James Wilson Codes

My first Fourth Event was an exciting thing! It was Green Jokers Monthly, which are the informal tournaments happening at Powder Monkey - a chance to get three games in one day. I decided to play Reva all day.

Game 1 - Jack Brown

Reva Cortinas, Death Shepherd into English Ivan, Obscura

I was paired up against the lovely Jack Brown who had brought English Ivan. Ivan was a master I heard about but never saw on the table in Third Edition, so this was an exciting start in itself. In our pre-game discussion, he explained that there was a lot of movement shenanigans and interacting. The setup was Wedge deployment and Informants strategy - quite a Killy game, which Reva, Death Shepherd was quite well suited to!

I had only played one game of Death Shepherd, although I loved the mounted Reva Cortinas in m3E. I’m very impressed here. While there is less stuff to do with fire, and she can no longer melee attack out of Corpse (or Remains as they are now called) Markers, she can still attack out models with shielded, however she can do this anywhere on the table. This means she can charge 8 inches and still hit you. However, the Flaming Rush trigger that her crew card gives you means that she can drain a soul stone to declare the charge action again, ignoring restrictions. I remember the week when this was not once per activation, I’m glad they changed that. However it does mean you can move 16 inches, create a Pyre Marker and hit someone miles away twice with base 3 damage - for one of your AP! If she gets a Mask on the generated melee attack, she can make the model she drew LOS from take an attack. (I have not managed to make this happen very often)

Vincent is also great now. I love the model, love the lore, love the tough guy who has done bad things but found redemption protecting Reva. I didn’t like how he played in M3E. A zero inch engagement with Agile meant he could be stymied by someone standing half an inch away from him. He could get a bunch of attacks, but it was very hard to set up. Now, I love him. Run and Gun, Expert Climber and Roll Aside along with Flaming Rush from the crew card mean that if Vincent starts his activation engaged by an enemy, he can shoot them four times with his base 3 damage crossbow, as well as charging his Sp twice. Very Cool.

Jack declared English Ivan - a master I’d heard about in M3E but never faced. He described him as quite schemey with a lot of movement tricks. This proved to be the case.

I’m not yet sure what to do with Reva, Death Shepherd’s totems, the Corpse Candles. She can summon them back (drawing a card in the process) with a signature action, so it doesn’t matter if they die, but I’m still looking for the optimal way to use them. In Plant Explosives, for example, they need to drop their bombs before they die, or they’ll lose them. They can be killed by a model within 1inch for a positive flip to an opposed duel. I think there’s still work to be done for me to find the best way of using them.

I started by using the Restless Spirit’s Grave Dust action to pulse out Shielded to my crew, and the sent the Restless Spirit and the Dapperling that I panic hired (as I had an illegal pool of seven soul stones) to sit on the strategy marker near me. The Alleyway Echo soon came and disposed of both of these guards, in a brutal fashion, even with Demise(Fungal Servant) on the Dapperling.

Jack sent Mr Mordrake down one flank to contest a Strategy Marker and Vincent went after him failing to kill him. A Corpse Candle lumbered over to help score the point, and he double checked that they had both activated. He then moved Eva Havenhand along with Secret Passage and dropped two Scheme Markers, positioning her to score the second point of Ensnare by engaging Vincent. I took a big chunk of time here thinking what to do. Ensnare has changed somewhat since the last edition - it is now scored at the end of any enemy activation - not at the start of the model who was Ensnared’s activation. This means to need to be extremely careful in situations like this! Luckily I noticed in time, and after much deliberation, decided to use a Shieldbearer to walk, Plant the Shield (a great signature action which places into base contact with a friendly model within 3 inches and gives them both a Shielded Token) then pick up one of the Scheme Markers. However, I flipped the Black Joker for Plant the Shield! Frustrating, but it happens. I couldn’t see any way of denying both, but instead I charged Eva with Shield Slam to at least move her away from Vincent so that Jack could only score the first point.

I’d picked Search the Area for my scheme, and was struggling to get my Scheme Markers down near the piece of terrain I’d chosen. Jack removed one, and hit a Lampad - allowing me to use Blinded By The Light (fast becoming one of my favourite abilities) to drain a soul stone and put it right back. However, Jack had realised, which I didn’t, that to score Search the Area, you cannot have enemy models near the Scheme Markers, so I only scored Strategy.


In the middle we had the strange phenomenon of highly mobile English Ivan just sitting on a building and not moving for the whole game. He kept getting on fire a bit, as I kept placing Pyre Markers there. The Ghost Eater did some good work to Exorcise the Daeva that was summoned.

In Turn 2, Reva charged down the board to drop a marker in Jack’s Deployment Zone and score Breakthrough. I had to use a Lampad’s activation to slam the Shadow Door Marker that was blocking her path first. This gave Jack the chance to run his Hopeful Prospect away to the Strategy marker in the other corner, but I noticed that he had dropped an enemy Scheme Marker there, so I removed that. I wasn’t sure what it was for (possibly the second point of Breakthrough?) but I didn’t like it. I had just declared Breakthrough when Jack explained that the Scheme Markers on the Centreline (originally intended for Search The Area) in Turn 1 were too close to his models. There then ended up with a bit of a scramble, where I dropped one elsewhere, and he moved in Host Ducat, but then he attacked another Lampad and after flipping a 13, I cheated the Black Joker - which surprised him! However, it meant I would take damage, and could use Blinded By The Light to finally score two points of Breakthrough.

Despite the use of chess clocks, we only played 2 turns! There’s still a lot of work for me to do to get up to speed with this edition. It ended when a Shieldbearer double-walked to contest the objective that the Alleyway Echo was holding. It ended 4-3 to me. It was a very fun game, and it was great to see Ivan on the table. It’s also the first time I’ve won my first game at any event, although I don’t think the pairings were done Swiss style - I think Yan was more trying to make sure people who see each other regularly didn’t play each other.


Game 2 - Emma Newham

Reva Cortinas, Luminary into Lord Cooper, Manhunter

I last played Emma at a tournament and Kastore, Awakened got whooped by her Jedza, and knowing she’s a very good player, I was expecting to lose again. I’d tried this exact scenario on Wednesday night with Geraint, so I took the Oops, All Minions crew again.

Boundary Dispute on Corner, or as I like to call it, Corndary Dispute, is a scenario that I think will become infamous throughout Gaining Grounds Zero. This is because of the sheer number of Interact actions needed to kick a can from within 12 inches of a corner across the centre line in 6 inch increments. It’s very hard to score schemes as well while doing this. Emma was planning to play Jedza, but had unfortunately left her models at home, so switched to Lord Cooper, who was perhaps not the ideal master for such an interact and movement heavy scenario.

My plan was to use my minions signature moves:


• Lampads have Hovering flame needing a 5 and moving 5 inches

• Shieldbearers have Plant The Shield, needing a 6 and teleporting to a model within 3 inches (which can also add their base size)

• Draugr have From the Pyre which lets them teleport to a Pyre Marker.

This last one was an issue - I realised halfway through the game, that Flickering Grasp, Reva Luminary’s Crew Card only lets unique models create a Pyre Marker by discarding a card. This was a problem as my game plan relied on Draugr Interacting, teleporting, then Interacting again. This will need revisiting. An alternative might be to empower the Lampad’s Hovering Flame with a mask, so that the Draugr can jump to that. Emma was chill though, we were both learning crews!


I think the plan (notwithstanding the Pyre Marker stuff) was a reasonable one - the crew gets a bunch of extra actions:

* once per turn, Reva can give a minion a Flicker token (which can’t be removed and kills the model in the end phase) but they are treated as unactivated - 2 more actions and a signature action

Reva can also summon back models that have been killed - they come in with 3 Health by default, but flipping (or cheating) a higher card means they can come in much higher - these will have Slow and Summon - 1 more action and a signature action
* If Reva resummons Temperance (side note - I’m very excited about her lore, and why she’s now got a first name rather than Miss Collins, and wondering what the model will look like - my fan theory is she’s a kind of secretary for Reva, organising the clinic (not a cult) and I hope her sculpt is that of a respectable lady in a Western, but with a slightly gothic edge to her) then she doesn’t get Slow and Summon tokens - meaning she can infuse a soulstone again on death, and also gets 2 more actions and a signature action! I’m not sure you can count on the enemy repeatedly killing Temperance - in my two games so far, it’s happened once in each - but I’ve been wondering about the Ghost Eater killing her as a cost, so Reva can bring her back.

Models with a Summon token, of course, cannot Interact, ever. This means they are implicitly ignored for three of the current Strategies, and the final one calls out models with Summon tokens. However, they do still count for schemes so there might be some mileage in summoning them at the end of the turn near someone for Public Demonstration or maybe near Scheme Markers to engage someone you plan to score Ensnare against - and of course, standing on rooftops for Take the High Ground.


As the game played out, however, my plan was working but was just outmatched. I managed to get Strategy Turn 1, but after that, Coopers dogs were just too efficient for me to deal with, in particular Artemis just sent the Strategy Markers sailing back.

I got confused by Scout the Rooftops and scored the first point, but hadn’t realised that the Scheme Marker used for the second point had to be on the enemy table half. This meant I used AP to drop a third Scheme Marker that I might have used elsewhere.

Cooper felt scary to play against. Emma stuck him up on a cliff and he shot at models. The Reload Token mechanic, which she explained each time, and I still don’t fully grasp meant that while I was getting peppered with shots from a big gun, it didn’t feel Oppressive or like a Negative Play Experience. Of course, there is a certain advantage in your crew not having permadeath... I think an important play against Reload tokens would be ranged token removal.

Ahool came forward and sat on a Strategy Marker in some Severe terrain on the wrong half of the board. This seems to be something in Fourth Edition that I am having trouble getting my head around. I know that if a (non-peon) model is in base contact with a marker, you can’t take the Interact action. I guard markers myself this way. For some reason, however, my mind completely fails to register this when it’s an enemy model and I try and Interact. Sorry to all my opponents I do this to, I’m not trying to cheat! It will take me a while to internalise it, I fear.

I didn’t have much of a way to shift Ahool, but I managed to use the Crew Card action to put a Convert token on him - this reduced the Dmg of his attack actions by 1, but also let Reva Obey him with Call on the Faithful - and, as is tradition, I sent him off to charge someone so I could Interact. I’m only now realising as I write this, that I should have just made him Interact and save an action. I have a lot to learn about Fourth!

Eventually, Emma won 6 - 4, we were both running out of time and appreciated the practice with the crews to get up to speed for more formal tournaments. I feel like I did not disgrace myself.

Round 3

Reva Cortinas, Death Shepherd into Harold Tull, Artillerist

This game was against Mark aka Mr MR Dub [CHECK] whom I have had the pleasure of playing a couple of times. In fact, I played my last game of Malifaux Third Edition with him at the Malifaux Yorkshire Rumble - where he killed Horse Reva with Leviticus and 7 irreducible damage! So, while he declared Tull this time, it still felt like a chance for Reva, Death Shepherd to get her revenge!

We were playing on a board (I can see how out of touch I am, I have forgotten to take many action photos) which had a large fortress in the middle split up into four quarters (to make LOS less weird, and allow for schemes involving terrain at height).

We were playing Standard and Recover Evidence. This was the killiest game of Fourth Edition I have yet played. I split my forces in two and sent a Lampad, Vincent and a Shieldbearer down the left flank and Reva, two Corpse Candles, two lamps, the Restless Spirit and the Ghost Eater down the right!

However, despite all the advice on Discord about playing Reva Death Shepherd into Recover Evidence is to kill the Corpse Candles yourself using their Smouldering Heart ability, I sent them towards the enemy to try and create Pyre markers, and they both got sniped. We ended up with Louisa Fuse and Maria Dyatlov blocking the right flank against me - with no way for Reva to charge past, as she wanted to do. There was nothing to do but try and murder them, and this was achieved eventually - the Ghost Eater having his Spectral Assault magic attack as a Signature really helped, as did him and Reva being able to get an extra charge from the crew card Flaming Rush ability. It certainly stopped me from being able to score Breakthrough, turn 1 though - I have since realised that this is definitely a Power Play on Standard or Corner deployment. In fact, I nearly got it, but Reva would have had to have charged right up to a piece of terrain and lobbed a Scheme Marker on top to be in his deployment zone - and I couldn’t have left it in base contact with me to stop his Rocketeer, which was still to activate from going.

Meanwhile, Jasper had picked up the original Strategy marker and bounced around Assault markers while Vincent was shooting him, Tull killed a Shieldbearer, and Vincent ended up on top of the big building (Run and Gun and Expert Climber) is a tough combo - but hemmed in by the Kings Wall. In Turn 2 he managed to Roll Aside and get his cheeky 4 shots in (including Flaming Rush) and a Corpse Candle that was summoned Turn 1 and scaled the building charged in to give a model with Shielded next to the King’s Wall so that Reva could attack through it.

We had to call it at the end of Turn 2, but talking it out, we projected that I would win as he had lost more models and the King’s wall was nearly dead and I had Rosie lined up to be Assassinated.

Overall, this was a very fun, casual event - big thanks to Yan and Ed for putting it on! It’s great to get three games of Malifaux in, in an organised but not brutally competitive session. The next big event for me is the English GT so it was very useful to get some Reva practice in.