Argentbadger

Good work on the yellow armour for the Guardian. I find that an especially tricky colour to get right. Lady Justice is fabulous, you can be very proud.

That is great.

Great battle report, thanks for posting. I find Kirai a tough proposition in general, but it looks like an especially tough fight for Hoffman, without much access to magical attacks and with many spirits ignoring armour.

Thanks for the kind words. I hope I haven't made too much of this etiquette business; it really wasn't a big deal for me. @NinjaBreadMen: Drop me a PM and maybe we can sort something out.

Thank you for the kind words. @Gorillawizard and DavidKerrSmith: Thanks for your thoughts. Actually my question wasn't about whether the game is meant to end at turn 5, or whether you can carry on after tabling your opponent; I know about both of those. It was more about the etiquette. As I've never played in a tournament, I was concerned that by shaking Irving's hand (which, of course, I would do as a matter of course at the end of a game) I was telling him that I agreed to end of the game. I assumed that was why he disagreed that I could carry on. It didn't occur to me that he thought that we'd run out of turns. So, Irving, if you're reading: sorry for misunderstanding! @Tattyted: I had a great time so I certainly plan to go to more of David's tournaments (though I can't make the one in August). So hopefully we'll get a game soon.

Thanks for running a great tournament. I had a really nice time, and everyone was very welcoming. For anyone interested, I put some more photos and some short battle report up here.

On 7th July 2012 I set off for my first ever tournament in any game system, the Blood, Steel and Stones tournament. I wasn’t really sure of what to expect, so I packed up my Guild, my line in the sand markers and the usual hobby supplies and set off into the pouring rain. I’m delighted to say how welcoming everyone was, especially since I think that all the other nine players knew each other or had at the very least met at previous Malifaux events. After a bit of setting up boards etc, the tournament organiser (TO), David announced the initial pairings, found that he’d matched up a couple against each other and swiftly re-jigged it. As there was an odd number of players, David himself was taking part and indeed I was his first opponent. My battle reports are a bit sketchy since I didn’t want to delay the games too much to take copious notes; the same goes for the photos. Game 1: Guild (me) vs Arcanists (David) Strategy: Shared Plant Evidence Schemes: Guild: Stake a Claim, Breakthrough Arcanists: Bodyguard, Kill Protegé (Samael Hopkins) Crews: Guild: Sonnia Criid (plus 6 soulstones), Samael Hopkins, Witchling Handler, 2 Guild Hounds, 2 Witchling Stalkers, Austringer Arcanists: Rasputina (plus 5 soulstones), Kaeris, Ice Gamin, 2 Gunsmiths, 2 Large Steampunk Arachnids I deploy in a strung out line, focussed in the middle with the Guild Hounds out on the right aiming to go through the ruins and start planting evidence (though I have no idea how; they can light dynamite too!) and the Austringer on the left to hide behind cover and send his bird at people a bit. David puts both Large Steampunk Arachnids facing the Guild Hounds, and they’ll tear the dogs to bits in a straight fight so I’ll have to rethink that part of the plan. Kaeris goes on my left and everyone else takes up the firing lane in the centre. Turn 1: Mostly everyone just runs forward. The Witchling Handler pushes one of the stalkers up to interfere with the Gunsmiths, and Rasputina burns a couple of soulstones to hurt him, then puts up ice pillars in front of the Guild Hounds, forcing them to turn around or spend ages trying to bite through them. This picture is from the end of turn 1. Turn 2: The Witchling Stalker severely wounds the female Gunsmith before being shot by the male one. The Ice Gamin runs up to the clump of my miniatures with Sonnia in it and I have no choice but to kill it off with the other Witchling simply to get it out of my hair. Sonnia then turns the wounded Gunsmith into another Witchling Stalker which is conveniently in combat with Rasputina, though she burns a soulstone to avoid its attack. Here’s are a couple of shots from somewhere around the end of turn 2. Turn 3: We’ve been playing fairly slowly, so this will be the final turn. Samael Hopkins flips the dreaded black joker taking a shot at one of the Large Steampunk Arachnids in the hope of destroying it before it plants evidence, then runs away to avoid getting killed (and hence give up kill protegé). Rasputina shows what she’s capable of by blowing up two Witchling Stalkers, but it’s too little, too late. Sonnia and the Guild Hounds zoom around planting evidence and staking a claim. The final score is 5 – 3 to the Guild (3 bits of evidence planted, plus stake a claim compared to 1 bit of evidence and bodyguard). This is the centre at the end of the game. It was a really fun game, and I learned quite a few rules clarifications from David. I’ve got a bit of a feeling that he was going a bit easy on me (as Henchman, it’s not really in his interest to pummel the new guy on his first ever game in the group), or perhaps he was just distracted because he was meant to be doing the TO thing as well as playing the game. After the game there was some lunch and general chit-chat, then the pairings were announced for game 2. I was to play Greg, who has the coolest possible method for tracking his soulstones: sweeties. Whenever he uses one in-game, he eats it for a ‘power up’. Game 2: Guild (me) vs Ressurectionists (Greg) Strategy: Shared Contain Power ® Schemes: Guild: Hold Out, Kill Protegé (Mortimer) Ressurectionists: Bodyguard, Death After Death Crews: Guild: Sonnia Criid (plus 8 soulstones), Exorcist, Witchling Handler, 2 Guild Hounds, 2 Witchling Stalkers, Austringer Ressurectionists: Nicodem (plus 6 soulstones), Grave Spirit, Von Schill (who was the leader for contain power and bodyguard purposes), Mortimer, Madame Sybelle, 2 Rotten Belles I actually remembered to take a picture of deployment this time. Turn 1: Everyone rushes forward like 5 year olds playing football. The Rotten Belles lure in one of the Witchling Stalkers, and Madame Sybelle hits him a little. Turn 2: Madame Sybelle kills her Witchling, and Von Schill makes short work of the other one. Meanwhile, the Guild Hounds eat the Grave Spirit and dog-pile Nicodem, mainly just to clog him up a bit while he kills them off. Nicodem totally ignores the dogs, instead summoning a Flesh Construct right in Sonnia’s face. Eeek! Turn 3: Sonnia uses a lot of soulstones to keep the Flesh Construct from killing her, and then tries to use her disassemble trigger to get it to go away. This doesn’t actually work, but Greg is forced to discard enough cards that the Exorcist can banish it to oblivion at the end of the turn. Von Schill rockets about being annoying, and somewhere around here the Witchling Handler is killed and Madame Sybelle and one of her Rotten Belles are severely damaged. The Guild Hounds carry on biting Nicodem, and he carries on paying them no attention. Down boy! Turn 4: This is the last turn, again due to time. Von Schill zooms into my deployment zone to try and make it hard to kill him and also to deny me holdout. Sonnia turns both Madame Sybelle and the injured Belle into Witchling Stalkers (I love doing that). Nicodem summons a boat load of Punk Zombies to try and get his death after death scheme, and is then killed by the Guild Hounds. A couple of shots on Mortimer don’t get me lucky enough to kill him, so it’s now all about the Austringer and Von Schill. The big guy is on 3 wounds. The Austringer hits with his first attack, doing one wound. He hits with his second attack. I’m on a negative flip, so I need both cards to be above 6. I flip the first: it’s a 6. All I ned now is anything above a 5 to win the game. Both Greg and I are on tenterhooks. I flip the second card… it’s a 3. Weak damage, and Von Schill is left on a single wound, denying me the points for hold out and contain power, while getting Greg the points for bodyguard. The final score is 2 – 0 to the Ressurectionists (for bodyguard). Here’s the scene at the end. Von Schill is painted like Hulk Hogan since they seem to share the same barber (balding with an outrageous moustache). That was a great game, perhaps the best I’ve had in Malifaux. Greg was a lovely opponent, and I really enjoyed every minute of it. Close games are always the most exciting. Anyway, with that we were onto the final round where I was paired with Irving. Game 3: Guild (me) vs Neverborn (Irving) Strategy: Shared Line in the Sand Schemes: Guild: Bodyguard, Grudge (Tuco) Neverborn: Hold Out, Assassinate Crews: Guild: Sonnia Criid (plus 8 soulstones), Samael Hopkins, Witchling Handler, 2 Guild Hounds, 2 Witchling Stalkers, Austringer Neverborn: Lilith (plus 7 soulstones), Mature Nephilim, Young Nephilim, 3 Terror Tots, Tuco As usual, deployment was a couple lines of miniatures hurrying to get to each other as quickly as possible. My Guild Hounds were away out on the left with everyone else pretty much taking up the centre. Lilith was on my far right and one Terror Tot was on the left, the rest of the Nephilim were advancing in the open ground behind the pool. Turn 1: Everyone rushes forward to get started on the dynamite. One of the Terror Tots in the centre is killed by the Austringer. The Mature Nephilim is looking very big and scary as it stands next to the pool. Turn 2: Samael Hopkins sets his bullets on fire then rapid fires at the Mature Nephilim. Slightly to my surprise, the big chap dies on the second shot. Lilith uses a couple of soulstones to get a blood token for herself (I’ve no idea what she can do with it though, as I’ve never played against Lilith or any other Neverborn before). The Guild Hounds kill the isolated Terror Tot and Sonnia Criid uses Violation of Magic to turn the last one into a Witchling Stalker. Did I mention how much I love that spell? Here’s how things looked at the end of turn 2. Turn 3: The fresh Witchling Stalker kill off Tuco, and the Young Nephilim is pulled down in a wash of black blood. Only Lilith is left from her crew, but she’s already lit two of the dynamite markers. Everyone starts running over to try and stop her. Turn 4: Pretty much my whole crew dog-piles Lilith. It’s depressingly ineffective, as I fail to put a single wound on her this round. Turn 5: Lilith kills Sonnia (getting assassinate, and denying me bodyguard), and I finally pull down Lilith as black blood splashing onto the Witchling Stalkers after Samael Hopkins had delivered a wound causes them to blow up and finish her off. The Austringer defuses one of the lit dynamite markers in turn 6. The final score is 5 – 2 to the Guild (I got 4 of 5 dynamite markers defused and picked up grudge; the Neverborn took the points for assassinate). There was an interesting bit of tournament etiquette here. When I killed Lilith in turn 5 (of 6), Irving shook my hand, which of course I reciprocated. I took this to mean ‘well done, you wiped out my crew and will win the game’ as I was already ahead on VPs at the time. However, he seemed to think that my accepting this handshake indicated that the game had ended, and was therefore aggrieved when I started moving my miniatures to try and get the remaining dynamite tokens. It ended up with a disagreement between Irving and the TO in which Irving was asked to leave the store, presumably to cool off. In full disclosure, they are brothers so I suppose that may have been the argument rather than anything relating to Malifaux. Anyway, how would you have interpreted the situation? Anyway, the tournament ended, and I came in a respectable 4th place with two wins and a defeat. David (game 1) was third with the same record, beating me on some tiebreaker which I think was VP differential. Greg (game 2) won overall with 3 wins and Irving finished in 9th. I’m pretty delighted at that result. Particular thanks must go to David for organising the tournament. I had a great time and I certainly plan to go back for more. It was quite interesting that I was the only player who brought Guild. There are some more pictures from the tournament on my blog and also here and a podcast with hilarious echo issues here.

I like them a lot. The photos don't seem to be doing them justice though. Could you take a few shots in natural light? I look forward to seeing how you tackle Kirai.

@Ninjabreadmen: Thanks. I too recognised your excellent Gremlins from this site, but saying so always sounds a little too close to 'I totally stalk you on the internet'. I'd be happy to play you sometime as I have never played against Gremlins in the dozen or so games I've had. @Rameses: Guilty as charged. Lucky for me that it's hard to tell at tabletop distance!

As part of the Malifaux tournament I just played in, I had to make up some markers for one of the strategies, A Line in the Sand. After some consideration, I decided that powder kegs were the most appropriate easiest option, and set about it. These are some of the barrels left from my Ogresses (see my blog if you're interested), with a bit of paper clip sticking out and a little blob of Milliput on the end. Then I painted them quickly. They’re not meant to win prizes (and indeed, they did not), but they’ll do the job and to be honest I just don’t find the scenery building aspect of the hobby very inspiring (which is why I never do any). Anyway, here they are; you can see the hand of my little helper, Argentbadger Junior, in the background. The red and black basing was just a thought to save me making ten of them – the idea is that the red side can be turned to face whichever player has control. In practice, as everyone at the tournament had them, we just swapped in and out as needed.

Thanks very much for the swift answer. Is this explicit in the Rules Manual? This particular possibility didn't even occur to us so we did not look for it. I see what you mean about it being a necessary part of the game for some crew match-ups though. This actually adds another related question though. If Kaeris is hit as the target (so her ability to ignore the does not come into play as described) but is under the , can she use Flaming Armour to heal a wound at that stage? Or is the simply not relevant for her at all if she is the target?

I played a game last night at 25 soulstones; I took Sonnia Criid and Justin played Kaeris. We came upon a combination of rules where the outcome was unclear, so I put it out to the wise people of the forums for expansion, exposition and explanation. The background: Sonnia Criid has the Explosive Burst trigger on her Flame Burst spell, meaning that if are placed then they can be put 2” away from the target model. Kaeris has Flaming Armour, meaning that (among other things) she ignores damage from . The event: Sonnia casts Flame Burst at Kaeris, getting severe damage and triggering the Explosive Burst (the casting total has been cheated and stoned out of sight; it’s a straight flip for damage). The are placed away from Kaeris to blow up her minions; Kaeris herself is not hit by a . The question: Does Kaeris’s Flaming Armour allow her to ignore this damage, as it is ‘caused’ by a , or does it have no effect (apart from the Armour itself) since she hasn’t literally been hit by a ? We played that she took the damage as the did not hit her. For what it’s worth, in my opinion this did not affect the course of the game (which was a fairly comfortable 8-2 victory for Sonnia Criid). Thanks in advance to everyone for their thoughts.

I am the Guild player here. It appears that I’m late to the party. For clarity, my crew was Sonnia Criid, two Witchling Stalkers, Santiago Ortega and Niño Ortega. I’ve never taken either of these Ortegas before, so they’re in the crew for experimental purposes. The strategy was shared Deliver a Message and my schemes were Raid and Bodyguard. We agreed to reflip shared Slaughter as neither us has much experience at the game or large pools of models from which to choose, but Aramoro was of the opinion that the Showgirls weren’t going to have the killing power to make much of a game of that. To summarise the game, there was some movement (generally toward each other) in turn 1. Turn 2 and the start of turn 3 were the crucial parts. Cassandra charges Santiago, declaring her sword dance ability. She strikes him for weak damage on the way in, then Red Jokers the actual charge attack killing the poor chap outright. She’d also got the trigger that allows a spell to be cast after the hit, so it was wasted (I like the idea of her breathing fire over his corpse anyway though). Sonnia then sauntered round a corner and stabbed Cassandra a few times and immolated her; Cassandra used a few Soulstones to survive on one wound. Sometime around now, the Witchling Stalkers killed off a Dove and the Corypheé. Turn 3 initiative was crucial, but went to Colette, so Cassandra casually sauntered up to Sonnia and hands her an envelope. In return, Sonnia turned her into a Witchling Stalker while she read her post. The rest of the game devolved into a ‘Benny Hill’-style chase as I moved someone into base contact with Colette at the end of the turn ready to deliver the message if I won the initiative next turn, but sadly I never did. The end result was a draw at four vps each, as I got none for Deliver a Message and two each for Raid and Bodyguard; Aramoro had all four from Deliver a Message but nothing from whatever his schemes were (Power Ritual and something else, probably Breakthrough). So considering how the game flowed overall, it seems to me that the Showgirls held their own nicely. Sure they can be killed, but I gain no benefit from that unless it’s part of the strategy.

@Oscilliath: Thanks. The eyes are (like everything else I paint) done in the simplest way I can manage. Basically, just paint a horizontal white line in roughly the right place, then a vertical black line through the centre. After that, just touch up above and below, and the job is done. I'd be a lot less irritated with the static grass if I'd actually used it on these miniatures! @NinjaBreadMen: Thanks. I'm still a little ambivalent about the swords. The ones which most clearly shown the green look a bit mouldy rather than magical to me, so I'm going to leave them a while and see how I feel after a few weeks. As for Sonnia Criid herself, here she is in all her glory. She was a pleasure to paint. The sculpting and the pose made the miniature a joy to get to work on, and I'm very happy with the results. As ever, there are a few things I can see now that I have the giant magnified picture available, but that's always the case when you're as clumsy at painting as I am. In particular the smudge around the lips (chocolate?) is literally not visible to the naked eye. I chose to paint the crew in more muted colours after the primary colour-fest of my Ogresses (see my blog for more details, if you're interested). Here's the crew so far. I've been impressed enough with Malifaux to order some more miniatures, specifically an Austringer, a Witchling Handler, an Exorcist and a pair of Guild Hounds. As I don't really know what use anything has in game, it's all part of the experiment.

Thanks. There's some food for thought here, hopefully I can apply it usefully in game. For the executioner, wouldn't he just get bogged down in an endless cycle, i.e. he dies, uses Slow to Die to kill a rat (healing himself up with Loves the Job) then the rat reappears and bites him and (eventually) he has enough blight tokens on him for this to be a one-shot? Or does this not actually occur in practice?

Witchling Stalkers ahoy! These little dudes were lots of fun to paint. I stuck with the same brown and cream coloured scheme I used on Samael Hopkins, as it’s easy to apply and looks fairly nice. I tried to suggest the magic nature of their shattered rune blades with a green ink wash, but it hasn’t really come out very well. I think that the green thread on the back of this one is a bit of static grass; it’s not stuck on. Mainly in the interests of livening up the colour scheme a little I made the neckerchief / face mask red and gave them (slightly) glowing green eyes. I’m fairly happy with how the eyes turned out, though the miniatures are rather downward looking so it’s not all that obvious thanks to their cowls. Here’s one where the green ink on the shattered rune blade stood out a bit better. It kind of looks mouldy rather than magical, so perhaps it’s for the best that it didn’t come out too strongly. The photo here seems to have suffered particularly badly from the infestation of static grass. I love these little guys. They look good and they’re great on the table top.

I am the Guild player from Aramoro’s game. We spoke about this for a while after the game, and my concern comes down to: killing the rats is pointless because they respawn and reactivate. However, you can’t ignore them as they also kill you with a thousand cuts and you can’t cheat to avoid it (as that gives Hamelin a chance to get good cards in hand). I think in this case some rats had up to four activations, and it seems to me that there is no upper limit. I’d like to have been able to shoot things up a bit first but the range of my guns is 10” and rats can cover that with only two activations. For reference, my crew was Sonnia Criid (+8 soulstones), 2 Witchling Stalkers, 2 Death Marshalls and Francisco Ortega. This wasn’t particularly selected to ‘counter’ Hamelin, or even really to do with the strategy; I am still trying to learn what things do. I thought (in retrospect) that the Witchling Stalkers would be good since they can Dispel Magic to get rid of the Insignificant and have a magic weapon with which to hurt Nix. We are both pretty new at the game, so Aramoro wasn’t using particularly cheap tricks; I imagine that you could spend ages just having rats kill each other until I run out of activations for a start. Anyway, later on it occurred to me that a decent option would be to take Nino and start to Headshot important models (i.e. Nix and any rat catchers) until Hamelin has no cards left, all the while avoiding the temptation to cheat. I’d be keen to play against Hamelin again when I’m not tired and whiny. It was certainly frustrating watching a tide of rats run over my Witchling Stalker, get blown up, then all reappear (plus one) and repeat the trick with Francisco Ortega.

Thanks. In the case of the shoulder pad, I’m going to hide behind the age-old excuse of ‘they look better in real life’. It was a sunny day when I took the pictures, and the shoulder pads are at the perfect angle and shininess to really show up with the sun on them. I guess this would be a reason to do NMM, but I’ve never really felt the inspiration to try and learn how. The base is one of the Victorian base inserts from Wyrd. I’ve never used base inserts before but (apart from the pain in the neck that was getting him pinned to the base) I’d say that the improvement in looks is probably worth it. The bases are expensive enough that I wouldn’t consider it for a large scale game, but for such a small number of miniatures as are required for Malifaux I am happy with the results.

Hello everyone. Here’s my first post on the Wyrd forums, and indeed my first post on any forum for a decade or so. My gaming group and I have started to experiment with Malifaux over the last few weeks, though we all have a long war-gaming background. So far, I’ve got to say I am pretty impressed with the game. All four of us agreed to purchase a starter box to see how Malifaux worked. I somewhat arbitrarily selected Sonnia Criid’s Witch Hunters, though to be honest I could have chosen any one of half a dozen crews and been happy with the miniatures. As none of us know what is good or not, the selections were based on aesthetics rather than in-game effectiveness. Anyway, here’s my first painted Malifaux miniature, Samael Hopkins.