Rasputina Vs Lady J 45ss

[AnythingBut]

This is my first attempt at writing a battle report. Me and a few mates from our war gaming group have recently discovered Malifaux. That given there may be a couple of points in the report where I ask if we played a rule correctly, clarification from some of the more experienced players would be welcome to correct us where we went wrong. 

 

Ive gone in at the Malifaux deep end, buying multiple crew boxes and metals to give me a decent pool to select from whereas most of the guys have a crew box or maybe two. Ive also signed myself up to the 45ss Tournament 'Not a Bad Thing' in September so with this in mind asked one of the other guys for a game this size even though neither of us has played 45ss before. 

 

I was playing the part of Rasputina and my good friend and club founder Adam was playing his Lady J crew with a new mercenary addition.

 

Stratergy : Reckoning 

 

Scheme pool : ALiTS, Spring the Trap, Plant Explosives, Assasinate, Bodyguard

 

Having only a handful of games under our belts neither of us had played reckoning before and with a raspy crew I was stuck between taking only big hard to kill models and hurt my ability to cast through ice mirrors or to take some smaller ss cost models that migh tbe easy Stratergy point targets but would enable me to use raspys casting to its full potential. 

 

In the end I went with the latter option hoping to keep my small minions safe for long enough for Raspy to blow some poeple to pieces. 

 

Crew Selection

 

Adam hasnt bought quite as many models as me in the short time we've been playing but still had a decent enough line up for the Strategy selected.

 

The Guild 45ss used, pool of 4

-Lady Justice (Badge of office, Implacable) I believe Adam thought bulletproof would reduce the damage caused by my casting too when selecting the implacable upgrade)

- The Judge (Lead Lined Coat) 

- Killjoy

- 3x Death Marshalls

 

Scheme's taken - ALiTS (announced) + Bodyguard (Killjoy)

 

The Arcanists 45ss used, pool of 3

- Rasputina (Decembers Pawn, Cold Nights)  My standard set up on Rasputina at games less than 50ss. I find the annoyance of getting into a perfect tactical position for it all to be undone by the black joker too much to bear and has been in ever list since my second game. The ice pillars I also think are ridiculously good in so many situations. Blocking LoS, markers, objectives etc. and at 1ss I dont see myself ever playing a game without them)

- Wendigo (double ice pillars you say? Sign me up!! not to mention a fast, non-peon 3ss totem who can one shot kill any target raspy can paralyse) 

- Joss ( probably a given in most arcanists Reckoning crews, especially given the death marshalls and the judges hard to kill and wound abilities)

- Ice Golem

- Blessed of December (Risky given the strategy, but hopefully with her leap could surprise and kill a model of two before going down itself) 

- 2x Ice gamin

 

Scheme's taken - Assasinate + Bodyguard (Joss)

 

So my plan was to keep my gamin and wedigos safe for as long as possible while using joss, the golem and blessed to kill stuff, hopefully two at a time! I had taken assasinate as Lady J need to be up doing work in combat and bodyguard as I figured I could keep a hard to kill model with armour alive easier than doing Spring the trap or plant explosives against his crew.

 

 

The Terrain 

 

 

We had a building in the centre, the top right is another building with a dense forest attached to the front, the top left is a long piece of Ht 2 impassible, blocking wall. on the Centre left of the shot is a hazardous toxic waste pool. Bottom left is a ruined Building which was Ht3, blocking but did have a shooting lane through it. and bottom right is a third building with a Ht1 wall courtyard.

 

 

Deployment

 

I won the flip and let adam deploy first

 

 

Sorry for the landscape picture but I think its the only one! Adam decided to start will Killjoy burried, with Lady J on the own at the far end behind the building and the Jodge plus death Marshalls slightly spread behind the Ht2 Wall. 

 

 

 

Seeing my assasinate target alone on one side of the board was a nice sight and so I deplyed my hitty BoD and Joss up towards her. Raspy and 1 gamin are behind the ruins and the golem with his two little friends are in the centre. 

 

 

Turn 1

Adam win initiative and as I out activate him and its turn 1 I allow him to go first. He activated Lady J first and triple walks her out into the thick of the action inviting a charge from my BoD. I then activate my Golem, throw a gamin ten inches up behind the building in the centre and trundle forward. 

 

The next few activation are death marshalls jumping over the wall and advancing towards the centre line while I move my wendigo up to the house also ensuring I have LoS to his crew as ice mirror.

 

The blessed makes a leap before charging Lady J. I manage to put weak damage on her while triggering my ram for another free attacking which does weak damage again for a total of 4. My second attack misses and adam manages to cheat in a high Mask for his reposte triger putting a whopping 4 wounds down in defense. not a good charge for me!

 

Joss moves round the building to help in the Lady J combat next turn.

 

Rasputina then activates and manages to blast the central of the three marshalls twice for 4 damage in total then deciding he was sufficiently softened up for a turn 2 kill for the strat points and put down some ice pillars to give the wendigo some cover. 

 

Here's the photo of the turn (the 50mm bases with blu tack on are my pillars. 

 

 

Turn 2

 

I win initiative and charge Joss into the fight. He swings a couple of times hitting once for 4 damage and missing the second attack (but no mask trigger thankfully this time!)

 

 

Lady J then activates. Heals for a 0 action. Smacks the BoD to death with 2 attacks then fails to hit joss with the third. 

 

 

The rest of turn 2 sees Adam's righter most marshall nip round the building and take a shot at my gamin which does 1 daamge thinks to my armour. in retaliation the gamin shoots back twice for a grand total of 0 damage!

 

His other death marshalls  spend their turns moving up to drop markers on the centre line. My golem moves up to provide one more ice mirror for raspy, who then proceeds to shoot the wounded death marshall again killing it (releasing killjoy and dropping another scheme marker as it went). Seeing this horror appear from the death marshalls body I decided it would be better to not shoot at the beast but instead block his charges with some more pillars. 

 

The judge goes round the back of the the building, presumable to try and start chewing through the gamin and wendigo next turn.

 

I dont manage to kill anyhting else however and so no strat points are scored by either side. 

 

Heres the end of turn shot. (adams scheme markers are the dice on the centre line as he forgot his 30mm bases) and the judge is hiding just behind the house near the acrobatic death marshal at the top of the shot. 

 

 

 

From here on I dont have end of turn shots, but do have kill shot and charges to show some of the important plays. 

 

 

Continued on Page 2!

[AnythingBut]

Turn 3

 

The flip for initiative here is the start luck going my way. I flip a 4, adam gets a 12. I ponder and decide its worth a SS to try reflip my initiative as if I get to go first joss will be able to paralyse Lady J with the high Crow I have in my hand. I flip a 13, apologise for my good luck. If looks could kill, id be a dead man.

 

I activate Joss, cheat in my 13 of crows which does enough damage to reduce Lady J to 4 remaining and give her paralysis. 

 

Killjoy activates, and as hes blacked in my the pillars, simply moves slightly and drops a marker for ALitS. My wendigo activates, moves away from the Judge before using his magical extension to copy ice pillars and block him in

 

The death marshall above the central building runs around the pillars and drops another marker for ALiTS. It gets counter charged and crushed by the ice golem.

 

 

 

The death marshal on the far left, takes a shot at my gamin, misses, then drops one more scheme marker (he really wants ot score ALiTS it seems!) I activate raspy, kill the marshall who has just activated (who drops just more markers as he goes) giving me the first stratergy point for killing two in one turn. 

 

 

Turn 4 

 

Turn 4 begins and I get first activation yet again. (thank you card gods) I actiave joss. flip a black joker (thank you decembers pawn) and take Lady J's last 4 wounds giving my all 3 points for assasinate. 

 

 

 

Next kill joy managed to walk and be withing charge range of a gamin (with his 1ap CG action) smashing it to pieces. 

 

 

 

Rasputina then paralyzes killjoy as hes within 6" and the wendigo charges in to try devour! I fail twice and the beast lives!

 

The judge walks all the way around the building ready for a charge next turn and the ice golem double walks up to him and has a swing with his melee expert doing a few wounds. 

 

 

We both score 1 for Bodyguard.

 

Turn 5

 

The judge dances inbetween the golem and wendigo and kills the wendigo in 1 hit. The golem then uses 3ap to smash the judge for 9 weak damage taking him to his hard to kill would. Killjoy activates and unparalyses.

 

Raspy when shoots into combat does, randomises onto killjoy, gets moderate damage and kills the judge with the blast token. 

 

 

Then with an amzing hand of high masks. Im able to cast my 2 remaning spells on killjoy, hit my over overpower trigger on each of the two casts for a total of 4 spells on the last model on his crew. I kill him aswel to claim one more point for the strat and deny him more bodyguard. 

 

 

 

The game ends in  8-4 victory to Rasputina. 

 

2 points for Rekoning, and all 3 for both my schemes. 

 

Adam claimed 1 for body guard and 3 for ALiTS.

 

It was a great game with lots of luck in my deck!

[Shadowfane]

Good game

Just one quick point - as far as I'm aware, December's Pawn only gives *Raspy* the ability to count the  black joker as the red joker, not the rest of her crew, so Joss flipping the black joker in turn 4 shouldn't have counted it as the red one...

[hrnyjackal]

Nice read. Seems like you both are getting a good grip of the games.

 

Shadowfane is right, the Black Joker counts only as a Red for Raspy.

 

Killjoys 1 AP charge is only at the start of his activiation if something is in his charge (friend or foe as he loves to chop!)

 

and the wendigo wouldnt be able to devour as it is living only!

[Dirial]

Good report.

 

I think your table is a bit light on terrain. Your opponent coped well enough, but once someone in your group gets Ophelia (for example), I would recommend adding some additional terrain.

[WORGORE]

I was the reckless fool in charge of Lady J

Thanks for the tips guys, myself and Mark are keen to brush up on our Noob mistakes!!

Would twice as much scenery be more like it ??

Thought that the Killjoy charge thing might be just initial activation? Handy to know.

My comments on the match up....

I'd spread the gang as to hope to swarm the line in the sand.

Thought I'd bury killjoy as wanted basically to see how this works. And as he was my bodyguard model a few more turns not being picked on is never a bad thing.

I honestly thought that Mark would not get the two models in one turn point, something that in the end cost me the game.

I did suspect that Mark had assassinate, but figured I would jump away from fights and run off and hide once I was sure it was his plan. Sadly paralyse and a hand of jokers/12's put paid to that!!! Haha

So when Lady J laid her life down for the law. I was on the back foot, but by this point line in the sand was secure and killjoy was alive. But then lost the two models one phase and that's why I broke formation and had to push for the two kills myself. Otherwise going down 7/8 was just the same as going down 4/8 to me?!

Either way lots of learning points and I can see a great future for the guild )

[AnythingBut]

Thanks for the replies guys and nice to know were mainly on the right tracks with the rules in the build up to my tourney in a purple of months! It was only the first report I've done but will probably continue to make them as the experienced players on here are a great help with rule clarification.

To be honest after re reading the Decembers pawn card I'm not sure how I managed to misplay it. It clearly says 'this model'. I guess for 2ss it would be far too powerful if it changed them to red jokers for the whole crew.

As for killjoy, it was the first time either if us had played with/against him. I did read the card but hadn't though that legal target would have included friendly models. I know the game allows you to target friendly models with attacks so that you can use randomising into combat for your advantage or simply trying to use a trigger, so I guessbibshoukdnt be too surprised you can charge a friendly model.

In this case how do most people play with killjoy? Either buried and unburying when a friendly model dies that is not too close to another friendly model or starting him on the table out on his own flank so not having to charge his own crew?

[Bengt]

Killjoy only have to charge if he has a legal target, and it can be any legal target if he has several, not just the closest or anything like that. So you either start with him buried and unbury when a model dies in a favourable position (he doesn't have to unbury at first opportunity), or you walk him up a flank or lane where friendly models are out of sight or range.

 

If you have special deployment options (e.g. From the shadows) or extreme movement options (e.g. Pigapult) you can start with him buried and have a model in the midst of the enemy on turn 1 that your opponent have to deal with knowing that Killjoy is waiting.

[AnythingBut]

I think with my raspy crew that game I had the prefect counter to killjoy then. It's slightly dependent on when in the activation chain you kill the model to unbury killjoy. But as I killed the death marshall that spawned him with raspys second AP I had one left to decide what to do.

I decided to put the pillars down to stop a killjoy charge next turn but as it turns out I think it would have been even worse for Adam if we'd realised he has to charge friendly models as the pillars blocked off his charge to my wendigo but still has a friendly death Marshall within charge range! I guess It would just lead to killjoys controller cheating in his low cards for his attacks and avoid damage but still worth it to pull him out of position for a turn or two.