FearLord Posted August 27, 2012 Report Share Posted August 27, 2012 (edited) As mentioned in my last battle report, I’ve convinced some of my Warmachine group to pick up Malifaux, so I’m trying to teach some of them (made harder because I haven’t played much in a good 6 months!) This game only got to turn 4 due to timing – a combination of my opponent picking the game up, me trying to refresh myself, and two new players playing their own game next to us and asking me rules questions as they came up. It worked out as an interesting game though, so I thought I’d put it up anyway! My crew: Lucius -Drill Sergeant Ryle Guild Guard Austringer 2 x Guild Hound Starting pool: 4 Strategy: Shared Destroy the Evidence Schemes: Bodyguard (Lucius) Kill Protégé (Sybelle) My Opponent’s crew: Seamus Sybelle 2 x Rotten Belle 2 x Crooligan Starting pool: 5 Strategy: Army of the Dead Death after Death This was my opponent’s first game using schemes (only about 3rd or 4th overall) and he didn’t announce either of his schemes, despite it being a requirement of both… He picked up both the Seamus and Molly box and so wanted to try out the Crooligans here as objective grabbers. I’d not played against them either so was interested to see how they would work out. I took Lucius, as I thought this would give the fairest match up – I’d only brought him and Hoffman in my case and didn’t want there to be no corpses from my crew for him to use. Set up and deployment (all directions from my point of view) The board was a cluttered town with two buildings and a low wall forming a courtyard in the middle with some barrels in the middle. To my right was a wood and some more barricades, and to the left was a small hill and more barricades. We flipped Corners for deployment. The central evidence marker was in the courtyard, close to the right most wall, my opponent’s evidence markers were scattered around my side of the board, left most one on the hill, deployment zone one next to the wood and the right most one in the wood, further up the board. Mine were placed in the open, one behind the building on the far side, one off to the left away over some barricades and the right hand one towards the back of the board in line with a narrow corridor between the house closest to me and the woods on my side. My opponent deployed his main crew first, all behind the house in front of his corner. I deployed in a similar fashion with the Austringer directly behind the building to take advantage of his ability to ignore line of sight, Lucius and the Dogs to his right and the Guild Guard slightly behind. Ryle deployed to the right side of my deployment zone, with the Drill Sergeant positioned to give him a boost from ‘Socially Repressed’ in the first turn. The Crooligans were then deployed, using ‘From the Shadows’, both positioning behind low walls, as close as they were allowed to be to the left and right evidence markers. Turn 1 The right hand Crooligan started things off by casting ‘The Mist’ and walking forwards, staying behind cover. The Drill Sergeant used his ‘Shooting Range’ action, catching both the Austringer and the Guild Guard in the Aura. The other Crooligan also cast ‘The Mist’ and advanced. He kept behind a wall, but a part of his base was exposed through a gap. Trying to take advantage of this, Ryle used ‘Socially Repressed’ to push away from the Sergeant, walked and shot twice (thanks to ‘Ranged Expert’) at the Crooligan, but the cover and extra Df from ‘The Mist’ meant Ryle didn’t come close to hitting… Seamus walked twice and took a shot at Ryle, but also missed. My Hounds Companioned and used ‘on the trail’ for an extra walk. Sadly neither of them could make it to the Central objective without using a second walk, so neither of them could perform the (2) Interact needed to destroy it… I positioned one touching it, and one slightly closer to my board edge, in the central courtyard, but with some low barrels between it and Seamus. Sybelle and the two Rotten Belles activated together via ‘Companion’. They were all still in range for Seamus’s speed buff, so Sybelle advanced near to Seamus and tried to cast her ‘Shriek’ at Ryle, but failed. She used ‘Call Belle’ to push one of them in front of her, which promptly moved towards Ryle and attacked him (because she wouldn’t be able to effect him with any of her spells thanks to ‘Breach Psychosis’) but his ‘Armor’ meant he took minimal damage. The other Belle walked into the Courtyard, engaging the Hound on the evidence marker. Seamus had nothing left to activate, so I finished off my crews activations. Lucius advanced once, cast ‘Reinforcements’ to bring the Guild Guard onto the central evidence marker and then used ‘Issue Command’ to make the Austringer fire at Sybelle, but she proved to be out of range. He used it again via ‘Casting Expert’, this time to make the Hound bite the Belle it was engaged with, inflicting a wound. I was going to use the Guild Guard to destroy the evidence, but I realised that the belle was engaging him as well, so he couldn’t! Instead he walked around and put another few wounds on her with an attack. The Austringer attempted to shoot at Sybelle using ‘Hunting Raptor’, but failed to hit due to some appalling flips and control cards… Turn 2 I won Initiative this turn and chose to activate Lucius and both dogs via ‘companion’ in an effort to destroy the central evidence marker. Lucius used his ‘Advanced training’ and ‘Issued Command’ to have the Guild Guard kill the Belle. We forgot about the Belle’s ‘Slow to die’ unfortunately. I’d stupidly positioned the second dog slightly outside of 3” of the Dog on the evidence, so I had to move it closer to get rid of Insignificant on the first one. I had a spare action, so it ‘Buried’ the Belle’s corpse counter. Finally, the other Dog was able to destroy the evidence. Seamus hopped over the wall, and shot the Guild Guard dead in one severe damage shot… He used ‘Live for Pain’ to put some damage on the Hound that had destroyed the evidence and attempted to raise a new Belle from the Guild Guard’s corpse, but failed to cast. The Drill Sergeant used his ‘Shooting Range’ action again. Sybelle and the Belle activated via ‘Companion’, the Belle dealing some damage to Ryle with her melee attacks. Sybelle advanced and dealt some damage to the other Dog with ‘Shriek’. The Austringer shot Seamus, getting a weak first hit, but a massive 8 damage from a Red Joker flip and bringing him down to just 3 wounds! The right hand Crooligan cast ‘The Mist’ again and advanced onto the right hand evidence marker in the wood. Ryle smacked the Rotten Belle up, but couldn’t finish her off with his melee, so had to use ‘Socially Repressed’ to push away from her and use ‘Ranged Expert’ to finish her off. Unfortunately, this meant the other Crooligan could make a dash for the left hand evidence marker that Ryle had previously been guarding… Turn 3 I lost Initiative, and Seamus wasted no time at all killing one of my hounds with his ‘Live for pain’ spell, hitting severe damage, which was extreme overkill, but netted him a huge heal (5 for the damage inflicted and another 2 for ‘Necrotic Ministrations’). He also walked backwards and took a shot at Ryle, dealing some more damage. He chose to activate Sybelle with Companion and she was able to walk to engage Lucius thanks to the speed buff from “Belle of the Ball”. I planned to activate the Austringer and have him issue orders to Ryle, so that I could try and stop both Crooligans from destroying the evidence markers they were on. Unfortunately, I was forgetting about Ryle’s ‘Can’t Connect’ so realised I wouldn’t be able to do this… I still went with the Austringer and thanks to some great flips, was able to take out the right hand Crooligan before he could interact. The left hand one destroyed the evidence and used the free push from ‘Always on the Move’ to back away from Ryle. Ryle activated and was able to gun the Crooligan down, despite it getting its ‘The Mists embrace’ trigger to make it a Spirit… My Drill Sergeant moved up and ‘Linked’ to the Austringer. The Hound chased after Seamus, but failed his Terrifying check when he reached him. Seamus hit him with the disengaging strike to keep it in melee. Lucius smacked Sybelle around a bit. Turn 4 I lost initiative again. Seamus easily killed off the last hound and advanced closer to Ryle, but putting some low barrels between them. He blasted Ryle again with his gun, taking him down to 3 wound remaining. He then used the Crooligan’s Corpse Counter to raise a new Belle in Ryle’s melee range, between them both. Ryle used ‘Socially Repressed’ to push away from the Austringer (slight mistake here, as I forgot that Seamus was living – he was much closer) which took him away from the Belle. He used his ‘Ranged Expert’ to shoot at Seamus, getting a decent hit despite the cover, and then charged, dealing a massive ‘Critical’ from his mechanical fist, which would have been easily enough to kill him… except, I’d forgotten about ‘Hard to Kill’, which kept him alive on a single wound! Doh! Sybelle used ‘Flurry’ to attack Lucius 3 times, but couldn’t land a blow at all thanks to ‘Highest Authority’… Lucius struck back, killing Sybelle, but only after getting the ‘Governor’s Authority’ trigger which prevented Sybelle from Striking him back with her ‘Slow to die’ action… Lucius also called up the Austringer with ‘Reinforcements’, intending for him to make a run for the evidence markers. The newly summoned belle walked back into melee with Ryle, but was ‘Slow’ so couldn’t attack him. The Austringer started walking towards the evidence marker on my right. We decided to call it here for time Final Score: Me: Destroyed neutral Evidence Marker 1VP Kept Lucius alive 2VP Killed Sybelle 2VP Him: Destroyed one evidence placed out of deployment 0VP More Corpse Counters on the board than Guild Models 1VP Less models in play than at the start of the encounter 0VP Lucius wins 5-1! Although the final score doesn’t make it look to close, I think it might have been a bit more close had we carried on – the initiative for the next turn would have been extremely important, because Ryle should have been able to finish off Seamus if he went first (as he was out of Stones, but equally, Seamus shouldn’t have had much trouble killing off Ryle if he went first. If he managed to kill Ryle, Seamus could have summoned more Belles from nearby Corpses and wouldn’t have had much stopping him from making a break for the evidence in my deployment zone. Lucius could have made a similar run himself, but the numbers would not have been with him, and it might have been a dicey prospect… I think with slightly better scheme choices he could have pulled it back easier as well – Army of the Dead was okay, and he could have potentially got this up to 2VP’s with a few more turns, but Death after Death seems extremely optimistic under the circumstances… Edited August 27, 2012 by FearLord Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scuttlebut Posted August 27, 2012 Report Share Posted August 27, 2012 Great report - the battle reports are by far my favourite things on the forum and yours is no exception. Well done getting your wm/h players into Malifaux. Well done convincing a newbie that Crooligans are a good choice *grin* Do you write down every ap that a models spends or just have a very good memory for these things? Quick point: you can only take 1 faction exclusive scheme (p73 of rulebook). Please keep these reports coming. I love reading them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FearLord Posted August 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted August 27, 2012 Great report - the battle reports are by far my favourite things on the forum and yours is no exception. Well done getting your wm/h players into Malifaux. Well done convincing a newbie that Crooligans are a good choice *grin* Do you write down every ap that a models spends or just have a very good memory for these things? Quick point: you can only take 1 faction exclusive scheme (p73 of rulebook). Please keep these reports coming. I love reading them. Thanks, much appreciated! I have a very good memory - occasionally I forget some of the less important things that happened, or get the turn order slightly wrong, but I can usually piece together what happened from other events. Although models have a lot of actions, you can generally work out who did what and in what order from the important events that happened in any given turn. I can only write them a short time after the game really though - I'd say 2 weeks is probably my limit before the details start to get a bit fuzzy... As for his schemes, yeah there were several issues with them - I should have offered a bit more guidance really, but I didn't realise until afterwards that he hadn't used them before, and it was only after the game that he even revealed what he was doing (and as mentioned, I explained that he had to announce either of them...) Hopefully there will be several more reports to come soon - I'm in a bit of a "Malifaux mood" at the moment, and I'm already looking forward to some games with my new Ten Thunder models! In the meantime, you can check out some of my older reports a few pages back if you haven't already (shameless plug!). Perhaps I'll compile them all into a blog post I can link into my signature so people can find them more easily - Malifaux is a complex game and I enjoy reports that go into the detail about what individual models get up to, so that's what I try to write... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Godlyness Posted August 27, 2012 Report Share Posted August 27, 2012 Isn't sybelle's shriek a wp resist? The next line you mentioned breach psycosis so I am confused why he would try casting it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FearLord Posted August 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted August 27, 2012 Isn't sybelle's shriek a wp resist? The next line you mentioned breach psycosis so I am confused why he would try casting it. It's a Df resist, at least in my book... It makes you take a moral duel if you're living, but the core spell and the damage is just a Df resist... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Godlyness Posted August 27, 2012 Report Share Posted August 27, 2012 Ahh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FearLord Posted August 28, 2012 Author Report Share Posted August 28, 2012 I think this game amply demonstrates just how hard Seamus can be to put down - I dealt some massive damage to him over the course of the game, but he's been able to laugh off most of it by killing my minions... My opponent didn't seem too willing to use 'Lure' and I'm sure he'll improve as a player once he starts to take advantage of some of the shenanigans that spell allows... The Crooligans seemed interesting - they get a really bad rap, but I didn't thing they were all that bad really, and the Mist seems like a great spell to protect against heavy shooting Guild lists... I'm not sure that's I'd bother with them at this size game, because he was really missing some hitters in this list (besides Seamus who was a bit of a beast...) but at 35ss or bigger I could see them being pretty useful as objective grabbers... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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