ToMB2 - Back...alley

It's been far too long, but I finally got some inspiration to finish what I started.

 Since I last wrote I have been to a few events with ressers and basically got a bit sick of them. There is nothing wrong with them, not at all, but the basic problem was that I didn't have the options I'd like to play with. Since then I have been to a bunch of events with Gremlins and really enjoyed trying out new things. The last event, however, saw me throw in the gauntlet as "guild". For those who don't know my "guild" crews are Lucius and McMorning with what they can take out of faction. I had masses of fun with this and, to my amazement, came third overall. This meant not only do I come home with some keen for McMorning but also with some shiny new Iron Zombies, who are possibly some of my favourite models in the range. All of this was enough to force me to get my paintbrush out and paint something fabulous. Below you can see the results.

So what now? Well I have missed my target by god knows how long and I don't even know how long is left for the next one. I think I am going to need to back out. It's not so much not hitting the deadline, but that I want to be able to do what I feel like. It's a shame, as I like this sort of thing, but what's the point of a hobby if you're not enjoying it?

That all being said, at this precise moment in time I am enjoying it. Next up I have a few options. For the same reasons I have given above I don't want to commit to anything specifically, but options include:

Nicodem
Mortimer
Vulture
3* Punk Zombies
The Iron Zombies
2*Performers

So in short: I may or may not do some hobby which may be for my Ressers.

It makes me laugh that this used to be daily. I am not sure I'll do another one. I guess being employed takes a lot of time. Go figure. For those that have kept up with it thanks for reading, hopefully I'll see you across the gaming table soon.

ToMB2 - Better Late than Never

Somehow, after having painted 3/4 models for this month in one week I managed to actually fail to meet my target for this month. Partly this was because the second nurse didn't really have much chance of making it into a Seamus crew, partly because I went on holiday. Enough of excuses though, I have finally got round to finish this questionable medical practitioner.

the offending nurse

So what am I going to do next? Well the plan was always to carry on painting the rest of the crew box. That is McMorning, Sebastian and the Chihuahua. The thing is, despite having lots of fun converting the doctor and being very grateful to Maria for providing the metal replacement to the BO plagues pooch after I stuff the plastic one in Seamus' bag, I didn't have a lot of love for anything other than the hatter.

This months pledge

So have I been converted? I am not entirely sure. One of the things I found about Seamus' as I have him now is that I am really happy with the list... which somehow is a bad thing. I really like making lists, discovering new synergies and concocting maniacal plans. I kind of feel stuck in a rut. Branching off into another master could be a way to fix that. One thing I definitely want to do is get Molly, but until she reveals herself I am wondering if McMorning could provide some release.

What I plan to paint this month

The thing is, though, I have not had any inspiration at all to make lists with him. Currently the plan is to use 2 Nurses, 2 performers, 2 flesh constructs, chihuahua, canine remains and sebastian. I honestly have no idea what I would even consider taking instead. Perhaps part of the problem is that I really only want to work in plastics, made even more important by the name tags that I have been putting on models bases. The other problem is that the Gremlins are calling to me again and I have been having lots of fun playing with them instead. It is possible, however, that once I put some paint to him I will feel compelled to put him on the table. We'll see.

On a positive note, however, I am going to Kings of North this weekend and I am planning to put ToMB2 to the field, if only for one of the days, so I am hoping that gives me more enthusiasm. I am sure I will let you know how that goes shortly.

Until then.

ToMB2 - Learning from Lemonentry

What did I learn from my Lemonentry? I think the main things were being aware of what I can do more and deeper thinking about model selection. Really, when I say, ‘being aware of what I can do’ it’s more ‘being aware of what Seamus can do’. Sometimes I can get a little wrapped in hitting things with my Chihuahua bag and not think about backhanding people or other stuff. Backhand is fantastic for getting Seamus out of trouble, which I suppose people who take the reputation upgrade are a little more familiar with, but when Seamus needs to be elsewhere for any reason it’s pretty essential. It’s also picking Seamus’ targets more carefully. I got it wrong in my last game where the scheme marker is placed when Seamus hits stuff (in contact with him and not the enemy) so not only did I not get the scheme marker where I wanted, but I set Seamus up to die. I think Seamus is best of killing little things. Sometimes, when teaming up with the copycat, he can take big models down, but ultimately he is a murderer who prays on the weak and vulnerable.

What feedback do I have on model selection? What about everyone else in the crew? Well there are some models that are not going to shift. Sybelle and the belles continue to be a favourite of mine.

I must say I am very happy with how Brunhilde the flesh construct performed. Although it died a lot it turned out to be crucial to a number of plans. It works with the rest of the crew by reactivating when the opponent has no cards but providing the punch that the crew can sometimes lack.

The canine remains didn't really achieve much in the game. Admittedly it was largely there for a swift scheme runner and was almost always hunted down by something large and gruesome; to name it Alyce one game, Huggy the next and finally the Dawn Serpent. I don't think that's what's putting me off it though, I think it doesn't really have any synergy with the crew. For an extra stone I could take a belle who with Sybelle have lots of speed. I am not going to take 3 belles, but I just think it may not be the best choice.

I really enjoy using Bete Noir and in some situations I think she is going to be very effective, I am little concerned I am getting a little dependent on her and when I fight against mass constructs or spirits (who aren't undead) it could cause issues. I think for the moment though she is far too usefull to ditch.

 Finally we hit the nurse. I am not entirely sure what to think about the nurse. She is frustratingly slow and has limited range. Without Seamus reputation she doesn't really have much synergy with the crew other than the flesh construct (paralyse to eat) but to get that off you really need your opponent to be in the right place at the right time and you to have the right cards. I think she is situationally evil and has lots of potential, but even when she works it jars with me. Turning enemy models off for a turn is basically harsh and the reason why I didn't want to play Pandora anymore. I think the nurse was a big reason why I didn't want to play with Zoraida to begin with. Don't get me wrong, I think they are very effective, I am just not sure it's the game I want to play.

 So based on this, what's next? Well I already have some punk zombies to paint up so they might add some punch to the crew (plus I had lots of fun making them so they are being painted) and I have the rest of the McMorning and Nicodem boxes to paint, but I don't really have an idea of what I want to have to expand the crew. I know I want dead doxies, but I am going to wait for the plastics which are not out for the next few months. There are many things that work well Seamus with the evil reputation, hanged are an obvious example, but seeing as that is not how I want to play him that doesn't help. Here are my thoughts so far:

 Canine Remains: I know above I said they don't synergise, but I mainly just want them so I can say I am running the 'bitches and hos' crew
Flesh Construct: I am really happy how the first has worked out, so a second will both be lots of fun to make and work well with the crew?
Molly box: I love Molly, I think she's a really fun character and she works really well with all the stuff I have already. I think she is one box that is definitely on my list.

I'd love to hear what you think. Post a comment or drop me a message in the various social networking sites I am on. Until next time.

ToMB2 - Lemonentry

Last week was pretty full on as I attempted to get all of my ToMB2 (Tale of Malifaux Bloggers 2) toys ready for a tournament running this Sunday. I basically had to get almost all of my pledge for this month painted by Sunday, all bar one nurse. Thankfully, almost at the last minute finishing Sunday, I managed to get them done and could rock up to the tournament with a fully painted crew. Of course, this meant I only used the same list every game, but to be honest I didn’t feel that handicapped by that. Rather than put all the pictures of my painted toys here I am going to use it up to break up the text, hope you don’t mind. So what happened in my games?

 Well round 1 I was matched up against Brookes. A sguig I have faced a few times in Sheffield, it turns out each time I have played him I have played a different faction! First time we fought I was thoroughly smashed, second time it swung the other way, so what would happen in the third. Well all my initial plans were put to waste when he declared Leviticus as his master. With not much chance of scoring for assassinate (and never 3 points) and absolutely none for spring the trap, which is what I wanted to use, I declared entourage on Seamus and protect territory. Brookes had announced entourage on Seamus and had hidden assassinate. Leviticus vs Seamus is an interesting game. On the one hand Seamus is one of the best masters to go hunting waifs that there is, demonstrated that in turn 2 I had eternally buried Leviticus. Abominations, however, are my crews bane. The highlight for me was when I realised I could comply Leviticus with Sybelle and make him take 2 wounds when he performs and action… even walking! However Brookes had taken a crew of very hefty beaters. Rusty Alice, Hannah and Johan all rocked minimum damage 3 and took more killing than I could dish out. Though I was losing on Turf war because of this, as long as Seamus stayed alive in his deployment zone and held onto my protect territory I’d still come out on top. This is where abominations came in. With Rusy Alice respawning them when they die, they prevented Seamus using his zero and disappearing out of harms way. Hannah also stopped Seamus being lured because of her anti-suit aura. In the end it all came down to the final flip, a TN 10 defence duel on Seamus which if he passed then I won. He failed and the one card in hand was not enough to keep him alive. Curses. Still, when the scores came out it was a 5 all draw. Killing Seamus hadn’t lost me protect territory because I still had a belle on the markers and he didn’t have more than me. Small mercies.

Thinking back on it now there were plenty of things I should have done. I could have used Seamus’ backhand to push away from the abomination so that I could 0 again. I should have gone defensive with Seamus in the last turn rather than pointlessly hitting Alice. I don’t feel too bad about this though. The game was fantastic, a nail biter through out. Brookes, as ever, was a gentleman and a great fun opponent.

 Second game I was drawn again Mike Taylor, fielding his beautifully painted Lynch crew. I was fairly confident in this game, I must admit. I have played using Lynch a fair amount so I was confident I knew the strengths and weaknesses of his crew. The game started out rather ominously as I black jokered a back alley with Seamus, preventing me from starting to unleash pain until a turn too late. This meant that Mike had scored breakthrough and there was very little I could do about it, however I still needed to cull some of Mike’s numbers otherwise it would make recon really difficult. This was another great game, more nip and tuck and models jumping around all over the place. In the end of the day, however, Seamus’ ability to hop into almost any quarter he wanted meant I could keep control of quarters. Final score 10-7 to me.

 So one win and a draw still me still in the race for a podium place, albeit it at the back of the pack. I even had a fair chance of not being matched up against the top players. Or you might have thought that… I actually got matched against another sguig, third place at the GT and masters qualifier Blutac Bursnell. Sigh. Don’t get me wrong though, blutac is a lovely guy but I had a feeling which way this was going to go. Announcing 10T McCabe in Headhunter I already knew it was going to be tough. The ability to push all of his models meant that he can get them out of combat ready to pick up head markers. Things got a lot more difficult when he killed Seamus first activation of turn 2! The reactivating Dawn Serpent, rather than running off to drop a scheme marker for plant explosives like I thought it would, dived on Seamus and in 4 attacks took him down to his hard to kill with millions of poison. Losing the initiative in turn 2 meant the mad hatter was no more. Although on the back foot from then on, I don’t think I did too badly. An unfortunate black joker to lure a model saw me unable to remove the last card from blutacs had and get reactivate on my flesh construct which is what I needed to score for headhunter turn 2. When the smoke cleared at the end of the game all, I had very few models left but managed to hold out for a 9-8 loss. Another fantastic close game and loads of fun.

 So counting it all up at the end of the day 1-1-1 of win, loss and draw puts me smack bang in the centre of the pack. Not to go home empty handed, however, I was voted best painted crew and got myself a shiny trophy. Awesome stuff! Thanks to everyone who voted for me! I must say there was some fantastic crews on display, special mention going out to Cy and his creepy shadows on the bases of his Neverborn and Mike’s beautifully smooth Lynch crew I mentioned before.

 Overall a fantastic day with really fun games. What more could you want?

It’s also given me plenty of food for thought with Seamus. I’ll probably put up another ramble tomorrow to discuss it. I’ve said it before, but I think tournaments really do give you the best chance to improve your game and reflect on what you have done. Maybe next time I can turn that draw into a win? I suppose it depends on how long I can resist the lure of the green menace I suppose…

ToMB2 - Deadline, I am in you!

So in my last update I said I had failed.

It turns out I lied.

The deadline for month one was, in fact, the 9th March. So, as you might have guessed from the title, this had given me enough time to successfully complete all of my pledged models this month. I even have some pictures as proof:

I have to admit it was tight, but there all done now...

Except that was only month 1!

So what's next?

Well for subsequent months we get £15 to expand our crews, so what am I going to pick?

Well, I have already mentioned I have been using nurses, so they are definitely in. In addition to this I am going to include a canine remains and a flesh construct. This is about half of the McMourning box (I have not included McMourning, Chihuahua and Sebastian) which is about £30 so that is basically £15 right?

I have no idea when the next deadline is though... stay tuned!

In other news, I also plan to take these freshly painted lovelies out to play in Lemonentry, a 50ss tournament at the North West Gaming Centre ran by Aidan 'Britney' Kirk. In a mad moment, I have also decided I am going to use all painted models (it's not a requirement of the event) which means I am going to be playing basically the same list every game. How can this possibly go wrong...

Wish me luck! Expect to hear me reporting defeat soon.

Tale of Malifaux Bloggers 2 - Failure

We are 3 days away from the final deadline for this month and some of you may be thinking, 'No, you can still do it!' but I am going to have to disagree. I am away this weekend for a friends birthday so I am not going to get a chance to paint anything.

I have fallen at the first hurdle. I missed this months challenge.

What did I actually achieve though?

Well I did manage to finally decide how to base my Resserectionists and made and painted almost all the bases for my current models:

I also managed to complete all of the minions from the box:

But of the 7 models I needed to complete, I managed 5:

So what happens now?

Well apparently there is some kind of forfeit, so I guess I am going to have to submit to that. It's not going to stop me trying to keep up with #ToMB2!

On another note, how have the games gone?

Well unfortunately there has been a little hiatus on the Malifaux campaign that was being run. The club wasn't open for one week and in the second there wasn't enough people to get some games in so we played some board games instead.

I have had one game that I haven't reported on since then, however. What have I learnt from this?

Sybelle is amazing! Using her upgrade 'bleeder lash' I charged into an illuminated, managed to cause 6 wounds after armour to it (mod damage twice) AND made it punch an illuminated it was standing next to for another 6 wounds! I am really starting to enjoy obey (I have been messing around with Zoraida in other games to) and it may have cost me a stone, but putting 2 illuminated in a position to die was well worth it!
 The ability call Belle is still the reason I take her though, but having tools at your disposal is very useful.

Nurses are brutal. Being able to guarantee, if you have a decent card in hand, that your opponents most powerful models can do nothing to you is savage. They do spend the beginning of the game dithering a fair amount, but once someone gets into their 8" range they can but savage. They are interesting models to play with, however, because they simply don't do damage. They are extremely good value, however.

I haven't had the ability to play with Seamus in the campaign yet though because I haven't bought a bounty. Soon my precious, soon.

Anyway, that's February's failure out of the way. Roll on March's failure! Catch you soon.

Tale of Malifaux Bloggers: Getting Mad for the Hatter

So far, I haven't done much painting. OK, I have actually done no painting, but I did get some way onto making bases. Look, shiny:

I actually have a fair bit to do on them still... and paint them. Progress is progress though, right?

Anyway, the real reason I am posting is because I have played my first game in the campaign tonight. I used:

Sybelle + her upgrades
2* Belle
Bete Noir
Nurse

with a full cache this comes to 35 stones, which is utterly rediculous because I have an obscene number of stones rapped up in Sybelle for no good reason. Oh well. Anyway, to make things worse we played the new strategy inteference and the weekly thing was a traveller, who sat in the middle of the no go zone dishing out (mostly) benefits to whoever decided to interact with him. The weekly other thing was getting scheme markers in every corner, which Vince's arcanist crew had no issue doing.  I think there were over 20 markers on the board at the end of the game. Somehow, in all the rediculous madness, 2 models were killed but flipped an ace or a 2 so they didn't have any effects. Bete 'died' twice but came back. The game was a draw. I had earned 13 scrip from the game (one of my belles spent the first two turns propositioning him, he paid out 6 scrip) but was only actually able to take 8 home with us from the game, so made the traveller pretty much redundant. It's hard to express how silly that game was. It wasn't helped by the fact that I had decided Bete had an intro, which was just me saying her name in a high pitched voice. Vince tried to get me to say it as many times as possible. The skills and upgrades are just a little bit mental. Cassy is now wp6 and immune to slow and paralysed and Sybelle walk 6.

So what do I think of the campaign so far? Well it seems to introduce chaos into the game for basically no purpose. If anyone had actually understood the rules in our game, the traveller would have just been a section of impassable terrain, and barely used as that. The skills seem a little extreme, but our actual examples of them aren't really. We are having lots of fun though and it's pushing us outside of our comfort zone, which is pretty cool. Good for the grey matter. Still needs more gaming to work it out. It feels like it expects you to play more than one game a week, though, which I am not sure is reasonable. Maybe we could slow down the weeks, make it a month or two weeks or something, so you get to understand what's going on a bit more. We'll stick to the basic rules for the moment though.

Anyway, that's all from me for now. I'll get back in touch if I do more hobby.