James Wilson Codes

This was a fun game - I'm learning Reva for the Escalation league and my opponent is learning Asami, but because this was not a league game, we could choose from any boxes we liked!

I've previously played James where he's fielded Hoffman, Marcus and McCabe - so it was fun to take him on with a very different crew - and I'm still really enjoying Reva 1!

We decided to flip actual physical cards for the pool for this game! It is definitely not the pool I'd have chosen - my least favourite strategy and deployment, and no killy schemes for Reva! I'm still struggling to find the best way of playing schemey schemes with her. However flipping the cards was fun!

I thought Boosey would be playing Asami as I know he is using her in the league. He'd suggested he'd be using non-league boxes, so I was very excited to take Old Hob for the first time!

So, I didn't know much about the old Oni, so the rework wasn't affecting me. Boosey did a lovely job of explaining them to me, but I have found that I don't really take it in until I've lost to a crew a few times! I knew they were summoners though, and he explained that due to flicker tokens, some of them would not stay for all their turns.

I saw Boosey was taking Gwyneth out of keyword. I think this might be the first OoK I've seen in the wild, but he must be doing something right as he won Best Ten Thunders at Road To Nationals two days later!

Scheme selection was as difficult as ever for me. I think I should probably consider Hold Up Their Forces more often, but I've found it very hard to pull off. I went for Espionage and Protected Territory, and I think Espionage on Corner was a very foolish move. It's a long way to the enemy deployment zone! Reva could get there with Mv 7 but she's kind of a centrepiece model that needs to be killing stuff.

Once the game got underway, I was quite pleased with setting Pyre markers up and pushing them up the board. James summoned an Akaname(I think! I haven't got the Oni models sorted in my head yet) right in the middle of my central bubble. This was incredibly well positioned - just enough to be engaging my models and stopping me from doing what I wanted to do. I hoped to take it out with a Lampad and messed up the flips - this meant that I had to spend far more AP taking it out in Turn 2 than I would have liked.

I knew my opponent did not care for Lampads - he's mentioned this before. I wonder if he has been hurt by burning spirits before, because he definitely came with a plan for taking mine out! He had summoned a Jorogumo - and they have a Quick action called Mark of Vengeance which prevents healing. I learned something I had not realised before - but this actually turns off the Lampad's Demise (Possessing Flame) ability - as they can't heal, so they die. At the time, I didn't have the cards to cheat against the ability and then he just obliterated my poor Lampad. This was sad, but I've learned something there about Demise abilities - I often play Kastore, and I almost never use Gwyll's Infested with Leeches trigger to do the same. It could be really useful against annoying Demise (Eternal) creatures - especially as you've also just given them Injured!

Meanwhile, Ezekiel was doing his thing. Mindless Zombies don't look great on their cards, but can be very useful for slowing people down and causing trouble - and of course they also count as Corpse Markers for Reva's Ethereal Reaping attack - although I've found you have to be very careful about making sure they don't wander into Pyre markers and get set on fire, as they don't ignore Burning like Corpse Candles. Although thematically, if a slightly comedy necromancer did summon Zombies, I could imagine a scene where they do get set on fire and cause carnage - although there's no 'Firework Factory Terrain' in Malifaux (you can have this idea for free, Wyrd for M4E or GG5, if you're reading!)

As well as Zombie Apocalypse, I'm also loving the Debt of Gratitude trigger on his Healing Energy action - healing an enemy is a shame, but then making them pick up Scheme Markers is great! It also meant that Boosey was forced into using resources to kill Ezekiel in Turn 5, when it had all gone South for me anyway (spoilers! sorry!), in order to stop him doing this last activation. The trouble is, that perhaps I shouldn't have been healing Amo No Zako for this, whom James described as 'the most important model in the crew'.

I was pleased with Old Hob's first outing. I think it'll take me a while to get used to how best to use Hurl Corpse as a shennanigan, to move Corpse Candles around, but he was solid against the Tengu and Minako Rei. I think people won't expect Armour 2 in a Resurrectionist Crew, so possibly don't tech against it. Temper Tantrum is nice - making people Slow vs a TN 14 Wp duel is great, and if you have a 5 of Rams, you can get a melee action out of it as well! I'd love to get him say next to a Strategy marker in Raid the Valults or Stuff the Ballots as he seems like a great guard. I totally forgot about his excellently named It's Raining Corpses ability which should have dropped some more markers when he was damaged.
Another neat trick is that his 50mm base means he can just plonk on top of a Scheme Marker for Protected Territory (which is how I scored one of my few points in this game!)

One thing I very much enjoyed - although my opponent did not was Reva's The Unquiet Dead action, which I've not used much before.

In fact, I've not really used this sort of action much before - Kastore, Awakened has Bountiful Feast but it's never seemed Master level good, so I've not used it much. But in this case:

• Injured is always great
• Wp 14 is pretty hard to beat - certainly enough to rinse a few cards
• A Pyre Marker is 50mm, not Destructible, and not Impassable. That's actually quite a large area that is covered by this action (I did the maths - it's 2.16% of the board!)
• Look at that Perdition's Flame trigger! You get to do it again!

So, I got to make poor James take 12 Consecutive simple duels! One good thing about Revenant is that if you've got Pyre markers out, you tend to have a lot, so if your enemy is unfortunate enough to have a few models near them, you can usually hit them multiple times. Asami herself was one of the targets here, and ended up with Injured +2.

I feel like I could have probably killed Asami, and I did move Vincent round to shoot at her, but Turn 4 it wasn't really worth it, given the points difference - better to concentrate on trying to eke out some scoring for myself.

It felt pretty brutal - I'd have been tempted to make it 18 (if there are three models, it feels well worth spending soulstones to get that trigger) but I had to have Reva use the Slam action to get rid of a Rift marker to not die from the Hazardous first. It did mean Asami ran away which probably helped me overall.

I've not mentioned Rift markers so far. These are what Asami summons her demons in through. They're also Hazardous, and James was very skillful at moving them through my models. In the end, this was what killed Reva. Overall, I just was not able to keep up with his Summons, and was unable to score enough points. I managed to eke out the second point of Protected Territory, with Old Hob and the Restless Spirit.

The game was a pleasure however, despite getting spanked - and the best bit was seeing how excited James was to play a new crew - and being able to tell how he'd been getting the reps in, to use them in a tournament(congratulations on the Best In Faction!) - it feels like he's really meshed with them, and it's always good to see people enjoying their toys.

I'm trying to think what I would do differently if I faced this crew again - while he took Gwyneth Out Of Keyword to help with Card Draw, I think summoners are card hungry. As I learned on the Green Jokers Podcast episode on Summoners attacking his hand and soulstones could prove useful - lots of attacks on henchmen (he had Amo No Zako, Minako Rei and Gwyneth to choose from) and masters, Unquiet Dead (the turn where I spammed this he definitely felt the hand/deck pressure) - and I guess trying to send the Zombies in to soak up APs.

Speaking of the podcast, the most recent episode has them shout out this very blog, and say some lovely words - thanks Guys! I'm sorry I didn't have this post done in time for them to record the episode, as James actually mentions it - but sadly Real Life sometimes intrudes on Malifaux related fun!