Baptism of Fire

My new Kaeris

I've had a hectic month of work and running the Team GT have limited progress on my own crews.  Likewise my #ToMB slow grow efforts have been well, slow. I did get a couple of games in using that month's purchases; Malifaux Child and The Captain.

The former has proved very useful and is now a default choice. At this point I'm thinking that The Captain looks better on paper than he actually is, more testing will tell.

I did manage to finally finish painting Kaeris, and I'm quite pleased with the result. Switching out the basic wings for some larger resin ones coupled with an elevated basing position really give the model more impact, she now stands at almost 10cm table to wing-tip.


With my newly finished master in case I headed to a small one day event at Games of War in Seaham. The event was a ton of fun, everyone was a great laugh. I managed to take first place on TP, and scored best painted to boot. A very positive result for what I was planning to simply treat as a test run for Kaeris.

I want to make this post the beginnings of my thoughts on how to play Kaeris. I'm far from having all the answers yet but I'm at the stage where I feel I have something to contribute with her.  I'm finding the M&SU's mechanical angel much more subtle than the flame-thrower wielding menace I'd presumed. She seems to be a skirmisher, at her best on the edge of the action. Swooping in to take out lone enemy and then darting back into cover.

This is partly because her defenses are somewhat weak for an Arcanist, her common resist stats are both sixes and other than Armor 1 there's nothing between the enemy and her twelve wounds.  This means being careful with her placement, subject to the ministrations of  major damage dealers Kaeris will fold fast.

Fortunately speed isn't a problem. Flight combined with Wk6 gives her impressive speed over the board. The Grab and Drop upgrade also gives her the potential to move another eight inches with an enemy in tow.  Using this positioning power is going to be key to getting the most out of her.

This has led me to a general core which is;

Kaeris
+ Upgrades [4]
+ 6ss Cache [2]

Malifaux Child [3]

Joss [10]
+ Imbued Energies [1] 

Mechanical Rider / Howard Langston [12] 

Soulstone Miner [6]

This gives a 38ss block gives me solid options to build up forty-five and fifty stone crews. I'll run through this core quickly below. I'm going to skip over Kaeris' upgrades as there's an article worth of materiel on those alone.

The Malifaux Child is the cheapest way to hand out burning to your own stuff. I can ping two models with Flaming Halo by throwing any tome to trigger 'Turn it Up'. This then lets Kaeris activate and draw cards via 'Truth In Flame' or lets the models take advantage of the burning, depending on her upgrade selection.  At a pinch it can also cast Immolate or Accelerant from Kaeris' card and has a mediocre healing spell of its own.

Joss makes it into my core as Kaeris' skirmishing nature means she will frequently need a solid combat blocker to hold the centre and prevent your crew being shattered by combat monsters. The customer facing roll of getting charged by Hungering Darkness and Rogue Necromancies is a thankless task, but someone has to do it.

There's been a lot of recent debate about the Mechanical Rider, I'm finding it potent but not overwhelming at the moment, that being said it offers a solid range of support and objective running options and so mostly makes the cut.  I swap her out for Miss Step (Howard) when I need a much more aggressive choice.

Finally the Soulstone Miner adds some additional objective running capacity. I've a separate article planned for this one in the not too distant future so I'll not dwell on this hear. 

Those are my initial thoughts on Kaeris and crew options. There's plenty I haven't tried yet and I'll add more thoughts as I go.

#ToMB - Hobby Wobble

Tale of Malifaux bloggers is moving into it's second month so it's about time for me to pen some Kaeris thoughts.

I played two games with her early in the month and was a little underwhelmed initially. So much so I had a brief hobby wobble and considered switching to Rasputina.

Having played my third game with the crew over the weekend things have started to gel a bit more for me and I'm back on track.

Kaeris is certainly a very fun master. Having played a lot of Ramos in M2e, and Collette / Zoraida in M1.5 I'm not used to actually attacking things with my master.  I could take to this getting stuck in lark. For this I want to run quickly through some thoughts on the minions in the crew;

Fire Gamin

The backbone of any crew are it's cheap significant minions*, the 4ss Fire Gamin are Kaeris' default choice. Their key benefits are their mobility (Wk5 / Cg7) and their attacks handing out burning. This is particularly useful on their Sh5 ranged attack, which with weak damage two and a point of burning is handing out a good deal of damage for such a small model.

They pay for that with defensive stats which are a pile of fours making them fairly squishy, even with armor one.

Gunsmiths

I like a bit of Gun-Fu, so want to like Gunsmiths. I really do. I'm not quite sold on them though. In theory they're damage dealers but for all their toolbox of tricks they have no way of getting above weak damage two.

Equilibrium

It almost feels like they're tripping over their defensive trigger which gives them fast, forcing some of the rest of their options to be toned down.  One thing I do think they'll do well is Vendetta, they have a lot of good options to 'finish' enemy models, which is what you want for that scheme.

I need a few more games with them but right now they feel like a solid 6ss model, which would be fine if they didn't cost 7ss. That said all seven stone minions tend to be in an awkward place power wise anyway, they aren't cheap and lack the power of henchmen and enforcers.

Ultimately I don't see ever using two of them in a crew once I have more options, but one may be viable.

I'm not going to cover Kaeris or the Soulstone Miner in this post as I want to cover them in more detail in their own posts later.

Month Two Dawns

I carried $5 over from month one, added to the $25 available in months two this gives me $30 to spend.  I'm not really sure what I want to add to the crew, the captain is fairly high on my list. I'll need to find suitable conversion parts for him though. I'm also tempted to convert up an Eternal Flame. I have one eye on adding a Mechanical Rider in month three, which would necessitate having $5 left over. 

I'll post my final choices as I make them.

*In the 1.5 sense, read; None Peon, non-Insignificant models.

RUTG2: Shaking Hands

Quick post following last week's Rumble Under the Gaslight II tournament (aka JimmyFaux2). This was held at a great local store an hour south of me in Sheffield; The Outpost.  For a local event the venue was certainly packed, 32 players played shoulder to shoulder over three rounds.

At three rounds a 32 player 40ss event will always have a higher level of randomness in the final standings than normal. Top players may not clash due to the breadth of the field, and smaller games make it hard to build a crew against adverse scheme pools and masters at the same time.

My hopes of the podium were dented with the round one pairings. I was matched up against UK Masters runner up Greg Piskosz, which is the game I want to quickly touch on. My Ramos was facing his had Jack Daw, playing Turf War with; Distract, Assassinate, Vendetta, and Deliver the Message.

Round one in progress

Early on turn three I delivered the message (unannounced) for 2VP, and Greg was limited to 2VP on Vendetta, both our crews were engaged in the Turf War zone and highly distracted. We looked at each other and shook hands for a 9-9 draw, four activations into turn three.

I like the fact we've reached a point in Malifaux where players can read a situation and know the outcome of the game. This speaks of a maturity in the game and a positive state for competitive play.

I managed to win my next two games, and ended the event in fourth, behind a podium of players on three of three wins. Congratulations to them.

Final Standings included another Gremlin podium, in this case for newcomer JP Stubbings. It's good to see we're starting to see a mix of factions doing well at events which points to a good level of balance in the meta at the moment.

Fourth still nets me just over ninety rankings points, which as the year progresses is a result well worth having. For those who haven't seen the UK's Malifaux rankings have moved from RHQ to a new site; www.malifauxrankings.com

My thanks to the guys who made that possible.

SmogCon - Aftermath

I'm back from SmogCon, alive. It's been a great weekend and I wanted to start by thanking all the people who made it possible, especially; Mike, Conrad, Lee and Matt. Without there guys the event wouldn't have been half the success it was.  I also wanted to thank my opponents and everyone who stopped by to say hello over the weekend, it was really great to meet you all.

For those who don't know SmogCon is a mini convention run over three days, and this year it hosted a significant number of Malifaux events including; story encounter, ranked tournament, random doubles, and a starter box tournament. 

There are a number of important (and not so important) things to cover from the weekend. So I'm going to skip the blow-by-blow from my perspective and focus on the key points I want to cover.

Guild Ball

There were demos of the new medieval fantasy football (soccer) miniatures game Guildball. Its Kickstarter launched on Friday and was funded in under twenty-four hours.

I got a demo of the game with it's creators at the Con and was very impressed with it.  It flowed brilliantly and had a real depth of play. There of lots of key action and resource management decisions built in.  I can really see this making a great tourney game in the future. 

Also I can't stress enough that it's NOT a Bloodbowl clone, unlike so many fantasy sports games we see. GB is it's own entity and even playing with card cutouts in the demo the world it was set in felt rich and deep. I can only imagine how cool it will be once it's played with painted teams and terrain. I can see this game surpassing Bloodbowl, and that's not something I say lightly.

So if you love Malifaux I'd recommend taking a look at Guild Ball. The game gripped me so much I've backed the KS, which is a first for me. I've never found a game I was willing to pay for before it's release but this is exceptional start to a promising new game..

New hotness aside it's time to dig back into my true gaming love, Malifaux...

non-Standard Deployment

The main event of the weekend was a 50ss, five round, fixed faction tournament. It's prominent as it's first major event in the UK to use non-Standard deployment types, as per the new Gaining Grounds.

These present some really interesting new tactical challenges; for example Power Ritual becomes quite a different scheme in corner deployment. This provides even more depth and re-playability to event play. So I'm glad to see these being adopted into the scene and hope we see them become the norm going forward. 

As Justin outed me on a recent Malifools episode I should declare an interest here. I was privileged to be close to the development of the new version of Gaining Grounds. Something my fellow players abused me for mercilessly whilst cutting my deck.

VP Before Diff

Another thing that marked the main event out was it was scored using; Tournament Points, Total VP and finally VP Differential. The use of total VP scored ahead of VP Differential in the scoring is the reverse of the UK (and GG) norm, where events are scored; TP, Diff, then VP.

While this in no way compromised the event it did reinforce for me that the way we normally do it is better. There were several instances where I could easily have given my opponents extra VP in game with no detriment to myself. This created opportunities to let players gain unnatural advantages.

The best example was in a game I lost to my club-mate Ant Hoult. It would have been easy for us to have the game end 9-10 and we would have both been better off for it.  Obviously we played properly and I lost 4-8, but the risk of this system remains.

The 7th Faction and Wave Two

Speaking of my club mate Ant, he won the main event, so congratulations to him. One of the main stories of the event however was the third place finish for Rob Smith with Gremlins. This marked a significant podium for the 7th faction.  Gremlin players have taken some lighthearted abuse for 'not being a proper faction'.  This podium may mark the tide turning. I'll be keeping an eye on the bayou.

The weekend also marked the start of Wave Two in competitive play. I encountered Kirai, Dreamer and Lucius during the weekend, as well as other W2 choices here and there.  Molly, Collette, and Wong also saw play so it's safe to say the full selection of models have now landed.  It's to soon to make meta and power level call but I'm looking forward to seeing how these shape up.

SmogCon

The Con itself is a primarily a Hordes Warmachine event and at times this was very evident. There were no Malifaux appropriate tables in the SmogPit (open play area) and the staff there seemed to have little idea what a Malifaux was. I heard tell an event I didn't attend had to be run by one of the players as the pit-staff didn't know what was happening.

This was a little disappointing and I'm hoping when I go to SmogCon next year that Malifaux feels more integrated and less tacked on. That being said I am planning to go back so it isn't a deal breaker.

So that's a very condensed write up of three days at SmogCon. I'm already looking forward to next year. Onward and upward!

The state of my wristband after the weekend.

SmogCon - before the storm

Quick post from the hotel room the night before SmogCon. I've arrived to a warm welcome at the venue. The tournament regulars are all on fine form and there's been some great banter in the bar. 

I've done a quick scout of the tables for Malifaux and they look great. BendyBoards have definitely come through on the terrain front. I'll get some photos of them up in the morning. 

Keep an eye on my twitter feed tomorrow as I've a few hours free to wander round the convention so I'll be grabbing as many photos as I can. 

Meanwhile much alcohol, and tea, has already been consumed and it's time I found my bed.

More tomorrow.

#ToMB - Out of tune

I managed my first ToMB game with with Kaeris, a narrow 6-5 victory against VASSAL newcomer JRoss' Seamus crew. The game itself was fairly standard, I did find Kaeris plays a little differently to the way I was expecting though. I'll share more cogent thoughts after my second game with her.

What I wanted to quickly touch on was playing with an un-tuned list. My normal 40ss Ramos list will draw on beasts, mercenaries and the contents of four different purchased items in order to fill out the 40ss of the crew. Where as my current Kaeris list draws from only two purchases, the box set and a Soulstone Miner;

Kaeris -- 7 Pool
 +Blinding Flame [1]
 +Born of Fire [2]
 +Purifying Flame [1]

Fire Gamin [4]
Fire Gamin [4]
Fire Gamin [4]

Gunsmith [7]
Gunsmith [7] 

Soulstone Miner [6]

This forces my Fire Gamin to cover a lot of bases. They need to run objectives and prop up my Gunsmiths in the damage dealing department.  The ability to truly tune a list is one of the primary advantages you gain as your Malifaux collection grows.  You'll see very few top crews with more than one type of model duplicated in their list. Even then it's rare to see three of anything deployed at the start of the game.

I think this is largely because it's important to have breadth of options in game. Having two of a model means you're not taking something which gives you more options 'in play', it just gives you the same options twice.

While he who has the most models wont always win choice is definitely an advantage in this game.

That being said a smaller collection does force you to learn to get the most out of each of your models. So you should be able to use them a little more effectively than someone who plays from a much wider base of models.

I'm looking forward to some more play time with Kaeris and sharing my thoughts. Meanwhile however I'm getting the final prep and painting done ahead of the mighty SmogCon this weekend.

#ToMB Month 0 - Disco Inferno

Like an increasing number of other members of the community I'm taking part in the Tale of Malifaux Bloggers (ToMB). Essentially this involves picking up a new crew and expanding it month by month.

We start by choosing $60 worth of models at Wyrd's store prices and adding $25 a month to it, blogging our thoughts along the way. I'm a fan of this sort of exercise, it makes you prioritise and breaks your hobby down into meaningful chunks. I've also looking for a way to move on from my Twenty Arcanists project last year.

You can read more about ToMB here, and in the thread on the Wyrd boards;

http://wyrd-games.net/community/topic/98442-tale-of-malifaux-bloggers-tomb/

After the Masters event I'm also very aware of some of the limitations I currently have with what's in my case. I'm weak in kill-based objectives.  I'm also struggling a bit with getting interact AP into my opponents half of the board early, although this is a secondary consideration.

I also need to consider the Mali-bros Tyrants of Painting (MXTOP) competition, which this month is focusing on models with ranged attacks. This leads me to playing Kaeris, which is handy because I have a spare Kaeris box laying about in my study anyway. I've not spent any time with the M&SU's flaming angel during beta but giving the new cards a once over I'm really keen to try her out.

Her general use of M&SU models will combo well with the good doctor and provide some good synergies.

The Kaeris set includes two Gunsmiths and three Fire Gamin, totalling 26ss of models, and will eat $40 of the $60 available. This crew is fairly aggressive and would benefit from access to a dedicated objective grabber. So I'll add a Soulstone Miner to my shopping list for month one, which will help out with the AP in my opponent's half issue.  This gives me $5 to carry over for next month.

I'm going to be interested to see how this shapes up, especially as there are some challenging parts to be painted in this crew. More next week when I've actually done something, I hope.

Meanwhile...