James Wilson Codes

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:

1. I got to see my mum.
2. While I missed my family, I didn't have children climbing on me while I was sleeping.

Playing somewhere else meant different boards, and it was nice to wander up and down the 16 tables and see what was out there.

Day 1

Round 1 - Kastore, Fervent into Misaki Katanaka

My first matchup was against Greg Packham, and the amusing story here is that Greg had had a busy time recently and arrived without his models, so he was playing with a loaner crew. However, I had never played against Katanaka and he was experienced with her, so it didn't end up as an advantage to me.

Scheme Selection

I wasn't sure about Schemes. I picked Death Beds with Strategy markers, as that seems like a clear choice for killy Kastore on Raid the Vaults, where they kind of have to be near those markers. I also went with Take Prisoner - I find that Kastore's Visceral Rampage is very good for this - but I wasn't sure who to pick, and just looked through Greg's cards on the app and picked Zheng. If I had read Greg's cards, I might have picked otherwise.

The Game

Greg was clearly familiar with playing into Kastore and made it very difficult to get off the Blood Rush blast damage by keeping Misaki up front so that Extended Reach would prevent me charging. This was rather frustrating - I'd been doing the traditional Returned unpack of slowly pushing Kastore into the centre. There was a fire pit in the middle of the board, and Kastore and Marathine ended up in there. Kastore ignoring the Hazardous, and Marathine not caring if it was on fire (and let's face it a burning sword looks very cool!)

I then had to walk, and then use Visceral Rampage against Misaki to pull her into the fire. I was just trying to do anything useful, but Greg told me at the end of the game that it was actually a smart move - as part of her thing is burying and then unburying next to Shadow markers, like the boss ninja she is, it left limited opportunities for condition removal. So the burning would happen on each of the five turns.

I overextended White Eyes on my left flank - he was up against the Dawn Serpent and Yasunori - and it was too much for him. I have, in the past ignored models on my flank to my point scoring detriment, but White Eyes just isn't tanky enough, despite his effectively putting everyone on a negative flip with Inhuman Physiology and Hard to Wound.

On the other side, my Cavern Nephilim was creeping through cover to reach Zheng, who was moving towards the other flank. I planned to use Echolocation to jump next to him and then score the first point, which I didn't manage to get off - Zheng is Mv 7! You also have to discard a card or target Mv with any attack. I managed to score Take Prisoner in Turn 2, but missed out on the Strategy point due to Minako Rei wandering up to contest the marker.

Then it turned into scrambling for points, Shang and the Terracotta Warrior were eventually dispatched, scoring me Death Beds, and I also managed to take out Zheng, which I knew would stop me from scoring the second point of Take Prisoner, but I thought was worth it. But in the middle of the field, Greg was wreaking havoc and took out an Enslaved Spirit, Urnbearer and Barbaros. The Urnbearer's hazardous Pools Of Blood is less effective against a master who can disappear into shadows.

Marathine's Remove Their Claim managed to help me (try to) deny a second point of Death Beds, although it didn't work out in the end, and Kastore ended the game just standing near the Strategy marker on the opposite flank for a second Raid The Vaults point.

Summary

In the end, I lost by two points, which I was very happy with, against a master I'd never faced before, and a much more experienced player. Take Prisoner is always a tricky one to score the second point of. I think holding White Eyes back and sending Barbaros and the Urnbearer with him might have helped take the fight to Greg a bit more.

Round 2 - Kastore, Fervent into Hamelin

I have played into Hamelin before and had a miserable time, losing the Leech King early and gradually getting slaughtered, so my only real goal here was to not have a miserable time.

After declaring Hamelin and seeing the pool, my opponent, Andy started chuckling to himself about 'a crazy list you can play with Hamelin' and I knew it would be a slightly strange game. I was not wrong.

Look at all the rats and pass tokens! The last time I played Hamelin, he didn't hire any rats, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

I decided to take the Grave Golem as I'd read that it is very good in Public enemies as Demise(Immortal Soil) means burying instead of dying so that your opponent can't use killing it to score strategy points.

Andy's deployment was equally unusual. The rats were spread out far enough apart to prevent blast damage from being effective. The majority of his activations were rats using Just a Rat...? so my 11(!) pass tokens soon disappeared.

I remembered from my previous Hamelin experience how horrible the blight tokens and the Black Staff and the Injured could be. My plan was to push Kastore up, and then use Visceral Rampage (I love this action!) to kidnap Hamelin into the middle, where there was a big blob of concealing steam and let Barbaros and the Grave Golem whale on him, in the Urnbearer's Pools of Blood Hazardous aura. My hope was that I'd be able to take him down quickly enough to stop me having too much blight to do more killing.

It didn't work out. Andy hadn't realised Kastore could ignore enemy models while moving, so the field of strategically placed rats wasn't a problem - but I just couldn't force the attack through. Hamelin then ran away (wise) from Kastore. But it did mean he was at large. Andy sent the rats in a lot, and while most of them didn't land any hits, they were annoying.

Over on the other side of the board, however, a small 30mm gap was causing chaos because Kastore and Barbaros couldn't fit through it, although Nix, the spectral dog had no trouble trotting through it. In retrospect, I should have just climbed over the wall.

Nix was, in fact, a massive pain. I tried so hard and sank so many resources into killing him, only to fail. I strongly believe not killing him and finding another way to deal with him is a better approach. He just kept healing up.

This tied up Barbaros, the Urnbearer and the Grave Golem for most of the game, meaning they weren't doing anything to score me points.

Then, my Cavern Nephilim, who was sneaking along the top of the board, trying to get to Andy's deployment zone to score Espionage got killed, and it all got a lot harder.

I hadn't managed to kill anything other than rats, and while I did score Sweating Bullets from Nix and Barbaros, Andy had also scored Deliver a Message!

I realised my only hope for Espionage was killing the Grave Golem myself, and unburying it on the cusp of my opponent's deployment zone, ready to interact and drop a scheme. Andy was very sporting and helped me manage my cards/cheating because I had only Gwyll and the Urnbearer to do it, and I needed to deal 10 wounds, with a 2/3/3 damage track from the Urnbearer and 2/2/3 from Gwyll - so relenting wouldn't cut it - I needed at least four moderates, or two severes from Gwyll. I managed this by burning the rest of my cards to have straight flips that I could cheat damage on and the Grave Golem was buried.

Andy then sacrificed two Stolen to use their Invevitable Fate and Demise(Hungry Rats) abilities to do this to my target corpse marker:

Luckily Gwyll was in range to walk and use her Decay action, which cleared off the four rats, and let the Golem salvage me a second point, to lose 3-2.

Summary

It was a strange, but fun game! Andy told me he messed up the Public Enemies a bit by choosing how to manage Bounty Tokens. I'm gutted my Visceral Rampage didn't go off when I needed it. I'm not sure it would have won me the game, but it was definitely the right thing to try!

Round 3 - Kastore, Fervent into Lucas McCabe, Tomb Delver

Round 3 was against Yan, of Green Jokers Podcast fame, whom I have also played recently. In fact, it was a very similar matchup of Kastore into McCabe. I wouldn't normally expect to be playing Yan at a tournament, as he's a very good player and we're both in the Green Jokers team, so are less likely to be matched up in round 1, so I expected him to be quite aggressive (but polite and sporting, as he is lovely).

I've never won against Yan before, so my aim here was to do as well as possible - and just not get slaughtered. The board had an interesting building in the middle of it, and I'm not too used to terrain that is climbable and enterable. In that previous game, I'd made the mistake of kidnapping Lucas and trying to use Hazardous terrain against him, which he ignores, so I was hoping to avoid doing that this time.

Scheme Selection

I picked In Your Face, which is kind of an auto take for me with Kastore 2, and also Sweating Bullets, which I find Barbaros is great for, with Bring It but also being quite tanky.

Yan was surprised when he saw in the app that my crew was called 'New Awakened Crew', because he was expecting me to play Kastore, Fervent (which I was) - thinking about it afterwards, I am wondering if Awakened would have been a good choice - there's not a lot of high Wp in his crew, so Dominate might have run wild a bit. However, I know Yan likes to kill something early if possible, and Kastore 1 can be quite squishy.

The Game

Unusually for a game of Plant Explosives, most of the action took place inside the building in the centre of the board. It was Height 1, Climbable, Concealing with the steps being counted as stairs you could walk/push up. One of the things that I was unfamiliar with, not having played with a lot of Climable terrain before, is that you can only climb with the Walk action. This means that all of the Returned Faith In The Flesh shenanigans wouldn't let me enter the building, even if 2 inches would have got me in. From the inside, the building must have looked like there was a horde of vampire/demons/gothic monsters outside, all writhing round, but failing to vault a couple of feet into the building.

I moved a Cavern Nephilim in early to drop a bomb, and I could see Yan pondering about whether he'd be able to kill it or not, and he moved Lucas in. This ended up being a bit of a weird game of King of the Hill, as you can't attack Lucas off a charge, but he does have a 2 inch melee range.

In the meantime, he brought Desper around to steal my soulstones! I decided I really wanted to take Desper down, so as most of my crew were around, I started whaling on him. Yan had a lot of luck with using Soulstones to reduce damage - he kept flipping severes! Eventually Desper Leaped away, but was close enough for me to push him into the Urnbearer's Pools of Blood aura and eventually take him down, scoring In Your Face. I did check, but Yan didn't feel inclined to give me my stolen Soulstones back.

I also eventually managed to kill McCabe! The Leech King's Blood Magic is a really powerful action when someone is past half wounds - you can ignore any negative flips, so as long as you can get the attack off, even if you just match their duel total, you can hit them with 5 damage (if you have a severe in hand) with some nasty triggers, which can often finish off models. I think flipping all the severe cards for damage reduction did damage Yan's deck though, because I was definitely getting some actions through that I wouldn't normally.

I also managed to kill Luna and a Huckster, which is definitely the most murdery I've ever been against Yan.

Sadly, however, I was getting tired and I didn't listen properly when he asked me if I wanted to cheat because he was about to use Precise from a Time Worn Blade upgrade to ignore Barbaros's armour, and I thought it was fine. This meant he killed Barbaros, just before I would have scored the first point of Sweating Bullets! He may have been able to do it anyway if I'd cheated, even to put him on a negative. I can't remember now if I had soulstones left (I probably didn't by now), but I always forget you can use them to add a negative flip to a duel, so that might have been an option.

Yan also dropped the Cavern Nephilim, and with it my chances of the second point of In Your Face.

With all the fighting, he'd had more time to score (and deny) points from Strategy, and also Ensnare and In Your Face. However, it felt like the fighting was worth it, it was definitely letting me have a say in the game, and reduce Yan's AP rather than being a distraction.

Overall, I was very happy with this game. I didn't expect to win, but I felt like I did much better against Yan than I have previously. I felt like I'd chosen the right schemes, which I've struggled with in the past, and played well, and I learned about Climbing/Walks, which I didn't know about.

There was much debate among players about whether a 4/2 split of games between the two days of the weekend was wise - I think it was overall, especially for people travelling further, but regardless, everybody felt pretty tired going into Round 4.

Round 4 - Kastore, Fervent into Lady Justice

I was exhausted when this game started! So much so that I picked the same crew as last time.

I was up against Dave Brown - aka Clousseau, who organises the UK Nationals event, which sadly I can't attend this year. Dave seemed worried about Stuff the Ballots with Corner deployment and the mobility of his Lady Justice Crew

Scheme Selection

As well as not changing my crew, I also picked the same Schemes as last time - In Your Face and Sweating Bullets! They are good for the Kastore 2 and Barbaros combination, in my experience.

The last time I faced Lady Justice with Kastore was at the Malifaux Yorkshire Rumble where Esme Bloomfield absolutely slaughtered my crew (in the nicest possible way) so I was... somewhat wary of this master.

The Game

The board was an interesting one - a kind of urban city map, with buildings and fences. I didn't quite unpack as smoothly as I hoped but managed to launch Kastore quite a long way towards the centre, which was dismaying my opponent. He got in a few good hits with Lady J, and I was worried. Then I kidnapped the Judge using Visceral Rampage and managed to take it down - I gave up a potential chance to score Sweating Bullets in favour of an early henchman kill. Lady Justice then jumped into the fray, but alone she ended up kind of surrounded by the Returned crew, which is not a nice place to be. I managed to do what people might describe as 'some bullshit' and use the Leech King's Regeneration paired with I'll Have What They're Having to trigger a Cavern Nephilim's Faith In The Flesh to move it two inches away, so the Leech King could get LOS on Lady Justice and summon a Giant Leech.

Dave had had some bad flips and I'd had some good ones but exhausted my hand, so when I said 'this probably won't work, I need a 10' and flipped exactly that to summon the Leech, I felt a little bit bad. I know you don't have to apologise for your flips, but when there's a big run of luck one way it does feel bad! I didn't drop the hammer on Lady Justice just then, which was puzzling, but I needed Barbaros to be engaging her to score Sweating Bullets. At the start of the next turn, the Giant Leech used Body Slam (as it has a higher stat than its Bloodsuck attack) and laid the Lady to rest.

Getting these kills early on did help swing the game, and the Cavern Nephilim burned cards to get as far into the opposite corner as he could - they can move a whopping 17 inches in their own activation ignoring terrain to secure the second point of In Your Face, and Sweating Bullets was guaranteed with Lady J and the Judge dead. The remainder of the game for me was spent harrassing the Lone Marshall who had managed to score the first point of Stuff the Ballots to try and stop him voting more, killing the totem and trying to make sure I'd got enough votes to score Stuff the Ballots. I finished with about 5s left on my clock, and most of my last activations were 'activate X vote twice' or 'walk, vote'.

In the end, the score was 8-1, which meant I finished the first day on a positive diff, whereas I have never had a positive diff at any point in a tournament so far.

It should be mentioned, however, that Dave realised he'd put Lead-Lined Coat on Lady Justice after she'd died. I think I could have still killed her - but the Armour would have made it harder. I also wouldn't have been able to use Visceral Rampage. I offered to put her back on the table with some more health, but he didn't want to. I had a really nice chat with him after - he was telling me some of the difficulties with organising a tournament the size of Nationals, and I think we left on good terms - he told me after that it's just Kastore he doesn't like 🙃

Day 2

I arrived refreshed with a later start, having gone home and had stew at my mum's house and watched Poirot followed by a decent sleep.

Round 5 - Kastore, Fervent into Hamelin, The Piper

I'd noticed that my opponent, Matt had played a different Outcast master each game so far, so I thought (correctly) that he was going for the Iron Scorpius of playing a different master each game.

My thoughts were that he would pick Von Schill or Tara. As I didn't want to get Tara-d again, I asked the Green Jokers Discord for some help and got lots of good stuff. The plan was to use Kastore 2 against Tara to murder support, or Kastore 1 against Von Schill in the hope of ping damage being good against armour. Then Matt declared Hamelin. I was going to triple (at least!) the number of games I'd played into Hamelin this weekend!

I've never played Turf War before!

As the pool was quite schemey, I decided to play Kastore 2 but lean into the mobility of the Returned keyword, so I took Espionage and Outflank. I added Grave Spirit's Touch to both White Eyes and a Cavern Nephilim - having been advised that 'Outcasts hate Terrifying' and also so that White Eyes could always proc Undulation to get a free 3 inch move.

This bit largely worked - I kept them back to the end, using pass tokens to activate them last. The reason for this was that I've found if you send people to the flanks too early that it just gives people a target. It meant that they could also flip the two markers in those corners, and as they were largely unopposed, this got me quite a few points.

I'm sad not to have a picture of the board, but it was largely a spooky Graveyard. With a lava pool in one corner. I actually sent two models through this lava, but more on that later as it ties in to a dramatic end turn.

The middle of the board is where most of the action happened. Matt protected himself (people always do, sigh) against Kastore's charge blasts, but I ended up charging a rat and placing off the blasts and then kidnapping his Rat Catcher. It was either that or another model I used Visceral Rampage on which then delivered a message. Every. Darn. Time. It's. In. The. Pool. It was basically a big kill fest in the middle of the board, until Nix arrived. This time, having experienced Nix pain in round 2, I didn't really try to kill him, but he's still a pain.

Matt managed to Obey Barbaros, to smack the Urnbearer and Shove Aside out of the way so her aura couldn't help much, and then smacked Kastore, but as that just healed him, it was possibly not worth it. The middle Turf War strategy marker flipped backwards and forwards a few times. Matt managed to drop Kastore after his activation Turn 4 - which I was happy with - he'd tied up a lot of models for a long time - and he had forgotten he needed him alive for the second point of Deliver a Message!

After this, I had to do some quick measuring. I needed to drop a scheme in Matt's deployment zone to score Espionage - so the Cavern Nephilim, with 4 Burning now (but also Regeneration +4 - Grave Spirit's Touch can be disgusting!) absolutely legged it across the board, and managed to interact, Ambush, interact to drop a scheme under himself. This turned out to be decisive, because Matt's plan was for Hamelin to Obey him into picking it back up, but he couldn't get both of them with one action.

In the end, I won, but it was super close and so much fun. After my first experience, it's hard to believe I enjoyed two Hamelin match-ups in one weekend!

At this point, I was feeling very pleased with myself - I'd got my two wins that I really wanted, and I saw my next opponent had played Nekima 2 all day. So I decided, after a chat with Jack and Esme in the break, to bring Reva, for a change! I didn't have Old Hob painted up, which is a shame as I really do want to try him with Reva, but I did have the Grave Golem. I was expecting to have an interesting match against Nekima 2, when my opponent Sy, told me he also fancied a change and declared: Pandora 2...

Round 6 - Reva Cortinas into Pandora, Tyrant Torn

We both collectively decided that we were going to have fun this game, as neither of us were headed to the podium. We also had a delayed start as we had to move boards, and as our brains were frazzled we only really finished three turns.

But, it was a great opportunity to test Reva in a tournament situation.

I had no ideas which schemes to pick - Reva has seemed quite killy so far, and this was quite schemey. I've read that a lot of people take Bête Noire Out Of Keyword for scheming with Reva, but I don't think I've really found a suitable schemer yet. Lampads get a 5 inch move as a bonus action that can move out of engagement, but they have other things to do, and are really at their best when stacking up a ton of burning in a Pyre marker.

I went for Protected Territory and Ensnare in the end.

I've also not played against the Delirium models before, so that was good to see.

One issue with the matchup is that Revenant depend on managing on Shielded and Burning, which are conditions. And guess which crew mess with your conditions? Also, Pyre and Corpse markers are super important and the Poltergeist (which Pandora 2 can resummon if you kill it) can remove markers with Telekinesis.
So, I'd have probably played better with Kastore 2, and some Killer Instinct upgrades on the crew to get Ruthless. But it was fun, nevertheless.

I managed to move a corpse candle quite a long way up the board, and managed to spread some Pyre markers near the middle - but that part of the board was a kind of tug of war between a lampad and a Delerious thrall and summoned Aversions. Reva killed an aversion early on through the corpse candle with Ethereal Reaping and then spent most of the game trying to get some damage to stick on Dorian Crowe. He is annoying!

The grave golem soaked up a lot of damage and conditions from Pandora - which sadly meant he was used to summon. When he eventually bought it, his Demise(Immortal Soil) meant that he could actually reappear on the other side of the board in a corpse that the Restless Spirit dropped with Grave Robber and start scoring some Cloak and Dagger points.

I managed to score a point of Protected territory, and there was some tricky activations towards the very end to see if I could deny a point of Cloak and Dagger, but in the end it was 4-2 to Sy.

Pandora has a bit of a reputation as a Negative Play Experience - and she is annoying, no doubt about it. But Sy was a lovely opponent - prompting me about things like the Aversions Antipathy aura every time I forgot about it (which was many) or any of the other Woe gotchas - he said he wanted opponents to make informed decisions, rather than not enjoying it.

Summary

I've been spoiled living so close to Powder Monkey and being able to play in events there, so it was a lot of fun to take part in an event with a different TO, a different venue, different boards etc. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, and I enjoyed all of my games. It even finished early enough that I could see my children before bedtime, despite giving two fellow Green Jokers a lift home.

I'm really pleased with how I did, a positive diff is definitely exciting, although it was skewed by Round 4. Winning two games is what I was looking for, so I'm well pleased. Onwards and Upwards.

Thank you to Jamie for running, and everyone else who helped or made boards or played.