Registration for a Malifaux tournament

I have just registered for my first ever tournament, the Blood, Steel & Stones tournament advertised on the excellent Coin and Carnage blog. Despite my blog nominally being a Warhammer Beastmen blog (look, it says so right there at the top of the screen), this is actually a Malifaux tournament. The chance of me getting a full Warhammer army together is not very high, but Malifaux only needs 5 to 10 miniatures on the table, which is a much more achievable goal for someone with my painting speed and gaming ADHD.

I am very excited about going to a tournament, not just because it’s a complete novelty. It’ll be the first time I’ve played outside my comfortable familiar gaming group of friends, so I am interested so see how our skills relate to the wider Malifaux community. I also suspect that we get into a sort of ‘group-think’ regarding the rules (and game play in general) so I hope to see how others interpret this game.

Malifaux is slightly unlike other games I’ve played in that you select your crew after you know which faction you will play against and what the strategy (i.e. objective) has been chosen. I only have 10 miniatures to choose from: Sonnia Criid (who is the Master of my crew, so she’s in whether I like it or not), Samael Hopkins, three Witchling Stalkers, two Guild Hounds, an Austringer, an Exorcist and a Witchling Handler. So at least that will make my crew selection pretty easy, although it is enough to give me some choices. Also luckily for me, there isn’t a requirement to have fully painted miniatures, so I don’t need to knock myself out trying to get the five new ones finished. Of course, painting five miniatures in a month or so shouldn’t be too much of a challenge, but I’m glad that there is no pressure to do so.

The only work I’ll have to do (apart from get more familiarity with the rules, the game play and my crew) is to prepare some tokens for one of the strategies, A Line in the Sand. In this, the objective is to either light or defuse five dynamite markers in the middle of the board. So I need to get on and prepare some. In fact, they need to be able to change to show whether the dynamite is lit or not, so I suppose that I need ten markers (or maybe five with some cunning arrangement of magnets). So far I am thinking of making Looney Tunes-style Acme cherry bombs out of Milliput, or perhaps using the many barrels I have lying around on Ogre sprues to represent powder kegs.

Finally, I believe that it is traditional to list some aspirations for the tournament. Therefore, I hope to:

• Draw or win at least one game
• Meet new gaming friends
• Have a good time

They shouldn’t be too hard to achieve (except for maybe the first one; I have no frame of reference as to the level of play in my regular gaming group).  Depending on how things go, I may attempt to take some photos.  In any event, I will certainly post about my experience.

Bad things happen…

Painted Irongut command

I have now completed the Irongut command group for the Little Death tribe.  The unit isn’t complete as such, because I tend to field them seven or eight strong and I only have six available.  Still, it gets me a little bit closer to my goal of actually having a painted army of Ogresses.

Following a suggestion from the excellent Zebrazach, I chose to make the clothes on the body brighter coloured.  Sadly, I didn’t do so very competently on the Gutlady.  Lucky for me that everything looks fine at tabletop distance, especially when in the middle of a unit of other brightly clothed Ogresses.

There’s not much to say about the bellower.  I liked the pose so it was a lot of fun to paint, but since I made the pose when I built her, I would only have myself to blame if I didn’t like it.  The dodgy sculpting work around the right shoulder is mercifully hard to see now that the painting is done.

Much like the bellower, the painting on this has hidden the worst excesses of my poor sculpting work.  I’m a little unsure about the ginger hair considering the bright orange trousers and flag, but I doubt that I’ll ever change it now.

The unit standard bearer caused me the same problem all standard bearers cause me – what to put on the flag that looks nice but doesn’t show up my total lack of skill at freehanding.  I think that this does the job adequately.

Next on the painting table: more Leadbelchers.  This is what the full unit of six looks like in all their glory.