I ended up doing this:
Som'er
Ophelia LaCroix
Pere Ravagé
6 Bayou Gremlins
Giant Mosquito (came in yesterday morning, had 4 on order, but only received 1)
- 3ss reserve
First game was Reconnoiter against a Kirai crew. We were playing that, in order to control, you needed to have only your models on a corner of the board. Our table drew when both sides were left with 2 models. In fact, out of 6 tables, only 1 table had a winner (who I played round 3 and won the tournament). The big highlight was the Mosquito doing 2 dg to Kirai and 4 of her weak (2wd) spirits with Pull My Finger, taking all but Kirai out and leaving her to die shortly thereafter.
Second game was a scenario created for the tournament. Carry a "bomb" to a building, blow open the door. I won on the second activation of turn 2, mostly due to the scenario needing some fine tuning - the Mosquito grabbed the bomb at the end of turn 1 (yay 10 move), won initiative, carried it over to my swarm of Gremlins near the Bank, where Ophelia used Family Tree to do a double activation with a Bayou Gremlin and won the game right there. Quick win, but kinda lame.
Third game was against the eventual winner playing this Crew:
McMourning
2 Nurses
2 Canine Remains
Zombie Chihuahua
Sebastian
Bette Noire
Scenario was another constructed scenario. Cut down a hanged nurse (didn't know how many activations it would take, that was kept secret), then move the nurse towards your side when in base-to-base. I screwed up and misunderstood the scenario; I thought we didn't have to be in base-to-base to move the nurse, so I spread out to ensure I would have Gremlins left to move her.
Anyway, McMourning is a monster; healing what the damage flip is and not how many wounds lost really hurts. Nearly killed him twice (down to one wound), but he got himself back to full next activation. I lost when all but a Gremlin was dead, almost entirely due to 1) McMourning and 2) Pere Ravagé just barely casting "Oopsie" (flipped a 6, had a 13 to cheat up), so his dogs and his nurse all made the Df flip. Oh well. Placed 4th out of 13, not bad for my 3rd, 4th, and 5th games, and first games with Som'er.
Some thoughts after my first Malifaux tournament:
Bring the Errata - we screwed up some things (like not using the Red Joker on a -fate damage flip) and getting them to change the initial scenario would have changed how we both approached it.
Demand written explanations of the special strategies - the tournament organizer worked hard at them, but they were definitely confusing, and not having something to reference really screwed things up and made it harder to deal with (although everyone was in the same boat).
Need more Mosquitoes - it seems that Som'er really needs to be drawing a bunch of cards in order to pull of Git Yer Bro; sacrificing Gremlins for Mosquitoes seems to be the most effective way of doing so. Plus, discards and Pull My Finger are really, really powerful.
Clump up - The ranges on a lot of buffs are really short. There also doesn't seem to be that much blast damage floating around, so keeping them together will let more Gremlins benefit from Ophelia's buffs and get more cards from Som'er.