Ophelia vs. Von Schill vs. Pandora

[Charmant]

Wrote up a battle report for my warmahordes/malifaux blog the other day, might as well post it here as well!

Today I went to alphaspel here in Stockholm in order to have a game of Malifaux with two guys from kolgruvan.se. Yesterday I played against a friend who had just bought the Dreamer-box, and a little bonus stuff such as teddy, and quickly realized the Neverborn can screw my gremlins up pretty bad pretty fast — guns and numbers are our strength, not our willpower! So when I learned one of the guys I was meeting up with was planning on playing Pandora I realized I could only hope to do as much damage as possible before I got ran off the table! It was his first game ever, but neither I nor the third player have much more experience. The other guy brought the Freikorps box, appearently he had a lot more stuff but had never tried the basic box out.

We set the table up with a large amout of ruined houses terrain, and decided that cornered deployment would be best for three players. For strategy we chose Shared Claim Jump, as when playing three people it’s usually best to go for a pretty simple strategy – things will be messy enough as they are without a crazy strategy adding in!

We played a 25SS game and these were the lists:

Mine:

Ophelia LaCroix

Francois LaCroix

Raphael LaCroix

Rami LaCroix

Pere Ravagé

3x Bayou Gremlin

Soulstone Pool: 3

Schemes: Hold out and Gather soulstones, both secret

blueskin:

Pandora

Doppelganger

Candy

3x Sorrow

Soulstone Pool: 5

Schemes: Hold out, and assassinate (I think, but it was on an uneligible model that is, not a henchman or master), both secret

Refraint:

Von Schill

Freikorps Librarian

Freikorps Specialist

Freikorps Trapper

2x Freikorpsmann

Soulstone Pool: 3

Schemes: Hold out and bodyguard, both secret

I won the draw for deployment and chose to go second, so I could be sure to no be in between the two other crews. Blueskin started, and picked, well, one of the corners. I picked the one opposing that (as was my cunning plan), and Refraint chose the one to my right, blueskin’s left.

The first turn blueskin won initiative flip, just like it should be with a doppelganger in his crew. Refraint lost and thus I was stuck in between. As is usual for turn one nothing spectacular happened, my entire crew took cover behind two houses with a good view of the objective, Ophelia gave Rami rams just in case, Raphael went reckless and ran up to try and take cover behind a house close to the objective and Pere hung out just behind Ophelia.

The Neverborn crew had advanced forward in a steady pace, all pretty much cuddling up behind a house some 20″ from Ophelia. I saw the opportunity and held my thumbs for a good -flip for initiative (well, as good as a -flip gets..) as the first turn ended. (The Freikorpsmen had just moved along the table edge furthest away from me)

Unfortunately I didn’t win it, blueskin did. But on the bright side of things, he was blissfully unaware of the pyromaniac about to run up and explode in the face of his crew. He moved something like a sorrow an inch or two, and as it was my turn I went y’all watch this (not using the ability though..). I simply did one of the good ol’ Pere-apults, activatet Ophelia with Pere companioned, moved her up six inches, gave Rami rams (you never know), “Ooh, a girl”d Pere to push him as close to the Pandora crew as possible. After this she simply moved back into the nice cover of a house wall. Pere knew what was going down, went reckless, moved his 10″ and ended up just about 4″ in front of the opposing crew.

Pere Ravagé about to blow up in the faces of poor folks (That's the objective behind him)

I cast “Oopsie!”, flipped something like an eight but cheated a 12, I felt I should give poor blueskin an even harder work resisting the blast. In all it killed one sorrow, he cheated the Df flip of one of them, the other just got lucky. The doppelganger and Pandora herself took five wounds, but I believe Candy made her way out of there unharmed. Pere was now stuck 4″ in front of the crew, with one Wd left. The Freikorps kept moving forward along the edge of the board. Raphael thought he should try and get lucky and moved up behind the high round building between the Freikorps and the objective and took defensive stance, the Pandora crew blew Pere up which caused no damage due to him being too far away, Candy moved up behind the house with the green roof, the Doppelganger (white) moved to the corner of the green house just across the street from hur position on the picture, Pandora pretty much hung around.

Refraint saw the opportunity of shooting Raphael up as his cover behind a round building was not great, and moved a Freikorpsmann down to put a hole in the poor green guy. He did three damage (I forgot about bullet proof ) which pushed Raphael down to three Wd left. With the doppelganger behind the green house I felt like I was almost obliged to end her miserable life using Rami’s extra long rifle — at least I might get a use of the rams from Ophelia. He moved up along his wall, caught a glimse of the Doppelganger, put gremlin sights up on her an pulled the trigger. He got a hit good enough for a straight flip, I got moderate damage and 3dg was enough to put the freak to ground! No use of Dumb and Lucky saved me a couple of Wd, so I Rami recklessed and ran back to his corner. Francois moved up to where Raphael had started his turn, the Bayou Gremlins repisitioned a little bit, Pandora still hung back around where the Doppelganger had been.

At the top of the second turn I felt like I had succeeded quite a bit blasting up the Neverborn and actually killing the Doppelganger, but Raphael was in a very tight spot in Freikorps territory, and Pandora was approaching. I do not remember who won initiative, but I do remember the third turn was the start of my demise. Raphael thought he was gonna try to take a shot at the Freikorpsmann who took three Wd of him in turn 2, and with three wounds left he was sitting on 3 AP + 1 walk. He used his wade out to be able to reach with his Big Honkin’ Gun, shot using his second action, but missed (crap!), walked to gain cover from the totally ruined building to his right — gotta love Ht1 at times — and tried to make a “Gremlins Bleed Green” cast. Of course it failed, and I really felt he was a sitting duck. So did the Freikorpsmann and Von Schill, of which the first put a bullet doing two wounds in Raphael, only for Von Schill to jump past the house he was standing behind, and end poor Raphael’s misery.

I don’t quite remember exactly how it happened, but all by a sudden Pandora started causing a lot of willpower checks on my left flank (it was her, one sorrow and Candy left, one of my Bayou Gremlins shot a sorrow up good) and once Pandora gets the Wp checks running, I felt it was time to abandon ship. Francois, Ophelia and a Bayou Gremlin advanced toward the Freikorpsmen (oh well – it did seem like the best option at the time!), and left poor Rami and a Bayou gremlin behind. The gremlin had gotten paralyzed and Rami just had to activate last. The Freikorpsmen repositioned themselves for the gremlin approach, and the Librarian cast some spell that increased the defense of models within 3″ by 2. Candy stood by the amongst neverborn so popular corner where the doppelganger had been shot apart, and thus was the end of turn three. By now I was confident it was all a matter of time before I was completely wiped.

At the start of turn 4, things are looking mighty grim for the gremlins

As a desperate last measure I activated Ophelia (on the left side of the “silo”) with Francois as a companion (him on the right side of the silo), she moved up in an attempt to get Von Schill killed. I ended up using soulstones both to hit and to wound, used Calculated luck and it all ended up in a modest 5 Dg. Francois moved up and was hoping to kill the Freikorps Specialist who was standing just behind the silo. After three hits ending up in a total of 5 Dg (at least I think, he was at 1 Wd left at least) – gotta love hair trigger. At that point I used reckless and cast Gremlin Menace on the librarian, to get Francois engaging her, a Freikorpsmann and Von Schill. Pandora attempted to get rid of Rami without succeeding, and then it was the Freikorps Specialist turn to activate. Needless to say the Bayou Gremlin and Ophelia got blasted to smithereens. If only I would have used that last action with Francois to attack the Freikorpsman Specialist! (Although I was pretty much royally screwed anyway.)

The Freikorpsmann put his knife in Francois, Pandora put the end to Rami and my crew was wiped. The Librarian healed Von Schill up, and the game ended by Pandora moving up to the marker, and she tried to keep all the Freikorps away. Unfortunately for blueskin there were just too many Freikorpsmen around, and in the end four of them got to within 3″ of the marker, whilst only three of the Neverborn were in the area.

All three players scored 1 VP from Hold Out, Refraint also got 1 VP from Bodyguard and 2 VP from the Scheme. A solid victory for the Freikorps it is!

What I should have done differently is really to have tried to get the Freikorpsmen between my crew and the Neverborn one, in order for both of them to have been softened up so that I could pick their last wounds away. Also, my crew REALLY hates Wp tests, I’m just glad Pere Ravagé didn’t have to make one, I still fear making a test at Wp 1.

All in all it was a good game, although it took an awful long time due to all the talking you do when you’re three guys playing a casual game. We all know a two-player game can take a really long time – especially when players are new to the system – and with three players there are twice as many for you to talk to! Dangerous, dangerous indeed.