James Wilson Codes

I was looking forward to this game. Playing Geraint is always lovely, and after Kastore gave Lucius a little tickle in our last game, I was eager to see what he would do with Reva Cortinas, Luminary.

There has been some discussion in the Green Jokers meta (and in the wider UK meta) about the current state of the Malifaux game. Recent keyword reworks seem to be comparatively strong and more complex - and there has been talk that the Resurrectionists have been left behind a little bit. So it was nice to be playing a Green on Green game!

I had planned to play Reva 2 because I wanted to practice her, and Geraint kindly offered to play a master I had not encountered before in preparation for A Breach In The North XI (tomorrow at time of writing!) - and he picked... Seamus!

Seamus is a character whose reputation precedes him. Problematic in the lore, he is still a popular figure but does not seem to be taken very often. That may be due to my limited experience of tournaments, however. In essence, he teleports around the board with Secret Passage and has a big gun, which he can sometimes fire twice if the stars align.

I asked Yan Pietrzak for some advice before this game, and his main piece was to avoid taking models that Seamus could one-shot with his .50 Flintlock, which can do 8 damage on a severe flip. In keyword, Shieldbearers were good for Take The Hit and Hard to Kill, while Lampads were good for Demise (Possessing Flame). I also took the Grave Golem, on the grounds that it can remove corpses to heal (which would inconvenience both Seamus and Bête Noire) but also for Demise (Immortal Soil), which not only removes a corpse but also turns it into an undying, regenerating sack of wounds. Finally, I went for Ezekiel - a 6 Health model with limited defensive tech seemed like a bad choice, but I was hoping he would summon Zombies to use Protected (Undead) on. I put Killer Instinct on Reva, as there is quite a bit of Terrifying in the Redchapel crew, but the main plan was to try and score on the flanks with the lamps, kill something with Reva, and hope for the best with Seamus.

Given the above plan, I took Outflank for the Lampads and Death Beds on Pyre Markers, on the grounds that if Reva kills something, there would probably be some Fire nearby.

The game was fun. It was a good chance to see some models on the table that I am interested in getting for myself: Bête Noire, Madame Sybelle, and the Carrion Emissary in particular. It started off with the Emissary blocking the path of one of my Lampad/Corpse Candle pairs with two Coffin Markers, which scuppered things a little. But I managed to get a Lampad most of the way toward each of the flanks, summon two Mindless Zombies with Ezekiel, and using Fan The Flames and the Traverse Through Ember trigger, brought both herself and a Shieldbearer close to the center, even getting a cheeky Lantern’s Light / Immolate combo off on Madame Sybelle.

On my right flank, Geraint was trying hard to snuff out the Lampad. Bête Noire and Seamus nearly managed it, but reducing damage with Flaming Body and reviving into the two Pyre Markers I had dropped there just managed to keep it alive long enough for the Grave Golem to lumber down and protect it. That said, Bête Noire is scary! I had not fully understood how Rise Again works - I assumed that while it said it can be taken while Buried, that was just how these actions were phrased, and that because you could not Unbury, you could not then take the Charge Action. However, after conferring with Adam and Jamie, luminaries of our meta, I was forced to conclude that it does not work like that, and she could get an extra hit on the Lampad. It feels like it should be restricted if she is meant to pop out of a corpse in a gothic fashion, but we rolled with it. I still do not completely understand the order of operations in Malifaux.

Reva managed to take out Madame Sybelle unactivated with Immolation early in Turn 2 and summon another Lampad (note to self: people do not always love it when you do that, but Geraint took it like a trooper!) while Seamus popped out of a Secret Passage to shoot Ezekiel, who bravely sent a Mindless Zombie in to block for him. I sank a lot of cards into that Mindless Zombie during that activation, but it managed to soak up all four of Seamus’s actions (his bonus can give him a regular one) before dying on the last one. This was important because, besides thwarting the enemy master, it meant Ezekiel would not get squashed in the next action, as Seamus could have removed the Zombie’s corpse and fired his gun again!

Eventually, Ezekiel died, amusingly summoning a Zombie from Zombify, and I regretted not cheating a card that might have saved him. The nearby Shieldbearer soon fell under the weight of Seamus and the Carrion Emissary.

By this point, I had managed to score Death Beds off the Strange Lady and had gained enough votes to score Strategy each turn. I foolishly ran a Lampad in to contest a marker for Geraint, forgetting that I needed two models for Outflank - so I denied a point but lost a point as it was Turn 4 and I then could not score both points of Outflank.

We clocked out, but since there was not much to do in Turn 5, we decided to play on. In the end, it was 7-4 in my favor, and a lot of fun!

We had a big discussion about whether Seamus is underpowered - he seems fine, but as many commentators have noted, there does not seem to be much synergy between him and his crew. I am glad to have played into him though - slowly ticking off the masters.

At the time of writing, I am heading to A Breach In The North XI tomorrow at Element Games, and the Malifaux Yorkshire Rumble in early June at my beloved Powder Monkey Gaming, so there are lots of exciting games to come!