Man Behind the Mask

Having returned to Guild, one of the first Masters I’ve gotten back onto the table has been the Governor’s Secretary, one Lucius Mattheson.

 

Lucius and I have history together. We won a tournament way back in July 2015, which remains the event I’ve had to work hardest at. The target numbers Lucius need to hit or caused his crew to need to hit were that bit too high to be reliable, and the consequences of failure were a Paralysed model because he uses Terrifying checks on his own crew to make them do things. He was also heavily restricted in what he could order around. Only Minions who weren’t Austringers. Nothing else. So getting that particular mess over the line was very hard work but still very rewarding.

It was an odd situation. Lucius’ backstory and fluff is brilliant, and in my opinion his story in Crossroads (M2E book 2) is the standout of any of the Master stories. His crew box looks lovely. His rules had some great ideas. But they just didn’t work properly, and we all really wanted to see a strong Lucius on the table. I know of a lot of new players who picked up his crew based on the imagery and aesthetics and ended up being bitterly disappointed.

Since then though, the January 2017 errata has happened. Lucius’ core mechanics were unchanged but the target numbers were changed, the models he could influence were changed and a very useful action became a 0.

The difference has been night and day. Dave Laing from 2 Guys 1 Paintpot up in Scotland (aka the Scottish Wizard) was the first person to pick up ‘new’ Lucius and he’s done really well with him. There was an utter schooling of my Ramos crew in there as well, and I remember saying afterwards “Lucius didn’t do anything that well before…” shortly before taking off the last of my models.

 

So I finished painting my Lucius model and have given him another go. Lots of test games and club games so far, culminating in using him on the top table at a 48-player event yesterday and winning handily.  

I’ve had a lot of tweets and messages asking for my thoughts on him, so here we go. Most of them are on crew selection – with support masters like Lucius, you want to make sure you’ve got the right models for them to support. Most of the battle with him is making sure you’ve got the tools to do the job on the table.

Anyway.

Panzer’s dos and do nots for new Lucius!

Painting by the incredibly talented Elinore, aka SybariteVI

 

Do… treat him like a new Master.

If you’ve ever played pre-errata Lucius, put all that out of your head and start afresh. The target numbers on his actions are different. Guild Intelligence, which essentially confers Don’t Mind Me on all friendly models within aura 6, is now a 0 action. He confers positive flips on more models. He can use his Commanding Presence ability on any type of model, not just minions. There is now way more depth on that card of his.

Don’t… get carried away with Mimics and Guardsmen.

Yes, it’s cool that he can bring in out of faction Mimics and Guardsmen, so Guild have Doppelgangers and Mr Graves whilst Neverborn can bring over Austringers. But they’re all quite fragile models. If you build a crew of them then you run the very severe risk of it all collapsing like the England cricket team’s batting order. And that’s a very bad thing.

Only bring over what you actually need.

 

Do… use the Scribe.

This little guy has gone from being a bit of a joke to arguably the best use for 2SS in the entire game. He’s a Minion. If he’s within aura 6 of Lucius he can take Interact actions. If Lucius is engaged then the Scribe can push him clear (and the action is called Do You Have an Appointment? How thematic is that!). And best of all, any of your models within aura 3 get +1 to their defence just for standing there.

 

Don’t… over-rely on Witchling Thralls.

Don’t get me wrong, these bruisers are fantastic models. 9 SS gets you 12 Wounds Impossible to Wound with a strike that does 3/4/6 and built in triggers to either force the enemy to discard or to heal the Thrall. And in a Lucius crew he can attack 5 times (his 2 AP, Lucius using both Commanding Presence and then Issue Order, and a scheme marker being dropped nearby triggering Prone to Frenzy) at positive flips (Lucius’ Elite Training aura).

BUT.

If they come under sustained attack then they will go down. Pandora tears them to pieces in a single activation. A big beatstick will rip chunks off. And so on. For that reason I would be very wary about taking 2 in the same crew. That would be 18SS of squishy before you’ve started adding in the support pieces.

Taking 1 Thrall allows you to add some beef in there. A Peacekeeper. The Judge. A Guardian. The Brutal Emissary. Basically something that can take the hits from the enemy and just grin, and ideally do some damage back.

 

Do… test your support Henchmen.

I firmly believe that much of the strength in the Guild is in the Henchmen. Just about all of them can throw out damage. But they also all have support abilities too, whether it’s as obvious as Francisco’s El Mayor ability or as discrete as Dr Grimwell’s Doctor’s Orders.

My two support favourites are Master Queeg and Allison Dade. Queeg is a model I’ve spoken about before, but to recap briefly his ability to carry Promises is a real bonus. He has a very good shooting attack with his pistol, a whip with built in triggers to push the targets around, and if he walks he can make friendly models take 0 actions. Hello, Guild Pathfinders summoning 2 Clockwork Traps per turn. Plus with the beautifully named Welcome to Hell and I am Your Devil, he can put an aura up that allows friendly models to take 1 Interact actions for a 0. Combine that with Guild Intelligence and a model can double-walk into the auras and place a scheme marker right next to an enemy model if you need to, or flip that troublesome Squatter’s Rights marker the enemy thought they had locked down.

Allison Dade was only released recently but I don’t know a Guild player who doesn’t own her. She’s that good. She’s normally Fast herself, and her passive auras can either heal friendly models that are attacking or damage enemy models that are attacking. With her attacks, she can hand out Slow and damage enemy models and do something else horrible to them like forcing them to discard scheme markers. I’m still getting to grips with her but there’s a lot of potential there!

 

Don’t… overdo the support models.

I know, I just said take some. Some is the key word there. Lucius has access to so many outstandingly good support models it is very possible to spend 50SS on nothing else. What you end up with is a crew that will only have 1 or 2 models that can actually threaten anybody. Lucius is a great support master who can make models take actions. His forte is taking one of his AP and turning it into 2 or 3 AP split across models. But you have to make sure he has multiple models in there that you want to take actions with!

The key to it is knowing what you want the crew to do and then taking the best enablers for that role. For example, Terracotta Warriors are great at swapping upgrades around and protecting a Minion or Enforcer model – if you’re starting with the right upgrades and your models don’t need his help, don’t take him. If you don’t have shooting Guardsmen and don’t want to summon Guild Guard, don’t take Dashel. If you’re running with minimal upgrades and mostly Minions without 0 actions, you won’t get value out of Master Queeg. And so on.

 

 

 

Anyway. I'm off to pretend to be hard at work at the day job. Hopefully this gives any potential Lucius players some food for thought. Whilst it's been written with Guild Lucius in mind, a lot of it does translate to Neverborn as well.

PanzerTech - Arcanists

One of the things I enjoy most about Malifaux are the different approaches that people can take to playing the same model. Tying into that, I love finding particular combinations that make a very unloved model suddenly the focus of my opponent when they realise what I’m up to!

My most infamous creation is probably still the Governor’s Proxy / Ama No Zako routine. Yes, it’s cornercase. But it worked.

For those who don’t know because they’ve never seen him, the Guild generic totem Governor’s Proxy has a front of card ability that states if he’s killed, the model that killed him has to take a WP duel or be immediately killed by the Governor-General. So if you Obey an enemy model to kill the Proxy, then you’re in control of that subsequent WP duel and can choose to fail it, resulting in the enemy model being killed. Luckily for most people the Guild are very short on enemy Obeys, meaning the only one I could actually make use of was Ama No Zako’s 0 action. It was still enough for the Nekimas, Gracies, Lazarii and Langstons I killed with it before people caught on and started resisting the Obey when the Governor’s Proxy was standing next to their key model…

Until fairly recently, when real life forced their sale, I was playing Arcanists. They gave me so many opportunities to experiment and dream up strange creations. It was great fun. They’re a faction that has some ridiculously powerful top tier models, but also a second tier containing models that most factions would take in a heartbeat. And it was those where I turned my attention.

Normally I shy away from any kind of podcast, article or blog that tells you how to play the game. Each player is different. Different playing styles, different interpretations of strength, different things they’re trying to get out of the game. Not to mention the fact that between all the random strategies, schemes and deployments, no two games of Malifaux will ever be identical, and what works in one game may not work in another.

But I’m going to break my own rule a bit, and share some of the things I came up with playing Arcanists. They may not work for you. My goal is to get people thinking and looking at models they wouldn’t normally look at, and maybe you can come up with a few tricks of your own as a result!

Marcus and Night Terrors in Interference / Recon

 

Most people see Arcanists in Interference, they think Ramos. They think Armour and anti-armour and relic hammers and summoning. They’re not expecting Marcus. 

They’re probably also not expecting just how fast a Marcus crew is. Marcus himself can go to WK8. Most of his crew can Leap. There are a lot of WK6 models in there to support. In a nutshell, it’s really not difficult to get models into different table quarters.

The issue is, it’s easy to run off and starting eating the opponent’s models. I know, I did this a lot. Enter the humble Night Terror. A 3SS Resurrectionist Beast that’s Incorporeal, Hard to Kill and 4 Wounds. That means pretty much regardless of what’s trying to hit it, they’re going to need 2 hits. But a Night Terror’s most annoying characteristic is that it’s a Minion. That’s right, the WK6 Incorporeal ghost bat can hold table quarters single-handedly. Ditto Stash markers and Turf War / Extraction. If you need to make sure you can still hold your own quarters, they’re an excellent choice to hide out of sight or take in multiples to flood a quarter.

They’re also a dirt cheap activation that you can burn early, making it that little bit easier to pick your targets with Marcus or a Sabretooth Cerberus.

Anglica as a Practiced Production Caddy

Practiced Production is an upgrade I’ve actually asked the games design team to take a look at. Of all the stunts I’ve pulled, including Pandora and the 6-model Justice crew of fleshtearing death, Practiced Production has earned me the most grief from my opponents. And I understand entirely why.

Place a scheme marker next to a friendly model when you activate the model carrying the upgrade, then make sure you have a different marker to pick up at the end of the turn. That’s it. It’s amazingly good.

 

The restriction is, it can only be taken by Showgirls. Which limits you to Colette, Cassandra, Carlos Vasquez or Angelica. Personally I find Colette’s slots are already taken when I play her, and for Cassandra and Carlos to be at their best they need to be potentially exposed to danger and using their AP for their own benefit. If it goes wrong and you lose them, then you find yourself struggling to get those markers down that you need.

Angelica however is a support piece. Her signature action is amazing – target a friendly non-Leader model within 8”, and push it up to 5” in any direction. The only restriction is you can’t target the same model with it twice a turn, but that’s it. No card flips, it just happens. That has so many potential applications in a game about movement and positioning that I found myself taking her an awful lot. She really helps in a lot of ways, from giving Sabretooth Cerberuses and Howard Langston a 5” head start, to pulling more fragile models like Oxfordian Mages or Brass Arachnids out of danger.

 

She works from behind the front line and benefits from Disguised, meaning she’s less likely to get attacked than her more illustrious companions. It also means she’s less likely to have to use her own AP for self-preservation, so if there’s no one else to drop that scheme marker to keep your Practiced Production marker, she’s quite happy to do it.

 A quick word on dealing with Practiced Production – don’t try and catch the scheme runners. Malifaux Raptors and Wind Gamin are extremely fast and if played right, nigh-on impossible to actually catch up to. Instead, focus on dealing with the model who has the upgrade. They’re not going to be the toughest model in the world to kill. Just make sure you’ve thought about how to get round their defences – Disguised, Southern Charm or Burning Armour – and you’ll be fine.

Ramos and Ice Golems

 

This was inspired by Justin Gibbs on Before We Begin, when he talked about using Ramos to buff Coryphee. Of course me being me and seeing that Ice Golems have a SMASH attack that does 9/10/12, my mind immediately turned to making best use of it. And Viktor is your man.

The Under Pressure upgrade gives friendly Constructs in aura 8 positive flips to melee attacks. If you’re spending 3AP to launch a mega-attack, positive flips are very nice. Even an Ice Golem’s standard attack does 3/3/6 with a built-in trigger for Slow. That’s not exactly a pleasant experience for the opponent either!

 

I also found a way around the Ice Golems’ main weakness, that frankly pathetic DF2. Metal Gamin. Protection of Metal will give the Golem DF6. Golems can Toss the Gamin around to make sure they’re in the right place to give that protection, and don’t be afraid to Reactivate a Metal Gamin with the Brass Arachnid to set up a bubble. Once the condition is on the Golem, 1 Metal Gamin can keep it on 2 Ice Golems by standing in the middle of them.

The other bit where Ramos does his thing is Field Generator. Use 1AP to cast Arcing Screen, giving positive flips to defence to friendly models in aura 6.

 

Line it all up right, and even I managed to pull it off so it’s not as hard as it looks, and those DF2 Ice Golems are suddenly DF6 with positive flips on defence. That’s a whole different ball game.

If you’re worried about all that tech being expensive, don’t be. What does Ramos also do? That’s right. He summons spiders off scrap markers. So take Mobile Toolkit, junk it first turn, and then your spider engine is off and running meaning that you’re not behind in the activation stakes either. Your standard Steam Arachnid is a surprisingly good scheme runner too.

Oiran with Colette

 

Very few models sell as poorly as the Oiran. But every Colette player should have one in their arsenal because they are extremely useful.

For starters, they buff the WP of all friendly living models within aura 6. WP is a huge problem in a Colette Showgirl crew – other than Colette herself, pretty much every other model in the crew is WP5. That makes them very vulnerable to being pulled around the place, and can make Terrifying models a particularly thorny problem. When the Oiran appears and nudges that up to WP6 it makes a real difference.

She’s also a Showgirl. That means she can benefit from Colette’s Showgirl tricks for Interacting and teleporting.

Her attacks are quite useful too. Her Lure is still CA8, better than a Rotten Belle’s now. Yes, it needs a suit, but if Cassandra is around to Understudy, well, that’s just a Soulstone away. But the real gold here is the Unbeknownst trigger that she has, that gives an enemy model a condition that prevents them from attacking models with the Showgirl characteristic. Force that through and you can turn off an enemy beater for a turn, and tell me that’s not worth it just to see your opponent’s face.

Plus, the models look lovely and paint up brilliantly. Bonus.

Cojo

The big monkey doesn’t get a lot of love at all. He comes with the Marcus box and if he didn’t, I do wonder how many would be in circulation. But he’s hilarious with scheme markers.

 

 

I’ve used him against Parker, Titania and Colette in particular, and in situations where I think my opponent will be clustering scheme markers. It’s pretty simple – Cojo rushes the pile of markers, does his 0 action Mark Territory, then picks them all up and gains Defensive for each marker removed. Your opponent has probably worked extremely hard to get that many markers in position for schemes like Set Up, Dig Their Graves and Claim Jump. Then along comes Cojo who promptly piddles on them, and then flips a load of cards to protect himself when the counterattack comes.

He’s also great for setting up pounces, Rougarou Pinball with Marcus being a particular favourite. His built in trigger on melee attacks pushes the victim 5” in any direction. His other 0 is Rude Sign Language, pushing all enemy models away with no resist. Is that a dead wolf waiting to welcome the target with open jaws…? For the same reason he’s great for knocking models around for strategy purposes.

 

I like the upgrade Well Rehearsed on him too. Cojo has Hard to Kill already, which can annoy people. They get downright angry when they shenanigan to take his last Wound only for him to discard Well Rehearsed and grin like only a giant gorilla can. Plus the pushes he can get from markers being dropped nearby can make him even more of a menace, and guarantee some more Defensive from Mark Territory.

Ice Dancers

I won’t lie, I love these girls.

Their main use is as a ludicrously fast scheme runner. Double walk 12”, push another 4”, and if you’ve cast Work the Crowd they then drop a scheme marker 16” away from where they started. Wow.

 

I found them genuinely capable killers too. As they come on their card, they’re ML6 with a 2/3/6 damage track and can push away after making their strikes. Have a strategically placed Ice Gamin with Bite of Winter, and that track goes to a faintly ludicrous 3/4/7.

Then you have Ice Path markers. Place these down, and if the enemy tries to finish an action on top of them, you can push them 3” immediately. OK, it works on you too, but if you want to deny charges or block off things like Squat markers, the Ice Path is brilliant.

Add in the usual Frozen Heart benefits as well as the fact that they’re Showgirls, and you get a package that’s worth much more than 6SS, particularly to Rasputina and Colette.

Ironsides and the Arcane Emissary

 

Poor old Bullocks gets a lot of grief at the moment. Despite the fact that he’s far and away the coolest model some players actually rate him as the weakest of the Emissaries. These people are wrong – it’s clearly Mysterious, ask Neverborn players – but his Walk of 4 is a bit pathetic.  

Cue Toni. For starters, Ironsides’ conflux is incredibly useful. If she activates within aura of the Emissary she gains Adrenaline +1. So that’s a head start if you want to start chaining punches, and a real boon for Rush ‘Em which is brilliant.

 

She also has an action called You Lookin’ At Me, which she can use to force models to push their Charge towards her, and they then take a melee strike against her if in range. That’s really good with the Arcane Emissary. Not only is his charge a monstrous 10, but when he gets there he doesn’t have a melee action to hit her with. His main attack is a Cast, and his big melee strike only works on the charge. Great all round.

Ironsides and Johan

This one is probably pretty obvious, but damn it’s effective.

 

Ironsides has an aura called Hand Picked Men – if an M&SU model nearby has taken any damage then they gain positive flips to attack and damage. Johan has Solidarity, meaning he gains positive flips to attack if in aura of M&SU. Both Ironsides and Johan are M&SU.

It gets even funnier if Johan’s target is a Tyrant or Construct. On my way to victory at a tournament, Johan took a wound from a throwaway attack from a Shadow Effigy, then planted himself next to Shen Long. Double positive to attack, triple positive to damage, with Flurry. The Monk of Many Pyjamas did not enjoy that at all.

Back in the Box - Panzer's Going Home

Been doing a lot of thinking lately. That would probably explain the thick smell of burning over Northamptonshire at the moment. But there have been reasons behind it.

 

There are things going on in the background that I won’t bore you with here. That’s meant looking again at what I get from gaming. For me, gaming is the release. It’s my social interaction. The high points of my week. For those few hours a week I get to stop being Ben the apparently unemployable finance bod, and take on the Panzer persona to play games and hang out with friends.

The Pandora / Neverborn experiment has been very hard work. Trying to pick up a new faction competitively whilst working out schemes, and play in a completely different style to my usual, is tough at the best of times. Never mind when there’s so much going on behind the scenes. So whilst it was a good idea, and I will come back to it, right now I need to be playing games my way.

 

Deep down I’m still a Guild player. Since that first event with them, when the only Guild Master I had was Lady Justice, there was a smattering of other stuff and nothing had even seen the tin of Chaos Black, I’ve not clicked with a faction to quite the same extent. I won that event – my first ever podium at a Malifaux event, never mind win. Guild are not a fashionable choice, they’ve never been top tier, but they and I have very similar aims in mind. Wrap up the points whilst putting as many things in the ground as possible, and if we can do that whilst throwing curve balls at the opponent (“I’ve never seen that model before, what’s it doing?”) so much the better.

 

So the Guild are coming back out. Will be dusting off their case tonight and throwing them straight back on the table at Squigs. A lot of the Squigs are synonymous with particular factions – Ben Halford is Resser Squig. BluTack is Arcanist Squig who dabbles. Joel is and always will be associated with Neverborn, even if he pops up elsewhere for a while. Brooks is inherent randomness and crazy. And then there’s me with Guild.

Another change I made was to take myself off the rankings. I’m always an advocate of rankings, my events are submitted to rankings and I have absolutely no issue with them at all. My broken brain just struggles sometimes to cope with the fact that once upon a time I was ranked very highly and now I’m not. At my peak I scraped inside the top 10 at no. 9. I qualified for Masters in the 2015 season having missed out by less than 1 point in 400 the season before. Right now, just finishing the 3 games of a tournament is an achievement, never mind living up to past glories. When I know I can finish events without the mental demons resurfacing mid-game, then I’ll start worrying about where I stand in the rankings again.

 

So yeah. Pandora is back in her box for a while. She’ll be back, that’s for sure, but for the meantime I’ve gone home. I’m a Guild player again. And it feels good.

 

 

Tournament Report - English GT, 1st & 2nd July 2017

This isn’t going to be a long blow-by-blow account of games played, more a general write-up of how things went for me at the English GT. This is partly because my notes are atrocious and partly due to me trying to mentally suppress what happened…

 

Anyway. These were the games. I took Box Opens Pandora for all 5 rounds but changed the crew up on a pretty regular basis depending on what I thought I needed to get the schemes done.

Round 1: Alex Hill, Neverborn Lynch. 3-6 loss

Round 2: Nick Featherstone, Guild Lucius. 8-8 draw

Round 3: Lee Battrick, Guild Lucius. 9-2 win

Round 4: Ross Hill, Voices Pandora. 4-7 loss

Round 5: Ben Leslie, Zipp. 1-6 loss

There was a pretty common thread running through these games. Apart from round 3 (sorry Lee!) my scheme selection was awful. I always seemed to find myself wishing I’d taken something else at some point, or I’d picked a crew with a particular scheme in mind and then not taken the right scheme or misplaced the key model.

 

Prime example would be round 5, Stake a Claim. I had Pandora with Fugue State, Doppleganger and Primordial Magic. For those who don’t know, that means potentially 7 casts of Nullify to make enemy models Insignificant until they kill whoever cast it on them. Good luck Staking a Claim to anything at that point.

Only, I got obsessed with melting Zipp with Pandora. I did it, but by that point in turn 2 the Gremlins had 4 Claim markers down and my Silurids were dead. So there’s 4 strategy points I’m not getting. And I had Frame for Murder on the Primordial Magic thinking it would be target number 1 if it was stopping models interacting. Funnily enough it wasn’t because I hadn’t nullified anything until it was too late (edit: it's been pointed out this was an even worse cock-up as you can't take Frame on a Peon). And when you plan to take Inspection with 2 Hexed Amongst You Waldgeists and then only take 1 Waldgeist, don’t then take Inspection.

 

So yeah. Moral of the story is to think scheme choice through a lot more than I have been. Inspection is a poor choice with Neverborn due to their lack of solidity, but it’s been fine with Guild and Arcanists either due to massed ranks of models or Armour. Leave Your Mark was such a gimme with Arcanists thanks to Practiced Production, but Neverborn like most factions will need to take an actual scheme runner to get it done. And I don’t know Neverborn well enough yet to identify which models straddle that key model / disposable model line well enough to warrant being a Frame target. More homework needed.

Pandora herself is coming together, and I’m starting to work out what she can do and what she can’t. A key part of what she does is her 0 action Incite which she uses WP for, so she can push through Fading Memory if she casts successfully. There’s a trigger on a tome to let her do it again, so if you hit the trigger and cast successfully twice then you have control over when your opponent activates 2 of their models and Pandora has pushed 4” twice. Canny opponents will try to stop that first Incite to slow her right down.

 

The bane of Pandora is attacks with a stat of 7. I’m happy to rush up and engage enemy hitters with Ml6 because if I keep a 13 in hand, I know she can get away thanks to Fading Memory (which by the way isn’t a trigger, so tough luck Joss). If the enemy model has a stat of 7 then they can force through the hit meaning Pandora can’t push away. And that in turn causes her huge problems because she’s now taking damage from a heavy hitter and only has 10 Wounds.

What Pandora loves are enemy models with healthy damage tracks. In the 2 games against Guild Lucius I faced 3 Witchling Thralls in total. None of the 3 made it to turn 3. She tore Zipp apart because Up We Go is a melee attack and he’s WP6, meaning she had a stat advantage and his 10 Wounds didn’t last long when he was repeatedly beating his head against the ground and taking Misery damage in the process.

 

A big problem I had initially was what to do when there weren’t any big beatstick targets for Pandora to deal with. But after playing a few games that’s getting easier – just stand in the middle of a clump of lesser models. When they activate they have to take a Fears Given Form DF14 duel or take 3 damage. If they try to hit Pandora or walk around her, TN13 Horror duel which will result in Misery damage. Should they want to disengage she’s stopping them with a 7 stat. And Inflict, an attack which forces WP duels for all enemy models in a 4” pulse or take 2 separate lots of 1 damage, will shred an opposing hand trying to keep things alive. All that combined is usually more than enough to see off several 4 or 5 Wound models at once, which takes the pressure right off your own crew.

 

 

Funnily enough that’s the other bit I need to work on. I have a few tricks that I’m happy with – Rougarou pinball, catapulting multiple Teddies, laying out a string of Paranormal markers – but it’s the bread and butter of the crew that I can’t seem to stick on. I think I need to start fixing elements for a few games instead of swapping so many models so often. What are the advantages of Sorrows over Insidious Madnesses. At what point do Changelings factor in. Who do I want to support Pandora in the ‘horribly murdering the enemy’ role. And so on.

 

So that’s where I am at the moment. English GT was a great event, and although I got kicked in the head for most of it I’m hoping the lessons learned will stick with me long enough to make it worthwhile.

Tournament Review - English GT, 1st & 2nd July 2017

Venue: Wayland Gaming Centre, Hockley, Essex

Tournament Organiser: Stuart 'Snezzley' Snares

I don't do many 2-day events any more. Between my bipolar struggles and an employment status that I can only describe as 'in flux', there are a great many benefits to being back in my own bed at night. With that said, I wouldn't miss the English GT. As soon as it was announced I was one of the first to pay up and Snezz delivered again.

There were a few technical Gremlins as well as the ones on tables, but they were sorted out quickly. We all had plenty of space, round times were 2 hours and if you couldn't access Bag O Tools then Snezz was quite happy to stand at the front and bellow out the draw.

I did love the atmosphere. Snezz is one of those TOs that's just as likely to be involved in the good-natured teasing as any of the players and it filtered down to most of the field. Certainly on and around the tables I played at, there were no game faces in sight.

Special nod to the painting competition. Lunch on day 1, any entrants set out a single miniature for the players' choice voting. Lunch on day 2, it was full crews for the judges' choice. I did like that idea, means that there's plenty of time to look at everything.

Prizes were generous, considering the low ticket price for the weekend. Nice big trophies for 1st, 2nd and 3rd, players and judges painting, mugs for best in faction and a hotly contested spoon, and what I can only describe as a metric f*ck-ton of store credit that was raffled off. One slight gripe was no best sports, but I appreciate that there aren't many TOs who give that out, and in the Malifaux scene pretty much everybody is awesome anyway.

All in all? Bloody well done Mr Snares. See you next year.

Runners and Riders

Wooden Spoon: Tom Nickerson, Guild

Best Painted (Players Choice): James Henley, Guild with Hoffman's Avatar. And bloody amazing it is too! Check him out on Twitter @henners900.

Best Painted (Judges Choice): Martin Jones, Gremlins. Seriously, the bases on this crew are the best I've ever seen. Martin has stacked them with swamp detritus then poured resin on top so that each model looks like they're standing on a slice of the Bayou. I don't know how he did it but combine it with how well the figures are painted, it looks incredible.
Best 10 Thunders: Troy 'Default' Ashdown

Best Gremlins: Martin Jones

Best Guild: Matt Lewin

Best Outcasts: Tom Thorpe

Best Neverborn: Lukasz 'Lost to Joel But Nicked His Trophy' Rozanski (I kid - enjoy Cap'n!)

3rd Place: Josh Leak, Resurrectionists

2nd Place: James 'Bridesmaid' Doxey, Arcanists (or is it Archanists?)

1st Place: Jamie Varney, Resurrectionists

Big congratulations to everyone!

Wax Lyrical - Oxfordian Mages

So in keeping with my desire to give me as many excuses to write as possible, here’s a new thing. Extolling the virtues of models I feel are worth another look. This isn’t a ‘here’s the card, here’s a walkthrough of everything on it’ style of rundown, more of a commentary on strengths, compensating for weaknesses and good uses.

The first subjects under the spotlight are the Oxfordian Mages for Arcanists. Wyrd have given these guys two different sets of 0-cost upgrades that they can carry in an attempt to boost them up, but to be honest I’m not entirely sure they needed them.

 

 

Anyway.

So what do you get when you hire these guys and girls? Well, for starters, these are one of the few models that you really should hire all 3 models from that boxed set. With the Temporary Shielding upgrade they gained, if you hire all 3 you get a discount, bringing their cost down from 6SS to 5SS. You can have 2 for 12SS or 3 for 15SS – for me personally that’s really a no-brainer.

 

Another compelling reason to hire multiples is how they work. Thanks to their front of card abilities, they gain an extra Tome for each other Academic within aura 3, a keyword that they have themselves, up to 2 extra Tomes. And boy can they make use of those Tomes.

Their main cast action, Elemental Bolt, is a fairly lacklustre Ca6 2/3/4 damage. But it has 4 triggers, each of which require a single Tome and so become built-in with 1 other nearby Mage. They are; ignore Armour, hand out Burning +1, hand out Slow, Push target model 2” in any direction for each Tome in the final total. 

 

And that’s what you take them for. The Mages are range 10 and can Furious Cast, so you can access that toolbox an awful lot of times in a given turn and from a healthy distance away. It means that they become control pieces as well as raw damage dealers. Models that rely on their Armour won’t want to risk it. A model in cover can find themselves pushed out of cover by one Mage with Focus so their friends can Furious Cast a target that thought it was safe. They can sap AP by handing out Slow with reckless abandon, making them an even more irritating proposition in strategies like Stake a Claim and Squatter’s Rights. The Push (which comes after succeeding, not after damaging) can really mess with positioning. And Hard to Kill can be neatly circumvented with a timely Burning +1 finishing the model off at the end of the turn.

That versatility is another good reason to take them – they’re a good pick pretty much regardless of the Master you take, with strong synergies with 3 in particular.

 

Sandeep loves him some Oxfordian Mages, and they love Sandeep. As Academics they can copy his actions, including the 0 actions to Place and Interact. Sandeep can, via an upgrade, take a 1 action that means Academics within aura don’t randomise when casting into combat. And he can drop a Gamin in next to them that gives them positive flips when they attack. That will really hurt your opponent.

That ability to drop Burning, and the fact that they’re fairly self-sufficient, makes them a very strong pick with Kaeris. They don’t need her to be nearby, leaving her free to exploit her speed and manoeuvrability, whilst you can set models up for a going-over from Immolate or Truth in Flame.

 

The M&SU keyword also chains nicely with Ironsides and Ramos – Oxfordian Mages get a positive flip to WP duels if in line of an M&SU Master or Henchman. Situationally that can be really useful, and means they’re a lot less bothered by Terrifying models than other models might be.

Ironsides also benefits due to Warding Runes, as the only Master who can take it. As well as giving Counterspell, this upgrade keys off a set of 0 upgrades the Oxfordian Mages can take; Blood Ward, Doom Ward and Nemesis Ward. Each of these grants the carrying Mage a benefit, but also confers a benefit to the Warding Runes carrier. If Ironsides is within aura 10 of the Mages, and that’s a big aura, the benefits stack up – immunity to conditions and pulse damage, Regeneration +1, and positive flips to all defence duels caused by the enemy Master. For a Master who wants to be in the middle of the enemy, one of those is useful. All of them vastly increases Ironsides’ survivability.

 

Warding Runes can also be taken by any Henchman. I can tell you from experience, if you think Joss or Dr Sokolov is tanky off his base card, try adding all of those benefits to him as well. Ditto for the Great Carlos Vasquez.

Now look at all of the above and tell me you think the Oxfordian Mage is overcosted at 6SS, never mind the 5SS you’ll likely pay.

Don’t get me wrong, there are weaknesses, some of them quite glaring. But they’re not insurmountable problems.

The first one is that 5 Wounds. Most big hitters will just need a moderate damage to one-shot-kill a Mage. With that said, they do have Arcane Shield; as long as they haven’t activated, they reduce incoming damage by 1, and this can reduce to 0.

He’ll kill me but I have to tell this story – the first time I got a win over Joel Henry, in 3 years of trying, Pandora pelted into the middle of my Mage battery and went Inflict-Inflict-Inflict. That forces models within a pulse to take a WP duel or take 1 damage, then an additional 1 damage for failing the duel near Pandora. The Mages hadn’t activated yet and therefore ignored all the damage thanks to Arcane Shield. I found this really quite amusing. Joel did not.

 

Oxfordian Mages also gain the Temporary Shielding ability off the upgrade of the same name – discard a card and the upgrade to reduce incoming damage by 2. This will combo with Arcane Shield to reduce by 3, and as you choose which order to apply the reduction you can apply the Temporary Shielding first and then the Arcane Shield to reduce 3 damage to 0 if you really need to avoid triggers, for example.

Those abilities are nice and they’ll slow down the opposition, but they don’t help weather a storm. If your opponent wants your Mages dead, they’re going to die. But hopefully they’ll survive long enough for the reinforcements to arrive, or to have achieved their role.

 

The other main weakness you’ll encounter is the traditional bane of casting models – if they’re engaged in melee then they’re nowhere near as effective.

 With the Oxfordian Mages, that’s not entirely true. It certainly isn’t true for whichever Mage is carrying the Blood Ward upgrade, as their Cast gains a claw which means it can be used in melee. There have been a few opponents who have gone in to tie the Mages up only for the Blood Mage to Furious Cast at point blank range and either remove the threat or use all those Tomes to Push it clear.

 

All Mages have a 0 action that they can use in melee. Granted, a Ca6 attack with a 1/2/3 damage spread isn’t all that. But it does get interesting with triggers. 1 Tome means you get a Soulstone back after damaging. 2 Tomes knocks the damage track up to 2/4/5. And 3 Tomes gives you Deathtouch – the target must discard two cards or two Soulstones, or be dead. So they’re no pushovers.

I won’t lie, using Oxfordian Mages properly takes some practice. You want them close together but not in such a clump that one model can neutralise all 3. Their casts are projectiles so you need to be wary of cover and randomisation (unless Sandeep because Sandeep). And they’re not particularly quick. But if you can get the knack of it then you have a little powerhouse in your crew for the princely sum of 15SS.

Got a model that you want to Wax Lyrical about? Drop me a line! If you’re happy to write it I’m happy to post it.