Hello everyone,
yesterday I had my second game of Malifaux with the Dreamer crew and I was in a situation at the end of round two where I didn´t see any outs for me anymore. We played "turf war" and I had the "breakthrough" and the "power ritual" scheme. My opponent took the same schemes.
My Crew:
Dreamer
LCP
Coppelius
Teddy
Hinamatsu
Stiched Together
Serena Bowman
8 SS
The crew I played against:
Sandeep (+ Magical Training)
Banasuva (+ SS cache)
Fire Gamin
Fire Gamin
Wind Gamin
Shastar Vidiya Guard
Arcane Emissary
Oxfodian Mage
8 SS
I´ve never played against Sandeep before since it was my second game at all and never watched a battle report with him so I only thought about my general game plan. I would try to shield my crew turn one, use Coppelius as scheme runner on one flank for both schemes and try to bring havoc to the middle of the table with my big beaters supported by Bowman and the Stiched while popping out some Alps in the enemy ranks. This was my "basic beginner game plan". Oh boy was I about to learn some lessons 😅.
The game started and after the deployment it look like that: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YZ-bpB-PFb8a3zx-SSM8dmqtxom6eeMw/view?usp=sharing
Since my opponent placed in the middle of the board I had to guess which flank I can send Coppelius to. Looking back I think it would have been better if I had placed him on the other flank together with LCP but yeah... second game.
My opponent summoned two more Gamins turn one and fusioned (?) three of them into a Fire Golem. He placed several fire templates and stacked the burning on the Golem up to eleven.
I summoned two Alps that popped out because my opponent put Banasuva a little to far upfront so that I could lure him/her (?) but with some tricks he managed to put her back behind the golem quite fast again. Later in the turn he placed an Ice Garmin in the space between the "wood" and the wall to secure this last gap with an ice pillar in the follwing round.
After a lot of thinking at the end of round two I conceded due to not knowing how to break through his crew or how to find a way to score my schemes.
The board looked like this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eoETD5Zd83yeL7hS-ToOgs3sNsdkBMMH/view?usp=sharing
I thought it would be better to talk about the game and what I did wrong to learn a thing or two than continue to play without any plan. Maybe it was too early to give up but I couldn´t figure out how to play against this crew. He blocked all passages with fire templates and a big beater waiting behind them (or even standing in them). The Fire Golem surrounded by fire templates would have eaten Teddy if I would have sent him in and every round I would stay back and play defensively he would generate a new Golem, shoot me from behind his frontline or just swarm me with little Garmins. Since he was controlling the turf marker in the middle I didn´t see a chance anymore. My Alps did not do enough damage to threaten the golem and they got killed instantly by the Golem, the fire or his little Gamins.
My opponent agreed that also he was surprised how bad the board state was for me and told me that he neither sees a chance of getting back into the game properly for me.
I know it was my second game and I am quite new to it but when we played the first game (Kirai against Marcus) I always had a game plan or strategy in mind. We had to end it in round 4 due to the late time during the week but chances where high that I would have won. In comparison to my first game I felt completly shut down in everything I tried to do.
I have several questions in my mind now and wanted to kindly ask if the more experienced player could tell me what I did wrong to end up in this situation. Or did I oversee something I could have done that would have turned the tides. Is Sandeep a bad matchup for the Dreamer in general or was the crew selection bad?
P.S.: If somebody could tell me how to link the pictures as pictures instead of a link I would be thankful
P.P.S.: I´m not a native speaker so please excuse some language/grammar mistakes
Cheers
