Thursday 26 February 2015

Jonah's ToMB Month 1 - Some more Ropes

As I said in my original post for ToMB I am cheating a little bit as I am wanting to learn Guild as a faction rather than just focusing on one Master.  As such I've got a couple more games in but I've switched it up and used Perdita for both of them.  First was a game of Headhunter against a Lucius crew and second a game of Extraction against a Collodi crew.  These were both really good learning games as both my opponents are new to their crews (I think I was only the 3rd/4th game for Lucius and maybe only 2nd for Collodi) and playing the new Gaining Ground strats which none of my gaming group have much experience of (it was my first time playing either of these strats).  I managed to pull out victories in both of them (8-6 against Lucius and 9-6 against Collodi).  I had pretty similar plans for both the games which was to target all the minions to reduce the effectiveness of the Masters.  In the Lucius game I made the decision to give up easy Head markers so that by killing off the minions I could stop him scoring ALiTS and in the Collodi game I also took MTS.  In the Collodi game my opponent thought I had taken Assassinate so spent the last turn running away with Collodi when in fact I'd taken Take Prisoner against his Beckoner.  This was partly a risk because Beckoner's tend to hang back but she was also the less destructive part of his crew and wasn't a priority target like Collodi's puppets.  Nevertheless I got quite lucky as I engaged her with Perdita in the final turn (killing a Stitched Together who would have meant me only getting 2VPs) then my opponent focused to Lure the Judge away from the Extraction marker which stopped me scoring for that turn which would have made the game a 6-6 draw had I taken Assassinate.  Fortunately she pushed towards my Brutal Effigy who had yet to activate and ran over to engage her.

My crews for both games were pretty similar.  I took Perdita, Francisco, Nino, Pathfinder, Rifleman, Enslaved Nephilim, Papa Loco, Papa's Taxi (Death Marshal) in the game against Lucius.  Nino got to use Hair Trigger first turn against an opposing Rifleman but then the second Rifleman my opponent had took a double focused shot courtesy of Lucas and one-shotted him for the cheek of killing his mate!  Never really got Papa going  as once the DM let him out he just picked up a couple of Heads!

Second crew was Perdita, Francisco, Judge, 2 x Riflemen, Enslaved Nephilim, Brutal Effigy, Pathfinder.  Judge didn't do a lot but hang around a lot though he did go a bit mental on an Arcane Effigy which burnt a lot of cards (not many from my hand though) but scored a VP for MTS which was worth it.  I like the Judge though as he seems very difficult to put down (see comments below on Francisco), has some good utility with being able to make other take Ml attacks and his own attacks can be devastating if you have the cards/SS.  He'll definitely be getting more of a run out.

Things I'm learning:

I find Guild quite slow.  This means I've yet to take Breakthrough or Entourage which are schemes I used to find easy to score well from with my Resurrectionists.  I think this is partly because I've not used things like Hunters or Watchers yet and a Hoffman box is probably going to be my next purchase (I've also not played McMourning as Guild or McCabe yet who are both quite manouverable crews that suit those schemes better IMHO).

Related to point one I find Perdita and friends a lot more manoeuvrable than Sonnia.  The Nephilim plus Perdita's own ability to push as an ability and Francisco's upgrade to pull people around with him too means her crew can move around to where they want much more easily than I found with Sonnia.  This is something that I need to get used to as I want to play Sonnia as I do enjoy using her.

Francisco is not invulnerable!  From reading things about him and looking at his card(s) he seems pretty durable but  even with HtK the fact he is Df5 and Wd8 means he goes down pretty easily.  I keep putting in him situations to fight things or hold things up and as a result he gets put down pretty quickly.  He has gone down to McTavish/Gator, Hoffman, Dashal and a Rifleman and Collodi meaning he's met his demise in every game, sometimes quite early too.  He's a solid piece and definitely worth his SS but I need to be more cautious with him and pick his fights.  See also Nino and the need to protect him.

Wednesday 25 February 2015

Mick's ToMB- month 1 quick update

I have built my month 1 purchases, the Rail crew box plus one set of Metal Gamin (one of which is now a flying Wind Gamin proxy) I'm hoping to get them painted by the deadline- looking shaky and I think there may be a forfeit coming...



Friday 20 February 2015

Jonah's ToMB Month 1 - Learning the Ropes

Sonnia has hit the table twice in the last two evenings so thought I'd report back on my early findings.  Both games have been Guard the Stash from Gaining Grounds 2015 tournament rules.  First game was very slow as we were playing the new strategy for the first time, I was playing Guild for the first time and my opponent who was also Guild was playing Hoffman and his Power Loop shenanigans for the first time.

I took Sonnia (with Cherufe's Imprint), Samael (with Witch Hunt), Francisco (with Wade In and Hermanos De Armas), 2 x Witchling Stalkers, Guild Pathfinder, Brutal Effigy, 2 x Guild Hounds

Opponent had Hoffman, Mechanical Attendant, Guardian (I think, one with the big shield!), Metal Gamin, Rail Golem, Watcher, 2 x Hunters

Schemes were Spring the Trap, Breakthrough, Entourage, ALiTS and Distract.  Figuring that Guild are pretty slow (and my crew in particular) I opted against Breakthrough and Entourage and took ALiTS and Distract.  My opponent took Breakthrough and Distract.

Ended up 9-8 to my opponent (I scored 3 for ALiTS, 3 for Guard the Stash, 2 for Distract.  My opponent got 3 for Guard the Stash, 3 for Distract, 3 for Breakthrough).

Was an odd game for Sonnia as couldn't do her blast shenanigans because of the Mechanical Attendant and because of Power Loop my opponent was able to just choose Wp5 so that I couldn't get (+) flips.  There wasn't a lot of killing though I took out the Rail Golem early thanks to Sammael and his extra damage against burning.  He was also helped by the Pathfinder doing 5 damage with a focused shot hitting his trigger to ignore armour.  Just from his card Samael doesn't look very good as he's 11SS with his upgrade and looks like he'll fall over in a stiff breeze but he was pretty effective for me this game by handing out Burning (combined with Sonnia's condition so that Burning isn't removed).  I failed to score Guard the Stash one turn when I could have easily so that was a bad mistake and one of the Guild Hounds got killed early in the second turn which messed up my plan to have them running around together dropping scheme markers for ALiTS.  I also learnt not to let Hoffman take a swing at you as he crushed Francisco in one activation.  My opponent pulled off a very nice move with the Mechanical Attendant on the last turn where he used the RJ to disengage from Samael then discarded an upgrade so that he could lose Insignificant for a turn to drop a second scheme marker to score max VPs for Breakthrough.

Second game I took a very similar crew except I dropped the Hounds for an extra Witchling Stalker and an extra SS.

Opponent had Gremlins with Ophelia, Franciois, Merris, MvTavish, Mancha Rocha, 2 x Gators

Schemes were ALiTS, Make them Suffer, Protect Territory, Bodyguard and Vendetta.  We both ended up going for Make them Suffer and Protect Territory.

Lots of killing going on this game and Sonnia really got her damage on although there was a lack of Blasts again because they were spread out.  But she took out Ophelia and Francois (in combination with other stuff) and landed the finishing blow on Mancha although the big green wrestler also did 9 damage to her from a charge which was pretty gross (and gave her Paralysed though I removed it with a Witchling) before killing off a crocodile and Blasting onto the second one.  I struggled to score MtS because my opponent only had two Minions and kept them back so I only ended up scoring once for it.  It was a mistake taking this having seen the crews as I was giving up points quite easily by having so many minions and I should have gone for Bodyguard on Franscisco (he did die but mainly because  put him in trouble, I could have protected him easily).  I thought I'd be able to take out the minions easily then score automatic VPs for him not having any in play.  Ended up losing 8-5 (I scored 1VP for Make them Suffer, 1VP for Protect Territory and 3VPs for Guard the Stash, opponent scored 3VPs for Protect Territory, 3VPs for Make them Suffer and 2VPs for Guard the Stash).

Both games were good fun though and I'm starting to feel like I'm getting a grip with the Guild.  I'm still not sure Samael is a good investment at 11SS (he seems useless without Witch Hunt and I'm loathe to put LLC or anything else on him and make him even more expensive) but I think I'll probably continue with him a bit to get used to Sonnia's crew box some more.  I also want to try out Witchling Stalkers although I need to convert some from the Female TTB figures which my FLGS didn't have in stock (but I have ordered).  I'll hopefully be playing full crew boxes + some extras against Mick who's BLOG I'm sharing soon as we're both doing ToMB.

Nevertheless I still have a 100% record with Guild right...

Monday 16 February 2015

Jonah's ToMB2 Month 0

My friend Mick has very kindly agreed to host me on his BLOG so this is a new experience for me and I'm hoping I'm not breaking it!  For those who don't know what Tale of Malifaux Bloggers (ToMB) is you can check out the details here.  The Tale comes at a convenient time for me as I've just decided to take a break from my Ressers and start a new faction - namely the law making scum known as the Guild.  A lot of my stuff has already been purchased but I've built it all since the Tale launched and I've had a frenetic spraying session today to get them ready for painting.  I will point out now that I am going to cheat a little as the idea is to mainly focus on a single Master but as I want to learn the Guild more thoroughly I'll probably branch out into more than one (especially as lots of the things I want to include come in crew boxes anyway).  Having said that I've decided to start with the Guild's resident witch hunting pyromaniac Sonnia Criid.  I've chosen her because she seems quite easy to learn, her crew box is quite easy to paint to get my initial pledge completed, and FIRE!!!  I will be adding Two Witchling Handlers to bring my initial commitment up to the month one total of £40 (Sonnia's box is £27 RRP and I'll be converting the Handlers from TTB miniatures but based at their RRP that equates to around £40).




I've run a PLOG on Warseer before but have never done one that also focuses on gaming as well as painting so am looking forward to documenting my progress.  The commitment is once a month but I'll aim to update the BLOG every 7-10 days depending on how frequently I get games in.

Sunday 15 February 2015

Mick's ToMb2 post month 0-

As you can see from the post above- I have a guest blogger for the next few months (or as long as he sticks around) in the form of Jonah (or Jonahmaul on the Wyrd Forum) Jonah is a long time hobbyist and friend of mine and is unfortunately much better at pretty much all wargames than me, (he does all these weird things like remembering the rules, paying attention during the game and reading FaQ's and forums to answer complicated rules queries...) however as we both wanted to do this Tale of a Malifaux Blogger thing, it seemed like a good idea to combine forces, by working on the same blog we can give each other a kick up the backside if we start to slack or miss deadlines, and it means we're guaranteed to have at least one opponent to play those all important games:)

I'm going to adding to my M&SU for ToMb, with Mei Feng as my master of purchase (I bought her at the start of the month and have so far done.. nothing, best get a wiggle on...) The starter set cost me £20.40, so I'll be adding a set of Metal Gamin to it at £12.70 for a total of £33.10, I don't want to completely overload myself painting so I'll save the other £6.90 for next month.



It says to highlight money saving tips here so I'll add something that has helped me quite a bit in recent years- doing favours. I have done a fair few favours for my local gaming store, as well as friends and local companies like Great Escape Games and Model Display products. these favours range from helping out at shows, making or fixing terrain or sculpting and painting models. Regardless of what your particular skillset is there's bound to be something you can contribute, even if it's just time, and helping other hobbyists out in your local area is a great way to source unusual bits for your bits box, or just get a few freebies (like Malifaux lessons from Dumb Luck). In this particular case I sculpted some bases for MDP a while back (these ones actually) and in return I get free resin base offcasts, which I can always fix up and saves me a ton of both money and time, I've been using the Industrial Rubble bases for my Arcanists and I have enough for Mei Feng and her boys too.

Mick

Monday 2 February 2015

Finished at last!

Here's a selection of Photographs of the finished table at it's new home in Firestorm games, shortly before I found out that I really do suck at Malifaux! (more on that later;)



The clock above the warehouse is made from the innards of the pocketwatch I use as a soulstone marker, it does tell the time.. ish... the varnish and the hour hand have occasional issues..


the East side entrance, the smallest of the doors it does face the long quay, and so deserves it's own sign. 


The interior of the factory, complete with treadmill and chemical vats, as well as some crates and other bits and bobs of scatter terrain.




The doors onto the main street, you can just see the skeletal form of an airship through the window, the name Halifax came from the word my friend and I always got when we typed Malifaux into our phones, we had arranged a game of Halifax so often I decided to do something about it.



As well as the usual wanted posters for Malifaux's denizens, the posters contain adverts for the Guild Guard, the Star Theatre and various mercenaries services, the board inside also has shift patterns for factory workers. (many of the wanted posters feature members of my gaming group)



The view across the bridge, you can see the Toll prices from here, as well as small map of the quarantine zones and some weaponry restrictions whilst on the bridge.




a few general pictures of the boats and crane- as you can see an extra platform has been added to the base of the crane since the original photos were taken, this adds a lot more playability to the watery section and the ladders add an extra detail. the extra walkways and jetty can be moved around to change the playing surface, and there is a lot of scatter terrain around to give even more cover. 


The inspiration came from one of Toulouse Lautrec's Moulin Rouge posters for the advertisement for the star theatre, with the dancer swapped for a Coryphee, extra stars and of course a change to the wording. I use freehand rather than printing as I find it easier to blend the colours in with the rest of the board. 


Some better views of the front, the doors looked less wonky in person, ah well, can't have everything:) these doors are massive, they really are, the smaller door fits a 35mm tall model through no issues, and even my Rail Golem could skip through without bumping it's head!

I am happy to say that the feedback from the players has been pretty positive overall, even those players who initially thought it would be unplayable found it made for a good game with interesting movement possibilities, (although Dom did manage to get a grem in an almost unassailable position which I had to put measures in to prevent happening again) no crew found itself particularly favoured or hampered by the table, so all in all a good project that I really enjoyed putting together that looks great in it's new home!