Painted Santiago Ortega

Here is Santiago Ortega, the shootier brother (or cousin, who knows?) of Francisco. He’s really nice in game, as his shooting is excellent and he even gets better if he’s injured. I’ve heard of people deliberately shooting him in the back on turn 1 to get this effect, but never tried it. My experience has generally been that he gets taken out in one turn so I never get the benefit, or he gets stuck in combat with something and never escapes. Partnering him with Francisco helps to mitigate that a little since the latter is actually competent in melee, but neither is exactly robust.

As for the miniature, I love it. So much character and such a lovely pose. It was like it painted itself. Santiago is meant to be some sort of Mexican gunslinger (so presumably should have dark hair) but as soon as I took him out of the box I knew he was going to get ginger hair. I think it fits him quite nicely. And apparently at least one other person did, as I won ‘best painted miniature‘ for him at Skirmish Showdown, an achievement which makes me a happy geek.

Next on the painting table: Nino Ortega.

Malifaux tournament report: Skirmish Showdown (35SS); 20Oct12

Last weekend, Aramoro and I headed out for the Skirmish Showdown run by DavidK-S. It was a 35SS, 3 round tournament with fixed faction (not a problem for me, since I only have Guild miniatures anyway), preset strategies and unique schemes across all games. After my last epic showing at a tournament (in which Justinmatters and I ‘won’ the wooden spoon) I was hoping to play a bit less badly. Still, the tournament for me is just an excuse to play Malifaux against people I wouldn’t normally meet, so I’m not really bothered about whether I win or lose as long as we have fun.  The initial random pairings put me against Aramoro but since about half of my games of Malifaux in total have been against him, we asked for a re-run of the scheduling.  This persisted for several more tries as various people were lined up against their most common opponents until eventually we got a set of first-round pair that everyone was happy with.  I was against Barry (I think he’s Grumhelden on the Wyrd Forum) who had given Justinmatters and me a good hiding twice in the previous tournament.

I failed to take my camera with me, but David took some photos which I’ve taken from his blog.  They aren’t taken at strategically relevant points, but at least you can see the general layout of the terrain etc.  Also, it breaks up the wall of text, which can only be a good thing.

Game 1: Guild (me) vs Neverborn (Barry)

Strategy:
Shared Plant Evidence (spend an action to interact with up four pieces of terrain in the other half of the board)

Schemes:
Guild: Hold Out (unannounced; stop the other side getting models in your deployment zone), Kill Protegé (on one of the Illuminated)
Neverborn: Bodyguard (keep your leader alive), Assassinate (kill the other master)

Crews:
Guild: Perdita Ortega, 2 Guild Hounds, 2 Witchling Stalkers, Nino Ortega, Santiago Ortega, Francisco Ortega
Neverborn: Jakob Lynch, Hungering Darkness, 2 Beckoners, 3 Illuminated, Depleted, Sorrow

I picked Perdita on the grounds that she’s fast, and the Hounds for pretty much the same reason.  The three Ortegas go in partly to take advantage of being Family and partly because they provide a nice firebase to keep things off my side of the board.  As for the Stalkers, I just love them; they are in practically every game I’ve played of Malifaux.  The map is bisected by a river with a bridge dead centre.  Barry suggests to treat it as open terrain anyway since all his miniatures either fly, float or ignore terrain for other reasons and he doesn’t want to take an unfair advantage.  I line up with the Hounds and Stalkers on the left and the Ortegas on the right; Nino is on his own on building roof.  Barry’s crew are all in a clump in the centre to go either way.  He admitted at this point that he has no real clue about these miniatures since they are very new and he’s never played them, but speculates that the major threats will be the Hungering Darkness and the Beckoners.

Turn 1: Everyone rushes forward.  The Neverborn split up with both Beckoners and two of the Illuminated (including my Kill Protegé target) heading for the Ortegas and everyone else to the other side of the bridge.  Perdita uses her speed and range to take a pot shot at the nearest Beckoner; Santiago tries to do the same but is out of range.

Turn 2:  I win initiative and my Hounds somehow plant three bits of evidence to rack up some victory points before they are horribly killed.  To my surprise, the Hungering Darkness ignores them and moves up to mark one of the Stalkers with Brilliance.  Jakob Lynch himself follows up and smites the poor creature for all but one of his wounds.  Meanwhile, Santiago and Perdita gun down both Beckoners before I can find out what nasty things they’re capable of, and the nearest Illuminated smacks Santiago so hard that only his ‘hard to kill’ ability keeps him alive.  Francisco’s counter-charge is totally ineffective.  Nino shoots the Hungering Darkness to minimal effect (as it’s a spirit) before the wounded Stalker shows him how it’s done by cutting it down with one shot from his magical weapon.  The other takes a good chunk out of Jakob Lynch who has conveniently placed himself in charge range.  Finally, one of the Hounds is killed by an Illuminated.

Turn 3:  I win initiative again and the Stalker finishes of Jakob Lynch.  With him, the Hungering Darkness and both Beckoners out of the game for next to no losses, I’m feeling confident at this point.  The Illuminated easily deals the last wound to Santiago but I cheat high for defense on the first swing to stop it from taking out Francisco too.  Perdita kills the other Illuminated nearby (handily, this one was the Kill Protegé target) and the Stalker and Hound start the clean up on the other side of the board.

Turn 4:  Yet again I get the initiative and Francisco finally does something useful by flurrying the Illuminated to death.  The last Illuminated tries to shoot Perdita but I get the ‘faster’n you’ trigger and kill it instead.  My Stalker black jokers the damage flip to take the last wound from the Depleted (in retrospect, this should have killed it anyway thanks to critical strike) and when I finally do kill the beastie it starts a chain explosion with one of the Stalkers.  Anyway, that’s the last Neverborn on the table so I spend the rest of the activations racking up victory points.  The final score is 7 – 0 to the Guild (I could have had 8 if I had announced Hold Out, but most Neverborn crews are very fast and I couldn’t have predicted this kind of game).  So I was up against another player with a big first round victory, Dave, who I think is Tattyted on the Wyrd Forums.

Game 2: Guild (me) vs Ressurectionists (Dave)

Strategy:
Shared Supply Wagon (various points available for escorting a wagon to the centre of the board)

Schemes:
Guild: Assassinate, Grudge (on Sebastian; kill him in melee with one of my minions)
Ressurectionists: Bodyguard, Hold Out

Crews:
Guild: Sonnia Criid, Witchling Handler, 2 Witchling Stalkers, Exorcist, Santiago Ortega, Francisco Ortega
Neverborn: Douglas McMourning, 4 Night Terrors, 4 Canine Remains, Sebastian, Desperate Mercenary, Grave Spirit, Punk Zombie

So on the grounds that this will be a slow and steady slug fest across the centre of the board, I choose Sonnia this time.  The Handler is useful for pushing Stalkers around (and I’m expecting a lot of them thanks to Sonnia’s ability to create more), and the Exorcist seems like a solid option against Ressurectionists although I’ve never actually managed to get much value out of him.  Santiago is a good shooter, and Francisco makes for a handy bodyguard for him in case anyone tries to just mob him with fast cheap minions. This was a mining board with a few mine-heads scattered around and some nice rock formations to hide behind.  Most of the Ressurectionists started hidden behind a building with all the Night Terrors in a flock together on one side and Sebastian and the Punk Zombie ‘escorting’ the wagon.  I have a line across the board with the Stalkers and Handler on the left, Sonnia and the Exorcist in the centre and the Ortegas on the right.  I’ve never played against McMourning, but he looks like a close-combat monster so I chose Assassinate on the grounds that he might put himself in harm’s way.

Turn 1: Of course, most things move forward.  Sonnia puts a flame wall up in a gap to limit options for the Ressurectionists.  The Night Terrors use ‘flock together’ to move about halfway across the board in one go, and McMourning just mucks about killing his own Canine Remains in his deployment zone to rack up about a million body parts.

Turn 2: The Handler pushes one of the Stalkers toward the mob of Night Terrors.  Most of them flee but for some reason one stays to get charged by the Stalker, who knocks it down to its ‘hard to kill’ wound.  I move up Francisco to shoot at the Desperate Mercenary but he’s a bit out of range and is shot in return.  That was a bit silly of me as there was no need to risk Francisco.  Still, the mercenary will also die at the end of the turn so at least it wasn’t a complete waste.  Sonnia puts a flame wall in front of the wagon – it won’t affect the wagon itself (indeed, it turns out that the flame wall is not actually ‘terrain’ even though it is hazardous) but it will stop Sebastian and the Punk Zombie moving through.  One of the Night Terrors flies to block my wagon from moving, then McMourning shows that he’s not just wasting time with his ‘experiments’ back behind the mine-head as he creates a Rogue Necromancy which races out and one-shots my Exorcist.  Admittedly, I did have him a bit too far forward, but I didn’t expect to lose him so easily.

Turn 3:  Santiago gets things underway by shooting half the wounds off the Rogue Necromancy, and Sonnia then uses a Soulstone to avoid its charge attack.  One Stalker kills the wounded Night Terror and the other takes the one sitting in front of my supply wagon down to one wound thanks to ‘hard to kill’.  Luckily, Sonnia loves things with ‘hard to kill’ as they can be conveniently turned into fresh Witchling Stalkers through ‘violation of magic’.  She duly cuts the Rogue Necromancy down (that massive sword isn’t just for show, you know) then violates the wounded Night Terror into a Stalker, which is placed as near as I can manage to Sebastian as I need to kill him in melee to get my Grudge.  The Handler pushes the new Stalker into the Punk Zombie, but it black jokers the wound.  Sebastian moves up to carve up the Stalker in his next activation (I guess he’s slow because of that ridiculous buzz saw he’s carting around with him!).  Finally, another Night Terror moves into the space vacated by the first, i.e. right in front of my wagon and McMourning kills off all but one of his Canine Remains  to recharge his stock of body parts.

Turn 4:  The last Canine Remains rushes up to the remains of the Rogue Necromancy and passes the corpse counters back to McMourning and Sebastian kills off his Stalker; the resulting explosion causes a bit of damage to him and the nearby Punk Zombie.  Sonnia then shows me why I love her as she stabs the Canine Remains to death, violates the wounded Night Terror (just like last turn, summoning a Stalker near to Sebastian) then flame bursts the little fat guy, Soulstoning and cheating high to really take his wounds down and nuke the Punk Zombie in the blast.  The Handler pushes the new Stalker up to Sebastian, and it then kills him with one swipe of its shattered rune blade.  McMourning, who is pretty lonely at this point, moves up to try and throw another Rogue Necromancy at me, but luckily he can’t get the casting requirement.

Turn 5:  I win initiative, and the furthest forward Stalker (the one who got Sebastian) charges the Grave Spirit, easily killing it.  In fact, I don’t care about the totem at this stage, but I want to get a disrupt magic effect near to McMourning to make him use an activation or two to clear it before he can try to summon another monster.  Needless to say McMourning annihilates the Stalker, summons a Rogue Necromancy near the wagons and then sensibly runs away to stop me from trying to shoot him to death.  It can’t do much damage since the Handler immediately knocks off half its wounds (stopping it from using its ‘two headed’ ability) and the Handler survives the attack anyway.  I need to take out the Rogue Necromancy to have a chance at damaging the Ressurectionist wagon and Sonnia’s charge leaves it on one wound.  I try to use violation of magic again but I can’t get the cards I need and in any case I still would have needed to get lucky hitting the wagon with the summoned Stalker.  We’re out of time, and the game ends with a 5 – 3 win for the Ressurectionists (I got Grudge and a point for an undamaged wagon, Dave also had an undamaged wagon and also got Hold Out and Bodyguard).  It was a very tight game, and very fun.  I greatly enjoy games that could be swung by the last card flips.  My opponent for the final round is Malcolm, who presumably was on about the same record as me.

Game 3: Guild (me) vs Guild (Malcolm)

Strategy:
Shared Slaughter (does what it says on the tin – just kill everything for lots of victory points)

Schemes:
Good Guild: Bodyguard, Raid! (have the most minions left in play at the end of the game)
Evil Guild: Assassinate, Raid! (well, we’re not both getting points for this one)

Crews:
Good Guild: Perdita Ortega, Nino Ortega, Santiago Ortega, Francisco Ortega, 3 Witchling Stalkers
Evil Guild: C. Hoffman, Ryle Hoffman, Peacekeeper, Guardian, Warden, 2 Guild Hounds

My choice of master could go either way here, but I feel like Sonnia’s summoning antics could get me into trouble so I select Perdita instead.  The Ortega boys are good at shooting so they’re an easy choice, and the Witchlings are not only awesome but conveniently explode when they die for one last hit.  This board is relatively open in midfield, but there are a couple of towers in the corners, some patches of rough terrain around the centre and walls scattered about.  I have everyone but Nino strung out in a line across the board, with Perdita in the middle and all three Stalkers on the right.  Nino, predictably, is as close as I can get him to the door of the tower.  Malcolm has the Hounds isolated for a flank run out of line of sight down my left, and Ryle all alone on my right.  Everyone else forms the ‘Hoff-ball’.

Turn 1:   It’s Guild on Guild, so not much shenanigans but lots of running forward.  To no-one’s surprise, Nino runs up to the roof of the tower so he can shoot most of the battlefield.

Turn 2:  I win initiative and Nino shoots the Peacekeeper twice, getting ‘headshots’ on both and forcing Malcolm to discard 4 great cards to keep the big robot in play (plus one he cheated in to avoid a ‘trigger happy’ on the first shot, which I then cheated above; in total he’s played out a 10, two 11s and two 12s).  Ryle responds by moving up behind a wall and shooting a Stalker but can only take it down to a single wound.  Perdita shows him how it’s done by casting bullet bending (to ignore the cover) and blow him away before the Warden charges the wounded Stalker to finish him off.  The Hounds charge Francisco but miss their attacks because Malcolm’s flips were terrible and he had nothing left to cheat in, then Francisco stabs one of them to death.  Finally,the Peacekeeper knocks another Stalker down to 1 wound.  I breathe a sigh of relief at my good luck… then Hoffman casts override edict to let the Peacekeeper finish the job.

Turn 3: I win initiative again after using a Soulstone and Perdita then shoots the Peacekeeper into scrap before it can get stuck into her.  Instead, the Guardian charges and Malcolm sensibly uses the shield bash attack to put some damage on Perdita and get round her ridiculous defence.  Francisco flurries the other Hound to death and the Warden charges the last Stalker but can’t quite finish it off.  The Stalker has no such issues and shreds the robot with his shattered rune blade despite the armour.  Hoffman attacks Perdita using machine puppet on himself (funnily enough, it never occurred to me that you could do that) and I’m forced to use all but one of my Soulstones to keep her alive.  Then I gamble with Santiago and shoot into the Guardian / Hoffman / Perdita scrum achieving nothing of note except not killing Perdita.

Turn 4: This turn is going to be critical for initiative, and Malcolm wins it with a 13.  Not much point using a Soulstone on that.  Hoffman duly lays into Perdita, and good flips keep me in it until the last shot (after tapping the Guardian for power to become fast).  The final hit is high, and Malcolm stones it out of sight.  I keep my final Soulstone in the hope of a good damage prevention flip, but the red joker is cheated into the damage and Perdita is well and truly vapourised, losing me the points for Bodyguard and getting Assassinate for Malcolm.  Still this has the silver lining that Hoffman and the Guardian are no longer in melee.  The remaining Ortegas companion, and Nino headshots the Guardian twice (again!) to drain the rest of Malcolm’s hand, though it does trigger ‘shielded’ to put his armour up to about fifty.  I then have a most amazing run of cards when I rapid fire Santiago into the Guardian, getting trigger happy off repeatedly for a total of 8 hits.  I black joker one them and it is pointed out that trigger happy requires damage (I’d assumed it worked off a hit) which breaks the chain at one point.  But it is still more than the Guardian can take and the last shot puts it down as I cheat for severe to get rid of it.  Francisco and then the Stalker charge the rather lonely looking Hoffman and force him to use the rest of his Soulstones just to survive.

Turn 5:  It’s a bit of a formality at this point as a Hoffman with no constructs, no Soulstones and in melee is not a happy Hoffman.  To make it even more embarrassing, I red joker the initiative flip.  Francisco Ortega avenges the death of his sister by flurrying Hoffman to death.  The final score is 6 – 3 to me (I got all 4 for Slaughter and 2 for Raid!; Malcolm got 1 for Slaughter and 2 for Assassinate).  I had outrageously good cards throughout the game, and Malcolm had very bad cards too; at one point it looked like we’d split two decks and given me all the high cards and him all the low ones.  Malcolm, if you’re reading this – sorry…  Anyway, it was a fun game played in a good spirit and Malcolm took his ill fortune with a smile on his face.  Or perhaps that was a grimace!

After the smoke clears, I get second place, behind Dave (who beat me in the second round) and narrowly ahead of Alan, who also had 2 wins and one loss but is slightly behind on some tie-breaker or other. I’m very happy with that, and I look forward a resumption of the jokes about being a ‘pro-tournament player’ from my friends.

To cap off an excellent day, I also take a prize for Santiago as best painted miniature. To be honest, I think that there was something odd going on here as I spent the whole day playing against and around miniatures painted better than any of my crew. David has a policy that if a miniature wins a prize then it’s not eligible again (presumably to prevent one player having one amazing crew then winning the prize every tournament without doing any more painting) so the only explanation is that everyone who had better painted miniatures than me already had a trophy at home.

Overall, it was a highly satisfactory day for me – three fun games of Malifaux against three really nice chaps, and plenty of banter in between for good measure. Aramoro has written a bit about his own experiences here and there are a load of pictures taken at the event by David, which can be found here, here and here. Thanks very much to David once again for all the work he puts in to make these events a success.

Painted Francisco Ortega

I painted some more Malifaux miniatures a little while ago, but never got round to taking pictures. Here is Francisco Ortega. In the story, he’s a righteous bad-ass, second only to his sister, Perdita in the ‘hard as nails’ stakes. However, in the game he is somewhat overshadowed by his brothers (or maybe cousins) Nino and Santiago. Still, I’ve had some luck with him as a deterrent to charging Nino or Santiago as, while neither of them could fight their way out of a wet paper bag, Francisco is pretty stabby with his sword as long as he doesn’t get killed first (which is depressingly easy to do).

I love the miniature as it just oozes menace and it was a joy to paint, though it does suffer from the Flat Stanley stylings of many other Wyrd models. Handily, the Ortegas fit quite nicely into the colour scheme I’ve been using for the rest of my Guild force.

Next on the painting table: Santiago Ortega.

Malifaux tournament report: Clover’s Pact (50SS team); 29Sep12

On the 28th September I attended the Clover’s Pact Malifaux team tournament, dragging along my good friend Justinmatters.  The rules are a little unusual and I won’t go into them in detail here (they can be found here) but basically the teams are both playing on the same board for the same strategies, but with separate schemes.  The crews have to be compatible, which meant that one of us would have to learn a new crew.  Luckily for me, Justinmatters volunteered for that duty and we did manage to get a single practice run in with him using Perdita Ortega.  I’m not much of a teacher since I think I’ve only used her once too.  Anyway, there’s nothing like learning in the heat of battle to temper your skills.  Our crews weren’t really optimal even considering that it was a fixed list event (normally in Malifaux you can select your crew once you know what faction you’ll be up against) but it’s limited by the miniatures I own.  I tried to get a few photos as we went on but most of them came out blurry even by my standards and in any case I didn’t want to delay the games.  David KS (the tournament organiser) has posted about a million of them here.

Me:  Sonnia Criid, Nino Ortega, Witchling Stalker, Witchling Handler, Guild Austringer, 6 soulstones

Justinmatters: Perdita Ortega, Francisco Ortega, Santiago Ortega, Witchling Stalker, 2 Guild Hounds, 6 soulstones

Game 1: Guild vs Neverborn

Strategy: Shared Reconnoitre (points available for having the most models in each table quarter)

Our first game was against Barry and Mark running Neverborn.

Schemes: I took Exterminate (Beasts) against Barry, as I thought that there might be some chance of getting it in this crew; Justinmatters took An Eye For An Eye against Mark.  On the other side, Barry took Bodyguard on Zoraida and Mark took Breakthrough against me.

Barry: Zoraida, Bad Juju, 3 Silurids

Mark: Pandora (plus Avatar), Teddy, 2 Sorrows, Doppelganger

Here’s how it looked at the start, sadly none of the photos show the sheer awesomeness of Mark’s scratch built Teddy, nor of the high quality painting we faced.

Turn 1, not much happened.  Zoraida predictably summoned a Voodoo Doll which linked to my Witchling Stalker, who uses Dispel Magic to get rid of some of the poison.  Mostly, everyone is running into position but it’s a bit cagey; in our case it’s because we don’t know what the other crews are capable of.  I assume that Mark and Barry were cautious about Guild firepower or something.

Turn 2 is where it all got a bit tasty.  Pandora incites Justinmatters’ Witchling Stalker and wounds it a few times mainly to use her pushes to scoot about the board a bit.  She’s wary of Perdita though, so Pandora is careful to stay back.  The Voodoo Doll obeys Teddy to charge and kill the poor Stalker, then Zoraida obeys the big guy to charge Perdita.  Good flipping and judicious use of soulstones means that Perdita avoids every one of Teddy’s attacks, even when he flurries her.  Nino tries a couple of headshots on Zoraida and forces her to discard a couple of cards before he’s dogpiled by Silurids.  Perdita calmly blows Teddy into stuffing and eyes up Bad Juju, who has appeared midfield and activated defensive stance.  Then the Doppelganger copies obey from Zoraida and forces it to lumber into Perdita, though it can’t make a hit stick either.  Finally, my Witchling Stalker kills off one of the Silurids.

After both sides using soulstones on the initiative flip, it goes to the Guild.  Perdita kills Bad Juju and her companioned Guild Hounds run off into the forest to try and claim a quarter for us.  Pandora scoots around a bit but ultimately doesn’t achieve a lot against the stubborn Ortegas, and the Silurids easily finish Nino.  My Witchling Stalker kills the Voodoo Doll as it’s the only thing in range; this also allows it to catch Zoraida and the Doppelganger in the disrupt magic effect.  Zoraida doesn’t care though, and obeys my Witchling Handler to charge Sonnia; she doesn’t do significant damage but it takes her away from the Silurids that I wanted to charge.  Sonnia does kill one of them before the game runs out of time.

We count up the victory points and it’s a 3 – 3 draw; we got 3 table quarters but no schemes and Mark and Barry got the other quarter plus Bodyguard.  It was a really fun game, and I have a least some idea of what the Neverborn do. It was a shame that we ran out of time, as I felt like we were whittling the Neverborn down and might have been able to get a win over 6 turns. On the other hand, I imagine that Mark and Barry thought that they could get us too if we had longer to play.  In particular, I think that they both felt that our crews were a good counter for theirs, and I guess that they could be right.

Game 2: Guild vs Guild

Strategy: Shared Destroy the Evidence (points for interacting with various markers on the board)

Game 2 was against the Davids. I have to admit to a bit of pre-game gushing here as I recognised one of the opposing crews as belonging to Sholto, of whom I am something of a fan via the internet. Hopefully I didn’t come across too stalker-y.

Schemes: I took Breakthrough against David M and David H took the same scheme against Justinmatters. Justinmatters took Bodyguard on Perdita and David M selected Raid.

David M: Hoffman, Peacekeeper, Steamborg Executioner, Mobile Toolkit

Mark: Perdita, Santiago, Nino, Guardian, Enslaved Nephilim

Strangely, this is only the second time I’ve played against Guild and the first was when I was showing Justinmatters what Perdita could do in preparation for this tournament. As usual, we just lined up to get moving as quickly as possible.

The game begins with the Hoffman train rolling right on top of the central evidence marker. Justinmatters and I tried to jam things up with a Witchling Stalker and the Guild Hounds but all we managed to do was take out the Toolkit and get our miniatures pulverised by the machine puppeted Peacekeeper. Sonnia does turn one of the Guild Hounds into a replacement Witchling Stalker which promptly fails its terror test from all the scary robots (Hoffman was assimilating terror from the Peacekeeper each turn) and runs for the far table edge.

Hoffman destroys the central evidence marker then companions the Peacekeeper, which charges Santiago. I do get some satisfaction as Nino headshots the Steamborg Executioner – that’s literally the first time I’ve ever managed to get a kill with that ability.

The other Nino is obeyed to shoot the fleeing Witchling Stalker but his shot draws the dreaded black joker. Our Santiago, who improbably survived the onslaught of the Peacekeeper tries and fails 3 times to get out of melee with the beast. Then we get to the real meat of the game – Perdita on Perdita action! Both Ortegas take some heavy damage and burn through all their soulstones, and while neither die, ours is definitely in more trouble. Finally, Francisco is killed by his brother’s impostor.

If things were going against up before (and they were), they get a lot worse now.  Hoffman machine puppets the Peacekeeper to finish off Santiago before stomping over toward the farthest evidence marker, coincidentally in melee range of Nino and the Witchling Handler.  Their Santiago takes out the Witchling Stalker lurking about in their deployment zone.  In fact, the only good thing is that our Perdita runs away very quickly and Sonnia kills the Enslaved Nephilim and puts some wounds on Nino and Santiago.  At this point the game ends before we’re thrashed any more soundly.

Remarkably we’ve only lost 5 – 2 (we get Bodyguard, they get one evidence token and both schemes) though we were definitely in line to be tabled for an 8 – 0 if the game had gone the distance. There are no two ways about it, we were comfortably beaten by better players on that one.

Game 3: Guild vs Neverborn

Strategy: Shared Claim Jump (points available for having the most models in the centre of the board)

So the pairings for the last round were announced, and we were against Barry and Mark again. Oh well, it would have been nice to match up with three different teams, but these guys were great fun to play against so I can’t complain. As a fixed crew tournament, of course both sides were the same.

Schemes: I took Raid against Barry and Justinmatters took Kill Protegé on Mark’s Teddy. On the other side, Barry chose Hold Out against me and Mark selected Kill Protegé on my Witchling Handler (though he could have chosen Nino).

There was a lot of raised terrain on this board, so I decided to make the most of it by putting the Austringer and Nino in elevated positions to make them a bit harder to kill.

As in the first game, turn 1 is just rushing into position and summoning Voodoo Dolls. All the Silurids leap up a level but I have to admit I haven’t a clue why as they all moved down again next turn.

The Voodoo Doll obeys Justinmatters’ Witchling Stalker to head toward the main body of Guild models, then Zoraida realises that she didn’t want to target him anyway, scraps the doll and makes new one, conduiting Santiago. He is obeyed to shoot the Witchling Handler but misses. Sonnia finally does something useful by nuking both Sorrows and turning one of them into a new Witchling Stalker, coincidentally this also puts some wounds on their master. Pandora herself scoot around a bit getting the Stalker and the Handler to beat themselves up a bit with self loathing (killing the former) but crucially I cheat in a red joker on the last incite, leaving her stuck in front of Perdita. A few shots later, Pandora is on 1 wound left with no soulstones, but still alive. Teddy heroically runs to interpose himself before any more shooting can go her way. Santiago then gets 3 trigger happy triggers in a row, blowing the Teddy away before it did anything useful (again). Finally, we all realise that the game will not go past the next turn so most activations are spent running toward the claim jump. Most, that is, with the exception of the Witchling Handler who runs off to hide with 1 wound left and Kill Protegé on her.

Pandora avatars, then kills a Guild Hound. My Witchling Stalker charges Candy and puts a few wounds on her, and catches a whole lot of Neverborn in his disrupt magic aura. Zoraida obeys Bad Juju to kill off the offending Stalker, but his explosion then takes both Pandora and Candy to a single wound remaining and Perdita finishes them off. Time is called and everyone runs for the claim jump marker.  Sadly, I failed to take a photo of the massive scrum around the marker at the end, but we count up who was in there and find that there is one more Neverborn miniature in range than Guild.

So we lose 4 – 2 as they got the Claim Jump and Hold Out; we got Kill Protegé.  Again, I did think that we were doing alright here.  If the game had gone the full number of turns I think our whittling down of the Neverborn would have paid off as we were only 1 Silurid away from getting Raid and had taken almost no casualties of our own.  Oh well.  The game was fun and I don’t want to take anything away from Barry and Mark as they knew what they had to do to get the victory.

With one draw and two defeats, it will come as no surprise that Justinmatters and I came in dead last and were duly handed the wooden spoon certificate.  I had a really nice day out, and I believe that Justinmatters enjoyed himself at his first Malifaux tournament (I am a veteran, of course, having attended one previously!).  I felt that we were doing well enough against Barry and Mark to make them work for their victory points and if things had been a little different we could have taken wins in either of those games.  As for game 2 against the two Davids, they were out of our league; they played better than us in every way and it showed during the game.  Thanks very much to both Davids, Barry and Mark for being fun to play with, and special thanks to ‘the hardest working henchman’ David KS for organising another great event.  I’ll be back!