James Wilson Codes

I was very excited to play this game because it was my chance to practice one of the wacky custom strategies that Yan and Ed at Powder Monkey had cooked up for the A Foul Gift event.

This is the third time that I have played against Adam, and previously (and every other time that I've seen him play) he has been firmly in Camp Bayou. This is why, when we set up the game in advance I was surprised by his choice:

This made things quite interesting! He told me he was planning a Nytemare Before Christmas themed crew for A Foul Gift.

I have played against Dreamer before, but in a restricted game where he couldn't summon. Which probably meant I hadn't had the full 'Dreamer Experience'.

However, I had wanted to try two Urnbearers for some time. There are two in the box, and I'd never taken two, and whenever I've played Kastore recently, I've really enjoyed using their Hazardous aura, and Down To The Last Drop action (regular readers will have heard me mention using this on Barbaros a lot!) - reading the card, it also seemed like there would be some nice interactions - when a Returned model lands in the Pools of Blood aura of one Urnbearer, they can potentially heal, then push with Faith in the Flesh into the other Urnbearer's Pools of Blood (after consulting rules gurus on the UK Malifaux Discord, you can't proc both in one go, but the once per activation applies separately to each Urnbearer) and get another heal/move - and hand a total of 4 Shielded between the two Urnbearers!

I also took Kastore, Awakened instead of Kastore, Fervent - mainly for his Insatiable trigger - with the extra mobility afforded by the Malifaux on Ice strategy, I was planning to use Barbaros's Broodfighter (2 inches + 1 inch push) and Shove Aside (4 inches + 1 inch push) to smack Marathine 8 inches in total in the first activation! Then Marathine could Walk twice (or charge if anyone is near) (two lots of 5 + 1 inches) to get 20 inches - with another (5 + 1 inches) from Broodmaster's Domain - meaning it could be in the midst of the enemy quite quickly, and then try to heal Kastore a lot in order to proc Insatiable and pulse out damage.

However, that crew had been made in advance based on the pool - I didn't adapt it for Dreamer, and I was walking in regretting that I hadn't used the Killer Instinct upgrade to add Ruthless to models to let them ignore all the Terrifying that many of Dreamer's models have. Adam was very sporting and offered me the chance to go back and change things - but I want to get better at crew selection as a part of the game, and I tend not to learn things unless I suffer the consequences, so I decided to press on.

The custom Strategy definitely took use some time to get used to! I definitely clocked out, and I think Adam would have too - but as it was a friendly evening game to get used to the strategy, we kept going.

I messed up the Cavern Nephilim - I tried to Echolocate onto the Marathine, thinking it was a neat way of moving across the board - not having read the card and realising you could only Place if you damaged a model! Adam kindly let me roll it back and do a charge with Ferocious Claws instead - which did in fact let me push the Marathine further. However, he expertly took the poor Neph apart in the coming turns. I think their 9 Health is designed for 'Three min-3 attacks can take this down' - which is probably fair given how much they can do, but always makes me sad. Particularly because I often forget and leave them overexposed.

I fared better after this though. The plan to pulse out damage from the Marathine worked really well! It bypassed a lot of the Incorporeal from the Dreamer crew, and I think Adam said Dreamer 'lost 6 health in Turn just from standing near a sword' - which put him on the back foot a little. Lord Chompy Bits ended up in an Urnbearer's Pools of Blood Hazardous aura, but engaged by Barbaros - which is a precarious position, as you're taking a point of damage for each action, each generated push, and you can only target Barbaros if you're attacking, who bleeds Black Blood onto you, and the Urnbearer can Down to the Last Drop onto Barbaros (unless he needs healing with Empty The Urns - he's not an unlimited beatsack) so poor Chompy was getting pinged all over the place too!

There was a strange interaction I've not had before though, where the Insidious Madness (either the original one he hired or one of the many he still managed to summon) kept giving Barbaros Distracted, and the Leech King kept using Bloodletting to remove it but make Barbaros take 1 irreducible damage. Which procced Black Blood again! It's definitely one I'll remember for crews that can give out negative conditions to models with Black Blood in future.

Adam did get LCB to escape and to kill both the Urnbearers before the end - he said afterwards that hiring Angel Eyes, if he'd been more generally playing Neverborn, would have made my day much harder - and I quite agree. I've yet to face Angel Eyes, but her reputation precedes her.

While all this was going on, Widow Weaver was kind of left on her own, unchallenged, setting up a network of schemes and web markers. This did mean she didn't get to summon because there was no scrap, or models killed near her.

In the end, with all the killing of models, it came down to a very tactical, activation order scoring of points. Despite all the ice, this is still Raid The Vaults, and we had both picked Sweating Bullets. Adam didn't have enough significant models without summon upgrades left to score Strategy, but Widow Weaver had two potential Web Markers to teleport to and be an unengaged henchman near the centre of the board to deny it from me. He also managed to get back to his deployment zone to redrop a scheme for Espionage that Marathine had picked up. I might have been able to prevent this if I'd activated Marathine later.

It all hinged on the Turn 5 initiative flip. Adam's Daydream's were still around with Ancient Pact, giving him +2 and it sounded like he had a 13 in hand to force it through... when I flipped the Red Joker! He was then very sporting and helped me work through what the options were with activations etc, and it came down to whether the Leech King could skate over to Widow Weaver in one activation - and once we'd measured it out, he could.

The score was 6-4 in the end to me, with his help - but what a great game! It's always fun against Adam, he's a great opponent, and you can tell he loves the game and all the weirdness (wyrdness?) it brings.

I was definitely planning to use this crew in the Malifaux on Ice round at A Foul Gift. Spoiler - I'm writing this after A Foul Gift - and it did NOT work so well there! will add a link here when that is written up!)