James Wilson Codes

I went into this knowing how good a player Yan is, so I wasn't too hopeful of my chances. However, like many people in the Green Jokers meta in and around Huddersfield, he's very chilled and happy to teach. He was happy to let me walk things back a couple of times, but largely I wanted to make the mistakes in order to learn from them (like The Whisper, I still find that so hard to administrate!)

We hadn't planned a scheme pool, or strategy, so we decided to flip cards for it, which was surprisingly exciting! I was pleased to practice Raid The Vaults as I've probably got the least experience with that strategy. The pool ended up being fairly schemy, except for Death Beds, which still needs scheme markers, so it's possible I should have switched my crew up, maybe used a second Cavern Nephilim. However I went with the same crew as my last game - but more on the differences with that game, later...

In the end, I chose Death Beds on the grounds that Raid The Vaults kind of guarantees enemies will be near strategy markers, and also Ensnare - partly to try out one of the Gwyll shennanigans from Yan and Jamie's podcast.

I have played against Lucas 1 before, when I was still learning the game from the escalation league and I think in the tournament at the end, and what I could really remember was 'Luna is a pain' and 'Lots of artifacts being tossed around'. The second was definitely true - the first didn't come up too much this game, which is good, because it's emotionally quite hard for me to target a dog with the intent to kill.

The game started interestingly for me. Yan's unpack involved his Cryptologist using Cursed Translation for the tome trigger to drop a scrap marker (in order to do artifact shennanigans) and Black Jokering - this didn't matter, as Lucas was relenting. Then, he managed to flip a Severe damage - so Lucas had to take 3 damage! He was regretting not picking the Incorporeal Host Ducat as a target.

At this point, I was thinking 'hmmm, maybe I can kill Lucas', and I started the process of bringing Kastore up the board.

Kastore, Fervent's main beating melee attack does double blast damage and lets you place if it's generated by a charge, and with some very careful Faith In The Flesh movement work (and advice from Yan - one of the things I love about what I've experienced of the Malifaux scene is how folk are happy to help you), I managed to avoid Lucas's Extended Reach ability and do the blast damage. I managed to hit 3 models, and which felt pretty good, and place myself out of melee range of Lucas. He also took out Host Ducat first turn.

But, as I often seem to do, I left Kastore overexposed, and Yan dropped him the first activation of turn 2. I'm slow to learn this one, but one of the things about Malifaux is there's no unkillable models (except Marathine, sort of) even a tough guy like Kastore will get take down if he's up against a group. One day I hope to properly internalise this.

I discussed with Yan afterwards what I could have done differently, and I think what I underuse is his Visceral Rampage action, which lets you ping someone, push up to your move and place them in base contact with you. You can also stagger them on a Mask trigger, great for kidnapping. Doing this would have kept me out of danger, a bit. At least Kastore and Marathine would have had a second activation. It also gave Lucas a Corpse marker for his Treasure Trove action to turn into articfact upgrades.

It was strange to be playing Resurrectionists and have my opponent want the corpses...

One of the schemes I'd picked was Ensnare. I used a Cavern Nephilim's Echolocation with the Tomes trigger to drop one near Desper LaRaux, and when another was there, I thought I'd got him. What I didn't realise at the time, was that a Huckster could just Walk, then Interact to get rid of one of them. I find myself forgetting things like this all the time, it's why I really struggle with Cloak and Dagger, I'm always having my intel tokens stolen😭.

Losing Kastore was a big blow, but what sounded the death knell for me this game was not reading (and Yan did explain it at the start, I have only myself to blame) Lucas's card. In particular, Depths of Malifaux meaning that he was unaffected by Hazardous terrain.

You see, in my last two games, kidnapping the enemy master into the Urnbearer's Pools of Blood aura, with a Gwisin Taking The Hit to help keep her alive has been very effective. However, what this actually meant was, I'd used Barbaros to move Lucas closer to a notoriously squish support model. I didn't even think to use the Urnbearer's Lure so that Barbaros could activate next and give Lucas a bit of a smack.

Over the next couple of turns, this ended with most of those models dying. I did finally manage to score Ensare though. Gwyll used Essence Transfer from an Enslaved Spirit (Yan hates those guys🤣) onto Barbaros to drop a scheme marker under Desper, and then Decay to kill the Enslaved Spirit and use Demise(Claims of the Court) to drop another. The reason I didn't Essence Transfer twice is not because it's limited, but because I was out of soulstones and didn't have a tome to cheat in. Barbaros's next move was to use Broodfighter to out of Desper's range and go and sit on the two scheme markers in case of any shennanigans - Hucksters can move a long way with Secret Passage!

This worked, I finally scored my first point!

Yan is very good at denying people points. I don't think I'm quite at the level yet where I can really think about that, unless I've got a big advantage. He stopped me from getting any strategy points. He somehow always seemed to have a model he could move into range of the strategy markers. Barbaros legged it after this for a strategy marker on the other side of the board, hoping to score at least one point for strategy, but McCabe moved next to him, and then used Deadly Pursuit from his Treasure Map upgrade to push 4 inches and deny me it.

Going into turn 5, I had three models left, and Yan had scored 5 points to my 1, so it's fair to say victory was unlikely. I did want to keep playing though, because a situation had developed between my Cavern Nephilim and his Alleyway Echo.

I'd been trying for a while to score death beds her. The Cavern Nephilim has a great, spiky damage track, and I had managed to not kill it the turn before and push it onto range of the strategy and scheme markers.

But, the Alleyway Echo's Combat Finesse meant that I could not cheat on melee attacks. Yan actually suggested 'you could just shoot it' which is what I did. I'd pushed him out of engaging me in turn 4 and then Echolocation managed to ping it for the 1 damage it needed to drop and score me Death Beds. If I hadn't had to do it in turn 5, I would have had a chance, maybe at scoring the second point, as Barbaros was also right next to a strategy marker. Yan, of course, moved a huckster in next to the Cavern Nephilim to deny me my last chance of getting Raid The Vaults.

In the end, I lost 2-8 to Yan. One thing I really appreciate is when really good players know they're going to win, they sometimes go into what I call 'coaching mode' - talking about my options etc. It really helps me to grow in the game, and Yan has always been fantastic at that.

Takeaways

• Kastore is scary, but he's not invulnerable. Someone at a tournament described him as being a 'scalpel, not a sledgehammer' and it's true. Just because the sculpt is a massive scary vampire, and he can heal a lot if he's near his Returned models, on his own, he's kind of just a target. It also means you lose Marathine. Marathine is less useful than with Kastore, Awakened, because you can't drop schemes or get that sweet ping damage, but it's still APs and possible scheme marker removal you're losing. I mentioned before about Visceral Rampage and I think in future I'm going to plan Kastore's escape routes better.
• Check enemies are affected by Hazardous terrain before trying to drown them in Pools Of Blood. Yan was so sporting about this - he felt bad about not reminding me because he didn't know that was the point of my kidnapping. I don't mind because I feel like this way, I will have learned to check, and possibly wouldn't have taken the Urnbearer - for two more stones I could have taken the Leech King and used some Giant Leeches to slow up his models.
• Watch out for those upgrades! I mean, look how many Lucas had on himself at the end:
  

All in all, a great game - thanks Yan!

James Boosey (👋 hope to write a blog about a game against you soon!) asked how come I'd been so loyal to Kastore since starting Malifaux. It's a combination of trying to fit in an expensive hobby with three children, but also having limited time to play, and soloing one master for an extended period of time has definitely helped me get better - and having a thriving local scene and tournaments people come to across the country within walking distance at Powder Monkey Gaming means that I'm being building up knowledge of a lot of different masters.

That said, I'm picking up Reva Cortinas this year! There's another Escalation League running later this month. I'm going to write a blog post at some point about how the first one got me into the game, and how great I thought it was - but for now, know that there are, I believe, at the time of writing, spaces available. It was great fun last time for both new (and in my case, very new to miniatures games) players, and experienced ones alike! Highly recommend giving it a shot if you're in the local area.