4 Way Hardcore! OO Matron!

       Just to shake things up a bit, the guys at Worhamma and Nate Zettle decided to run some Hardcore Malifaux games at the club on Thursday. It wasn't going to be a major thing, just announced the session before and see who took it up. There was, however, some chaos. As mentioned in the last blog post, there was a major mistake made with Worhamma's supplier so they were spending all of their energy trying to deal with that. There was also some excitement about the new releases, with people getting into dystopian wars, and many people doing a role playing session. This left us with 4 players. Rather than doing a couple of small games we decided it would be best to simply throw down with everyone on the the table.

So what is hardcore? It's quick and brutal Malifaux. 20 stones per player, so henchmen led. You can't increase your cache. You must have 4 models, no more, no less. The Strategy is always turf war and the scheme is always Assassinate. For our multi-player game we decided that each leader was going to be worth 3 points to whomever killed them!

 Our rules were pretty much made off the cuff for multi-player. With the initiative flip whomever won decided if they wanted to go last or first by making it go highest to lowest or vice versa. There were only a couple of rule oddities, such as ceaseless advance, which we simply dealt with as it arises. However, on the whole, multi- player Malifaux is awesome, just as I thought it would be.

 So who was in? Jordan Parkins played with Samael as his leader, with the Judge and 2 riflemen. Nate Played Cassandra with Angelica, Performer and Oiran. John used Hannah with a guild trapper, strongarm suit and desperate merc.

Me? Well I couldn't resist the opportunity to use only pigs. With Old Major as my Henchmen I took 2 piglets and Gracie. It's a stupid list. The piglets have to charge, so are useless in turf war because they charge out of the centre all of the time, but it was loads of fun.

My piglets charged into the Judge and maybe a mockery of one of the most powerful characters of the guild. He did not win a single duel against them! Gracie was repeatedly buried by Hannah so didn't do much. Old Major just trotted around trying to give positive flips to piglets and absorbing damage from John Wharton's crew. On the opposite side of the board, Jordan took down Cassandra early doors with masses of range damage and John used the Trapper to take down Angelica. The remaining showgirls gave Samael something like 6 poison!

 Then suddenly, galloping over the distance, a piglet bolted into the fray! Suprise pig assault was hilarious, having used his first ap to walk and then attack the Judge to trigger ramapage and charge Samael! It was inneffective however and the game ended, because we took ages to get things sorted, on turn 3 with Nate taking last place with 0 points. Me next with 1 cheeky turf war point. John second with two turf points (the only one who really stood any chance of consistently scoring! Finally Jordan, despite some appalling luck and being in a really bad position, taking the day with his 3 points from assassinating Cassy.

 So 4 way hardcore is awesome! Thoroughly recommend the madness! If you are local, come down to Worhamma and see if you can't take part. I think next week we are planning on playtesting some 'Minion Madness' rules that John has made so it should be a good laugh.