Blood, Steel and Stones tournament report (35SS)

[Argentbadger]

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.

Edited July 15, 2012 by Argentbadger

[gorillawizard]

Great reports. In the last game you were perfectly right to carry on after wiping out the opponants crew, it's in the rules manual somewhere but not sure where bouts i cba to look tbh lol.

[DavidKerrSmith]

The page in question is Pg73 or the RM - Varying Encounter Length.

I spoke about this at length to Irving after the event. At the end of Turn 5, the game would have been a draw or potentially a win to Irving depending on Hold Out. I don't see the dogs in the pictures so I shall presume they are in the deployment zone.

Irving achieved Assassinate by killing Sonnia and having 2 LitS markers activated for a total or 4 VP.

You killed Tuco and had 3 LitS markers deactivated. A total of 4VP to yourself.

In turn 6, you deactivate the 4th marker, shifting the score to 5-2.

Irving was under the impression that a game lasts till turn 5 and then you flip for it, not turn 6. An easy mistake to make and I've known for long enough that getting him to read the RM can be like getting blood from a stone.

I've made adjustments to the Rules Packs for future events to cover such occurrences.

[tattyted]

Great write ups. Didn't play you at the tournament but hopefully at the next one.........

[Argentbadger]

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.

[cerealkiller195]

in tournaments and even in casual play if time is tight we try and run through whatever turns we may have had and what could be done to work out how it ends. There is no use in moving etc if its simply model moves here does this and scores points so on and so forth.

good read though and glad that you enjoyed playing in the tournament, there is nothing like playing against a diverse group of people to both go out and meet enthusiasts and test your skill out.

[NinjaBreadMen]

Excellent write up! Really great to have photos to go along with everything too, helps to break up the reviews of each different game so they don't run into one giant battle. Hopefully we can get a game in sometime so I can see what all the fuss is about the guild ;P

[Argentbadger]

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.

[WarlockFiretop]

I think the handshake thing was a pretty easy misunderstanding.

I've never been to a tournament, and if my opponent shook my hand during a game, without saying anything, I would not be able to guess what they meant. I'd be confused, and probably think they were trying to compliment me in an ironically solemn manner!

If the game is still in progress, shaking hands could mean claiming victory, or it could mean conceding the game. If you opponent doesn't accompany the handshake with words to the effect of 'I've won' or 'I concede', you're none the wiser.

Furthermore, if you continue to play, you're demonstrating that you think the game is continuing, so good grace would be to allow the game to continue!

[FearLord]

If a handshake signifies the end of the game because your opponent doesn't want to carry on, they are conceding and presumably giving you maximum VP's that are available. They cannot call an end to the game early to prevent you from beating them on VP's

The guy who beat you in game 2 (and went on to win) was playing Contain Power wrong which would have led to a draw in that game - Contain Power specifies that you must take out all Leaders to score 2 VP, and take them out with your Leader to score 4VP - Henchmen are only leaders in scraps where there is no master, so you should have scored 2VP when Nicodiem died...

He could still select Von Schill for Bodyguard, as that scheme specifies that you pick one of your Masters or Henchmen.