hardly believe I've had two tournaments so close together. I got lucky as my wife decided to go to Spain. Sadly she hates Malifaux, Wargaming, Comic books, Sci Fi, and tournaments so play time can be seriously restricted. 

I went to Bitefaux in Chessington, London (UK. It was held in a stunningly nice church hall. Not an old shed but a genuinely big, modern and spacious Church activity centre. We were in two lovely big rooms with big windows on a gloriously sunny spring day. It helped make the atmosphere light and pleasant. I was really pleased about that as I'd had an anxiety attack the night before the tournament, so I was feeling rough on the way to the venue. Luckily I'd bumped into Insidious Madness as we got out of the same train carriage and a walk in the sunshine cheered me up no end. 

I took Pandora. The strategies/schemes were prepublished and they were great for the Mistress of Mental Hate. If only she had a decent player controlling her. 

Pandora cries at Boarfaux

Ok tournament write up time. 

This was one of those rare times when my wife gave me permission to go to a tournament. What a tournament. Boarfaux, held in the fabulous Paradise cafe Warboar in Bromley, London (UK). A 50ss fixed faction event in 2016 using Gaining Grounds and the new schemes. 

Now I was very nervous going into this tournament. Not only am I one of the worst Malifaux players in the UK, but I'm also very inexperienced with Neverborn. I'd had 4 games with Pandora in the run up (2 wins, 2 losses). I also have trouble knowing what the strategies are and I have never scored more than 1 to 2 points of a strat. If I get 5 points overall I have had a high scoring game by my standards. I was therefore worried I'd be a boring and disappointing opponent. Still it was a chance to play 4 games in a row, see my friends and some of the wider community in a great location. 

Battle report: Pandora v Kirai

So here is a short battle report for my first outing with Pandora

I had 26ss to play with. The Strategy was Turf War. I took Take Prisoner and Distract as my schemes. Dr Walnut took Breakthrough and A Line in the Sand! 

I was really nervous when it came time to deploy. He had Kirai, Izamu, Lost Love and Philip & the Nanny. I had 

Pandora The Box Opens, Aether Connection and Wings of Darkness (I think)

Candy Best Behaviour

Doppleganger

Primordial Magic. 

I was really, really sure I was going to be wiped out easily. My crew was built to buff and debuff but I didn't actually have any hitters. On the upside I was drawing 7 cards a turn and able to prevent 2 damage on my prevention flips for Pandora. She also had Terrifying 13(All). That at least made me confident she would be ok in the centre for a bit. 

As we went into turns 1-2, the Kirai crew just grew, adding Gaki, Onryo and a Hanged. I think he must have added a good 30ss to his crew over the game. Filthy, filthy ressers, especially in a 26ss game and he was basically running a 50s crew. 

2015 Tournament Report: A Year in Review

I was hoping to have this article out at the end of 2015... But it ended up taking longer than I thought it would and I've also been busier than I thought I'd be so oh well. At least it's up now.

Before I go into my 2015 tournament statistical analysis I'd just like to quickly run over 2014 as technically my first two events in Malifaux were in that year.

My first ever Malifaux event was a 8-10 player event, Fools of Fate at Wayland Games. It was a three-rounder fixed-master (I think) event. At the time I only had a very small pool of Nightmares to run. I ended up winning my first two games(Squatters Rights and Turf War) before losing on the top table in the final game to James Reeves in Reckoning. This started two major trends of my 2014 events: 1) Sucking at Reckoning and 2) Facing James Reeves a lot.

My second ever event was also a small event at wayland games (I think 12 players made it that time), In the Name of the Master. This was actually the only event to date I ended with a losing record, as I won my first game (Squatters Rights) before losing my final two in excruciating fashion (Second game was a Dreamer off vs Dave Hill (Reconnoitre) that just went on forever and ended in a 1vp win for him. Final game (Reckoning again) I just didn't see my opponent's model and walked right into a trap. Oops!)

So I ended 2014 with a 3-3 tournament record, having used Dreamer in every game (as I would continue to do for quite a while).

Anyway, now that that stuff is out of the way, let's get to the meat of the article. In 2015 I went to 13 events and played in 50 games in these events. It would have been 51 be I had a first round bye at that event (which counted as a 10-5 win). For the purposes of this article I'm excluding the bye from all statistics. Overall I am really happy with my performance as I won 38 of these games for a win % of 76%. I also only had 1 tie all year which was against Lee Walstow in Reckoning at Summer Showdown.

To break down my record further, here is how I did a the various strategies: For this chart I decided to include the 2014 events to give the strategies a larger sample size (also because my Reckoning record becomes artificially inflated if you ignore the fact that I was 0-2 in it in 2014).

Badluck & Blood in 2016

Well the last of the mince pies have been eaten (before I could even get my paws on them) and the decorations are away. A warm December has turning into a nasty January and I've done my 2015 Year in Review post already. 

Now on to 2016. New Year means New Faction, especially as the Abnormalifaux crew are running a slow grow. Very excited. One of the rules was that it had to be a completely new master, and fully painted. As I've done a year with TT I thought I could use Misaki. I haven't tried her yet. She is just sitting on the shelf painted and ready. Still, that felt a bit like I would be playing new comers with lots of models I knew well, just with a different master. That didn't seem fair. I thought about Lynch perhaps as Neverborn. I already have Mr Graves, Mr Tannen and 3 Terror Tots painted for him when I want to run him as Neverborn. This was tempting but there was a big problem. I hate the Hungering Darkness so I threw the model away and started converting a new one. There was no way it was going to be ready in time. 

Masters 2015 (Which takes place in 2016, just so you know)

I wasn't actually planning on writing anything about Masters before I went. Much like Nationals, it is too big an event and there is too much going on to take enough notes to do a proper tournament report. But I did think my experience at Masters is worth writing a few short (for me) words about.

My first proper tournament was the League of Extraordinary Henchmen weekend events in January 2015. Philippa and I were lucky enough to get a ride up there from Joe Wood and it was a great weekend. It was at that point I finally got to start testing myself competitively and see how I matched up. It was also, for the most part, the first time I got to meet people in the Malifaux scene. I'd met a few people, including Mike Marshall, James Reeves, Dave Hill, at earlier small events at Wayland but wasn't really a part of the scene at that point. So LOEH last year was thus both the start of my first year of competitive gaming, and the beginning of building a whole new social group in my life. As fun as the gaming was, going out for drinks and dinner on the Saturday night was probably the highlight.

Fast forward a year. After doing far better than I expected over the last year I managed to qualify for Masters. So Philippa and I were back, a year later, where the whole year of Malifaux started. The best part was, instead of being new and not knowing a ton of people, we were getting together with a bunch of friends from all over the country. We even had a fewer others from the Dark Sphere crowd come up for at least one day. Considering how I work in a non-social environment (there are only two of us here in London) and Philippa and I live on our own, the Malifaux community has become one of my main social circles. And what a great community it is. Nationals was so busy and exhausting that I found it hard to really get much socialising done. This weekend was even more about enjoying hanging out with friends than it was about playing for me. Especially since I wasn't particular confident in my ability to make it to Day Two of Masters. I spent most of the train ride up reading the new schemes for LOEH Sunday. Anyway, I'm rambling again, but I just wanted to thank everyone in the Malifaux community for making me feel so welcome and being such a huge part of why I love living in the UK. Also the dinner Saturday was fantastic and hilarious. Really enjoyed how relaxed and social everything was. Thanks to Maria for organising the dinner.

Every time the conversation about Masters has occurred since I started playing Malifaux, people would say that it was the best event of the year. Often saying that high level of competition was balanced with a relaxed atmosphere due to people having nothing left to prove. I wasn't sure I actually believed it, but it was definitely true. On day one I managed to play 3 great games against top notch players I had either never face or never beaten (you still have a winning record over me Dave :P). Even in the games where I won by a lop-sided score, it was a much closer game than the score would indicate. After (shockingly) getting through day 1 undefeated and (even more shockingly) not taking Dreamer out of the case all day (Pandora is so darn good), I was on to Day Two. Day Two started with my one game of the weekend where I didn't use Pandora (Dreamer finally coming out) and was a 9-9 draw that saw me go through to the next round due to previous day's results. The semi-finals saw me take the first punch as Huggy took out Nekima early, but I managed to recover  to win the game 8-7.

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.

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.

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.

Henchmen Hardcore Recap

On Tuesday night, our typical Malifaux night at Dark Sphere, Peter ran a Henchmen Hardcore event which ended up with 10 players. I was going back and forth between two lists but decided to go with Neverborn rather than Outcasts. For reference, the Outcast list I would have gone with was Taelor, Bishop, Johan and HodgePodge Effigy. Instead I went with Hungering Darkness (Aether Connection and Addict), 2 Illuminated and a Depleted. The plan was for the depleted to tarpit and/or just sit there going defensive and scoring the strategy while Hungering Darkness put out Brilliance for the illuminated to take advantage of. With Aether Connection and a 5 soulstone cache Huggy could tank really well, especially against non-casting actions. There were four games each and my first game was against again fellow blog contributor RelaxedDave.

List Building at Dark Faux

As my full-sized report on Dark Faux is dragging along and still not ready to be published I thought I would post some more specific musings that wouldn't be covered in the main tournament report. Namely, I want to talk about list building. List building in a very short period of time is one of the most underrated skills in Malifaux. You have to have some idea of what all your models do, when to take them, and when not to. Also you have to be able to consider the strategy, schemes, terrain and scenario. Obviously knowing the strategy in advance you can think of some combinations that would be useful but until you have all the need information you can't make any final decision (or at least you shouldn't). This is also why pre-releasing schemes and pre choosing lists is problematic as you are still lacking in intel, not knowing your opponent or the board itself.

Due to the importance of list building and the fact that I have been talking about it a lot recently with other Abnormalifaux members, I thought I would go through my thought process on the lists I built for a couple of the games at Dark Faux. This will not be completely in-depth but will touch upon the main considerations I made. Also keep in mind that Dark Faux was a fixed master event so it is slightly different from games where you won't know the opponents master when building your crew.

Game 1: Squatters Rights (Corner) vs Maria

LITS
Assassinate
Distract

Plant Explosives

Vendetta

Summer Showdown Tournament Report

Well after almost 3 months since my last event (name it) I finally was back in a tournament. This was also the first tournament I had done since finishing painting Zoraida and Pandora so for the first time I was going into the event with more than just one master (Dreamer) to choose from. Was really looking forward to the added tactical choices this entailed. Also since the strategies weren’t pre-announced I would have to be making quick choices. My goal for the day was to use at least two different masters and get four good games in. After not being in a proper event in a while I was too rusty to worried about placing (although obviously I was hoping to do well)

Game 1: Reckoning (Standard) vs Lee Walstow

LITS
Bodyguard

Breakthrough

Plant Evidence

Deliver the Message

Deployment

My List:

Pandora with On Wings of Darkness, Fugue State, Box Opens

Primordial Magic

Nekima with Fears Given Form

Coppelius with On Dreaming Wings

Doppelganger

Silurid

7 Stones

Neverborn: my painted collection

After completing #TOMB2 and uploading photos of my finished crew, I decided I should do a photo of all my painted malifaux models since I haven't had a big photo of everything together yet. I spent a weekend doing touchups on all my metal models, varnishing them (since I hadn't done that the first time), and painting all the base edges black (since many had paint splattered on them). The process was quite fun as I got to see how much I have improved from my earliest models (Dreamer crew) to the most recent (Bishop, Nekima).

Here are a couple shots of all the models I have currently painted. For anyone who is curious, 21 of the models are metal and 27 are plastic (as you can see I am not at all opposed to the old metals like some people are). Just a note that their are two models in here that I didn't paint as they were given to me by other players (thank you guys!). The Brutal Effigy was painted by Mike Marshall and Lazarus was painted by Joel Henry.

#TOMB2 Month 4: This is the End

Month 3 Catchup

Before I get into all the fun month 4 stuff, since I hadn't finished month 3 in time I thought I would include some photos of my month 3 model Nekima here now that she is completed. Nekima ended up being a very long process but I am quite happy with the results. Went for Grey skin like Lilitu and gave her Red Clothes and Blue wings (keeping with the Grey,blue,red colours used on Lilitu/Lelu, my only other painted Nephilim) Also tried putting a gloss coat on the sword to see if I liked the shine (it's fairly subtle but I think it adds a little bit. This was my first attempt at proper blonde hair and it ended up being a bit more yellow than I'd planned. Since it isn't on a human though it's not a big deal. Nekima has been a blast to play even though I haven't come anywhere near to getting her rolling at peak effectiveness yet. It is great to get her up to min damage 6 from the Nurse and watch her attack 4 times in a turn (3 in her activation, once from obey). Will definitely be trying to get some more playing time as the competitive community seems split on how great she is.

Learning Lynch

I could be wrong but I think Lynch might be the master everyone wants to play but often feels he (or they) come up short when it matters. Who doesn't want to be a card shark in a card game!

So, as I am currently 'learning Lynch' myself, from the Neverborn angle I should point out, I thought I might do a bit of a spiel on what I have discovered so far.

Quick disclaimer, I'm no pro, I have played 4 games so far only with Lynch, these are my initial thoughts on Lynch and I hope to post additional musings and tactical genius (hah!) as I go along!

#TOMB2 Month Three: Nekima Rises (or not)

Month Three Hobby
Well here we are at the end of another month. This month was both more and far less successful than the previous months. I got 2 games in this month with Zoraida (more than the first two months combined). However, due to the realities of real life getting in the way (as I am currently in the process of moving to a new place so haven't had much time to set up my stuff and paint) I have not finished Nekima for the end of Month 3 :(. I'm probably about 50% done her at best and doubt I will have much more time this month to paint until I've finished the process of moving into a new place. So rather than focus on the painting failures, below I have included summaries of the two games I played with Zoraida this month.