The UKGT - Washed Up

Round four in full swing

I'm typing this as I'm still coming down from an incredible weekend at the largest ever Malifaux tournament.  Mike, Matt, Lee and the rest of the guys put on a fantastic weekend of 'Faux for sixty-six players and I enjoyed every minute. Having the venue under forty drive minutes from my house was also a bonus.

This post is going to be a very quick high level of the event from my perspective.  I may drill into some specifics in later posts.

First I should congratulate the overall winner Ben Crowe with Outcasts, as well as John Wharton in second, and Graham Bursnell in third with Arcanists. It's good to see the podiums going to a range of different places in UK, another sign of the health of the game across the country.

The whole event was a blast and it was great to catch up with so many folks from around the UK for two days of great games and better banter.  The community took to the event in great spirit. With my first round opponent arriving late following some overindulgence I had to be re-paired.

On Saturday night most of us headed over to a local brewery for a private function in their bar. This gave some of us a chance to catch up with a special guest and living Malifaux legend Neverata (aka Jo). For those who don't know her, Jo can claim a significant part of the credit for popularizing the game in the UK.  Back in the day we attended many events together and I had a great time chatting and reminiscing about battles past.

Sunday morning dawned and after a night at the local brewery a number of players looked as green as a gremlin, literally and figuratively.

My opponents across the weekend, most of who I'd never played before, were all great guys which seemed representative of the experiences throughout.

On the table I had a lackluster time, ending up 16th of 66 players with 11 TP and +3 Diff, from; three wins, two draws, and a loss. Hardly a stellar performance but not something I'm ashamed of, despite being repeatedly told I'm 'washed up' by a few players.

Naturally my thoughts run to all the twists of luck against me over the weekend but the truth is my play overall simply wasn't good enough. A pair of stupid errors turned my fifth round game from a win to draw. I chose one scheme incorrectly which cost me a victory point, and made a basic activation order error which cost me another.  Getting my game rate up again will smooth these errors over in the longer term.

My crew selection was also a little all over the place. I need to do more list building in advance so I've better 'default' options to tailor on the day rather than building complete lists on the fly.

In the end My only loss came to overall event winner and all round great guy Ben Crowe with Levi in Stake a Claim, and was always going to be a poor match up for me and I need to think about that in more detail.

So what's next?

For the UK scene all eyes turn to the Masters Invitational in January which fires the starting gun on the 2015 season and promises to have the best standard of Malifaux play anywhere, ever.

For myself I'm revitalized for the game and looking forward to a few events I have lined up before the end of the year and trying to decide which Arcanist master I want to try my hand at next.

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I'm torn between the three, although I'm leaning to the left pair of the trio above.

Prelude to the M2GT - I'm not Dead!

It’s been a while since I posted here. The good news is I'm not dead!

A lot has been going on in real life and this has limited my hobby time to just the minimum required to play the odd game and paint the occasional toy for several months now.  To stay sharp I need to average ten or more games a month, and right now I'm running closer to three.  So frankly my competitive edge isn't what it was a year ago.

By the time you read this I’ll be playing in this year’s UKGT. This will by my fifth, having played in or marshaled at all of the previous singles GTs. The 2014 GT however will be the biggest Malifaux tournament ever held, and competition will be as fierce as ever before. Over six rounds close to seventy players will be fighting it out for first place and automatic Masters Qualification. 

The growing tournament scene is a testament not only to the brilliance of M2e but also to the welcoming nature of the UK Malifaux community, and long may that continue.

There's been a lot of discussion about the runners and riders for this event and who will come out on top.  To my mind there are at least a dozen players on the roster more than capable of winning. Things will be close and I predict the event will hinge on small edges. Much will depend on the strategy and scheme pool in play when top players meet.

One thing I haven't heard discussed is the nature of this being two day event impacting on players. A number of the top contenders for the podium are more used to one day events rather than two and I'll be interested to see if this has an impact.  To win a two day event, especially over six rounds you will have to play other top players in the room, not always so in a one day.

Bag packed and ready to go.

There is also a case of stamina, Malifaux is mentally taxing and longer events become mentally draining. There's also the social side, a two day event comes with a couple of nights socializing. While the social aspect is a vital part of what makes the event so fun over indulgence has claimed many victims over the years.  Stamina may well be a factor in the overall outcome.

Personally speaking I'm not overly confident and I’d realistically like to end the weekend on four wins and score more than eighty rankings points, which would mean finishing fourteenth or higher depending on final numbers.

However I perform this weekend I know it’s going to be a blast. The UKGT has always been a festival of Malifaux and I'm looking forward to the atmosphere and catching up with the community again.

Good luck to all participating, I'll see you on the other side.

For a forum discussion...

Randomly posted for a discussion in this thread.

MultiMedia

If you follow me on Twitter you've probably already seen these, but I've done a couple of short video battle reports based from VASSAL matches.  

They're up on YouTube now;

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.