Argentbadger

Game 2: Guild (me) vs Resurrectionists (Martin; MalifauxMartin on the forums) Strategy: Turf War Schemes Pool: Line in the Sand, Entourage, Spring The Trap, Breakthrough, Assassinate Guild: Line in the Sand (announced), Breakthrough (announced) Resurrectionists: Breakthrough (announced), Assassinate Crews Guild: Sonnia Criid (Reincarnation, Counterspell Aura, Cherufe’s Imprint), Malifaux Child, Papa Loco (Hermanos De Armas), 2 Hunters, Brutal Effigy, Death Marshal, Austringer, Watcher Resurrectionists: Molly Squidpiddge (Forgotten Life, Tear of the Gorgon), Madame Sybelle (Not Too Banged Up), Killjoy (Decaying Aura), Yin the Penangalan, 2 Rotten Belles This was my time to try out the more defensive oriented Sonnia I’ve been thinking of. I’m normally very agressive with Sonnia and it often ends up with me losing her to a counterpunch because I spend all my resources attacking and not defending. The idea was to use the Flame Walls for stopping retaliation by putting them close to Sonnia to block line of sight rather than using them primarily for choke points. I took Counterspell Aura to keep Belles at bay. Turn 1: Sybelle moves forward and uses Call Belle to bring Molly to the very middle of the board. I think my suspicions were aroused here, but I didn’t do anything, partly because I don’t think that I could actually affect what I was expecting to happen (i.e. Killjoy to appear and maul me) and mainly because I forgot that Molly has Accomplice. Molly did indeed walk twice, summon a Necrotic Machine which died immediately to bring out Killjoy then use Whispers of Future Flesh to move the big lunk even further forward. Killjoy then chain activates and eats Sonnia (scoring Assassinate in the process) as not only is she pitifully easy to kill in melee but I couldn’t even prevent damage thanks to the Decaying Aura. Well, so much for that plan! A Belle Lures Molly back to relative safety. The other Belle Lures my Watcher up to Sybelle and the Austringer Delivers Orders to get it out of melee with her and drop a scheme marker. The Death Marshal puts Killjoy in his Pine Box. Turn 2: The Hunter on the left drops a scheme marker and Slows Yin. Molly summons a pair of Punk Zombies in the general area of Papa Loco, the puts the old man on negative flips. So he does the only thing his can do, which is blow up. All this achieves is knocking the Punk Zombies back to Hard To Kill; the Austringer kills both after one of them cuts the Death Marshal a little. Sybelle hurts my Watcher while my pieces run around trying to drop scheme markers all over the place. Meanwhile, the Belles Lure my Effigy back and forth but fail to do much to it. We both score for Turf War. Turn 3: Molly gives the Death Marshal the Terrible Truth, then kills him anyway. Both Belles charge the Effigy, who admittedly has led something of a charmed life up to this point, and eventually kill it off. The Austringer uses Distract a couple of times (I must remember to make more use of that trigger) to drain Martin’s hand, then improbably survives a charge from Killjoy. Both my Hunters drop scheme markers but Yin removes one on the left. Martin score for the strategy. Turn 4: Molly summons a Student of Steel near the Hunter and makes it mauls my robot close to scrap. One of the Belles finishes off the Austringer and my Watcher somehow escapes Sybelle’s attentions to continue showering scheme markers across the back of the board. My Child, who had rather rashly gone into melee with a Belle earlier on (I’m not sure what I had been thinking there, other than that it wouldn’t be able to help me much) fails to disengage; I had been hoping to drag Killjoy away from my deployment zone to stop him from dropping markers for Breakthrough (which he duly does). The Hunter knocks off the Student and drops another scheme marker; the Hunter on the left continues its ridiculous dance with Yin. Martin scores for Turf War. Turn 5: The Hunter attacks Molly in the hope of drawing some cards from her to slow the summoning. The Watcher, which has somehow survived up to this point, flies back toward the centre. Sybelle beats up the left Hunter but still fails to kill it; the Belle Lures it away so that Yin can remove the last of my scheme markers over there. At this point I have 2 scheme markers left for Line in the Sand. Molly makes a Belle Lure the Hunter engaging her away so that she can walk over and remove one of them. Killjoy, deprived of any charge targets, walks around and drops another marker for Breakthrough. We both score for the strategy. Guild lose 5 – 10 (2 for Turf War and 3 for Breakthrough for me; full score for Martin). Wow, that was quite a start to a game. I often lose Sonnia but I don’t think that I’ve ever lost her so early before – that was activation 3 of turn 1. It is such a clever move by Martin and he counterpicked me really well. Oh well, now that I’ve seen the trick I’ll be able to start thinking about how to avoid it happening again. Losing Sonnia, who I’ll admit was my main plan for firepower here, really put me on the back foot and made the game really interesting as I scrambled to pick up whatever points I could manage. Martin is always a lovely opponent and this game was just as enjoyable as previous times I’ve played him. We broke for lunch – a picnic on a tiny piece of grass in an industrial estate – then it was back to the gaming.

Joe, Furycat and I drove down to Middlesbrough for the Middlefaux Malifaux tournament. We were part of a group of 8 travellers from the Scotland gaming scene which is probably the most people we’ve ever managed to drag to an event outside Scotland itself. After the usual nonsense to get us started (i.e. Joe picking me up half an hour later than planned) we arrived in time to chat with old and new friends and look around the rather nice venue. Game 1: Guild (me) vs Ten Thunders (Stephen; PotentiallyLethal on the forums) Strategy: Head Hunter Schemes Pool: Line in the Sand, Power Ritual, Assassinate, Plant Evidence, Protect Territory Guild: Plant Evidence (announced), Power Ritual (announced) Ten Thunders: Power Ritual (announced), Assassinate Crews Guild: Sonnia Criid (Reincarnation), Papa Loco (Hermanos De Armas), 2 Hunters, Brutal Effigy, Death Marshal, Austringer, Watcher, 2 Guild Hounds Ten Thunders: Lucas McCabe (Glowing Sabre, Badge of Speed), Toshiro the Daimyo (Blot The Sky, Command The Graves), 2 Thunder Archers, 2 Punk Zombies, Pathfinder I had been intending to try Sonnia out making more use of Flame Walls to protect myself from retaliation but with this board I figured that just getting line of sight to anything would be enough of a problem and shelved the idea. The Austringer is great for Head Hunter because of the push and interact from Deliver Orders. I had some kind of vague plan about sending the Hounds for one corner and the Watcher to the other and hoping that one of them would make it to score for Power Ritual. Plant Evidence was picked over Protect Territory on the grounds that in corner deployment I’d have to move about as far to put down the markers, but Plant Evidence didn’t require my pieces to stay there until the end of the game. Turn 1: McCabe reactivates one Punk Zombie and passes the Sabre to the other then races forward, presumably to get into the Thick Of It. My Hunter plinks the Pathfinder for Slow to stop it from getting any funny ideas about shooting my clumped up pieces early on. Papa Loco tells Sonnia to Hold This and pulls her through one of the only open channels on the board; a Death Marshal follows him and tuck him into his Pine Box. Sonnia then saunters into the edge of the wood so that she can see McCabe and knocks him off his horse with a timely cheated Red Joker. The rest of the crews slog into engagement range. Turn 2: Sonnia finishes off McCabe, the Pathfinder and the nearby Punk Zombie. She summons a Stalker from the latter simply because I find it amusing to use Reincarnation even when it’s not especially useful. Toshiro War Fans one of the Archer then summons an Ashigaru from the remains of the Pathfinder. The Hunter nearby kills it off. The Fast Archer knocks the Effigy down to Hard To Kill and hands out Slow. The Watcher and Hounds, having made it to their corners, start dropping scheme markers and finally the Austringer makes the Effigy pick up the head of the Pathfinder. I score Head Hunter. Turn 3: The lead Archer fails to drop the Death Marshal then the Effigy collects the Ashigaru’s head (not sure what it was using since I already picked up the one from the Pathfinder earlier). Sonnia immolates both Archers and hurts Toshiro with the blast damage. The Hunter and Stalker gang up to finish the second Punk Zombie. Toshiro summons another Ashigaru and my Hounds kill it again. I score for the Strategy. Turn 4: Toshiro summons an Ashigaru, then Sonnia turns both of them into expanding clouds of ash. Guild win 10 – 1 (full score for me; 1 point for Power Ritual for Stephen). That was a fun game and Stephen was a very nice person to play with, but by his own admission is quite new to the game. I hope I explained what I was doing clearly and gave some advice to help him out. From my side, everything went swimmingly so there isn’t much more to say.

Here are the first of my Malifaux Outcasts, at least out of the ones I purchased with the idea of playing them as Outcasts; the Freikorpsmen. They are cheap minions in game who are pretty good at most things but arguably suffer a bit by not being really great at any one thing. I like them though as they often seem to have something going for them that is relevant, be that their resilience (armour and immune to blasts and some other stuff), speed (unimpeded, but not too slow either) or attack (the damage track is nothing special but they have a good Ml stat on the knife and having a gun can be handy once they have got to where they are going. A Freikorpsmann does have one entertaining synergy with Hannah, who can copy Reference The Field Guide to add a second tome to her melee attack and cause swathes of horror duels on bunched up enemies. Although a realistic set of mercenaries would employ drab colours (or maybe camouflage, I don’t actually know when that became even slightly common in warfare), that would be boring to paint. Instead, I decided to liven up the grey Friekorps suits with a nice bright pink detailing and armour. I have a feeling I stole that scheme from someone else’s Freikorps crew but I can’t remember who. If it was you, feel free to let me know and I’ll give credit where it is due. I very much enjoyed painting these chaps. Maybe because there was only two of them rather than the usual trio of minions in Wyrd’s boxes, or maybe because of the nice style and varied yet somewhat plausible poses.

Nice. No wonder giant pandas are endangered; they're hard to breed, then some lunatic takes to using them as hats . I really like the basing on that Pathfinder; it looks like you put a lot of effort into it.

Lovely painting. The base work really takes the whole effect up a notch. But my favourite is the flame on Vanessa's staff.

This is the Mechanical Attendant, the totem for Hoffman and part of my Guild Malifaux crew. I’ve played so little of Hoffman that I don’t really have much to say about this little chap on the tabletop, though it looks to have a few nice things going for it on paper. In the fluff, I see Hoffman as a form-over function sort of man, so left his totem with minimal colouration. The one colourful element is the ‘eye’ for which I’ve used my usual dark red to match the rest of my Guild.

Another construct for my Malifaux Guild crew, this time we have the Guardian. It brings a few useful things to table, not least a mightly 3″ melee range at a Ml value of 7. Even with the fairly weak damage track, that makes it quite helpful in Squatter’s Rights to lock down a couple of markers. The main trick that Guardian brings is the Protect ability to add the Defensive condition to anothr model for (0) action. This can be hilarious with Perdita’s natively high defense in particular. The painting job here was simple as usual for my Guild constructs – metallic drybrushing for the most part with some red on the wiring sections to keep the tie in with the rest of the crew. I’ve also put in some bronze colouring on the more elaborate bits (mainly the shield) though I don’t really feel like the Guild would be the sort of folks to put that kind of bling on their robots.

Lovely painting. I think that maybe your camera is washing some depth out of your miniatures as the skin in particular on the Hamelin crew looks rather flat. The basing is really cool, and I'm a fan of the neatness needed for the mirror of on your Stolen on the left.

Very nice. I like the very dark take on Pandora's crew, it suits them much more than the glowy green I've often seen.

I like your painting. I'm especially impressed with Montresor's stubble!

Game 3: Guild (me) vs Arcanists (Ant; Stryder on the forums) Strategy: Collect The Bounty Schemes Pool: Line in the Sand, Protect Territory, Breakthrough, Take Prisoner, Spring The Trap Guild: Protect Territory (announced), Breakthrough (announced) Arcanists: Protect Territory (announced), Breakthrough (announced) Crews Guild: Sonnia Criid (Reincarnation, Disrupt Magic), Papa Loco, 2 Hunters, 2 Witchling Stalkers, Brutal Effigy, Death Marshal, Austringer Arcanists: Rasputina (Arcane Reservoir, December’s Pawn, Shattered Heart), Snow Storm (Imbued Energies, Warding Runes), Blessed of December (Imbued Energies), Myranda (Imbued Energies), Essence of Power, Ice Gamin So after losing to the number 1 ranked player in my country, I got the ‘soft’ final round of playing against the reigning Masters champion. I went for Sonnia on the grounds that Disrupt Magic can be quite brutal against some Arcanists build, and the rest of the crew was mainly minions with the idea of giving up as few points for Collect the Bounty as possible. Protect Territory is a bit of pain in Flank deployment but I still preferred it over the other options, and anyway figured that I was heading over to that side of the board either way. Turn 1: Papa Loco does his usual thing and is put in a Pine Box. The Blessed heads one way out of the little frozen fortress and Myranda goes the other way. This is really good play from Ant as it puts a really high range attacker with leap on either side of me to box in Sonnia’s options. Rasputina softens up a Hunter and Stalker and Sonnia kills off the wounded Stalker to get another one a little further up. Turn 2: The Hunter on the left attacks Snow Storm, then Rasputina channels snowballs through the Blessed to kill off the Hunter (which you can clearly see I’ve managed to put in no cover whatsoever) and puts armour on Snow Storm. It then smites the other Hunter and Witchling that I’ve stupidly blundered into melee with it. Myranda turns into a Cerberus which the Austringer plinks away at. Sonnia splashes some damage onto the Effigy and Rasputina via the Effigy, which of course dies and drops a scheme marker. The Blessed Leaps and attacks Sonnia; the Cerberus does the same to close down the Austringer. Ant scores on the Strategy. Turn 3: I use a stone to beat a four on the initiative flip, and manage to replace my 2 with a 1. The Blessed doesn’t need to be asked twice and kills Sonnia. The Death Marshal moves up and unleashes Papa Loco, who blows up himself, the Death Marshal, another nearby Stalker and the Ice Gamin, not to mention some nice damage on Snow Storm and Rasputina. Sadly, that is pretty much it for my offensive capability. The Cerberus easily kills the Austringer and we call it there as Ant will have no trouble polishing off the remains of my crew and picking up all my scheme markers. Guild lose 10 – 0 (nothing for me and full score for Ant). That could be the worst I’ve played in Malifaux second edition. Beating a player as good as Ant would have been a huge ask anyway, but I didn’t really do anything right in this game. Even basic stuff like using cover was entirely beyond me. Oh well, Ant was a gentleman and I still enjoyed the game despite my poor playing of it. After all that, I think I came in 14th or so of 22 players (in retrospect that seems a bit generous considering my scores so maybe I noted it down wrong) and had a really enjoyable time. I really wish I could play against the likes of Ant and Greg more often; I learn more in general from a loss than a win and it hopefully did me good. Nate always puts on a good tournament and this was no exception. Thanks again to him and rest of the Worhamma folks for running the show and to Graham, Greg and Ant for three fun games.

Game 2: Guild (me) vs Neverborn (Greg; Sir#67 on the forums) Strategy: Squatter’s Rights Schemes Pool: Line in the Sand, Breakthrough, Bodyguard, Deliver a Message, Murder Protegé Guild: Murder Protegé (Nekima; unannounced), Line in the Sand (announced) Neverborn: Murder Protegé (Guardian; unannounced), Breakthrough (announced) Crews Guild: Perdita Ortega (Trick Shooting, Aura Ancestral), Nino Ortega (Hair Trigger), Guardian, 2 Hunters, Austringer, Enslaved Nephilim, Watcher, Brutal Effigy Neverborn: Lilith (Beckon Malifaux, Wings of Darkness), Primordial Magic, Doppelganger, Johan (Retribution’s Eye), Mr Graves, Mysterious Effigy, Nekima, Terror Tot I’ve been in a habit of using Sonnia against Neverborn, but with Squatter’s Rights I decided that maybe the extra movement afforded me by Perdita and the Enslaved Nephilim would be more helpful. I had some kind of vague plan about keeping a couple of the markers covered by the Guardian’s massive melee range, but also I do find that Perdita plus Protect is quite entertaining. I was hoping to spread out with the Watcher and maybe one of the Hunters to pick up the outermost markers, then swing inward and keep the centre tied up in a huge scrum. Turn 1: Lilith fails to Tangle Shadows on Nino thanks to Aura Ancestral, she then drops an Illusory Forest in front of herself. Nino breathes a sigh of relief and pings a few wounds off the Effigy. Mr Graves pushes Nekima forward and she then scraps the lead Hunter. I knew I was going to lose something so I wasn’t too surprised that Greg pulled the trigger so early. Perdita shoots away about half of Nekima’s wounds. Turn 2: Greg takes the opportunity to cheat initiative and Nekima swats Nino, paralysing the Guardian with Teach Them Fear. The Watcher takes the right marker and drops a scheme marker and the Hunter follows suit on the right. Lilith charges the Austringer but Black Jokers one of her attacks to leave him alive. Johan scraps my Effigy, then the Austringer and Perdita gang up to finally drop Nekima (scoring me two VP for Murder Protegé in the process). The Doppelganger takes a Squat marker. I score on the Strategy. Turn 3: After cheating the initiative, Johan smites the Guardian for a couple of VP on Murder Protegé before being finished off by the Austringer. Perdita narrowly fails to kill off the Doppelganger (just one wound short!). She, or maybe it, moves to take the centre marker. My Hunter hurts Mr Graves and the Tot flips like a hero to kill off the Watcher. The Nephilim fails to Influence my Austringer to kill the Doppelganger, then Lilith kills the bird-man. The Mysterious Effigy reflips the right-most marker. Greg scores for the Strategy. Turn 4: Lilith kills Perdita after a lucky initial damage flip then some clever use of resources by Greg. The Hunter and Mr Graves bounce off each other. Looking at the board state, I call it here. Guild lose 3 – 8 (2 for Murder Protegé and 1 for Squatter’s Rights for me; 3 for Squatter’s Rights, 3 for Breakthrough and 2 for Murder Protegé for Greg). Greg is a tough match-up and I need to be at my very best to beat him, which was plainly not how I played this game. Still, I don’t think I made any catastrophic errors; a few instances of poor placement at the end of turn 1 and a couple of bad choices of activation order in turn 3 in particular. Greg got a bit unlucky in a couple of key points but I didn’t take advantage and in the end this was a pretty routine win for him. In many ways this was like playing against a better version of myself – Greg is particularly adept at killing off unactivated pieces for example to get a pseudo-activation advantage. The difference is that Greg is also great at denying retaliation which is an area that I need to work on a lot. Indeed after this game, I did get a few ideas about a different way to play Sonnia which I am looking forward to trying out to see it works out.

I like to take the opportunity to visit tournaments outside Scotland whenever possible, partly as I like to reciprocate the visits that other gamers give to my local scene, and partly because I love to play against a wide variety of opponents. Since Joe (Euclid) is so kind to drive when we make these road trips, it’s very pleasing to be able to just sit in his passenger seat and enjoy the ride even if we do all have to set off early. For this event, Dave L (Bighammer) joined us in the car. Sunderland obviously makes quite an appealing location for an ‘away trip’ partly since it’s among the nearest possible destinations and partly because the local Henchman, Nate, runs terrific events. Game 1: Guild (me) vs Arcanists (Graham) Strategy: Turf War Schemes Pool: Line in the Sand, Distract, Assassinate, Plant Evidence, Entourage Guild: Plant Evidence (announced), Line in the Sand (announced) Arcanists: Plant Evidence (announced), Distract Crews Guild: Sonnia Criid (Reincarnation, Disrupt Magic), Papa Loco (Hermanos De Armas), 2 Hunters, Witchling Stalker, Brutal Effigy, Death Marshal, Austringer, Watcher Arcanists: Ramos (Arcane Reservoir, Bleeding Edge Tech, Combat Mechanic), Brass Arachnid, Arcane Effigy, Electrical Creation, Howard Langston (Imbued Energies), Mechanical Rider, Metal Gamin The board was quite open here so my basic plan was to either use Sonnia from further back to clear the centre each turn if Graham was aggressive, or take the centre myself and just blast anything that came near. There was nothing in the scheme pool that I fancied the look of much; Distract was going to make my plan for Turf War hard to execute, Entourage with Sonnia in corner deployment looked improbable and I didn’t really like my chances of catching Assassinate in Ramos if I was also going to keep the centre open. Tidying up Langston and the Mechanical Rider early was going to be the main challenge; then I would have to concentrate on dealing with the inevitable swarms of spiders. Turn 1: We start with the predictable set plays; the Metal Gamin using Protection of Metal on itself; Papa Loco using Hold This on Sonnia, pulling her forward and being Pine Boxed by the Death Marshal, and Ramos zapping the Electrical Creation. But then, to my great surprise, Ramos didn’t summon loads of Steam Arachnids. I had thought at the time that maybe Graham was wary of giving Sonnia targets out in the open, but actually it ws just that his hand was terrible. The Brass Arachnid fails to Stoke Langston, and the big chap uses his steam cloud and moves into some cover. Sonnia Flame Bursts him anyway (without the benefit of Confiscated Lore on the first shot since I’m an idiot and forgot to use it), splashing some damage over the Rider. Turn 2: I was expecting Langston to come racing over to kill my stuff, but instead he hides and creates another cloud of steam. My Effigy drops a scheme marker and Ramos summons a trio of Steam Arachnids before retreating to cover. Sonnia immolates 2 of the spiders and takes the opportunity to splash a couple more blasts over Langston. The Brass Arachnid fails again to Stoke Langston and my Death Marshal pops the last spider. On the far right, a Metal Gamin Magnetises over to my Hunter and is gently poked in return. The Rider summons another Metal Gamin and joins it in a slap fight with my other Hunter. The Austringer dinks a wound off the Gamin on the right. Somewhere in here my Watcher drops a scheme marker on my far left. I score for Turf War. Turn 3: The Brutal Effigy shoots a Gamin on the left, killing it. The Mechanical Rider summons another and kills off my Watcher, dropping a couple of scheme markers in the process. Over on the right, the Hunter prods ineffectively at the Metal Gamin and the Austringer finally kills the dang thing. The Brass Arachnid Stokes Langston at the third time of asking and he sets off toward the centre with a murderous look in his eyes. So Sonnia vapourises him, and splashes the Brass Arachnid down to a single wound and on fire while she’s at it. Ramos summons three more spiders which swarm together and are pushes into a Pine Box by the Death Marshal. I score again for Turf War. Turn 4: On the left, my Hunter drops a scheme marker and shoots Slow onto the Rider. She summons a Steam Arachnid and scraps the impudent Hunter. Sonnia uses the newly-summoned Arachnid as a target from which to aim her blasts, killing it, the Rider and the nearby Arachnid. Ramos summons another trio of Arachnids and kills my Effigy. Papa Loco Focuses and shoots Ramos, cheating in severe damage to kill off all three spiders. The Death Marshal manages to keep the Swarm in his Pine Box and I start the slow process of plinking away at Ramos’ wounds. I score for the Strategy. Turn 5: Ramos kills my Hunter on the right and summons another couple of spiders. We look at the game and agree to call it as it stands. Guild win 10 – 1 (full score for me; 1 for Plant Evidence for Graham). Graham was a lovely chap to play against, and thanks to him I have a new-found understanding of the timing rules (hopefully I didn’t come across as too rude when we were discussing it). From my side everything went swimmingly, but the board was very much in my favour. Indeed, we did mention it to the TO and there was some scatter terrain added before the beginning of the next round. After a break for a delicious chilli, I was paired up with the Chosen One himself.

Awesome report! Did the Emissary work as well with Misaki as you'd hoped? Or do you think that waiting another turn to pull the trigger on the Misaki missile might have worked better?

Hmm, reposting due to the rollback. Moondog - it's not so much that I'm avoiding Hoffman as that I'm having so much fun with Perdita and Sonnia. I also don't really have much in the way of constructs to use with him. These are my painted Hunters for my Guild in Malifaux. They’re another piece that has improved in power in the change from 1.5 to M2E, as I think that they were regarded as a bit rubbish in the first version of Malifaux (though I didn’t own them at the time). Right now in Malifaux 2nd edition they are really good and I love to play them all the time. Firstly, they are giant metal sabretooth tigers, which is a plenty good enough reason to play them anyway, but also their rules make them highly effective. They’re somewhat fast and tough; not super-resilient like an Illuminated, but enough that they take work to put down before they do what I need. The Hunter packs a ranged attack that causes slow on hit (i.e. they don’t have to damage) as well as a built-in trigger to drag their hapless foes towards them. All their attacks against unactivated enemies get positive flips which can help get this action off against targets in cover. On top of all that, they have a fairly tasty melee attack and an end-of-turn push to get them where they need to be. All in all, I think that Hunters are well worth their cost, which is probably why I seem to have a pair of them in just about every Guild crew at the moment. I like to play them out wide where they can sweep up enemy scheme runners under their weight class then come in and pressure the centre in the mid game. There is not much to say about the painting. Like the Watcher I felt that it matched my vision of the Guild more to have them as plain metal rather than some fancy enamelled colour, though I did put my usual red colour on their curiously exposed wiring. The miniatures themselves are rather boringly mirror images of each other. Unfortunately the harpoon was a point of attachment to the sprue so I ended up snapping one off while cleaning it up. Luckily, it allows me to easily differentiate the models for in-game purposes.

Ooh, yes. Get a tournament on here and we'll get some travellers up from the Central Belt.

Thanks for waiting. Payment sent for Gareth Henry, Joe Taylor and Paul Campbell. I believe Maria Wieland has sent hers separately. Please could I request that you arrange the round one draw so that all the people travelling down from Scotland don't have to play each other? We see each other at most events up here as it is; one of the big draws of travelling for events is playing folks you don't see so much.

Please can you hold 5 or 6 spaces for folk from Scotland for now? We're discussing various plans and travel arrangements. I'll confirm in the next couple of days.

Bengt, Lamo - Thanks! AdmiralVorkraft - I agree that getting crazy damage with Sonnia is much more likely against the less experienced players. I actually start games against players who I think might not be aware of what Sonnia can do by explaining how things will work. But even so, I still get a lot of damage out. I think that there is something about the dissonance between words and actions that means that players just can't really understand what is going to happen until it actually happens to them once (certainly I find that people can get me with the most ludicrously simple plays if I haven't seen them before). In these games, I only managed to live the dream of spending all three round one AP on Flame Burst once (against Lewis' Resurrectionists in game 2), the others did require at least a little walking. Math Mathonwy - Thank you for your always-kind words and insightful comment. I am very glad that you and others enjoy these reports. Coming in second in an event this big will certainly be enough to improve me in the rankings. There are some pretty good players in England doing well with Guild at the moment though so I'm not sure how this affects the standings in terms of top Guild player. I actually finished off painting most of my Guild just before the event (the unpainted Effigy and partly-painted Death Marshal are borrowed from Joe while he's playing Outcasts and Arcanists) though I do need to get some pictures of the Hunters and the others into my painting thread. Game 1: I played pretty badly here with Papa Loco. Once Sonnia was off the board I should have moved the Death Marshal as far away as possible from Pandora and kept running. But I had a bad run of Horror Duels against Teddy in turn 2 and got a bit obsessed with knocking his last couple of wounds off before it regenerated, which led to me throwing the Death Marshal into the fray. I also forgot about Disrupt Magic which would have almost certainly kept Sonnia alive in turn 2 had I remembered it. I got away with those mistakes only because of Ewan's relative lack of experience (he hails from Inverness, which is pretty much as far north as Malifaux seems to be played in the UK to my knowledge, and so doesn't get a chance to play against many people other than his own gaming group). Game 2: As mentioned, I got to live the dream of using all of Sonnia's AP in turn one to kill things, and it was quite amazing. Kai did a good job to fight back from having half of his crew killed in turn one, but in the end it was an insurmountable obstacle. The funny thing about the Plant Explosives was that I was only able to get it off so neatly because Kai was using the trick of bracing the Copycat Killer against Seamus to avoid being pushed out of range by his gun. Of course, this scheme is exactly why the Austringer is so good! Game 3: In retrospect, I would have been better to choose a scheme that was in my control (e.g. A Line in the Sand) rather than Frame For Murder. I always find it hard to balance between putting my victim in harms way and telegraphing them to my opponent. I'm not sure if James was able to guess that I had it on Nino but as it happened he really only had one opportunity to attack him (with Hans discarding Scout The Field) so it would only have been relevant if he'd had a severe card to cheat on that damage flip. Game 4: Funny story - the pairings were announced on the Saturday evening before we all went for dinner so there was plenty of chatter about who was drawn with whom the next morning. When it became known that Maria and I were matched up, there was an air of "Morpheus is Fighting Neo" with several other players joking that they planned to throw their own game 10-0 in round one so that they could come and spectate. While you're right about the use of McCabe for Deliver A Message, I didn't give this more than brief consideration for a few reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, I am awful at playing McCabe, and I would have to be at my best to compete with a player of Maria's calibre. It also occurred to me that Maria might take either Leveticus or Tara and make life extremely difficult for me to deliver any messages. In Reckoning, deploying two Hounds and Luna would make it far too easy for Maria to wrap up a lot of points on the Strategy by killing one a turn plus one other piece. In the end I just decided that my better bet was Entourage and Bodyguard, even though the latter can be a gamble in Reckoning. As you point out, killing Francisco is not especially hard, though with help from the Guardian I was just able to keep him in it. I was not concerned that we wouldn't make it to the end of the game (commonly cited as a reason not to take Bodyguard in a timed setting) as both Maria and I both play plenty fast enough to get all the turns in. Game 5: In the end this turned out to be a fairly straightforward game but it was not easy by any means. However, if I understood him correctly, Connor did not select this 'wacky' crew for the comedy value; he is a very strong player and was himself in contention to win overall at this stage. Indeed, he told me afterward that he has previously used variations on this crew to terrific effect in tournaments and considered it highly efficacious. I believe that the general idea is to get both players to discard their hands, then abuse Dirty Cheater, the large number of attacks and out-activation to wipe out the other crew early. I'll ask him if he wouldn't mind posting more about it in this thread. I found the terrain fine, but that might just be because this is what I'm used to seeing in the UK tournament scene. (Edit: Probably it's only a matter of time before ZFiend posts in here to note his disgust at the sparsity of cover though). I take a lot of options that either ignore cover or have built in positive flips on their shooting if I think I might need it; of course I can take a look at the board before picking my crew so as long as I own the model then in theory I can pick the right tools. In games three and four I still had to advance into the other crew simply to winkle them out of the cover of the buildings on their side of the board. In fact in game three I had to physically walk round to James' side of the table several times to see what was going on behind the buildings, and Connor in game five was probably also sick of having to describe to me the positions of the various Gremlins hiding back there. Just wanted to comment on this part (not the bit about being clever, though of course I appreciate the nice words) about not playing the 'usual stuff'. There is a lot of theoryfaux going on in the faction subforums that frequently seems to show very little similarity to what I see in practice. So part of why I continue to post these threads is to provide a bit of backing to the theory: "I tried this stuff, and these bits worked while these bits didn't". Not games filled with perfectly counterpicked counterplays, but games of what actually occured on the table with the luck of the cards and the mental state of the players.

Lovely writing as usual, with the captioned photos adding greatly to my enjoyment. It seems that the main thing you will learn from this event will be to pay attention to the scoring conditions of your schemes!

I really like the style of these battle reports. You're adding some great thoughts about why you're doing things from your side so I don't have too much to add there. If I'm being greedy, photos make it much easier to understand the board state each round. Your friend could probably make better use of the Ice Golem. It's a handy utility piece throwing the Ice Gamin around, and a fantastic damage soak. Notably in the second turn of your most recent game, the only use out of it seems to have been a dropping a scheme marker. I can understand if you are focussing Seamus and the Copycat Killer to drop the big chap early with their fantastic weak damage, but in that case your friend needs to position to take advantage of the positioning to either score while your master is busy or kill him off in return.

Game 5: Guild (me) vs Gremlins (Connor Barker; Proximocoal on the forums) Strategy: Reconnoitre Schemes Pool: Line in the Sand, Breakthrough, Assassinate, Cursed Object, Vendetta Guild: Breakthrough (announced), Cursed Object Gremlins: Breakthrough (announced), Assassinate Crews Guild: Sonnia Criid (Reincarnation), Papa Loco, 2 Hunters, 2 Guild Hounds, Brutal Effigy, Death Marshal, Austringer, Watcher Gremlins: Som’er Teeth Jones, 2 Skeeters, Merris LaCroix, 12 (yes, twelve) Bayou Gremlins With Reconnoitre I supposed that I might be likely to see a Som’er summoning factory and figured that setting them all ablaze with Sonnia would be the simplest option. There was no reason here not to take a nice cheap crew with plenty of activations so I took the Hounds, Watcher and Brutal Effigy to cheaply run schemes. Of course, I was still expecting to be out-activated, but I was still amazed by what Connor set down across the table. Naturally, killing Merris efficiently was going to be key to this game. With close deployment I picked Breakthrough as an easy 3 points (and so did just about everyone else I saw) and decided that Cursed Object should be simple enough to score as there were simply so many Gremlins out there. Turn 1: The Hunters Chain Spear a Gremlin each but one Black Jokers the damage flip. The drag victim moves round the Hunter to be further on my side of the board. The Hounds move up and drop scheme markers. Some Gremlins punch or shoot Som’er to move him around with Loudest Squeal. Papa Loco give Sonnia a stick of magical dynamite (no need for Cover Me in close deployment) and is eventually popped into a Pine Box. Som’er uses Do It Like Dis for rams then uses his Bigger Hat on Sonnia to make us both discard our hands. A Skeeter moves up to engage Sonnia and is killed by the Austringer. Sonnia takes a couple of pot shots into the crowd of Gremlins, but she’s pretty sad with no control hand and Merris sitting behind the building. I think I kill one or two in the end. Merris goes Reckless to move up into view of my crew and misses a shot at Sonnia. The Watcher advances and drops a scheme marker. Various Bayou Gremlins stroll around and take shots but they mostly seems to be getting in each others way. Turn 2: Som’er uses Do It Like Dis for masks. He tries to compare Hats with Sonnia but I manage to get Reflect Magic off on the first 2 (top-decking the Red Joker on the first) and hitting moderate damage on both to kill a pair of nearby Gremlins. With the extra cards in hand Som’er decides he’s not so keen to get rid of his own hand. The Brutal Effigy puts out Fear Not The Sword. Sonnia uses Confiscated Lore to get up to Ca9 then vapourises Merris with a single shot. Naturally I kill her first to remove the blast immunity for the rest of the Gremlins, dropping 3 of them with the first action. She then puts some fairly serious damage onto Som’er since he’s obligingly standing there. The Gremlin on the left hurts my Hunter. Over on the right, the Hounds eat the leading Gremlin. The Death Marshal guns down another and the second Skeeter moves in to take the place of the first and I’m not able to pick it off this time with the Austringer. The Watcher hands the Gremlin on the left a Cursed Object. I score Cursed Object and Reconnoitre. Turn 3: The Skeeter goes double Defensive. The Hunter on the right kills one of the Gremlins behind the big building. One of the few surviving Gremlins shoots Som’er to move him. He uses Do It Like Dis for rams again then double focusses and shoots Sonnia, accurately picking her out in the melee and doing some nasty damage with Thinkin’ Luck. The Death Marshal shoots at Som’er, who is looking distinctly unhealthy by now. The Austringer can only manage 1 damage on the Skeeter so it’ll be up to Sonnia to try to get herself free. The Brutal Effigy uses Fear Not The Sword and fails to disengage. Sonnia then flips a very timely Red Joker to attack the Skeeter, killing it and healing a ludicrous number wound and drawing cards thanks to the Brutal Effigy and the Absorb Magic trigger. She then immolates Som’er and the remaining two Gremlins in the middle of the board. Over on the left, the last Gremlin is dropping Breakthrough markers and the Watcher hands it another Cursed Object. Since this is the last Gremlin and it has only a single wound, Connor decided that it would kill itself with Reckless next turn to deny me the final point for Cursed Object; of course, I would remove his scheme markers. Guild win 9 – 0 (4 for Reconnoitre, 3 for Breakthrough and 2 for Cursed Object for me; nothing for Connor). Any game against Connor is always fun, and this was no exception. He took my expectation of what I would come up against and dialled it up to 11. I don’t think I would do anything particularly different (and notably, I did get some very lucky flips) but the main thing I took away from this is that using Merris to protect your Gremlins against Sonnia is going to be very hard to achieve. When the points are all added up, I come in a very respectable second place, behind Maria only on VP scored as we were also tied on VP difference. I’m really happy with the result, and I felt that my play got better as the event went on, albeit from a fairly ropey start. I had five great games against five great people and got to spend my weekend with a really great crew of folks, both locals and those who had made the effort to travel far to play. Thanks to Ewan, Kai, James, Maria and Connor for being wonderful opponents, and thanks of course to Joe, Andrew and Maria (again) for making everything run smoothly. All in all, a wonderful way to spend a weekend.

Game 4: Guild (me) vs Outcasts (Maria Wieland; MariFaux on the forums) Strategy: Reckoning Schemes Pool: Line in the Sand, Bodyguard, Entourage, Distract, Deliver a Message Guild: Entourage (Perdita; announced), Bodyguard (Francisco) Outcasts: Deliver a Message (announced), Bodyguard (Vanessa) Crews Guild: Perdita Ortega (Trick Shooting, Aura Ancestral), Nino Ortega (Hair Trigger), Francisco (Wade In), Guardian, Austringer, 2 Hunters Outcasts: Tara (Eternal Journey, Obliteration Symbiote, Knowledge of Eternity), Bishop, Johan, Malifaux Child, Vanessa, Lazarus, Freikorps Trapper I’d had the overnight break to think about my options for this game. Normally I don’t make much of an effort to plan my crews in advance, but since this game was against such a strong player I did discuss it on the journey to and from the venue. After a while I realised that I could get into a loop of always worrying about being counterpicked and just went for a crew that felt like it could get the job done and hope to be able to do the correct thing on the table. Indeed, Malifaux is not a game that can generally be decided at the crew selection stage. I didn’t really fancy anything in the scheme pool too much as nothing I have in Guild gives me many options for Deliver a Message and Distract goes against what I’ll be trying to do in Reckoning. Despite my reputation (and by self-admission) for playing a very damage-focussed game, I actually find Reckoning quite hard as the optimal crew builds are usually quite low model count. I feel like I am at my most comfortable in Malifaux with a crew of 8 or 9 good activations rather than 5 or 6 great activations. Ultimately I selected Bodyguard on Francisco and hoped to keep him alive with judicious use of Soulstones and Entourage on Perdita, which would be quite straightforward if I could keep her alive. Turn 1: Tara makes Lazarus Fast. Nino Rapid Fires at Tara, forcing a couple of masks out of her hand. The Trapper focusses and hurts Nino. Vanessa Commands Construct to move Lazarus forward, then the big robot focuses and Auto-Fires, killing Nino with the first shot (and thereby enabling Deliver a Message) and hurting the left Hunter. Perdita ignores armour to kill Lazarus. The Child makes Bishop Fast and buries him. The Guardian uses Protect on Perdita, mainly so that I can briefly live the dream of being Df9 with double positive defensive flips. Tara misses a few shots at a Hunter. I know that something (presumably Bishop) is coming in to try to Deliver a Message at the start of the next turn so I’m trying to build a web of bases and melee ranges to make him have to work for it. Turn 2: Maria and I spend a bit of time verifying that Tara can move and drop Bishop in a place where he can walk to Deliver a Message without triggering any disengaging strikes, and since I couldn’t quite keep him out he is able to do so and score 3VP for the scheme. Tara teleports back to her own deployment zone during her activation. The Guardian pokes Bishop and the Trapper kills the wounded Hunter before putting a shot into the other one. The Austringer pings another couple of wounds out of Bishop, leaving him on a single wound. Vanessa finishes the second Hunter. Perdita kills Bishop, moves up and Obeys Francisco into charge range of Vanessa (while still being within 2″ of her, so she can get another turn out of El Mayor). Somewhere around her I also Hero’s Gamble, putting away a 3 card hand no higher than a 4 and picking up another 3 cards also not higher than a 4. Maria sees Francisco coming and so the Child buries Vanessa. Instead, Francisco charges the Trapper but leave him on a single wound. Johan charges Francisco but is only able to do a single hit thanks to Finesse. Maria scores for Reckoning. Turn 3: Tara pings Francisco for Slow and makes Johan Fast. Perdita charges in and takes Johan down to his Hard to Kill wound and companions to Francisco who kills off the Trapper then uses Finesse. Vanessa falls back to reality on the roof of the building. Johan Flurries Francisco but can’t make it through the Finesse. The Guardian Protects Francisco and takes the Trigger to heal him. Vanessa disengages, focusses and misses a shot a Francisco. The Austringer polishes off Johan and the Child fails to Slow Francisco. I score on the Strategy. Turn 4: Vanessa runs the hell away from Perdita and Francisco, telegraphing that she has Bodyguard on her. Perdita blows away the Malifaux Child, the Guardian heals Francisco again with the trigger on Protect and the Austringer top decks a Red Joker attack flip on Vanessa allowing me to cheat in a nice severe plus Critical Strike. We both score a point for Bodyguard. Turn 5: Vanessa heals herself. The Guardian and Perdita both charge Tara (conveniently this gets Perdita into Tara’s deployment zone) and hurt her quite badly. Tara moves round, avoiding the disengaging strike, and tries to take Francisco below half wounds but can’t quite do enough damage. For the second turn in a row I’m able to flip a Red Joker attack with the Austringer on Vanessa, putting her down to a single wound. If the game ends now I will win by one. We flip, and the game does not continue. Maria chooses (not surprisingly) to reflip with Stutter Time, and it comes up a 13! We both score a point again for Bodyguard. Turn 6: Vanessa heals again to have 5 wounds left. Perdita drops Tara finally. The Austringer can’t quite do the needed number of wounds to finish off Vanessa (I would need a 12 of rams or better, plus one other severe card, or any 12 and the Red Joker I think). The game ends in a draw (1 for Reckoning and full points for both schemes for both of us). Wow, what a game. Maria has a reputation as a fantastic Malifaux player for a good reason and I’m glad to have held her to a draw after 6 turns. I probably could have played Francisco a bit more cagily considering he had Bodyguard on him; Johan could probably have killed him by taking a focussed swing in turn 3 rather than using Flurry. I felt that I let the Hunters go quite cheaply too; in general I’m used to being able to flood the board with comparable threats which means that the Hunters (who are often out on the flanks away thank to their mobility) tend to get a fairly easy ride. In this case the terrain forced me to send them both straight up the middle and without much cover available Maria was able to gun both down without any trouble. As it happened the other two players on three wins also got a draw and in addition the two just below who were on two wins and draw both won their games (their draw had been against each other which is why they weren’t playing again). So we went into game 5 with everything still to play for and only points difference separating the top six players.

Game 3: Guild (me) vs Outcasts (James Reeves) Strategy: Collect The Bounty Schemes Pool: Line in the Sand, Protect Territory, Distract, Take Prisoner, Frame For Murder Guild: Protect Territory (announced), Frame For Murder (Nino Ortega) Outcasts: Protect Territory (announced), Frame For Murder (Void Wretch) Crews Guild: Perdita Ortega (Trick Shooting), Nino Ortega (Hair Trigger), Guardian, 2 Hunters, Austringer, Enslaved Nephilim, Witchling Stalker Outcasts: Tara (Eternal Journey, Obliteration Symbiote, Knowledge of Eternity), Johana, Bishop (Oathkeeper), Taelor (Oathkeeper), Hans (Scout The Field), Void Wretch, Malifaux Child I decided on Perdita for Collect The Bounty on the basis that she is very likely to be able to kill off one piece per turn on her own, and hopefully the rest of the crew could contribute enough Bounty between them to score each time. Apart from Nino, the rest of the crew are either dangerous or hard to kill and are minions (and therefore score only a single Bounty point). I put Frame For Murder on Nino as he could start further forward and is an enforcer which I hoped would make him an appealing target. The terrain in the game makes the photos a bit useless as most of James’s crew sensibly spent most of the game behind big buildings. Turn 1: Tara buries Bishop after making him Fast. The Stalker moves forward and the Nephilim pushes both Hunters after it. The Child makes Taelor Fast which she uses to race off around a building far away from any likely action. Nino pings a few shots at Tara, mainly to draw her attention and succeeds in drawing a couple of Soulstones; one Hunter puts Slow on her too but doesn’t drag her in as I don’t want to give up a ‘Bishop bomb’ too easily. Hans focuses but misses a Hunter anyway. The Austringer pings a little more damage onto Tara. The Guardian Protects Perdita and she moves into the open and puts some wounds into Johana. Turn 2: One Hunter attacks Tara; she pokes it back with her sword and then teleports back to her deployment zone. The other Hunter kills Johana, releasing Bishop next to her corpse. Nino pings a volley into the Void Wretch, mainly hitting the Hunter in the end. The Child fails to heal Tara and the Void Wretch makes my Hunter Slow. Bishop bounces embarrassingly off the Hunter. The Nephilim Shackles itself and Perdita forward. Hans drops Scout the Field but only does moderate damage to Nino (annoyingly, as cheating in severe would have got me my Frame For Murder points). Taelor burns Oathkeeper and charges Perdita; in return both the Guardian and Perdita herself fight back but can only drop Taelor to a single remaining wound. I score for Collect The Bounty. The engaged Hunter pushes to engage Hans. Turn 3: The Guardian kills Taelor and companions to Perdita who charges kills Bishop. The Child again fails to heal Tara. The Hunter misses Hans and is killed by Tara. The Witchling Stalker finally makes it across the square and kills off the Void Wretch, giving up 2 VP for Frame For Murder. Funnily enough, only a Black Joker damage flip from Perdita on Bishop earlier in the turn saved me from giving up the extra point by killing it off with her. Nino, one Hunter and the Austringer begin a long walk to get in range of any potential targets. I score again for the Strategy. Turn 4: Tara teleports right to the edge of her deployment zone and makes a break for the left corner of the board. Perdita follows but James has enough masks in his hand to keep Tara safe. Hans pings the Stalker. Nino finally finishes trudging / being Shackled around the building and drops the Malifaux Child. The rest of my stuff fails to hurt Hans. Turn 5. Tara saunters round the building and drops scheme markers for Protect Territory. Perdita tells her crew to stop messing about and guns down Hans with no further fuss. The rest of my crew drop scheme markers, or sit next to them if they are already there. I score for Collect The Bounty. Guild win 6 – 5 (3 for Collect The Bounty and 3 for Protect Territory for me; 3 for Protect Territory and 2 for Frame For Murder for James). James has a pretty strong reputation so I was glad to be able to hold on for a win against him here. We had plenty of laughs and I really liked his wacky perspective on the Malifaux world. I was in real trouble for a while since James’s crew mostly stayed back and didn’t ever go in a position to threaten Nino so apart from one shot from Hans I wasn’t ever looking likely to score Frame For Murder. In the end, I just got lucky with Perdita not being the one to kill the Void Wretch which allowed me to sneak a narrow win. This was the end of the first day, so scores were added up and the round 4 pairings were announced, then we went out for a highly satisfactory dinner and drinks.

Game 2: Guild (me) vs Resurrectionists (Kai Young; NoMoreMrNiceKai on the forums) Strategy: Turf War Schemes Pool: Line in the Sand, Bodyguard, Assassinate, Plant Explosives, Power Ritual Guild: Power Ritual (announced), Plant Explosives Resurrectionists: Assassinate, Plant Explosives Crews Guild: Sonnia Criid (Reincarnation, Counterspell Aura), Papa Loco (Hermanos De Armas), 2 Hunters, Witchling Stalker, Brutal Effigy, Death Marshal, Austringer, Watcher Resurrectionists: Seamus (Not Too Banged Up, Bag of Tools, Mad Haberdasher), Copycat Killer, Madame Sybelle, 3 Rotten Belles, Nurse, Crooligan, Bete Noire Turf War requires a lot of bunching up so I figured that I could keep Sonnia somewhat safe and blast away at anything that stayed in a group close to the marker, bouncing blasts off my own models if needed. I basically kept the same crew as the previous game, except adding the missing Watcher and swapping out Disrupt Magic for Counterspell Aura since I expected some Luring. Power Ritual looked like a good job for the Watcher if I could keep attention on the centre of the board. Plant Explosives is handy if there is a lot of pieces placing next to each other (like the Copycat Killer moving to Seamus), but I did worry about giving up some points if my plan to carpet bomb the Ressurectionists went too well. Turn 1: Papa Loco hands Sonnia a stick of dynamite and heads forward, pulling up with him using Cover Me before the following Death Marshal catches up and puts him in a Pine Box. In one corner, the Stalker drops a scheme marker for Power Ritual before beginning the long slog be involved in the game. The Nurse, Sybelle and all three Belles rather helpfully line up next to each other with a sliver of line of sight from Sonnia to the Nurse. What follows is not pretty. The Brutal Effigy puts Fear Not The Sword on Sonnia and a barrage of Flame Bursts ensues. The first shot targets the Nurse and lights up the other four victims; successive shots finish her off along with all three Belles; Sybelle is left on fire and with a single remaining wound. I’m feeling pretty good, so I burn a couple of Soulstones to summon a couple of Witchling Stalkers in the process; though I am concerned about my ability to score on Plant Explosives now. Bete Noire pops out of the carnage. Kai gets his revenge as first Seamus and then the Copycat Killer teleport into range of Sonnia and blast away at her leaving my master with 2 remaining wounds. The left Hunter Chain Spears Seamus for Slow. The Crooligan starts up the Mist to keep me from shooting more at Seamus. The Watcher moves up past Seamus and the Austringer Delivers Orders to make it drop a marker, thereby scoring me 3VP for Plant Explosives. Turn 2: The Copycat Killer kills Sonnia, scoring 3VP for Assassinate then puts a shot into the Death Marshal. The Death Marshal delivers Papa Loco into the group of the Crooligan, Seamus and the CopyCat Killer, and the Ortega duly blows himself up for some nice damage on Seamus and killing both of the others (and the Death Marshal and himself of course). Seamus summons a Belle then charges and kills one of my summoned Stalkers, damaging himself and Bete Noire in the ensuing explosion. The Watcher makes a run for the far corner and its date with Power Ritual. Bete kills the other new Stalker and one Hunter kills the new Belle (poor girl, before she’s even activated). The other Hunter drags and Slows Seamus. The Austringer continues to ping Seamus, eventually knocking his hat off. Bete burns to death but Kai is able to top deck the required 10 to bury her. I score on the Strategy. Turn 3: Seamus focusses and kills the Stalker so that Bete can come back out. The Hunter bites her and she Flurries back rather ineffectually. The Watcher finally makes it to the corner and drops a Power Ritual marker. Everything else I have (i.e. not much at this point) gangs up and finally kills Seamus. I score on for Turf War. Turn 4: One of the Hunters kills Bete Noire. Guild win 10 – 3 (full score for me; 3 for Assassinate for Kai). Kai was a lovely chap to play against, but after I destroyed half of his crew in turn 1 there was only one way this was going to end. I did ask Kai if he knew what Sonnia did, and he assured me that he was familiar with her, so I am not sure why he didn’t space out a bit more. The gaming group Kai comes from is somewhat new to the Malifaux scene and it’s really good to see them keep improving with each event. Hopefully this will be another bit of experience that can help Kai’s game (i.e. don’t stand close to your friends if Sonnia is on the other side of the board). From my side, I didn’t really feel like I did anything very clever, but once again, I was happy to get a good win from a potentially tricky match up.