James Wilson Codes

I was excited for this event! I love the idea of special rules, and Yan, the TO, had done a great job of teasing them in the UK Discord. I'd had the opportunity to practice the Malifaux on Ice strategy in a recent game against Adam Eccles so I was feeling a (misplaced, as you will later see...) sense of confidence about Round 2.

One thing I want to try and write more about is the whole Event experience - including prizes, winners, painting competition etc. So this time I remembered to take a picture.

The big prize was the translucent Kirai core box - which I did have my eye on as I would like to play an Urami crew at some point, but there were lots of prizes, including alt versions of models, which always go down well with the crowd.

Another part of the UK Malifaux Event experience is swag. I always like receiving it, but I think I'm not as excited about it as some people. It's certainly helped me build up a collection of measuring widgets early on, which has been very useful. These are some acrylic tokens for use in Gift Exchange, an official Wyrd festive Strategy, and perhaps the most complex Strategy ever devised. We also all received a very special marker at the end.

To make things even more interesting, every game at this event had the A Foul Gift rules - so there was an extra, cheeky upgrade, available for the cost of an Interact action.

I liked that Yan explained at the start that they were secret and you couldn't look beforehand - this did ramp up the tension nicely throughout the event. I wasn't sure how to place the Gift Marker that I had control over, so I thought maximum chaos could be caused by placing them both together - as there was no rule against it. I am aware that trying maverick ideas like this is usually more effective when you do know what is going on.

Round 1 - it's the Res Off!

Round 1 was the only strategy that is an official, if non-standard Wyrd strategy. It's also the most complicated! We forgot to move the Strategy Marker every single time, but after a while we just decided to leave it there, as it would be weird to start doing it towards the end of the game.

My opponent was Tez from Harlefaux, whom I'd not met before, but was lovely - very much putting me at my ease. He declared Molly, whom I'd faced once before, but not in a 50ss match. I declared Kastore, Fervent. I'd looked at the Scheme and Strategy pools beforehand, and unless something jumped out at me, I had a plan. I picked Kastore 2 because I think Visceral Rampage makes Take Prisoner easy (at least the first point) and I hoped to use Gwyll's Essence Transfer to make Ensnare possible. Also, I'm a bit afraid of Ensnare, and wanted to try and overcome that.

The takeaways from that previous game, and it is only just now occurring to me that I could go back and read my own blog posts when I've faced a master before - although probably not in a tournament scenario were:

• Kill the Children - crooligans ruin your day
• Archie is a pain - burning won't help
• Necrotic Machine is the healer - kill it

So I hoped to overcome some of that.

I regretted not adding Killer Instinct to someone to deal with Archie, and I also was excited to bring Ezekiel for the first time with Kastore. However, this meant that I forgot to bring even one Urnbearer. So, I think, going forth - take a deep breath when hiring, chill, try and calm down. In Round 1 it's possible to get quite anxious - you're likely facing a very good player, you've not settled into your groove yet. Tez was very very chill and funny, though, and it didn't take me long to warm up.

In contrast to my last game against Miss Squidpiddge, the two Crooligans were deployed right in the corners, rather than From The Shadows. They immediately dropped schemes and Concentrated. This meant they could By Your Side at the start of their activation in Turn 2, and would already be focused - and Tez was well on the way to scoring Power Ritual.

I went with my normal method of moving Kastore forward - I hoped to kidnap the Strange Lady for Take Prisoner, but she seemed to be being waltzed around so much by other models that I assumed she'd activated! Tez also brought the Necrotic Machine in to engage Kastore, which was actually a pain, because I couldn't charge with Blood Rush. In retrospect, I should have just squashed the little ancient robot dog medical tech in Turn 1 and accepted that Kastore wouldn't do much else. Although, because Molly could see Size 4 Kastore easily, I'd have ended up taking 4 Damage from Lethe's Caress to do so.

One thing I want to emulate that I see better players doing is being more calculated with my attacks. The overwhelming majority of models function as well on 1 Health as on full (in some cases better!) unless you have the Leech King nearby. I see people taking out my Cavern Nephilim with three careful min 3 attacks, and I want me some of that. I didn't do this analysis at the time, but let's think:

Necrotic Machine has 4 Health and Armour +2. So Kastore's min 3 attack would only do 1 damage unless I cheated. So I would need to Concentrate and use Focus (which I didn't already have due to no Urnbearer to Empty The Urns), win a duel (not too hard with stat 7 vs Df 5 and The Whisper) and cheat in a severe to do 5 damage, of which the Necrotic Machine would take 3. I could then have used Visceral Rampage to finish it off (Stat 6 vs Mv 5) to avoid Lethe's Caress. I wouldn't have got the push from Visceral Rampage though, because the Necrotic Machine would be dead.

Or, Concentrate ➡️ Blood Rush with Focus (3 damage) ➡️ Broodmaster's Blade to make the Marathine Charge (Stat 6 vs Df 5) to kill the Necrotic Machine (2 damage reduced to 1), then I'd have had a spare action, and could possibly have charged with Blood Rush to set off some blast damage, and maybe got Tear Off A Bite to heal the damage from Lethe's Caress from doing Blood Rush twice.

Or, Concentrate ➡️ Blood Rush ➡️ Broodmaster's Blade ➡️ Charge ➡️ Visceral Rampage and kill the machine, avoid Lethe's Caress and kidnap a model!

So, (thank you for bearing with my stream of Malifaux consciousness here!) it is clear that there are paths of actions that are better than others. I think you get some way towards this by getting used to your models - but this analysis afterwards (and careful use of focus, which I'm a bit haphazard with!) has helped me see that there is thinking that can be done.

The Strange Lady had been moved away however, and I can't quite remember the board position (it's hard when you're writing up after the fact, real life keeps getting in the way)

Turn 2 I think, I used Visceral Rampage to dump Molly in the Egg Ponds Severe Terrain. People generally don't like Severe Terrain, but as Molly was happy just causing trouble, she didn't really care!

Meanwhile, this guy was making my life hard. I've not faced the Dead Rider before, and he is a bit of a beast. Swooping in, dishing out Injured, getting more melee attacks than seems fair with Spinning Scythe and then using Reap to move me around.

The Dead Rider seems to be worth the hype, and I'm very much looking forward to fielding him myself soon as my friend Steve has resin printed me a lovely proxy.

I didn't have an answer to him in this game, but looking over the cards, it seems like Stunning him would be effective - his major action is a quick action, so that would probably bother him significantly.

I did, however, manage to use Gwyll's Essence Transfer with the tomes trigger for Prepare The Ritual to drop two schemes in and around the Dead Rider, hoping to score Ensnare off him at a later time, which did work, which I'm pleased with. I did eventually manage to score Take Prisoner on the Strange Lady, which Tez said he knew was coming - but the amount of AP I'd sunk into doing so made it very expensive!

While this was going on, my Cavern Nephilim had nabbed a Christmas Present! It wasn't super useful for him, it gave him a choice of a gun attack, or an upgrade to let his existing gun attacks ignore cover (I chose this one).

However, Archie was perilously close to him, so his Turn 2 was mainly spent runing away, while Ezekiel summoned some Zombies to try and distract Archie.

Eventually the Cavern Nephilim got to take a gift from the Gift Exchange and spent the rest of the game running as far away as possible. Luckily it was a 3 token - so he could score two Strategy points in Turns 4 and 5. However, Tez managed to get nearly all of the other Gift Tokens, so he closed off the Strategy.

At the end, Tez revealed he hadn't chosen Power Ritual - he just put scheme markers in corners to frustrate me if I had! I guess that's a pretty useful first turn for Crooligans, especially as they don't have to actually walk anywhere.

Overall, this was a lot of fun - I lost, but I was happy that I could at least recognise where I went wrong and could make improvements. I sometimes feel like I'm always saying in this blog 'they were a lovely opponent' or 'this game was lots of fun' - but games are so often fun, and either I'm very lucky and have only met lovely oppponents, or the community is, in general, full of great people!

Round 2 - done this before, should be easy, right?

Before the round started, Yan announced there would be a spot prize for anyone killing an enemy model with an attack from an upgrade from A Foul Gift, which added an extra frisson of excitement.

This game, I was feeling quite positive about as I'd practiced the exact pool in my practice game against Adam. It... did not go as well as that one! I've played against Dan before, at Skivemind so it was nice to see him again.

I have played against Tiri before, but it was in the end of league tournament for the first Escalation League I joined - and both of us were newbies, so I don't think it helped me prepare.

I don't have the notes to write this up in as much detail, but I think the main problem was in me trying to apply the techniques that worked in the last game to this one. In particular, relying on Marathine to pulse out ping damage by healing Kastore and proccing Insatiable. Because Bygone have so much Shielded, this often just knocked off the Shielded, and the Metallurgist, taken Out of Keyword, meant that if the Shielded had gone, then Armour could reduce it to zero anyway.

So, that kind of scuppered my plan!

An exciting moment was when Dan unwrapped his Gift Marker to find...

... and the susurrus in the room, as people gradually realised that every upgrade this round was Soulstone Iceskates! There was no spot prize won at our table, although I believe this prize was won by the Malisaurus Rex, causing much hilarity.

The rest of the game didn't go so well for me - I managed to pull off a few good Dominates with Kastore, but eventually the Iron Matron (whom I seemed unable not to call the Iron Maiden - perhaps Wyrd will do an alt sculpt of Eddie?) just went super murdery, and killed enough stuff to prevent me scoring anything. I think I was left with one Urnbearer, who did her best, but there's limits to how many points a 6 stone model can score me in the final turn, even if they are one of my favourite sculpts.

I loved playing with Dan, and he was very understanding, but it always drags a little when you get yourself into a place where you can't score anything, so my mood did dip a little. He did apologise after, but as I said, I don't want anyone to not be playing the best game they can - and I believe, that bad things happen in Malifaux.

Thinking back, had I realised about the Shielded (and he did explain about Tiri and Shielded, and I've seen the Metallurgist before, so this wasn't a gotcha, more of a 'first time you face them thrashing), I would definitely have picked Kastore 2, and tried to Alpha Strike the Metallurgist. If I had hired White Eyes, then Nowhere to Hide would have made Tiri's day very bad indeed - sucking out all of the Shielded. Something to bear in mind the next time I face her!

Lunchtime

and at Lunchtime, we have the best painted competition! The theme was 'Best wintery model' - I'm surprised there wasn't more Rasputina/December entries, as I believe a number of players fielded her!

Round 3 - Molly is Back

So I face Molly for the second time today! I have played Jordan before near the start of our recent Escalation League, and also had some recent practice in Round 1 today, so at least I knew what Molly does...

It also appears from the rules that having control of the Reindeer is very powerful, so I went into this really wanting to score Strategy points from the Reindeer.

I also chose Let Them Bleed and In Your Face, in the hope of playing Reva quite aggressively. Jordan had taken Rogue Necromancy (cost 10) as well as a Noxious Nephilim and Archie (both cost 9) so there was a bit of flexibility in scoring Let Them Bleed, and I didn't have to deal with Archie.

This game was largely influenced by me getting the Reindeer in Turn 2! While I never managed to get it entirely into my deployment zone, in the hope of scoring more than 8 points, I was fairly confident I could either score Strategy each turn or prevent Jordan from scoring, and this turned out to be the case.

Scoring Let Them Bleed was harder - I didn't want to mess with Archie, and the Noxious Nephilim ended up engaged in the centre of the board, and struggling to get free, and while Jordan healed him (and I also healed him with Ezekiel's Healing Energy and Debt of Gratitude to keep him alive while I tried to damage the Rogue Necromany, who was on the other side of the board. I did manage to do it in the end, and also score In Your Face's first point (but not the second - no way to get Old Hob all the way up to the enemy deployment zone!)

Jordan did manage to claw some points back in a clever fashion - I'd had to use Reva to take out a Crooligan and pick up a Scheme Marker that looked destined for Outflank. I was about to clock out, so I rushed - if I'd thought to get Reva to drop a scheme (she didn't have anything else to do) he wouldn't have been able to Leap in with Archie and get the Scheme Marker back, as it would be too close. Well played. Also, Archie can do a lot!

We both agreed, as did quite a few players, that the Reindeer was fun but unbalanced, so I'm not taking it as indicative of my skill, but playing with Jordan was fun - and it was nice to get a win at a tournament!

All Things Must End

Once the games were over, it was time for the prizes!

This too, felt very festive. It was a skewed raffle, but because there were enough prizes for everyone, Yan explained that if you already had a prize and won another, you could give one of them to someone without a prize.This was lovely, and meant I went home with an Asian Ruins Wyrd base, that I'm hoping to paint next year as part of James Moinet's 2025 painting challenge.

Also, everyone got to take home their choice of a reindeer or the Christmas Tree that was used as the Strategy Marker in Gift Exchange (and which I like more than the Carnivorous Wyrmwood model, and should perhaps be the standard proxy). Some people theorised that the people choosing the reindeers were the ones who had won by getting the reindeer. I can't confirm this, but I am part of the correlation. If the event happens again next year 🤞I'd love to come back with him all painted up:

There were also results!

You can see the full table on Longshanks, but congratulations to Joel, Jack and Adam for their podium places. The omnipresent James Boosey deservedly won Best Sport (and nearly the podium!) and this delightful painting by Tom Kapel won the painting competition.

Thank you so much to Yan and Ed for all the hard work that goes into organising and hosting a tournament like this. It was a lovely way to end the Malifaux year, and I hope it can become a Christmas fixture!