James Wilson Codes

This was my second event of the year. I did not write a post for the first one, A Breach In The North X at Element Games, because the lovely people at the Green Joker’s Podcast kindly invited me on to discuss it. So if you're interested in the mistakes I made there, have a listen.

One thing I learned at Breach was that I needed to choose my Strategies and Schemes more carefully. I took some advice from my local meta and devised a plan in advance for some of the pools.

I was feeling better prepared, accepting that in Malifaux things might go wrong as soon as we hit the table.

This event was organised by Yan Pietrzak and was held at the lovely Powder Monkey Gaming in Huddersfield (and 10 mins walk from my house!)

Round 1

Looking at this pool—and having practiced it with James Boosey earlier in the week - I decided to use a similar crew but with Barbaros so that I could get Marathine well into their Wedge Deployment Zone and begin proccing Insatiable to distract while I tried to drop some Scheme Markers.

Then the pairings were announced and I faced Emma Newham. I know Emma is a Masters player, so I did not expect to win. She was playing Explorer’s Society and mentioned she was trying out a new crew. When we declared our Masters, it turned out to be Jedza! I had never played against Jedza before. I had briefly looked at the cards because she looked interesting, but I knew she makes it difficult for me to heal, so I somewhat regretted my choice of Master. Indeed most people I've spoken to afterwards described it as a tough match-up.

However, you do not always know what your opponent will declare, and it was still fun. A great thing about events is that you play people outside of your local meta, and get to face new masters you've not seen before.

Given that I had a plan for my first turn, it was somewhat scuppered by the fact that both of us had a fence at the very point of our Wedge, which made deploying a bit challenging. It was Height 1 and Climbable, but that means you must walk, and a 2-inch push from Faith In The Flesh would not be enough to get you over even if walking were possible. Once again, I got to see the spectacle of a bunch of vampires completely stymied by a waist-height fence.

This meant I had to change my rehearsed unpack - and make a mental note to practice unpacks with inconvenient terrain. I still managed to get Marathine into Emma’s crew and score a bit of damage, but I quickly realized that with Jedza able to prevent models from dying, my attack was never going to be more than an annoyance. So I decided to focus on points instead. I also discovered that Jedza can remove Scheme Markers at the same time as drawing cards, which made scoring Information Overload tricky. I moved Marathine to the very back of the board (out of Jedza’s line of sight) and kept dropping Scheme Markers with Broodmaster’s Domain.

I did have more trouble on the centreline. Kastore was successful with using Dominate and Enthrall on Jedza’s crew, but what could he actually Enthrall them into doing? He managed to get Sophie to charge a Yaksha, but without killing, that did not achieve much (an Injured +1 is not useful if you cannot follow up). Similarly, he managed to move a Yaksha away from a Ballot and a Scheme, but they had enough mobility to get back and undo all his work. He also tried to kill a Surveyor, who was surprisingly difficult to put down—and then healed back up. Imagine the ancient vampire wincing and sadly musing "but that is my thing; I heal quickly, not you."

Barbaros boldly strolled up to the centre of the board to vote and try to score points, but he had to run away. He was later killed, which gave Emma a score of In Your Face. Because she managed to rack up three votes on all of the centreline ballot boxes, I had great difficulty scoring any Strategy points. I did manage to get the first points of Information Overload and Espionage, but that was it; the round ended 8–2 in Emma’s favour.

Still, it was fun. Emma was a helpful and understanding opponent who explained how things work and even allowed minor take-backs. As a newer player with plenty to learn, I expect to lose my first round in events for some time to come.

Round 2

In Round 2, I faced Ben Ault, whom I have played before (Reva 1 against his Lord Cooper 1; Reva did well but did not quite manage to win). He had brought Jedza and Cooper but offered to play Cooper to give me some variety. I had looked at this pool the night before and decided this was the Murderin’ one: Raid the Vaults, then take Death Beds (on strategy markers) and Let Them Bleed. I also took the Dead Rider for the first time since his disappointing first outing.

I used Batsch and Amalie to push everyone forward and the Dead Rider to ferry Gwyll forward. I managed to get a charge with blast damage from Kastore onto a Crypsis Corps and a Vatagi Huntsman.

Then Cooper started shooting, dealing significant damage, and going into Turn 2 I faced a choice: finish off the models I had hurt, or charge Kastore into Lord Cooper to get some delicious blast damage and try to kidnap him with Visceral Rampage. In the end, I chose the second option—even though I had not realized that Lord Cooper has Laugh Off. Ultimately, I had to use Visceral Rampage on a Runaway just to escape a clutch of three models.

Somehow, Kastore managed to survive, and then things got very intense. The Dead Rider moved around and finished off Uller with Soulfire. Later, Kastore used an activation to run across the board from a Vault on the centreline to one entirely in Ben’s half. There he stayed for the rest of the game, simply dropping a Scheme Marker to score Death Beds. Then the Dead Rider, who was a superstar this game, summoned Zombies from the corpses of two Runaways to engage Model 9 and prevent him from moving. The rest of my crew managed to finish off the remaining Crypsis and Vatagi, and while one Runaway managed to escape, the game ended 8–3 in my favour. I only lost two summoned models (a Zombie and a Leech), so I was quite pleased. However, it was incredibly tense; if Cooper had managed to take out Kastore, I believe I would have lost by a similar margin.

One very proud moment was when I won one of the spot prizes for flipping the Black Joker with my master, when Kastore totally failed to defend.

Round 3

Now, I faced Ed Grace, the proprietor of Powder Monkey Gaming himself. I knew from chatting with him earlier that he was soloing Basse, and although that is a terrible matchup, I wanted to play something other than Kastore for the third round, so I declared Reva 2. This turned out to be a strategic mistake, although the game was still fun.

The problem was that Basse’s Order in the Badlands action, combined with the Tumbleweed trigger, can remove many of my Pyre markers as well as the Burning condition. This meant Reva was not able to do much. Also, Lead-Lined Coat prevented me from moving either Jonathan Reichart (I did not realize until about Turn 4 that he is not actually called Pie Chart in real life) or Basse, making it difficult to score.

Old Hob has What a Lovely Day, which can lead to strange situations. Pushing toward an enemy whenever you are damaged results in some very unusual plays.

I tried to concentrate on scoring points and only lost 7–5. The Dapperlings did sterling work picking up Intel tokens, and there was a strange moment when Basse stole some Intel; however, Ed misread the rules for Cloak and Dagger and did not realize that a different model could steal them from him.

There was an impressive turnaround from Ed in the final turn when he denied me the final points for both my Schemes. Had I not clocked out, I might have taken more time to think and possibly prevented that, but that is on me. I need to get faster with Reva 2.

I also forgot to use Guiding Light and drop an extra Pyre Marker on three of the five turns. That could have been really useful, so I must remember to do it in the future.

The painting competition was highly impressive, as always. I often enter if I've got something I'm proud of, not because I think I've any chance of winning, but because I think people should. Maybe entering should get people a raffle ticket 🤔

Overall

This was a really fun event. In the end, I placed 13th out of 18, but I did receive this lovely Best in Faction prize by default, as there were no other Resurrectionist players present. I was exhausted when I got home, and the next day at work - but that is always the case. I'm looking forward to more events...