James Wilson Codes

Pregame (written the night before!)

I've played Jamie a few times now, and always lost. So, I'm hoping to learn from this - he's always been great at teaching, so if I lose again I'm sure I'll learn something!

I believe he's playing Ophelia. I think I played against her crew once, in the early days of the Escalation League - but it was a while ago and I think it might have been still henchman led. In any case, I've forgotten!

The only chance I've had to look at the Kin cards has suggested a lot of shooting. So, the only thing I can think of is to take Athorak, for his Wardstones blocking LOS. Other than that, all I can really think of is to hide my models behind cover wherever possible.

We shall see!

The Game

This game was so much fun! Jamie is always a fab opponent - very experienced, but always happy to teach, gets caught up in the fun comic aspects of it. I highly recommend anybody reading checks out the Green Jokers Podcast that he hosts. He's well known for being on a 'Bayou Hype' at the moment - but he informed me that it's only his second game with Ophelia.

I was expecting a very shooty crew - what I seemed to get was a One Gremlin Army with support. I didn't take Athorak, mainly because I find the wardstones hard to use (and Jamie pointed out one of his models can remove markers, so they wouldn't have been too effective anyway.

The first turn was fairly cagey and cautious, both Masters got into threat range of each other, and it was a kind of Cat and Mouse game of who got to engage. Eventually Ophelia took the plunge, and started setting my people on fire and blasting them. The Grave Spirit's Touch on the Gwisin meant she could protect Kastore a bit, and is definitely something I'll try again in future games. By the end of turn 1, nobody had died.

Turn 2 was where it started to get interesting. I cheated up to an 8 on initiative, which tempted Jamie (much to his later regret) into cheating up to a 13, and activating Ophelia first. She is pretty brutal, but we managed to survive.

Then, the fun started, Barbaros hit her, pushed her into a building, and then pushed himself in to hem her in - her Size 1, which had been giving her Shielded from The Bigger They Are now worked against her, as she couldn't see or be seen over Barbaros, and she couldn't move because she was blocked.

The worry here was that I wanted Barbaros to score Sweating Bullets, so I needed Ophelia to not die, but be damaged enough that Jamie used up resources. She's surprising durable with her extra shielded, that I always forgot about.

Eventually, however, Bo Peep entered the mix, interacting to get an intel token but staying out of engagement so I couldn't steal it back easily. This meant, however that I could score Sweating Bullets off her. Kastore could have whacked Ophelia then, but instead, he took out a Young Lacroix, used the card he drew from The Whisper to cheat on Broodmaster's Blade to get the Marathine to hit him and use Feast On The Faithful to move him out of Ophelia's engagement, then interact to steal the intel from Bo Peep and hit her.

Then, Sammy Lacroix Jynxed Kastore, and managed to get off the trigger - and buried him! Bit of a panic.

However at the start of turn 3, the Urnbearer used Down To The Last Drop on Barbaros. This is such a great combo. I haven't got very far into Breachside Broadcast, which is my main way of learning the lore of Malifaux, and I know he has history with Nekima, but I really really want Barbaros to marry an Urnbearer! They're such beautiful sculpts and they have so many synergies. This is a great one though. First, he and enemy models within 1" take 1 damage. But, because of his Black Blood, the enemy models take another 1 damage. Ping damage is great, bypassing armour and lots of other defensive tech (no good against incorporeal though!) and this actually killed Bo Peep and Ophelia, unactivated! Pretty good for a bonus action! This was probably the turning point of the game.

Ophelia was a scary threat, however. Good shooting, but she manages to get Arsenal upgrades from herself and from totems that she can discard to reduce damage but that also give her a ton of extra attacks. One thing I do like about Malifaux is the way some of the mechanics, while looking super dry when written out in rule form (I guess they have to be, because rules need to be very clear about what happens) actually really do invoke a narrative if you lean into it. The Tar Bomb upgrade does decent damage, but if the target is already on fire, it becomes very worrying. Kind of like if you were on fire, you would not want something flammable thrown on you. More on this later, when Kastore meets his doom in turn 4. Ophelia definitely had the vibe of an action movie hero from the 80s, laden down with weapons, but with three misbehaving children (her Young Lacroix totems) wandering around causing her grief. As a parent of three, I sympathise with how hard it can be sometimes!

I activated Kastore and Jamie placed him way on the other side of the board, near my Enslaved Spirit and Cavern Nephilim who had nobody around them and spent the game moving and collecting from a single intel marker. Kastore does have a big threat range though, and walk/walk/charged. This proved to be his doom, because Pere Ravage used Breath of Fire with the No, Down, Pig! trigger.

This depended on Jamie being able to cheat a 12 of Crows! This is another great example of rules adding to the narrative. The thought of a scary massive ancient vampire rising from the ground, charging violently in, and finally being blown up by a gremlin with a dynamite laden pig is hilarious. I didn't even mind I'd lost my master to a Size 1 model, it was an epic moment.

After this, I managed to score Take Prisoner against Sly 'Six Shots' - he ran away from My Gwisin, and Barbaros walked up to him, avoiding charging so as not to trigger his Squeal defensive trigger that would let him run away. Next turn, Barbaros Push Asided him into the middle of a Severe mudpit. What a great way to work on Take Prisoner. What a shame I forgot about keeping him alive. I didn't kill him (I was trying, just didn't get it off) and then he ran into the Urnbearer's Pools of Blood aura, which denied me the point.

At this point, we talked it out as it was getting late. The final score was 7-4. It's always fun to win a game, but I would have had a blast with Jamie even if I'd lost. He managed to score the final point of In Your Face by just pegging it to my deployment zone - although this did guarantee me the second point of Sweating Bullets. Amusingly he also scored the first point of Sweating Bullets at the exact same time as me, having chosen Bo Peep.

Just to show that cards are weird, Gwyll had a double negative damage flip and:

Takeaways

Urnbearers are still awesome

They are super squishy, but I think a Gwisin with Grave Spirit's Touch helps massively, and the Hazardous terrain and heals are great. Shame she can't heal the Gwisin, but it's not a Returned model. I don't think she Emptied The Urns once this game - and I think when I've taken them before I've focused on that to the exclusion of all else.

Don't forget about the second point of schemes

It's so easy to mess this up or put yourself in a position where you can't score it.

Ophelia is like Rambo but small and green

The Arsenal upgrades are bonkers! It felt like Jamie was playing Bonanza Brawl and I was playing regular Malifaux!