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.

Hot Topic - Chucking Principles in a Box

Good morning, Malifaux world.

A lot has happened since this blog went to sleep. Wave 5 has been confirmed and much of it appeared on an open playtest. There have been many, many events. It turned out that Americans really can play Malifaux and us Europeans were being sniffy. I know, right?

 

Anyway. I’m making resolutions here and now to try and get the blog active again, so without further ado, here we go.

This post was inspired by a tweet from Tobias Dracup about how he felt that his game had hit a glass ceiling lately. There was a lot of advice given, and most of it was very useful. A tip that stuck out for me included getting practice games against better players, something I’ve long been a big believer in. It’s why I make the hour’s drive north to Leicester every Monday for Squigs night. Well, correction. It’s why I started making that drive. Now I do because they’re my best mates and Monday evenings are the highlight of my week. But you also have the UK number 1 and 2 in regular attendance, along with 4 other event winners and our newer members, nearly all of whom are hitting podiums lately as well (sorry Scott, your quest for relevance continues… have you tried playing Gremlins?).

 

Some of the advice Tobias received was from me – look back at your defeats and see if there are any common themes. Any particular strategies. Any particular factions. Are you getting your scheme choices wrong. And so on. Identify problems and work to fix them.

Primarily I am one of those players that plays the game for fun. I do it for relief. I do it because I enjoy it. I do it because I thrive on the social interactions. But, and I think everyone who plays competitive anything will admit this, I do like to win too. And lately I have started to realise there are games I’m losing regularly, so I took my own advice.

It’ll come as no shock when I admit to being an aggressive player. I love the alpha strike. Applied brutality is a beautiful thing when it works, and a top-ranked player has to do a double-take because the erratic loon across the table has just pulled off a Master assassination run top of turn 2. There are other aggressive players on the scene now – Baby Squig Chris Donaldson, the shop-keeping walking rage machine Karl McConnell of Warzone’s Own and the Gonads’ (I know it’s Faux-mads but Snezzley renamed them and I can’t stop myself…) Tim Britton , to name but 3.

That means that players are adapting to deal with aggression and what I’m seeing a lot of is chess-style piece / model exchange. My opponents accept that at some point, something big and powerful that they don’t want to lose is going to disappear, and potentially a couple of its friends as well. So they set up to make extra sure that the counterattack takes my hitters down too, leaving the shells of both crews to score the remaining points in the game.

 

This is where I tend to lose. That tight, technical last couple of turns where things like activation order and finesse are paramount. Your top tier players are ultimately happy to end up in this situation because they back themselves to win these exchanges.

One game still sticks in my mind against the nicest guy in Malifaux, Rich Bream. My Sonnia crew tore into his Pandora crew with such gusto that I was 7-0 up by the end of turn 2. I was then completely outplayed, didn’t score another point and lost 9-7.

So my areas of improvement are painfully obvious. I need to teach myself some measure of finesse and learn the finer points of the game so that I’m not completely outclassed once I’m done smashing things off the table. That means playing a faction and Master that isn’t particularly forgiving of mistakes, rewards good technical play and proper activation order, and will let me get to grips with these things.

This is where it gets slightly murky. After thinking about it I realised there is a Master that meets those criteria. It’s Pandora.

 

Yes, I know. THAT Pandora. The one that induces epic keyboard-smashing rage. I can hear the indignant squeak from Castle Marshall even as I type this. That same Pandora that I published an article for here on this very blog telling people thinking about playing her to go and buy a WhoreMachine rulebook. The Master that I once bought, painted and sold 6 months later having never played.

But think about it for a second.

She is all about auras, and getting her areas of effect to overlap with those of her crew to catch enemy models between them. That means she needs to be in the right place, and the right place for her is up front. Her wounds count is a pathetic 10 and if you get it wrong, her only defence is a stat of 7. Cock it up, and I’ve seen plenty of Pandora players do so, you’ll lose her and you’ll lose her early.

The activation order has to be right in order to get that placement for her. Fears Given Form, the Neverborn upgrade that forces difficult Defence duels on activation with pain if you fail, is a double-edged sword for that reason because it affects both friend and foe. Get your bubble wrong and you could potentially have to take all those tests with your own crew, and Neverborn aren’t renowned for their staying power.

 

That lack of staying power is why, in my view, Neverborn aren’t a very forgiving faction. If you screw up then you can lose models to a single activation from your opponent. But get it right, and have those cogs turning properly, and they are very, very strong.

So I’ve decided to risk the nerd rage and play some Pandora. She ticks the boxes I need to be ticked in order to learn, and her way of coming at your opponent sideways appeals to me.

 

I’m aware of the Negative Play Experience potential and will be doing my best to mitigate it. Paralyse builds don’t appeal to me in the slightest for that very reason. I’ll be more than happy to talk things through with my opponent after the game, assuming they didn’t kick her head in. And I’ll make sure before we get going that they know what to look out for.

Ultimately though I think this experiment will be worth it. I need to learn, and Pandora will teach me. And along the way, through my own thundering incompetence or post-game chats, I hope a lot of the myths about her can be deconstructed and she won’t be so scary for people in the future. And if they prove true, at least I’ll have facts and evidence on my side rather than Internet dogma!