James Wilson Codes

This match was against Dan Fallows and was part of our Escalation League. Dan is quite new to Malifaux, and Honeypot is his first keyword - although I've never faced Honeypot before!

I read up on the cards before starting, and while they seemed to have a lot of scary abilities, some of them did have low stats, so I was hoping to be able to kill some to start with, to put me in a better position for later.

One thing that occurred to me before this game is that a Shieldbearer makes a good selection for Sweating Bullets. Take the Hit lets you place in base contact with a model that's being targeted by the enemy. My thinking is that if a master or henchman targets a model near the centre, I should be able to Take the Hit and move to engage them, ready to score Sweating Bullets at the end of the turn.

In Your Face also seemed like a good choice for Reva, as she can be quite killy.

The only one of these models that I'd met before was Gwyneth Maddox in my last game against Asami - but she was taken Out of Keyword there, whereas now she is in keyword - so I was expecting more card draw shenannigans.

The game started off with Dan using Jakob's Obey to send his Beckoners down the flanks. I concentrated on a kind of set piece unpack I've been practicing (but still not perfected) - it feels like the key to Reva is getting Pyre markers spread out on the board as soon as possible, and Corpse Markers and Corpse Candles into position. Because I had Ezekiel, who could summon Mindless Zombies, there's a few interactions here to consider. Corpse Candles have a Light The Way bonus action - which can push Corpse Markers - so you can push the other Corpse Candle, and two zombies - if you summon them first. I think I will need to play a lot more games to get my head round this (especially as I want to use Old Hob to throw them) - but it seemed to be working okay here. If you do Blasphemous Ritual on one of them from a ShieldBearer you get two Pyre Markers, from Demise (Possessing Flame) and Funeral Pyre and hand out a bunch of Focus to your crew. Then your Lampads can use Dancing in the Flames to move the Pyre Markers out.

While I was doing this, Dan move the Hungering Darkness close to one of my Lampads. There were a lot of tricky auras in his crew to contend with - Gwyneth can hand out Brilliance Tokens, Mr Tannen can set up Boring Conversation, Jakob can make you take damage if you Cheat Fate. So, I was trying to avoid those models! Luckily the Hungering Darkness was close enough to me that I could do that, so I concentrated my attacks on it. The Lampad failed to hit, but Vincent St Clair can do a surprising amount of damage if he keeps shooting, and I managed to drop the Hungering Darkness turn 2 - after Dan had done some cunning positioning to move it back into the fray.

Meanwhile, one of his Beckoners was stopping my Restless Spirit from Planting Explosives with A Pleasant Distraction.

The next part of the game was dominated by Reva's The Unquiet Dead action. Because a number of Lynch's crew were in the centre, where my Pyre Markers were, she could spend a Soulstone to get the action off twice with the Perdition's Flame trigger. Because I was forcing Dan to take a lot of Simple Duels, it meant he was either losing cards or getting damaged and Injured. There was a terrible moment where I realised I'd forgotten that I'd killed a Corpse Candle with Feed On Grief and had taken too many actions with Reva! We rolled it back and made sure all Dan's models had healed back/weren't injured/he had back any cards he'd cheated. I left my soulstones and cheated cards as discarded. I felt terrible about it, but he was so sporting!

I think this was a bit of a turning point in the game - because it put him on the back foot, I was able to dictate a bit more of the game. I killed some models - which then gave me enough AP to pick up Explosives. I spotted that Dan had set up Ensnare really nicely on Reva, by moving Kitty through her and I was troubled because I didn't think I'd be able to stop him scoring it - till I remembered Ezekiel could heal a model to make them pick up Schemes, so I did that. I found out in our post game chat that I'd unintentionally denied him Take Prisoner as well - he had specified Ezekiel - but I randomly summoned a Mindless Zombie with a spare AP, meaning he could not score it. This was pure luck, and in no way skill on my part!

I did manage to score Sweating Bullets with the Shieldbearer, but it was made harder by the Corpse Candle's Death Urge which was meant to push Kitty through models towards the Shieldbearer completely whiffed.

I also managed to do some positioning I was pleased with (usually I get this very wrong) so that a Mindless Zombie could attack without triggering auras by having its target directly between them.

In the end it was 8-1 to me. Dan played really well (far better than I did when I had the same number of games under my belt!) and hopefully it was still fun for him as well. Things like The Unquiet Dead can be pretty painful, especially when your hand is reduced and your options are cut off. He was an absolute trooper though and was always looking for ways to score right until the very end - which I think is definitely the best approach. I've often found myself going into 'Damage Limitation Mode' when I know I'm losing - and I think I have learned quite a lot from it. He had clearly worked out how annoying Boring Conversation can be, and was using it well. I'm looking forward to the next time I play him!

It's the end of League event tomorrow - I'm looking forward to it, let's see what I've learned about Reva! I'm also looking forward to being able to use Old Hob once more...