Shared Scheme pool week 3

As last week seemed to be a success looks like we might as well try this again for next week.

This time I'm using the wonderful twitter bot @malifauxschemes  to generate the schemes.

• Extraction.
• Schemes: Convict Labour, Take Prisoner,Leave Your Mark,Set Up,Search The Ruins. 
• Deploy: Flank

Enjoy, let me know how you get on or if you want to do a quick battle report to guest on the blog.

*Edit as I realised that I didn't actually explain anything this time...

The basic idea is this,

• I'll post a scheme pool each week
• Use it just like you'd preflipped before a game
• People taking part can chat tactics and crews before they play
• After people can compare results and look for advice

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:

Cards or Dice & Chancing to win (not lose)

One of the key differences for Malifaux that every player notices is, of course, no dice and a deck of cards in its place. There must be endless articles on this fact but I thought I would muse on a few things over the matter and a brief take on playing the odds.

While many of the other elements of the game of Malifaux, Schemes & Strategies or building your crew 'on the fly' are also quite unique and go a long way to make Malifaux the amazing game that it is the use of cards, for me, is the real big separator from other systems.

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.