Friday, October 31, 2014

Intermountain Malifaux

Are you in Utah (or the rest of the Intermountain West, really)?  Do you play Malifaux, or are you interested in checking it out?

Well, we have a Facebook Group: Intermountain Malifaux.

Come join us!

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Salt City Gladiator Games Recap - Part 2

Read Part 1 for the first-day recap.

Like the last post...
Almost all the pictures in this post came from the Intermountain Malifaux Facebook Group -- my phone died on the first day, and I simply forgot to take pictures on the second.  If you're a Malifaux player, or someone simply interested in the game, and in the Intermountian area, please come join us.

Other pictures came from the A Wyrd Place Facebook Group -- if you're into Malifaux, Puppet Wars, Evil Baby Orphanage, or anything else Wyrd, join that group.
The picture of the Henchman Hardcore game came from the TO's Twitter account.  Follow him!

Rail Golem sets up to smash The Judge.

Day 2 - Saturday, and the Gaining Grounds Malifaux Tournament

After about 6 hours of sleep, Saturday started off quickly.  After picking Evan up and grabbing some Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast (sorry, everyone, their coffee is only slightly better than gas station coffee), we arrived at the Games about an hour after the doors opened.  Nothing had started, yet, and we were 2 hours early for the Malifaux tournament.

So, like the day before, we set up another fun game.  We knew we weren't going to finish, but Evan wanted more practice with Lilith and I'm always up for a game.  (This was the game that TFG basically asked us why we were even bothering playing if it wasn't for competitive points.)  I don't believe we made it through Turn 3 before we got kicked off the table, 15 minutes before the Gaining Grounds tournament started, which gave us enough time to hit the restrooms and pull all of our minis out of our bags.

Gaining Grounds, Round 1

Round 1
For Round 1, I was paired up against my regular Henchman, Clayton Driggs.  Standard deployment, Stake a Claim, with Breakthrough, Plant Explosives, and... two others.

Clayton was running his regular Perdita crew ('Dita, Francisco, Nino, Abuela, and two Pistoleros -- not sure about the upgrades), which I'd lost to before.  I opted to run Colette w/ the upgrade to make Doves, Cassandra with Smoke and Mirrors, Howard Langston (played by Miss Step), two Performers, two Mannequins, and a Mechanical Dove.
The table we played on for Round 1.  Not our minis, though.

I don't remember a whole lot about this game other than I got absolutely destroyed.  10-2.  I remember that Hank took out Abuela, and that I misunderstood Plant Explosives, and couldn't get a footing.

My takeaway from this was to not play a master I don't really know (I've played Colette a few times, but I've never won with her), and that I naturally gravitate toward aggressive crews so I don't know how to play reserved.

1 loss, 2 VP, -8 Differential

Round 2

Round 2
At this point I was kind of depressed -- getting beaten badly will do that -- but I was doing my best to not let it ruin my time.  (I knew why I was upset, and that it was largely my fault.)  Clayton pointed out that I'm usually a much better player, which kind of made me feel worse for my next opponent; at -8 Differential, I was in absolute last place and I knew I'd be paired against someone who was less familiar with the game.

The table for Round 2
Which I was -- for Round 2, I was paired against a player named Jake.  Round 2 would be his 3rd game of Malifaux -- he had experience in other miniatures games, so he wasn't a total novice, but Malifaux is weird.  This game was Close Deployment, Turf War, with Vendetta, Deliver a Message, and something that relied on Scheme Markers.. and maybe Make Them Suffer.

Jake was running a Lady Justice crew with Lady J, her totem, the Judge, three Death Marshals, a Guild Austringer, and an Exorcist.  I don't remember the upgrades at all.  This time, after I was destroyed in the previous round, was feeling more aggressive -- I ran Mei Fang w/ Seismic Claws and Vapomancy, Joss with Open Current, a Rail Golem with Powered by Flame, Howard Langston (played by Miss Tep, again), a Gunsmith, and a Fire Gamin (maybe... I remember having two Minions, but my second one didn't really do anything).

Despite the difference in Malifaux experience, this was a tough-ish game.  I'd played against Lady J before -- she was also the crew I had my original demo game with -- but I'd never seen Death Marshals' Pinebox used effectively.  On the first turn, I knew I wanted to take the Exorcist out -- my Gunsmith had a Vendetta against him -- and I knew I wanted to get everything I had up in the middle, on the tree-covered hill for soft cover against his shooting attacks.

After that, everything is kind of a blur ... Everything moved up, Miss Step got a great hit off on the Exorcist which gave him Burning from Powered by Flame, Joss was Pineboxed, the Exorcist ran away from Miss Step and right out into the open for the Gunsmith to get full points for Vendetta (Exorcist was already damaged, and Burning for the Gunsmith's Hard Way, and I believe I cheated in Severe damage).  Mei Feng put herself right in the middle, chain-attacking the Judge, Lady J, and all three Death Marshals, but not getting anything.  I'm sure the Rail Golem hit something, too.

The Austringer moved to send his bird after my Gunsmith.. over and over and over again, until the Gunsmith was dead.  Miss Step Delivered the Message, the Judge delivered his, Mei killed the Death Marshal with Joss in his box and Joss worked his way over to kill the damn Austringer.  The Rail Golem and was promptly boxed by another Death Marshal.

That Marshal was killed by Mei, who then attacked Lady J, missed, and was killed by Repost. Lady J attacked, but didn't kill, Miss Step, who ran away to the far edge of the Turf War area. The final Death Marshal started running for my deployment, the Rail Golem killed Lady J, Joss chased down and killed the final Death Marshal, and either the Rail Golem or Miss Step finished off Lady J's totem at the end of Turn 4.

I won, 9 to 6 -- I didn't reveal Deliver a Message, which kept me from full points.  Jake didn't reveal it, either, got 3 points from Turf War, and a final point from the ridiculous amount of scheme markers he was able to drop from Finish the Job.

1 loss, 1 win, 11 VP, -5 Differential

Round 3

Round 3
I ended up paired against Jake for a second time -- that -8 Differential, up front, really hurt me, keeping me near the bottom.  I knew Jake would be running the same crew -- he was borrowing the models -- which gave me an unfair advantage for hiring.

This round was Flank Deployment, Reconnoiter, with Arcane Ritual (which we both took), and three others that were unimportant as we both took A Line In The Sand and revealed everything.

The table for Round 3. These aren't our minis, though.
Again, Jake was running Lady J, her totem, The Judge, three Death Marshals, the Exorcist, and an Austringer.  This time, I ran Kaeris with Grab and Drop, Cassandra with Smoke and Mirrors, The Firestarter, Miss Step, a December Acolyte, and three Fire Gamin.

Jake won Deployment, and had me choose sides and deploy second.  The terrain had two large bluffs in opposite corners (which I had built my crew around, with Kaeris and The Firestarter), so I chose to deploy right on top of one of them.  I put The Firstarter and the Gamin on one side of my flank, and Cass and Miss Step on the other, with the December Acolyte deploying up in the corner where Miss Step and Cass were going.

This game was less fair -- I kept everything out of range of the Austringer, utilized Miss Step and Cass' Nimble to start dropping Scheme Markers immediately, and sent a Fire Gamin and the Firestarter toward their quarter to hopefully drop more markers.  Jake ran his Exorcist and all three Marshals toward that same quarter -- they ended up killing The Firestarter first or second turn, before I could do anything with him.

Kaeris used Grab and Drop on The Judge, killing him with 6 damage (Jake didn't care to cheat up his flip -- falling damage is one of those things you don't really understand until you take it), and attempted it on Lady J.  Cass finished off Lady J -- it took both attacks from her Charge, plus the trigger that allowed her to Grab and Drop Lady J, since Kaeris was close enough.  Kaeris then moved to Grab and Drop the Austringer, and moved him right in line to be charged and killed by Miss Step.

I didn't want to move my December Acolyte, so he killed Lady J's totem, probably dropped a Scheme Marker, then stayed in his uncontested quarter.

Cass or Miss Step ended up finishing off the Exorcist, who had wandered away from the Death Marshals.  The Marshals turtled up in their quarter, realizing the game was lost, and I moved the two Fire Gamin out of their quarter to try and kill the Marshals.

Cass and one of the Gamin were killed by a Marshal.  The other Marshal Pineboxed Miss Step, and was promptly killed by the last Fire Gamin, dropping Miss Step right next to the final Marshal.  Kaeris moved up and removed the Scheme Marker in my opponent's deployment.

At this point, it was the end of turn 5 ... we flipped a 13, and kept going.

Kaeris dropped her own Scheme marker, then passed her two actions.  The Fire Gamin didn't want to shoot into Melee (I think Miss Step was injured enough that there was a potential to kill her), so he moved back into his starting quarter.  Miss Step Flurried, and the Death Marshal successfully dodged each attack.

End of turn 6... we flipped an 11, and moved into Turn 7.

The Death Marshal couldn't kill Miss Step, and Miss Step missed all 3 attacks of her Flurry again, and nothing else was in range to do anything.

The final flip was a 3, and the game was over.

That Death Marshal earned his stripes, surviving two full Flurries from Miss Step, and actually finishing the game!

I don't remember the Differential -- I had a full 10 VP (3 corners had my Arcane Ritual markers, Cass had single-handedly dropped 4 markers for A Line In The Sand, and I controlled all 4 quarters), but Jake had earned a few VP from... something.

At the end, I was 2 Wins, 1 Loss, with 21 VP and my Differential was either + or - 2.

How it all ended.

I ended up pulling 5th out of 10, much better than I'd expected after the crushing defeat in the first round, and snagged myself a Relic Hunters box set.

After all was said and done, Evan and I wandered off to play our usual Saturday Pathfinder game.  It was an absolutely awesome weekend.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Salt City Gladiator Games Recap - Part 1


The view from the front, looking at the TO
table -- you can see one of the Henchmen
taking pictures of the table.

Almost all the pictures in this post came from the Intermountain Malifaux Facebook Group -- my phone died on the first day, and I simply forgot to take pictures on the second.  If you're a Malifaux player, or someone simply interested in the game, and in the Intermountian area, please come join us.

Other pictures came from the A Wyrd Place Facebook Group -- if you're into Malifaux, Puppet Wars, Evil Baby Orphanage, or anything else Wyrd, join that group.

The picture of the Henchman Hardcore game came from the TO's Twitter account.  Follow him!



This last weekend was the first annual Salt City Gladiator Games -- a 2 day tournament / convention, featuring Warhammer 40k and WarmaHordes, but with an open play area that had Malifaux, Infinity, Dark Ages, and HeroClix demos and tournaments throughout, as well as speed painting and a painting competition -- and I had the opportunity to attend.  My initial plan was to play both Malifaux tournaments -- which I did -- and get in as many game demos as possible.

The view from the TO's table --
that's Jason Tuttle, the TO, walking away.


Day 1 - Friday, and the Malifaux Henchman Hardcore Tournament


I was lucky enough to get Friday off work so I could get the full Gladiator Games experience, so Evan and I showed up about an hour after the doors opened.  There were WH40k and WarmaHordes qualifier tournaments happening throughout the day, but we weren't there for those games so we had time to kill.  First things first, we checked out the eight Malifaux tables (visible on the right) -- there was a lot of variety, and enough terrain that the Ortegas and LaCroixs weren't going to have an unfair advantage throughout the tournament (there was at least one table without cover through the middle area, which I felt the full force of on Day 2, but one out of eight isn't bad).  After that, and a quick lap of the entire event to see what other games were playing on (WH40k were pretty standard, and I had no idea WarmaHordes played on basically empty tables), Evan and I set up for a practice / friendly / demo game.


As an aside, on our second day, playing a second non-tournament game a full two hours before the tournament started, we were essentially asked by another player why we would bother playing games for fun, instead of standing around waiting for the tournament to start. This player would go on to be the most complained about player in the tournament -- he seemed to intentionally waste his opponents' time during the Henchman Hardcore game through surfing on his phone and calling over the TO for clarification on everything that wasn't going his way, and finished the two-day event by arguing with the TO about how he should have placed higher because of... something...  This is all I'm going to say about him, but it's a sad reality of the competitive scene that there will always be "That Fucking Guy. (TFG)"

During our first friendly game, Evan was trying out his newly purchased-and-assembled Lilith crew so he could get a feel for her before the actual event started.  I don't remember a whole lot about the Strat/Scheme Pool, or our crew make ups, but a few stand-out things happened:
  •  I had Kang and Miss Step (the official counts-as-Howard Langston) fairly close together, and Evan didn't like the look of them, so he attacked Kang with a Mature Nephilim.  The Nephilim landed in some trees (his base wouldn't fit between them), got a decent attack off on Kang, and was then decapitated by a Flurry from Miss Step.
  • Evan and I both took Frame for Murder, then proceeded to pit our two patsies against each other.  Barbaros and a Gunsmith spent two or three rounds attempting to have the other kill them before a Fire Gamin-caused splash of Barbaros' Black Blood took the Gunsmith out.  Barbaros was then killed by Mei, herself, so we both got full points.
After that we grabbed lunch and picked up Evan's Battlefoam bag and Beckoner model that had been delivered to his house. 

Upon returning, I got a demo of HeroClix in, which was interesting -- you could tell the person who gave me my demo loved the game, but he wasn't great at running a demo, so he spent probably an hour explaining rules and random neat things to me before we ever pitted models against each other.  I wasn't getting it -- I am a person who learns by doing, not being told -- so we ran a 275 point 1 vs 1 game of Ronin the Accuser vs. Cosmic X-23 (by the way, when did she get a last name?).  During that part of the demo, I figured the game out, and it's a lot of fun despite being rules-heavy.  I'll probably pick up a starter box to play with Ninja within the next few weeks.


 

Henchman Hardcore

Finally, it was time for the Henchman Hardcore (again, pictures on the right).  In case you aren't familiar with the format, it's a 20 Soulstone Henchman-lead game with exactly four models per side.  No totems, no summoners, Turf War is the only Strategy, and Assassinate and Make Them Suffer were the only Schemes.

Through some peer pressure, we were able to cobble together a 10-player tournament.  A few of these players had never played Malifaux before, so their first game was going to be their demo.  My first opponent was one of these players -- he had plenty of experience with tabletop games, so he picked things up pretty quickly, and I feel like I did a decent job explaining the game (decent enough that the two Henchmen that were available left our table alone to concentrate on teaching the other new players, anyway).

Evan and I both played against TFG during this, which soured our taste for him (during Evan's game he did the aforementioned phone-surfing, and he called over the TO and decided to make dinner plans during mine), but otherwise it seemed to go well.  We ended up in the middle of the pack, and I got a lucky draw in the raffle and ended up with a M1E Leveticus box set.

We learned that Henchman Hardcore, due to the rapid-fire nature, is NOT a good format for people who are prone to panic attacks.

We finished the night by grabbing food with the Henchmen, and a few other players, and played a couple rounds of Hex Hex at dinner.  All in all, it was a great first day.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

#6MMRPC Week 5 Wrap-Up

(I'm legitimately sorry for the pictures, this week -- I couldn't take a good picture to save my life.)

Yeah, I skipped a week -- I ran out of super glue (both brush on and gel), right after a financial emergency, and couldn't afford to spend the money on glue.  That doesn't mean I wasn't working, I just wasn't doing very much.

In that time, I put another coat of flesh onto my Dark Eldar project -- a few of them will need a third coat, then I'm onto highlights -- and, that's really it for all of week 4.

At the beginning of Week 5, my wife was kind enough to buy me some glue, so I got back to work.  I did very little gap-filling (I need to find a less messy way to do it, both for the sake of my living room (where I've been working), and for the sake of my glue, which kept thickening up in the bottle from baby powder that stuck to the brush), and decided to work on bases.  This was mostly for the Salt City Gladiator Games -- with the games coming up, I want to have everything I could possibly use based, at the very least.


First up was my December Acolytes -- simple cork bases with sticks for trees.

Next up was Mr. Tannen (in the background of the Drowned's picture) -- I've made quite a few of these hardwood bases before using HO Scale Milled Lumber, but this time I wanted to fill the gap around the edges using superglue and baby powder.  That ended up being more effort than it was worth -- the glue got all over the edges of the wood, and then I had to carve wood grain into the glue after I sanded it down.  Next time I'll use Green Stuff.

After that, I had picked up some linoleum samples that I wanted to try out, so I moved onto my Drowned -- I won't be using these at the Gladiator Games, but the texture was perfect for a sandy base.  I started by drilling out the center to make fully recessed bases, then cut the linoleum to fit, glued the linoleum to plastic and glued all of that to the bottom of the base -- after that, I lined the edges with cork, and covered the seams with coarse sand and rope made of twisted wire.  I'll fill the bases with water effects after I paint.

Finally, my coup de gras of the week -- Mr. Graves.  I've been debating on how to do him for awhile, and I had various parts of this plan laid out for months.  Over the last 3 or so months, I created a door with my scale lumber and card stock, which I then used to make a door frame in some plasticard.  I didn't like how that looked, so I spent A LOT of time with a dremel, files, and my hobby knife to try and make the wall look like rough-hewn wood.  After that, I lost my door, so I had to make a new one out of plasticard, which I decorated with some Etch-Master brass from their IndieGoGo campaign (I'll get a better picture as I add my doorknobs and hinges).

Next, I needed a cobblestone base, and I've never liked the look of hand-modeled greenstuff cobblestones.  So, I hollowed out another base (I swear there's a tutorial about that somewhere -- if I find it, I'll link it) and capped off the bottom with another piece of spare plastic.  I glued down a layer of fishtank rocks, which just happened to be the right height, followed by a layer of water-thinned PVA and railroad talus which I press-leveled (I took something flat, and pressed it into the base to have a level surface), and finished off with more thinned PVA and the same course sand I used on the Drowened bases.

The final step was putting it all together -- I needed an elevated floor for the "inside" of the door, so I built a hardwood base on a wooden disk which I glued onto the cobblestone base (I made this a bit too big, and covered up way too much of the stones), pinned and glued on my wall, then my door (it's not glued, just pinned, so I can remove it for painting), and, finally, Mr. Graves.

This coming week will be more Dark Eldar -- I need to add flesh highlights, then edge highlight everything, and I'll be ready to base everything! -- and my Fire Gamin.