McM, How to Suck at

[Obeisance]

So I had my first Malifaux tournament today, something like game 4 with my Crew.

The tournament was a 50ss pool, with 30ss games. Schemes were unique during the tournament, so no spamming Kill Protege for the whole tourney.

McMourning

Shikome

Dead Rider

Grave Spirit

Canine Remains

Belle, Belle

7 Stones.

=30ss

As I'm pretty new, I just took along the minimum points I needed. As I didn't know what I needed to sideboard against, or what is good against things... eh.

Round 1 - Simmo. Hamlin vs. McMourning.

- Shared Claim Jump, Stake Claim, Bodyguard

I thought the game was going awesomely, when I cheated in a Red Joker to kill Hamlin. Turns out he can butcher a Stolen to keep alive. The game just went downhill from there. Simmo kept casting stuff, making my few models Insignificant. I ended up losing a war of attrition and being unable to score or attack stuff.

Loss. 2/6pts I think.

Round 2 - Luke R. Pandora vs. McMourning.

- Shared Slaughter, Hold Out, Exterminate (Nightmares, Leiu, Liitu, Madness)

From the start, I was losing. I didn't realize Leiu (or Litu, I forget) could spam Lure and it cost me my Shikome. I also kept having to blow my hand to prevent McMourning from being affected by a spells that forces a WP duel for every action/negative flips for WP- or try to stop Incite/Pacify.

At one point, McMourning had to skip his activation due to having like double negative flips to WP duels. While taking 3 damage per duel loss. Finally got initiative. McMourning managed to eat two Woes and heal back up to full, reducing the amount of damage he takes. But at that point- really didn't matter. Virtually everything was dead.

Loss. 2/7?

Round 3 - Ash B. Kirai vs. McMourning.

- Shared Claim Jump, Assassinate, Breakthrough

Turn 1, Ash summons a Shikome and charges my Shikome. Awesome. I managed to cheat to keep it alive. I Mounted Combat a Night Terror over near McMourning to provide him a stepping stone. Ash changes places with a Shishin. Shishin bounces to Kirai. McMourning hops into a Forest and slings his Scalpel at a Night Terror, bouncing over to the pair of Shikome and the Terror. I blow my hand to do like 8 damage, halved to 4 due to Spirit. Ugh.

Dead Rider spends the rest of the game scooting around, messing up Ash's placement with Drag Along. End of the game came down to a mad rush for Claim Jump. But his extreme mobility won out and had 1 more model than me in the zone. Boooooo.

Close, close game- but still a loss. Had I known what Kirai did, I wouldn't have taken Assassinate. 2-6, I think.

Round 4 - Kurgan. Somer Teeth vs. McMourning.

- Contain Power, Kill Protege, Stake Claim (oops!)

Turn 1, I lure his Warhog down the board- as it's my Prey and Protege. 18" is stupid. Dead Rider charges it and does a hefty blow. Warhog gets angry and moves through the Rider to swing at McMourning, I take a good chunk of health. McMourning carves up the Warhog and heals back to full. Pull a Mosquito to a Belle, who spends the rest of the game swinging at it. Literally whole game.

Next turn, Shikome charges Somer and bounces. McMourning walks, hurls his Scalpel and appears beside Somer. He's all like, hi. These are shiny. Gets Somer down to like 2 wounds. Somer chugs, heals a lot. McMourning cuts him up the following turn.

Kurgan kept exploding his own guys, and I kept flipping like 11+ and 10+ cards to resist. Again and again.

So end of the game, I killed everything but the Mosquito. I'd have gotten 8pts, but I used Claim Jump twice. Ooooooops.

6/0

...

So- I was expecting to get tabled the whole tourney. My biggest problem was that I didn't know what my opponent's armies did, resulting in me losing. Also made a bunch of mistakes. Chose wrong schemes due to not knowing what people's stuff did. But yeah. First tournament, didn't know what to expect, roll with the punches and stuff. Just glad I didn't get the wooden spoon. lol.

Winner was Victorias with Von Schill. Guy scored max points in every round. 8+8+8+8. 20 player event.

...

I'm a little eh about McMourning at the moment. Knowing that top tier crews like Pandora and Hamlin exploit willpower- which is his weakness.. makes me want to buy a Dreamer crew.

So, before I get to that step- let's discuss what I could've done better. From what I can tell, the top crews were Victoria, Dreamer, Pandora and Hamlin.

I tried to go after stuff I don't need WP duels with Pandora, but she just kept stacking crap on McMourning and scooting around the board on her magical hoverboard.

Next event is 30ss and the one after 35. Possibly fixed lists. Wanna give me some tips on lists/tactics?

Edited August 28, 2011 by Obeisance

[cerealkiller195]

what was your goal with that list? where was the synergy? what did you do with body part counters? did you not try and dissect your own models?

not trying to be a jerk or anything i just do not see a coherent strategy in your crew selection. since you posted on the boards i would say go over to the other faction boards and look at the thread tactics on some of the masters. Going into any environment even a casual game, you need to have a working knowledge of what the enemy can do to you.

against hamelin even if he "respawns" he should of been at -4 to cast his spells, not sure if thats what did it in against you or not but just saying in case you weren't aware. Against the Pandora match up she can be tough, regardless of faction I am playing i tend to work my way up, start with lowest SS and work up. Unless you have a great opportunity to knock out a big piece. Never attack Pandora directly till she is the last target or near/is objective.

You stated you lost because you didn't know what your enemies did... so you want to faction hop to the dreamer? Even if you had the dreamer and you still didn't know what other people did you would of STILL come out with the same results. Don't give up on McMourning learn how to adjust versus different masters. Remember you make crews AFTER finding out scheme and what enemy faction you are playing against. Don't take the same crew every time all the time (unless that is all that you own) just because.

[Obeisance]

Ah. Ok, so every game I basically started out with McMourning casting Wracked With Pain and 0-Slicing the Canine Remains for 2 parts and a corpse, then walking.

Generally I'd go for a few lesser activations like the Spirit linking to the Dead Rider, random Shambling and whatnot- to try get my opponents to commit models first.

Whenever I had an abundance of bodyparts, I didn't have the Crows. Or when I had the Crows, I didn't have the body parts- or I was having to burn cards to do things like keep McMourning from suffering from Pacify.

Hamlin was at -4 Ca when he respawned. But by that point, most of my stuff was already Insignificant. I had few models. Against Hamelin, I concentrated on trying to kill the Rat Catchers.. then once I realized what they did, the Stolen. Even McMourning was Insignificant at the end.. by then, I literally could not win. Every time I killed something, he made a new one. Constant recursion of models. I probably could've killed the only Stolen in 3" first.

Against Pandora, my vague plan was to avoid Pandora herself and kill anything I didn't have to take a WP duel to target. Shikome chose the combat Leiu/Litu twin as Prey- but my screw up resulted in being Lured and eaten. McMourning walked up 5" and from then, he was under constant (and frustrating tbh) assault from Pandora. All I managed to get to grips with, was 2/3 Sorrows.

The game with Kirai could have gone differently, if I had realized how much life she had to pay for to summon the Shikome. Or that she could even summon a Shikome. Absolutely came down to the wire. One of the mistakes I made here, was attacking in melee instead of using spells. Spirits. Magic. Hoorah.

Game vs. Somer, I just killed stuff. Yay.

I have been reading up on the other Masters. But there's a huge amount of information to digest- and even then, a lot of stuff doesn't click until you see it in action. I'm a Warmahordes player, I know I learn more from having my ass handed to me than a win.

As for my list, it's pretty much all I own. I've played like 3 games before the tournament- now 7. What's listed, plus a couple Nurses, Necropunks, another Remains, Sebastian and Chihuahua. Literally been playing McMourning for like 2 weeks. I'd pick up more stuff, if I knew what I needed.

Dogs and Necropunks would've been useless against Hamlin. What I needed was blast weapons.

Against Pandora, I've heard Jack Daw and Hanged are the way to go. But that's a lot of points for a "maybe."

As for faction jumping? Meh. Just because I want to play Dreamer, doesn't mean I will. My crew is painted, I may as well play it for at least as long as it took to paint.

Edited August 28, 2011 by Obeisance

[cerealkiller195]

okay now i can understand much better, I know when I first started about 3? years ago I was getting pretty beat up by my friends who are more competitive minded than myself. But eventually I started seeing common threads/strategies among crews looked up what everyone could do and now I am a much better player.

To draw a vague parallel between warmahordes and malifaux they both share "synergy" between models. Though when it comes to malifaux that synergy is even greater because you do not have an "army" you have a handful of models.

Not having a lot of models does hurt you somewhat when playing with Ressurs. Is there any reason you dindt take McM's totem?

[Obeisance]

Synergy I understand- but I'm too new to recognize it. I'm starting to understand good/bad matchups as the game is starting to "click" now.

I didn't take McM's totem due to the style of list- though I own it. Beat face list. Spirit links to Dead Rider, making him ARM2 and H2W2. Plus Regen. He just tanks it out. Surprisingly, he doesn't do all that much damage for a 10 wound model. But he's very tough.

With the list I ran, it was a list suggested to me by another member of this forum when I was starting out. Was just looking for an easy to play/decent list to learn the system.

I'm finding the Shikome to be pretty hit and miss. They Prey generally goes down if it doesn't have armor- but it's often mutually assured destruction.

McMourning, I feel, is a good master to learn with because he's so mobile and resilient. He takes a beating, kills something and is back to full health.

[cerealkiller195]

Agreed Shikome tends to torpedo towards her target and will usually end up dying but either killing her target outright or causing severe damage.

McMourning is a great master between scalpel slinging to get a free attack,walk and a body part. Followed by gaining fast (discarding body part) and using his two AP for attacks means he can really lay down some serious hurt.

Against spirits it is tough because most armies simply do not have many magical weapons or spells that cause damage. Having totem cast dissection (burning a stone to make sure it goes through) does give you a bit more punch against spirits.

[osoi]

It takes time Obe, just like WM/H. When I looked at the results for the tournament there werent too many surprises for me based purely on experience levels of the players involved (not saying I was surprised by some of the final standings but most fell where I thought they would).

The tournament was very tight and going into round 4 there were feasibly 4 people that could have won it.

The list you were running is different to a typical McM list and I was curious to see how it would run.

Rotten Belles - good inclusion

Dead Rider - A nice mobile tank, whose damage output is a little below where you might hope but his durability is pretty good.

Shikome - Not 100% sure on this one

Model s I like with McMourning (but vary it up)

Necropunks - Fast objective grabbers that are also cheap

Canines - You have 1 maybe look at 3 so you can use for parts or grab objectives as they are pretty quick as well and loose insignificant in groups

Flesh Construct - Sometimes worthwhile to start with 1 in game as he is durable and hits like a truck.

Killjoy - BIG heavy hitter who can come into play very easily via a necropunk delivery system.

McMourning I have found works best when you are able to out activate your opponent and then go to your more important pieces early game

[dakrulz55]

all that and no bettie? she would be the bane of some armies as she kills with relative ease, and having sever spine can ruin certain crews along with masters.

[kanhead]

You tried a fairly unusual McM list. I have more luck with only one nuke model and a whole lot of smaller stuff. Try more dogs, Bete Noire (or continue with the dead rider) and Seb supported by belles and/or necropunks. You basically want to be getting a lot of activations and swarming objectives.

Chihuahua rules!

[Tiny]

just a note, in your somer game, he shouldnt have had a mosquito left, when the master dies the attached totems are sacrificed.

[Cornelious1424]

I'm a little eh about McMourning at the moment. Knowing that top tier crews like Pandora and Hamlin exploit willpower- which is his weakness.. makes me want to buy a Dreamer crew.

Don't do it, it's just what the Neverborn want us to do!!!

Seriously though, I've seen a lot of this approach in a lot of other threads and it's driving me crazy. Play what you like, not what is considered "top tier". I started out with Som'er when the game first came out, a lost a ton, but also gained respect in my group because I got really good with him. Then Ophelia came out and answered my competitive prayers!!!

That tournament format is also something I'm not a fan of. It isn't Malifaux when you play like that. It truly favors masters rather than faction, IMHO.