James Wilson Codes

Before this event, I’d been intending to pore over the pools and come in with a plan for what I wanted to play into each. Then real life intervened, but I did manage to have a plan for two of them. It’s always fun to get out of the house for a day and play some games against new opponents (more on this later…).

Sharing a car down with the hosts of the Green Jokers Podcast, James Boosey and Yan Pietrzak, led to quite a bit of discussion about the game in general. It turns out neither of them are fans of Reva summoning Lampads... or Lampads in general.

Round 1

When the first pairings went up, I saw that I’d been matched with Jamie Varney—one of the best players in the country and a multiple UK Masters winner. Suffice it to say, I was hoping for a ‘learning game’ and not expecting a victory!

Given the pool, I was fairly sure this would be a killy game, with Wedge deployment and Raid the Vaults, as well as In Your Face and Let Them Bleed. Those were, in fact, the schemes I chose. Jamie declared Mah Tucket 1, and I decided that Kastore 2 was a good fit for this pool.

The game started straightforwardly enough. I concentrated on moving Kastore forward with Overheals and Faith in the Flesh, and tried to stack him with Focus. Jamie had Pit Traps and hadn’t realized that Kastore ignores them due to his immunity to Hazardous terrain. His plan had been to drag Kastore through the Pit Traps and stack Injured, as Kastore only has Stat 5 defensively. I did let him know before he spent more actions on it, but I think he would have set up his crew differently if he’d known in advance.

I used Kastore’s Blood Rush with Focus... and flipped the Black Joker! The cards swung around quickly, though - I flipped the Red Joker on a damage flip in the next activation.

Then I used Visceral Rampage to move Mah Tucket away from her crew and into the Urnbearer’s Hazardous aura from Pools of Blood, putting her in a precarious position going into Turn 2.

Turn 2 was where Jamie said he had some of the worst card flips he’s ever experienced in Malifaux—and I can confirm, they were terrible. I used Kastore to take out Mah early (again, forgetting that you can’t score In Your Face against a Leader, and accidentally revealing my scheme choice!).

Jamie focused on shooting my Urnbearer with Jebediah, which stopped some of my shenanigans... until I realized that she had Shielded from all the Fill The Urns tricks, so she survived on 1 health. Jamie very graciously let me put her back on the table and continue, especially as she then Emptied The Urns on herself to heal, which I don't think I've ever done before.

At that point, my In Your Face options were limited to Jebediah and Big Brain Brin. When I got Jebediah down to 1 health, Jamie moved him across to the other side of the board. That left me with the tough choice of whether to send Kastore across to take him out—he’s definitely capable of doing so, but it would leave him exposed, and he does go down if enough things hit him. So I had to focus on Brin. I’d already managed to get him to half health, scoring Let Them Bleed, but if I’d realized how hard it is to actually kill Brin, I might have chosen differently:

1. Protected (Bayou) redirected hits to a nearby Test Subject in a Pit Trap (now at Df 8!).

2. Serene Countenance made landing hits even harder.

3. I Knew You Were Gonna Do That stopped the Dead Rider from scorching him with Soulfire.

Things looked rough. Jamie even commented on how much I’d committed—moving a Cavern Nephilim off a strategy marker and giving up on Raid the Vaults for Turn 4—to try and score In Your Face. It looked like Brin wouldn’t go down in time to score both points.

However, the Urnbearer still had an activation. She used Down to the Last Drop to ping the Cavern Nephilim and Brin twice (including Black Blood) and then charged the Neph again to ping Brin once more. I did manage to score the scheme that turn!

The final turn was all about moving models out of the Dead Rider’s path to Jamie’s Deployment Zone for In Your Face, and piling them around one of the centreline Vaults to prevent denial.

Amazingly, I won 6–5! This was a very surprising result, and definitely helped by Jamie’s bad flips. I’m not expecting to beat him next time, but it was a fun game. I always appreciate how the top UK players talk through their turns and thinking—I gain a lot from it.

Round 2

Next up was fellow Green Joker Jack Zissell, whom it’s always a pleasure to play. Today, he brought Bayou and Dread Pirate Zipp!

This was another pool I’d previously thought about, and even practiced in a recent game against Geraint. So I decided to take a similar crew and try a similar plan: send a Lampad and a Corpse Candle up each flank, hoping the two Pyres gained from killing the Candle (via Funeral Pyre and Demise (Smoldering Heart)) would help keep them alive using Flaming Body and Demise (Possessing Flame). Then send Reva and a Shieldbearer up the middle to score or kill something and summon another Lampad.

However, Jack was very strong on the flanks and not very present in the middle. Some parts of the plan worked better than others. On my right, Zipp and a Skeeter hassled and killed my Lampad, which cost me both points of Outflank. On the left, something similar almost happened, but not quite as effectively. Reva used Fan the Flames and Traverse Through Ember to bring herself and a Shieldbearer forward. With just enough range, she used Lantern’s Light and Immolate on poor Earl Burns to summon a new Lampad!

Reva and the Shieldbearer then turned left to help out the remaining Lampad. There ended up being a strange scrum with an Iron Skeeter and the First Mate. I was trying to kill them, while both of us wanted to vote in the corner. Eventually I prevailed, but it took until Turn 4 and used up a lot of actions.

I also had a Shieldbearer, Ezekiel, and a Dapperling in the center voting. As the summoned Lampad saw off the remaining Flying Piglets, I realized it couldn’t vote. So the Dapperling stepped in to handle that. The Shieldbearer and Ezekiel locked up one Ballot Box with three votes, then moved on to hassle Jack further—Ezekiel probably did the most, using Healing Energy on undamaged enemy models with the Debt of Gratitude trigger to make Jack pick up schemes. Eventually, they both went down.

Jack had already declared the first point of Information Overload, so Turn 5 was a race for me to drop Scheme Markers to deny the second point—which I managed. However, I just didn’t have enough control elsewhere (and had lost Outflank entirely) to secure a win. It ended a jovial 5–5.

Round 3

Round 3 was against Yan, at his first event since Masters. This was the round I hadn’t prepared for, telling myself I’d sort it out over lunch. Reader, I did not sort it out over lunch. The most I’d thought was that I’d need some fast models.

I went with Kastore 2, two Cavern Nephilim, and the Dead Rider. Yan declared Rasputina, and I decided to avoid fighting her as much as possible and just focus on scoring. I took Protected Territory and Espionage (on Corner, hoping for a surprise, and relying on my fast models).

I was a little giddy at this point. Three games in one day is a lot of concentration, and I wasn’t sure I had the tournament stamina to focus entirely. Nevertheless, the board was fun—a Western town with a steam train and railroad. Yan had already played on it but did not mind sticking with it rather than switching to the spare table. He may have later regretted this.

As the attacker - and in a tournament first - I chose a corner that meant we had to swap sides from where we had randomly put our stuff down! I picked the empty corner and forced Yan into the one partially blocked by a giant train. I also decided that all the buildings should be climbable because, in a Western, you want people scaling rooftops and shooting. In the end, only Rasputina shot anyone from a gallows, and while a Cannibal Ice Mistress blasting Ancient Winged Vampires isn’t entirely on-theme for the Old West, it was the afternoon of a long day and felt great.

In Turn 1 I was pleased with the play. I had been pushing Kastore forward with Overheals as usual, and he was very close to the centre. Yan expected a killy charge and surge, but instead I used Visceral Rampage on my Cavern Nephilim to move it into Yan’s territory. Then I used the ability on one of his models to move Kastore further up and block line of sight. Luckily, I decided to take a punt on Broodmaster’s Blade, grabbed the Tome, and placed Marathine near me so she could charge the Wendigo. The attack flipped a Red Joker on damage and killed the Wendigo in one shot! Yan was not impressed with this series of plays. It was not something that could be planned, but I am sure it still felt bad for him. Even my offer of grapes did not make up for it. He also experienced several other unfortunate flips. An interesting benefit of my positioning was that in Turn 2, the Cavern Nephilim could move through the train using Expert Getaway and later drop an explosive and two schemes to set up for Espionage.

The Dead Rider and Gwyll then became involved in a brutal ballet with Ceddra and (I think) a Soulstone Miner. We exchanged hits without killing anyone. Once the Miner was dead, I tried to use the Dead Rider’s Reap trigger to reposition Ceddra so that she could not engage Gwyll. However, thanks to Butterfly Jump from the mutation Yan had given her, Ceddra kept moving back. I was not trying to kill her, but after several minimum 3-damage hits, I did trigger her Demise (Eternal). Note that Reap is not as effective for kidnapping as Visceral Rampage because you must push the victim into base contact rather than simply repositioning them; you cannot place them on the far side of you.

Meanwhile, Bashe scored Take Prisoner on the other Cavern Nephilim. As that model disengaged, Yan decided that operating on an unchallenged flank was worth missing out on the second point, so he simply sacrificed the Nephilim and took his bomb.

All the while, Rasputina was blasting models and creating Ice Pillars.

Batsch and Amalie were slow for most of the round but managed to be annoying with their Endless Waltz ability. This forced Yan to carefully decide when to attack so that they could not push away from the Ice Pillars. In the end, they doubled back to my Deployment Zone to try and ensure I could score Espionage, but the Blessed of December completely ravaged the poor, beautiful zombie scientist dancers. Some might say the cult of December has no class.

I had saved a card that Yan did not realize, so Kastore was able to double walk and pick up a bomb, denying Yan an important strategy. At the start of Turn 5, I faced a choice. I had finally freed Gwyll and could activate either her or Kastore. I chose Gwyll, convinced I could score a point with her, but Yan dropped Kastore—my last hope for Espionage—and as Marathine hit the floor, so did my hopes of eking out a draw.

In all honesty, I probably did not have much chance of winning by focusing solely on scoring my own points and not on killing or denying, which rarely wins a game unless you are very lucky—especially against such a strong player. However, I regret nothing! It was fun to try a different strategy with Kastore, and I think it was one Yan did not expect that may have given him pause for thought. It was certainly one of the games I have played with the highest board activity; it felt as if there was action in every segment of the board, which is unusual for Corner. In the end, I lost 7–4, but it was a really fun game.

I also managed to win Bête Noire in the raffle! Boosey kindly gave me his ticket because he knew I wanted her and did not have one he fancied himself. Malifaux people are kind!

Sadly, there was no Default (or earned) Best in Faction prize to take home, but I was very pleased to see the event won by another Resurrectionist player (soloing Seamus, no doubt!) since I think they are under-represented at events at the moment. Malifaux 4th Edition has been announced between this event and my writing, and who knows what it will bring. It is nice to see more green crows on the results table!

Huge thanks to Jamie, Jack, and Yan, my opponents, and to Carl and Radek for their hard work running the event! It was an extremely fun event, and although I was tired, I went home with a big smile on my face. Finishing 8/14 is not bad, and I think a Holy Trinity of Win, Draw, Lose is better than any one-day event I have attended so far!