Worhamma, my local gaming club, hosted it’s second ever
Malifaux tournament named ‘Not a Bad Thing’ Yesterday. We managed to convince
27? Players to brave intelligible accents and attend. I say ‘We’, what I really
mean is Nate, Andy and Victor did all the hard work and organising whilst I
added a few boards worth of terrain and got to play with my toys!
The rulespack was
pretty standard. 4 round, starting a bit early at 9 and finishing, because we
ran late, at about 6:30, 45 soulstone games. The one unusual element was that
you could either player as fixed faction or fixed master of dual faction (i.e.
play McCabe as Thunders in one game and Guild in the next, but use no other
master). I know a few people took advantage of this and I don’t think it caused
any real issues, though I have not been on the internet for a little bit due to
fighting off invading Welshmen so couldn’t guarantee.
Though further extending
this substantial intro, I think it’s important to set the scene from my
perspective. Some of you may be aware that last weekend I lost the position of
best Gremlin in the UK to Rob Smith. I had worked out, however, if I was to get
3rd in this event I would have reclaimed the big hat. I didn’t
expect to do that well, it was a very strong field, but I felt like the pressure
was on.
What of the games? Well round one saw me randomly drawn to
play on my Bayou Board, which I had made for the last event and had still not
played on! I was pretty happy with that! My opponent was someone I hadn’t met
before, Matt Abbot (or ‘Mad Abbot’ as he was dubbed) who came up with the
sguigs.
I’ll be honest, I was
pretty confident of a strong game knowing I wasn’t a big name and seeing the
strategy and schemes. Som’er in recon with a piggapult is pretty amazing, I can
pretty much guarantee my own points and likely deny my opponent at the end of
each turn. Deliver a Message makes it even worse, particularly as I took
Trixxie to secure the initiative!
Unfortunately for
Matt, the game went almost as planned. I lost a couple of points because of a
mistimed black joker and because we basically ran out of time, but equally part
of Matt’s problem (which he astutely pointed out afterwards) is that he gave
too many jobs to his Necropunks. The Drowned Lady (not going to try and spell
her name) was pretty effective at grabbing Trixxie and not letting go… but it
was not enough. Final score was 6-2 to me at the end of turn 3. Matt bagging 1
for Recon and Distract and I got 3 for Deliver a Message, 2 for Recon and 1 for
Make them suffer.
After this first
strong game I knew this was going to be a tough tournament. Next I was matched
against Jimmy Balderstone, who I have played once before in York in my first
Gremlin event (I think it was his first game against Gremlins aswell, we broke
our cherry together man :P). He repeatedly accused me of taking what he
referred to as ‘Gremlin Bullshit’
Not to disappoint, I
decided to field Pere Ravage for this Turf War game, reasoning a fair number of
the enemy would head to the middle first turn and would be ripe for a bit of ‘oopsie’.
This was perhaps, however, the most infuriating game I had ever played. Pere
got almost all of Jimmy’s crew into range and blew himself three times,
including his death blast, but the top deck and hand of a god saw Jimmy emerge
largely unscathed. Later Gracie needed to kill teddy to grab my murder protégé and
black joker her damage flip, very dangerous as it meant she couldn’t heal. No
matter, thought I, I will cheat to go first and make Gracie kill him then… but
she bloody red jokered again! With that Jimmy got Murder Protégé and denied me
a turf war point when I black jokered again to not kill his Wendigo and deny
him some turf also! When the dust had settled, however, my extra points from announcing
schemes secured me the win at 8-7 to me.
So, two wins? That’s
pretty good going! What’s next? Well after a bit of chilli and banter it turned
out that I was faced against Mr Joel Henry himself in Reckoning. Damn, just
going to go home! Well no, I decided I was just going to play less risky than I
normally like to. I took Merris, who is absolutely useless in reckoning but can
confidently secure protect territory by hiding. I took entourage on Som’er and
decided that I would only go for the kills if I was in a real strong position
and wouldn’t get much flak back. The game started pretty well, Som’er managed
to get three clean shots at McCabe and unhorse him, putting pressure on him
because he was his announced entourage, and causing blasts on Izamu in the
process. My bad positioning had cost me a mass of wounds on burt though. Second
turn saw Izamu die from a double focus boomer shot from Som’er putting Joel
firmly on the back foot, but the rest of my crew could not kill the strong arm
in that turn to score reckoning, or get in range of anything else (unhorsed
McCabe had fled) meaning that neither of us scored strategy and got full for
schemes. 6 all draw.
Wow, I thought, a
draw against Mr. Henry! I can do this! First is gone, but 3rd is
definitely doable now! The pressure is on. My last opponent was Joe Taylor.
Anyone who has a good memory and follows my tournament reports will know that
my last game against Joe saw Ulix get
absolutely ruined by Collette in reckoning. It couldn’t happen again, however,
I needed the win. Anyway, Reckoning has gone, Squatter’s right isn’t so bad…
though it is Collette’s game!
This is where I made
the most stupid mistake. Even simply typing it makes me gnash my teeth in
frustration. When making my crew I thought to myself ‘Gracie always dies, frame
for murder should be fine on her’. Like an absolutely hero, however, I wrote
the name ‘Trixxie’ on the card. It was the other model I was considering, but I
decided she was too valuable to get killed in this scenario. Of course, I only
realised this as I deployed and by that point it was too late. A very elite
crew saw me swamp the markers and score 2 for cursed object and 2 for strat, as
we only got to turn 3. Denied the squat markers, Collette in the last turn
reactivated a mole man to get 2 for breakthrough (unannounced) and 3 for line
in the sand. By this time Gracie had
been killed by Langston, Trixxie was still alive and kicking meaning the final
score was 4-5 to Joe… which meant he got 3rd in the final rankings...
which is exactly where I would have ended up if I hadn’t put the wrong name on
the card… which is what I needed to get my big hat (top Gremlin position in the
UK) back.
Sigh
Fuck this game, I’m
going to go play tiddlywinks
In all seriousness
though congrats to Joe for the great game and big thanks to all my opponents
for some great games. Joel went on to win his game and thus claim second, with
Blutac defeating the local Greg and claim the gold. It seemed like loads of
people had a great time and 8 people went home with cakes. All of this seems
pretty win.
My final thought,
however, is that I don’t think I actually managed to get to turn 5 on any of my
games, which is not great. I know it seemed last time that we had enough time
to add an extra 5 soulstones on the crews, but it might have been a touch too
far for the time limit. Just my thoughts and suggestion to the big Ned and
Worhamma lads for the future.
All said and done though they did an absolutely amazing job
putting on the day and I just hope we can continue having such awesome. Thanks
again guys.
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