James Wilson Codes

I'm going to approach this write up somewhat differently from normal. Partly because it was before Christmas and a lot has happened and I've forgotten some of the specifics, and partly because I want to focus on hiring process and outcomes more than the actual game.

My opponent was James Boosey, Luminary, regular guest on the Green Jokers Podcast, whom I've played a number of times before. Indeed, I've played this specific matchup against him before. I have still yet to beat him! (spoiler alert, this game doesn't change that...)

I was fairly sure this was going to be my last game of the year - having young children and Christmas makes it hard to get down to Powder Monkey over the break.

I have wanted for a while to focus on crew hiring in games, and one of the neat things about the Malilfaux Crew Builder app is you can do those steps in advance for a casual game.

The factions weren't a surprise - Ten Thunders for James and Ressers for me (I don't have any other factions! I could declare Barbaros as a leader, or Kastore in Neverborn, but I'm sticking with Green for now...) and also the Masters - Reva vs Asami.

So at this point, while I thought he might declare Asami 2, as we have played Reva 1 into Asami 1 before, I decided I had to address the Summoning antics he might bring. So, I put the Whisper on Vincent St. Clair, to help him get off the Exorcism trigger on his Sanctified Crossbow - I know Boosey likes to summon Jorogumo and that would be Stat 6 vs Df 5.

I also decided to take the Ghost Eater again. He also has Exorcism on his melee Tear Apart action, and I read up on how the Ghost Lights and their abilities worked and I was sure I could make it work for me this time.

I also really wanted to take the Dead Rider, as my friend Steve had resin printed me an amazing proxy (I'm not keen on the Wyrd model for the Dead Rider for some reason) and I faced him at A Foul Gift. I was hoping to use Revel In Death and Spinning Scythe and Reap to kidnap some models and ideally dump them into Pyre markers. I was aware that being Stunned would be bad for him ( Revel In Death is a bonus action and Reap and Spinning Scythe are triggers.)

I also purposefully didn't take Lampads - I know my opponent hates them, and would tech against them. (last time he turned off healing so they couldn't use Demise(Possessing Flame) and then killed the poor things!)

This got blown out of the water a bit when he declared Asami's title version! He also hired two Jorogumo - which effectively get Hard To Wound if they aren't summoned. It's actually worse, because Vincent's shooting ignores Hard to Wound but won't ignore the Centuries Old ability that was giving the same effect.

The new toy was the Story of Suzaku - and this was the only hire I didn't think I had much of a way to deal with.

I hoped that:

• The Dead Rider's Ruthless would help me vs Ama No Zako's Terrifying
• Vincent or the Ghost Eater could shoot Amanjaku
• Reva or the Dead Rider as Min 3 beaters could take out Jorogumos

It was a wedge deployment, so I was anticipating a lot of fighting. As it turned out, the terrain kind of blocked that initial pile on, so I decided to use the Dead Rider to Ride With Me Vincent round the side, instead of to the centre like I'd planned. This led to Boosey moving a Jorogumo up and nearly splattering the poor hooded skeletal cavalry. I used my first ever Fate Token to try and keep him alive! He then used his new Big Bird Suzaku toy to kill the poor little Restless Spirit, a little glowing guy who wants to do nothing more than drift Incorporeally around the board, Interacting and dropping corpses.

The next passage of play requires a tiny bit of context. I was privileged recently to be a guest on an episode of the Green Jokers Podcast to talk about Gotchas in Malifaux. Aside from hearing my own voice and thinking I'm waffling, I think it's a pretty useful discussion and highlights the high level of Sportsmanship within the Malifaux community, and highlights several ways in which we can avoid Gotchas. However, I then Gotchad Boosey! I didn't mean to, but it happened.

As I've mentioned, we'd played Reva vs Asami before, and I went through all the models then. Reva's big melee attack is Ethereal Reaping and while I've regularly used the ability that it can draw range and LOS from a corpse marker, I've very rarely used the stipulation that it can also do it from friendly models with Shielded. Possibly it's something I should use more, but there always seems to be a mountain of corpses near Reva due to The Forgotten Dead and Corpse Candles, especially as I often take Ezekiel too, so there's Mindless Zombies that also count. Anyhow, I used Vincent's bonus action Protective Spirits to give the Dead Rider Shielded - mainly in an effort to keep him alive. Then I remembered Reva's attack. I also saw, with her Mv 7, that she could charge to just within 8 inches of the Dead Rider and attack through him (is the dead rider a he? how could we tell?) - which I did - three min 3 hits took it out.

James was not happy - he didn't know about this interaction, and he wouldn't have overextended his Jorogumo if he had - if he'd kept it back, or moved Asami 2 forward, she could have absorbed 2 of the damage each hit. I felt terrible. I'd absolutely not meant to mislead him, I'd just assumed he knew - but thinking back, though I would have explained it on Halloween - and James has played a lot of games since then, as I know he's been to more tournaments than me in that in between time. It's so unfortunate because it was about 6 days after the podcast dropped!

However, we moved past it, and the game did not get better for me.

The Dead Rider did not survive the second Jorogumo. Ama No Zako got up in my face, and while I made a valiant attempt at controlling her, I didn't get close to killing her, and she just ate up all my actions. It was nice to use Ezekiel's Debt of Gratitude on the full health Story of Suzaku to try and at least slow down Outflank, and I did manage to get it down to Df 2 through Reva's The Unquiet Dead with the Mask of Perdition trigger, and do some decent damage. Sadly, not enough, and it turns out that the Wind Up Bird bonus action can just remove the Injured anyway. There was also a bizarre passage of play where Ezekiel used Fresh Meat at stat 5 on Ama No Zako (Wp 7) to give her Slow.

Ultimately, I just didn't have the models or resources and we talked it out when I conceded in Turn 4. It would have been 7-1 to James, only missing scoring the last strategy point, which is always difficult with Cloak and Dagger. I don't think I made it off my table half.

My Schemes were Sweating Bullets (Shieldbearer, killed before she could score the first point) and Let Them Bleed - generally a good choice for Reva, but did me no good here! The Ghost Eater disappointed again. He survived a long time, but didn't seem to achieve much - and the Ghost Light mechanics are so complicated, I can't get my head around how to use them)

I was a little bit grumpy I'm afraid - it's never nice to get pinned down in a game, but also, I was extremely tired, there's been a lot going on outside of Malifaux, and my last day at work was the next day! I apologised the next day, and it's fine, but it just goes to show that gaming, like any social activity can be tricky if you're tired or stressed.

Anyhow, on to 2025! I'm expecting great things from Boosey and Asami - it's been a pleasure to watch him playing her, how she's just clicked for him.

And, in case it was because I hadn't painted the Dead Rider that made him unlucky (it wasn't, I just used him wrong) I had a go at him: