Tournament Time Management: So it is written

The M&SU approach Pandora with care.

Last Saturday I got to my first tournament in a few months. Having been out of the game for a while I expected to be rusty and so made the trek north to the 'So it is Written' event in Sunderland with mindset that this was essentially three practice games.

To be honest I was a little apprehensive the night before the event, would I still enjoy the tournament game after so long away?

By the morning this had evaporated though and I was genuinely excited to catch up with people and push my toys around again.

On the table I avoided major blunders, but I didn't manage my time as well as I needed to. Time management in tournament games is a critical skill, and one I clearly need to work on, as it cost me at least 5 VP diff during the day.

With that in mind here are my top tournament time management tips;

The timer I use at events

Know what time it is:  Most TO's don't make regular enough time calls. Get a app on your phone, wristwatch, or a countdown timer for your tournament bag. Set it at the start of each round and check it regularly, That way you'll always know how you're doing for time.

Practice Timed Games:  The week before a big event it's worth getting one or two games in using the timing rules on the day, so you get the feel for them.

Plan for four turns:  You can't rely on getting all five turns into a tournament game, even if you play quickly enough you may have a slow opponent. Plan to be winning at the end of turn four and five.

Think about lists in advance:  Most events give the strategy and deployment for each round in advance, It's often helpful to make 'dummy' lists in advance of the event to use as starting points once you see; terrain, opponent, and schemes. This speeds up crew selection and helps you think about how you want to approach the game in advance. 

This is also the main reason I'm keen for more events to publish scheme pools in advance, but that's a topic for another time.

Had I put these tips into practice at the event as well as I used to do  I would have done better at the event overall.  As it was I ended the event with on; a win, a draw, and a loss with zero diff.

Still that's what I expected and I had a great time; free tea, good company, and three games of Malifaux. What more you could you want from a day?

If you've any time management tips when you're at events, please share them in the comments!

Snow In September

It's time for me to pick up a new master, I've been torn between Colette and Rasputina for a little while. At a deadlock I did the only sensible thing I could do...

I asked twitter to decide for me.

I'm a dumb-ass.

Twitter has spoken and December help me my next project is a Rasputina crew, mostly because there will be more than enough Colette players out there as soon as the plastics hit.  My 'thanks' to everyone who gave me their thoughts on which I should choose and why.

Fortunately I own almost all of the models already, except maybe one model I'll get gouged for on ebay. That said most of them are untouched and unassembled somewhere in the crates for Malifaux toys I have in my study.

Whoever dies with the most toys wins.

Currently the only frozen heart in model in my case is the December Acolyte, because he's really fun filthy.

This makes it more a question of maintaining the hobby stamina to do the necessary work and get her on the table and freezing my enemies to death before actual December rolls around again. I am not the quickest of painters after all.

To this end I'm going to set myself a challenge;

I'll win at least one game with a fully painted Cult of December crew before the end of September. 

Doesn't sound like a lot but with other hobby commitments, work and family commitments, I may have bitten off more than a Wendigo can chew. That said what're blogs for if not publicly overcommitting to things?

Right I'm off to play with a big tub of scenic snow and some glitter to see what kind of cool snow effects I can make.

Back on the Horse

I've been playing Malifaux as my main game for over five years now.  Since almost the beginning of the game and the UK scene.  Playing as long as I have from time to time I need to take a break.  The mood will come upon me suddenly and I'll have no motivation to play for a while.

In my experience trying to play through this loss of motivation is counter-productive so I use these breaks to mess about with other games.  Then after finding these games inferior to Malifaux my desire to play resets. That's how it was this time, after a few months inactivity I woke up one morning a week back refreshed and raring to go.

The only problem with not playing Malifaux for any extended period is how quickly your skills degrade.  I've been playing less an eighth of the rate of games I need to be sharp, so right now I'm slow and my moves are clumsy.  I'm in the process of sharpening back up and aiming to be more than competent again soon. 

For the main topic of this post I wanted to very briefly overview some of the games I've messed about with while I've been taking a break and what I think of them;

Dropzone Commander;  This is a really fun game. If you were looking for a 10mm SciFi version of Malifaux this would be it. My only criticism is it's one of those games where you roll low numbers of D6s, and as a result the variance is higher than I'd like.  If you can cope with that though give it a whirl. The minis are a dream to paint.

Alien vs Predator: The Hunt Begins;  I love me some Space Hulk, and this game shares a lot of DNA with that seminal title. It's also got some great ideas of its own, a cool board, and stunning minis.  The deal breaker though is the rule book, which has the quality of writing you'd expect from a free PDF home brew rule set.

It's so bad that I'm actually offended Prodos Games had the nerve to ship the game with the rules in this state.  When I grumbled about this on twitter they tweeted me asking what rules I was confused by, when I politely told them they chose not respond. That's the last time they'll receive my custom.

Hearthstone; As a reformed cardboard crack addict (read MtG player) this one hooked me pretty quickly and suspect I'll keep playing it. It's a fantastically fun and tactical digital CCG. It has some truly elegant game design and a monetisation model I could appreciate even while it emptied my bank account.

That's it for this post. I'm lining up a few more blog posts at the moment, aiming for shorter three to five hundred word posts quickly covering a key topic. So check back soon for some more gaming ramblings...

Obligatory end of year post

2014 is drawing to an end and I'm looking ahead to 2015. Updating the event calendar for my team mates there are already as many tournaments as there are weeks in Q1. Which is fairly amazing when you think about it.

The next major event in the is the masters in mid-January which promises to be both the toughest and most fun event of the year. I'm not expecting to do overly well at the masters, I'm off form and I don't think I have the right tools in my box for that field. That being said I'll give it a shot. 

Priority wise though I'm going to focus on the 2015 season rather than the Masters. I always view masters as a prize rather than a contest and with the 2015 season looking to be the most competitive yet I think that's where my focus needs to be.

I've a rare week off work over the Christmas break so I'm planning hobby to get my new Marcus crew properly off the ground and the practice games to make it worth playing at events.

I know a lot of players look to switch to a new faction with the new year but I feel I've so much left to explore in the Arcanists that I'm going to stay put and give those a try.  Plus the more Kaeris I play the more I want to play, she's one of the most fun masters I've ever taken.

My new years gaming resolution is to keep more of a record of my games, more on that soon, and also to qualify for the masters again next season.

That's it from me, have a happy new year and I'll see y'all breach side! 

Flip Flop Flurry

I've had a bit of a flurry of hobby activity in the last week or so and thought I'd post a quick round up.

Firstly I had the pleasure of playing at the Elementary tournament last weekend. Long time Malifaux player, and Guybrush Threepwood impersonator, Aidan Kirk did an admirable job of TO'ing the 26 player event and acting as spare player at the same time.

Quick pick of game one in progress.

The event ended with me on two wins and a draw and finishing 4th, one VP diff behind great opponent Connor Barker, who I drew my second round against. This was a reasonable result for me, and while it changes almost nothing from a rankings standpoint it was valuable practice. 

I should make an honourable mention of my first round opponent. He had the misfortune of playing his first ever tournament game against me, and doubly unfortunately he was using Ramos. This didn't go well for him, I hope the experience didn't put him off tournament play.

I'm feeling a lot less rusty that I did at the GT, and while my play is far from perfect I'm certainly on the road to being sharp again.

Last post I talked about the dilemma I was having about what I want to do next crew wise. Having flip flopped almost daily between; Marcus, Tina, and Colette I'm still unsure. I've had practice games with both Marcus and Colette and both are a lot of fun. 


I've spent a little hobby time recently painting a trio of Mechanical Doves. I tried out a new technique with these, I'll talk about it in more detail in a later post, once I've experimented with it some more. Meanwhile see if you can spot the new element it involves;

Painting these Doves does mean I can effectively play a painted Colette crew right now. Although there are a few models I'd want to add to the crew before I went competitive with it. I'd also want to paint a new version of Colette herself before too very long, the one I have right now was a practice piece and I'm not a huge fan of the sculpt (Avatar Colette with the rabbit).

Finally I treated myself to a new toy, a Harder and Steenbeck Infinity CRplus airbrush to complement my ageing H&S Ultra.  A new airbrush is never a cheap investment, especially one as advanced as the Infinity, but I should get some good use out of it over the coming years.

There are some new techniques I want to try with her and early experiments have proven very promising.

I've another event up north in scenic Scotland this coming weekend, which will close out the UK Malifaux season nicely.

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.