James Wilson Codes

Note - my opponent was using the Rotten Harvest versions of Zoraida's models - I'm going to try and refer to them by their original names, as I think that'll be more use to readers in the future. Adam and I set this game up on the app in advance, so we had time to study each other's crew. I've never faced Zoraida before, so I'm glad of this. He mainly had big models and lots of soulstones, which is quite different from when I usually face Bayou and there's a lot of smaller, squishier models. I once tried to read a book about Chess - I usually get beaten at Chess by anybody who actually knows how to play it - and while I don't remember the name of the book, and didn't get any better at chess, there's one line that has stuck with me: A bad plan is better than no plan at all. So, I needed a way to deal with Zoraida. And looking at her card, she's quite formidable. I've never seen a model with an 8 for a stat on their card before! So that is quite a lot of Willpower. However, most of my crew target Defence - but she has a defensive trigger, with a built in suit to end your activation if you damage her. It seems like her obvious weakness is being Stunned - it would stop that defensive trigger, and Her Obey action with Ensorcel trigger that lets/forces other models to take actions wouldn't work either. However, my crew didn't have access to Stunning. In the end, my 'plan' was: Ignore Zoraida, but cut her off from LOS of her own models if possible - when I faced Hamelin 2 at the English GT, I realised that Obey masters are not as much about getting me to hit myself, as they are about 'extra actions for the henchmen that are already up in your grill' and also 'making your low Wp scheme runner pick that scheme marker back up'. This plan came with a realisation that Adam's henchmen would be getting extra actions - and couldn't really be considered 'activated' in that sense.

The last time I played Jamie, it was still Resurrectionists into Bayou, but I got a much better result than I was expecting. However on that occasion I was playing a crew I'd solo-ed for months, and he had his first game with his. Whatever happened, I knew it'd be fun because playing games with Jamie is fun. This was a game in our local Escalation League, so I was still learning Reva, and he was learning Mah Tucket 1. I'd played against Mah 2 before, but this was my first time up against the original. I knew that Pit Traps were still involved.

I'm still a fairly new Malifaux player. This is my first GT event, and also my first tournament not hosted at my beloved Powder Monkey Gaming, but at Sanctuary Gaming Centre, in Sutton-In-Ashfield, and a benefit of that for me is that my mum lives about 20 minutes drive away, and I could stay there. This meant that: Playing somewhere else meant different boards, and it was nice to wander up and down the 16 tables and see what was out there.

I haven't listed the exact crews as we didn't use the app, but I took Lampads, Vincent, Ghost Eater, Shieldbearer and Reva, and Geraint had Autumn Knights, Killjoy, Aeslinn, Gorar and Bultungin. I found Reva 1 into Titania a difficult match up. It may have been the board, but the Underbrush markers seemed to hem me in (as they are supposed to!) I took Let Them Bleed and Death Beds with Pyre markers as Reva has proved quite killy in the past. I started off well, making plenty of pyre markers and pushing them up - but because of the underbrush, I was forced into one particular path - I sent the Restless Spirit and a Lampad up one flank, but Titania wiped out the Lampad, and the Restless Spirit didn't do much more than distract (till the end of the game when he got me a third of my points by voting! On the other side of the board, my biggest problem was Killjoy. I'd not really heard of him before, and I think he's been buffed in the 2024 errata. He just kept healing, and placing with Bloody Gate and then proccing Made To Kill to get extra melee attacks (I can't complain having used White Eyes for similar!) - and with a 3/3/6 damage track and a built in positive flip for being near an underbrush marker, he was doing a lot of damage! A lot of my effort was spent in healing up my models - which meant there was little progress on scoring points. At one point, when Killjoy had 1 health left, I managed to flip the Black and Red jokers together. Surely one of the most heart crushing occurrences in the game!

Note - I've been super busy with non-gaming and a turnip 28 regiment build and event (will try and do a post on this!) and life stuff, so I'm afraid this one is going up a little late and without the level of detail I've tried to include. I was excited to play this game, as I'm loving learning Reva. I asked Tom Kapel at Skivemind as I know he's played Molly a lot and the (somewhat scary) advice was "Kill The Children" - referring to the Crooligans. My aims going in:

This is my first write up of a tournament - I'd hoped to do each game in the level of detail that I normally do, but with how intense playing in a tournament is, I didn't manage to take enough notes/photos. So it'll be a bit more of a general write up. Skivemind II was organised by the lovely Yan Pietrzak, co-host of the Green Jokers podcast, and someone who drives and organises a lot of the local Malifaux scene. It was three rounds of GG4 with the Bans 1 format. This means that after masters are chosen, you can ban a keyword for the opponent to hire from. Versatile models can still be hired, so it's really just affecting Out of Keyword hiring. As it turned out, I, along with all three of my opponents were playing totally in keyword, so it didn't have any impact - unless it meant that they weren't choosing OOK so that I couldn't ban it, of course. I'm not sure I'm quite at the level for Out of Keyword hiring yet - I'm having enough trouble learning keywords... That Said, Bête Noire, I've got my eye on you in my forthcoming Reva crew!

I've played Boosey quite a few times, but this is the first one I've written about. He's one of the nicest players you'll meet, and a great advocate for the game, and looking after newer players. This game was a practice for Skivemind II, which is on Sunday. Boosey didn't tell me his master (though I knew it was probably Marcus or Hoffman) and we did all the hiring like we would in a tournament (including Bans although I'm not sure it mattered!) I wanted to try out White Eyes since the 2024 errata, and looking at the pool, I picked Kastore 1, as I enjoyed him last time, and because it was quite schemey and Broodmaster's Domain letting him drop Scheme markers with Marathine. I also hoped that the ping damage from Insatiable would be good against the Armour in Hoffman's crew.

This was the same matchup as last time, but a different board, and the first league round! My goals going in:

This is a very exciting post for me to write! This is my first game with Reva Cortinas, my new master. Thus, there will be a lot of talk of how I didn't manage to get things off, and mistakes I made. I really enjoyed it, and am looking forward to getting her back on the tabletop! It's also a practice game for the new Escalation League I've joined, organised by the peerless Yan Pietrzak. There was one that ran earlier this year, and that was how I got into Malifaux in the first place. I've been solo-ing Kastore since then (in Resurrectionists) so it's been good to try something new.

This was an interesting game for a number of reasons. Firstly, a new opponent - and new to Powder Monkey as well, which is always exciting. Then, a new master to play into - I've not encountered Tull before. Finally - I decided to play Kastore, Awakened instead of Kastore, Fervent! From what I've seen on the internet, and chatting to players IRL, Kastore 2 seems to be much more popular than Kastore 1. However, some a really useful Reddit comment from /u/headbangerxfacerip on my last game highlighted some times when it might be useful to take the non-title version. As this was Raid The Vaults, and a scheme heavy pool, it was a contender. Also, it looked like a lot of Rhys's crew would have some armor, pairing well with ping damage from Insatiable - and being Guild, they were likely to have Lead Lined Coat, which would make Visceral Rampage hard to pull off. My aims going in were: I picked Power Ritual and Protected Territory. I was unsure whether I'd manage to get Power Ritual off.

This will probably be a shorter post than normal. This is the first time I've played and talked it out after Turn 2! It was still a lot of fun. I think it was a combination of me arriving after 7pm, and just generally chatting a lot during the game. My opponent, Jon, had recently competed at the Scottish GT and was sharing some of his experiences there - and we just talked a lot about models! My goals going in were: Jon was playing Marcus. I've played against Marcus, Alpha once at a tournament, so I was looking forward to trying the original.

Going into the game, based on last one against Yan, my aims were: We shall see whether I managed them...

I went into this knowing how good a player Yan is, so I wasn't too hopeful of my chances. However, like many people in the Green Jokers meta in and around Huddersfield, he's very chilled and happy to teach. He was happy to let me walk things back a couple of times, but largely I wanted to make the mistakes in order to learn from them (like The Whisper, I still find that so hard to administrate!) We hadn't planned a scheme pool, or strategy, so we decided to flip cards for it, which was surprisingly exciting! I was pleased to practice Raid The Vaults as I've probably got the least experience with that strategy. The pool ended up being fairly schemy, except for Death Beds, which still needs scheme markers, so it's possible I should have switched my crew up, maybe used a second Cavern Nephilim. However I went with the same crew as my last game - but more on the differences with that game, later... In the end, I chose Death Beds on the grounds that Raid The Vaults kind of guarantees enemies will be near strategy markers, and also Ensnare - partly to try out one of the Gwyll shennanigans from Yan and Jamie's podcast. I have played against Lucas 1 before, when I was still learning the game from the escalation league and I think in the tournament at the end, and what I could really remember was 'Luna is a pain' and 'Lots of artifacts being tossed around'. The second was definitely true - the first didn't come up too much this game, which is good, because it's emotionally quite hard for me to target a dog with the intent to kill.

I've played Jamie a few times now, and always lost. So, I'm hoping to learn from this - he's always been great at teaching, so if I lose again I'm sure I'll learn something! I believe he's playing Ophelia. I think I played against her crew once, in the early days of the Escalation League - but it was a while ago and I think it might have been still henchman led. In any case, I've forgotten! The only chance I've had to look at the Kin cards has suggested a lot of shooting. So, the only thing I can think of is to take Athorak, for his Wardstones blocking LOS. Other than that, all I can really think of is to hide my models behind cover wherever possible. We shall see!

This is the first game in a while that I've taken an Urnbearer. They are one of my favourite sculpts, but I was fed up with them getting killed. I'm glad I did take her! I switched out the Leech King from my usual list to make space, so I had an extra couple of soulstones. My plan for the game was to use Kastore's Visceral Rampage to drag models into the Urnbearer's Pools Of Blood aura, healing Kastore and damaging them. It kind of worked, but not like how I imagined. I thought this game had gone terribly at first! I did my practiced Kastore 2 unpack, moved him out of Corner into the middle of the board... Mei Feng and the rest of his crew were nowhere to be seen! He ended up double walking then charging. He ended up doing 2 damage to the Mechanical Rider. He also failed to score Death Beds on turn 2 because I didn't leave him within 1 of a Metal Gamin and I forgot I needed to be there in order to pulse out damage from the Urnbearer's Down To The Last Drop. Then the Mechanical Rider rescued the Metal Gamin with Ride With Me at the start of turn 3. I think it's the scary reputation that Kastore 2 has. He seems to either: This game, it was mainly the latter... It did mean I didn't have any trouble dropping my bombs, and I managed to kill the Metal Gamin unactivated turn 3, which was good, although unfortunately I was going to Visceral Rampage him back to the Death Beds friendly location, but on 1 Health, it would have killed him. It it just kind of felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. Mei Feng killed my Cavern Nephilim (often an MVP for me) and Barbaros was kind of stuck in the middle. I was really regretting taking Sweating Bullets at this point because Greg only had one eligible model! He didn't take henchman - he had enforcers with the Soulstone Cache upgrade! So I had to get Mei Feng into the centre of the board and engaging him, and keep her there till the end of turn. I managed it - I'd forgotten how good a combination Barbaros and the Urnbearer can be. To The Last Drop can ping out 2 damage - one from itself and one from Black Blood, which is great as a tactical action against models with Armour. Also, the Black Blood gives the Urnbearer Shielded, helping keep her alive for longer! But the Hazardous aura was amazing. However, to get Mei into the trap, I had to use 2 Lures from the Urnbearer and 2 Bring Its from Barbaros. The final Bring It, Mei Feng Black Jokered her generated melee attack, and I cheated in an 11 of Crows to declare the Cage Fighter trigger. Barbaros then hit Mei, and used Push Aside to move her (ping damage from Pools of Blood) into a Gremlin Eating Plant (height 3 hazardous terrain) I wish I'd taken a picture, but she was kind of cut off from her crew, and more importantly, engaged by a Barbaros who was within 6 inches of the centre so I could score Sweating Bullets. Greg brought in Neil Henry to keep Mei alive, which worked, but his actions (and he got more later courtesy of the Mechanical Rider chipped away at his health. However, I still had Death Beds to score - and he managed to kill the Gwisin that was protecting the Urnbearer unactivated - I'd planned to drop the Scheme with it. Kastore to the rescue! This was turn 4, and Ed had asked us to wrap up in 15 mins as the shop was closing. It was the first time I'd taken The Whisper upgrade and I was finding it very hard to plan my activation knowing what the cards were. I had an 8, the Red Joker, and the Black Joker. So something was going to fail! In the end, I used the Black Joker for BroodMaster's Blade, which failed, walked, walked, used Pools of Blood to overheal and move 2 inches, and interact, leaving the Red Joker topdecked for the Urnbearer to kill Neil Henry. Meanwhile, Greg had scored 3 Plant Explosives, and was about to get Information Overload - he thought he had it, but with Kastore's extra Scheme marker he needed one more. At this point, it was 5-3. We had to talk out turn 5, but I'm confident I scored 8. Greg's score was harder to work out - he could have got an extra bomb point, if he'd won first activation and escaped with Mei Feng, but she was also his main chance of scoring Death Beds (he did say he'd forgotten to score the first point earlier, so he might have got 2 more points if he did!) and I would have been prepared to cheat initiative and off her first activation as she was very nearly dead. Luckily with ping damage it's harder to stop accidentally killing a model by flipping a red joker and not being able to cheat down. It finished as 8 points to me, quite confidently and probably a between 3-5 for Greg, depending on how Turn 5 would have turned out. I was very happy with the result, considering how many mistakes (and occasional bad flips) I made - felt slightly better than I deserved, in some respects.