tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68690720263054953002024-02-08T01:00:35.631+00:00Jodenthe13FatesThe roughly put together musings of a causal tabletop gamer.JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-69656000455448693732016-06-06T19:00:00.000+01:002016-06-06T19:00:22.202+01:00Overactive RPG Vision<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't know if this happens with anybody else but hear me out: When I walk out of a cinema after enjoying a film I really enjoyed watching, I get this sense of still being in the film. Say for example: <i>Limitless</i>, the film about a guy who pops a tic-tac and suddenly his brain starts working at it's maximum potential. I enjoyed the film and I walked out with the clarity of my memory being fairly okay following wild daydreams of the day I could learn the Violin in under a week and a fleeting moment of perceptive clarity of my surroundings. The film stayed briefly with me and started getting inside my head for 30 or so minutes afterwards. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The same can be said for games. When I was playing a lot of <i>Prince of Persia: Sands of Time</i>, I would walk around a shopping center and start plotting out climbing paths in my mind, I would go to London and start scanning the city sky line for routes I could climb.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now I'm very much aware that I can't handle a solitary chin-up, let alone hang by my finger tips 200 meters in the air with my next move being that "wtf are you doing mate?" of leaping upward and catching a ledge the size of a finger nail without the hint of falling. I know this but with playing a game like <i>Prince of Persia</i> or the latest Nathan Drake epic, I see the world in a different way altered by these experiences.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tabletop Roleplaying games have effected me in much the same way only instead of the world, I'm seeing many decisions in film making being told in an RPG sense. Guardians of the Galaxy is my primary example of this. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Peter Quill is first introduced (after the backstory introduction) stealing a mysterious orb, using a knowledge check followed by a successful thief check he obtains it but alas! He is caught by guards, Quill then crit-fails a convince check (</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"<b><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Starlord, man</span></i></b>"</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) and through a series of quick thinking and lucky rolls escapes the guards and avoiding huge damage to his ship.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I see the whole movie like this, a series of player interactions, skill checks and obvious nat 20s and crit-fails. Arguments at the table, players following others because.. well they have to right?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7VpQ22e9N8k8HqjY3uSgp9OPLBRu301TrpY5UvXFN3XxyPofJcw8v4gl5og_8IoqryqTTo9kuHfrxQCbNczd5RcUG06ZWbthOziuz7vAm5HvKLYAW7Zb2uSOF_Rkd8D7bn7xgLpokJg8/s1600/NoSplit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7VpQ22e9N8k8HqjY3uSgp9OPLBRu301TrpY5UvXFN3XxyPofJcw8v4gl5og_8IoqryqTTo9kuHfrxQCbNczd5RcUG06ZWbthOziuz7vAm5HvKLYAW7Zb2uSOF_Rkd8D7bn7xgLpokJg8/s400/NoSplit.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and the GM allowing certain players to do silly stuff that would get them killed. You saw what happened to Drax when he tried to solo Ronan, he got his clock cleaned but because the GM didn't want the player to create another character, made sure that Drax didn't die. When Groot sacrificed himself, the GM decided that the player made such a great unique character with game breaking flaws that he was given an out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This undeniably is easier to do in team movies with multiple characters. X-men, Guardians, Avengers, easy to RPG-ify. What about my second favorite film of all time: Versus? For the all of you that don't have a clue what this movie is or about: Criminals are in a forest shooting zombies then ends with a climatic battle between brothers that fight every 500 years because the same group is reincarnated to meet, for reasons. If you don't mind Japanese B-Movies, it's a fantastic film and the reason I have stills of the film tattoo'd on my arms. </span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj28GstIsCUClqJmU8PrdKgn6r36Kb7eK80efUGPHBn-NiHE_zBie9aHFU3xEFHEcTnZtjWdf20WkjatLstd3qfrvZmVUxoA-xufljzYNUjPmFCJZNt0Ktmuiod3vVWhL3spRJLUmtgQFs/s1600/vere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj28GstIsCUClqJmU8PrdKgn6r36Kb7eK80efUGPHBn-NiHE_zBie9aHFU3xEFHEcTnZtjWdf20WkjatLstd3qfrvZmVUxoA-xufljzYNUjPmFCJZNt0Ktmuiod3vVWhL3spRJLUmtgQFs/s1600/vere.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The intro involves two orange clad criminals running through the woods, sprinting at high speeds, falling and rolling but continuing on until they reach a road. The two argue for a while until a small convoy of two cars and a bike appears. Without going into the whole plot, a 2-player RPG could easily be built around this premise and with the writing the way it is, you could easily see the movie being ripped from an RPG session.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Almost all films or series I happen to watch nowadays have this RPG film wrapped over them due to my near-constant day dreaming of new story lines and events. Being that the whole point of role-playing is story driven decisions with random elements thrown in to create tension, this isn't exactly a difficult endeavor. It's a lot harder to equate say Yahtzee or Texas Hold 'Em Poker to real life or film situations for instance but in my mind it makes for story inspiration and a (sometimes) imaginary look behind the scenes of how certain elements in films play out. <br /><br />A montage is pretty much the GM going "Whilst you wait for the <a href="https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Big_Bad_Evil_Guy" target="_blank">BBEG</a> to arrive, this happens" surely? <br />Schwarzenegger never running out of ammo and taking down a whole army is little more than a high level character and a tired GM right? <br />Sean Bean always dying is a player with a horrid losing streak maybe? <br />Jason Statham is a min/maxer who never role plays but rather "Roll"plays is clear as day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Maintain that childlike imagination and have fun out there</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-29928436313068532092016-05-30T19:00:00.000+01:002016-05-30T19:00:07.033+01:00Pay No Attention to that Man Rolling Dice Behind the Curtain<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Slowly getting to grips with my new found obsession with mastering games (that obsession helped greatly by it being a whole lot easier on the wallet) has given me a much more meaningful insight on how much time and effort goes into role-playing games and their gods controlling them. Home brewing my current AMP game that's soon coming to a close has been an amazing contrast of laugh-out-loud highlights and "the f*** you doing Joden?". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My first session, in my head, was the tutorial which is a horrible horrible way to start any campaign, short or ongoing. I love Get Backers and so based the story of my two players as: <br />You're both in heavy debt with the owner of this cafe and to pay him back, you do mercenary work that involves returning stolen goods to their rightful owners.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their first task in "Player timeline" was securing a briefcase from a building that didn't have security! And they were even told to wear the Harry Potter invisibility cape in the form of the MIGHTY HI-VIS(tm)! </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Blazing into a cafe where helpful Tommy Chong was there to point them in the right direction to then have them casually walk into the basement level of the CCTV-less government building had the hint of a good idea behind it but lacked any real substance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You see, as my first ever GM'd session, I was so utterly terrified that my players would be unable to unearth the secrets of what my story was telling. So afraid I was, I made two characters that by primary, secondary and tertiary roles (& beyond) was there purely to say:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>"Oh yeah <b>THAT</b> building. The briefcase you're looking for is going to be in the basement. It just so turns out that I know exactly what they do there, where they would place stolen cases, when the building was erected and how good the security is there <b>DESPITE</b> not knowing dick about it until just the second you asked me about it...."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I said, brown-pants-ingly timorous (<i>Timorous Joden? Was 'afraid' too arduous to write?</i>).</span></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwnyliVwUJkKvvVmXZlIIOZ2v5tPxFUrBB2SXqCmVeOWk9mlH1Xw115FwPyomKIRApy66kuUyuVWqQgYNKCcoqxb-qogwZWBJNnpJbCCCFLi5-pDhCSe_1E_iZeT8PrBi5zBl9gxe610o/s1600/acenene.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwnyliVwUJkKvvVmXZlIIOZ2v5tPxFUrBB2SXqCmVeOWk9mlH1Xw115FwPyomKIRApy66kuUyuVWqQgYNKCcoqxb-qogwZWBJNnpJbCCCFLi5-pDhCSe_1E_iZeT8PrBi5zBl9gxe610o/s200/acenene.gif" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Learning my lesson pretty darn quick, I rested on my laurels and decided to let an adventure book do the meat and potatoes of the writing allowing myself more freedom with fleshing out NPCs and giving them noticeable traits, body language and outrageous accents! <br />Adding pinches of my own world I had originally intended to connect the basically random plots of "Find the Zero Patient Tumor epicenter" & "Escort Fireboy in an RV" worked in my favor and really built the existing characters up from the shells they were in the first session.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having a bit more of an idea of what to do I then once again faced the bright burning light of running a session without leaning on pre-written material. It went <i>better</i> this time although instead of telling my players exactly what they should be doing, I instead went with sticking them onto some rails and gave them no options whatsoever instead...</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ahh, the Bliss of Hindsight. At the time I thought I as being right clever with interesting encounters and events, unknowingly tying them together with precisely one way to proceed. I'm still learning, give me a break...</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How to improve myself as a GM? Well for starters I need to smash the training wheels. Assumptions that my utter brilliance will prevent players from ever leaving the room they currently occupy must be quashed if I ever want to have meaningful sessions that aren't predicated on "Stuff happens, stuff happens <b><span style="font-size: large;">SUPER INTERESTING BOSS BATTLE</span></b>, then stuff happens". Letting my players loose and making their own choices in how to alter the world they stand in is better than my current flaw of answering the question "How do I get the players to go where I want them to?" with a character who's only characteristic is that he's got a bad Jamaican accent and freezes time whilst <i style="font-weight: bold;">BAMF</i>'ing the players with no save or reaction to the next story location.<br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The other flaw I have right now as a GM is being a little TOO loose with the rules. AMP's two-skill combo system is fantastic as a narrative tool but when it comes to fair and challenging combat, my players have learnt that having nothing in a stat isn't a detriment since making another stat make sense is as easy as slightly changing what they want to do. My Gf for example has absolutely no Fighting skill but still rolls huge numbers because being an amateur surgeon who primarily uses needles in combat, she uses Medicine checks mixed with Marksmanship to make attacks. My friend uses Intimidate instead of the normal Speed+Intuition as his Initiative roll in combat which results in him getting hit first but only after he makes the first attack being that his intimidation stat is through the roof. I let it happen because the game outright tells you to (as in if it makes sense, use it). It does smell slightly of BS when instead of using one's actual fighting prowess in a brawl, a player instead remembers their days at medical college and how good they are at origami and be just as good, if not better at killing a man as the guy who been street fighting their whole lives. It's still fun and my players are awesome enough to only slightly abuse it but it's still a little funky in my own view. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Talking about fear, I'm also super afraid to get my players killed. My Gf's character rolled low to defend vs a high roll against a truck full of machine gun nutcases (I prefer to let the dice fall as they may and then do what the character would do in the given scenario) and she took double her hit points in damage which by AMP's game rules means that character is <span style="font-size: large;">DEAD </span>but since it was only halfway through my intended campaign arch; instead of being <span style="font-size: x-large;">SUPER DEAD</span>, she instead lay on the floor and the NPC teacher of science performed kitchen drawer surgery enough to get my Gf's character conscience and heal up unaided.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Luckily, the players I game with aren't using this to munchkin through the campaign knowing they're immortal and are instead doing the honorable thing of doing what they feel their player characters would do which is a huge boon as a GM in my mind, but still a pretty big failing on my part if they <i>were</i> that type of player.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the next session looming, I hope to hell I learn from these experiences. Negatives aside though, it is so very rewarding being a game master and creating worlds and characters. Being able to have a laugh with friends and creating "Remember that time when" moments is pure and simple joy and I'm so glad I took the leap to do it.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Make those characters in your head come to life and have fun out there.</span></span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-40997774025028295112016-05-23T19:00:00.000+01:002016-05-23T19:00:02.175+01:00The Cards Against Humanity Effect<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I once went to a gaming cafe for an MMO meet-up and after the thrill of getting 40-odd strangers together with nothing more than a guild in common with each other we all sort of settled down into our cliques and waited the day out. One group called out that familiar "Who wants to play Cards Against Humanity!?" to which quarter of the room joined in with what was a fuster-cluck of a game where half of the 10 players couldn't hear what was going on and completely dis-regarded the end game in favor of getting those shining moments.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You know the moments right? The moments that you will share later on in geeky discussions as part of a round table of funny memories. The moments you share out whenever you talk about your favorite games with like-minded people. Cards Against Humanity is built around this factor, its the whole game. A certain black card comes down and suddenly you're back to the day you first slapped down the greatest white card ever and the whole table gasped in "I shouldn't laugh but I am" horror and for those glorious 15 seconds, you were the worst human being in the room.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, I hate Cards Against Humanity but I can respect it's effect. I hate it because it is a game without end and it's very much a game that's waiting for the card combos that get highlighted whenever other groups play it. "Winning the game" doesn't matter as much as "What's the most horrible &/or funniest random white card I have". I've played MTG multiplayer games that went on for 6 hours where no one was winning or progressing to end-game, I've played Apocalypse 40K games that lasted FOREVER and quite frankly, I've done my time. Playing a game that doesn't end simply stops being fun for me and it dilutes the simple joy of tabletop gaming.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What I can respect though is the Cards Against Humanity effect, where a game becomes more than just a decent way to spend time. RPGs are ruthless in this regard, as are most tabletop games where special moments are collected in one's mind and are brought forward by geeky discussions and continue to multiply with each proceeding game.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A Munchkin game where my friend ended up with 3 arms that were holding a total of three one-handed weapons and another 2 handed weapon (Due to the "Cheating" card) and absolutely wreaking everything in his path with no way to screw him over.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Take Malifaux, where the Red Joker absolutely saved or ruined a game, those times where a Black joker has occurred only to turn into the Red Joker because the attack still got through or how a certain upgrade made one model an absolute beast against a certain opposing model. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My recent games of AMP where my friend's character "Dr Chaos" in a chase scene I lovingly crafted as a finale to a session was ended by him dumping all resources into an attack then crit'ed that MOFO rendering the THREE trucks Two-Dimensional by sheer power of Force Blast. A fine way to end a day of critical fails and subsequent dice shaming.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My Gf's character "Dr Hu" (Yes, jokes were made) in the session before that rained down hot death in a basement brawl. She managed to roll really high steamrolling my difficulty modifiers thus enabling her to stab a needle directly into a clones brain via eardrum. Next turn managing to tear said needle from this guys ear, ripping through another clone's jugular and ending the needle stabbed into a third clone's face.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtXF88CtOPbykR0KBAndEv3orHoSJ57WzmMyHCXEfxw3QAPZ6pq5WYjxZB7frpsXgp__HKv22hV7ZQVIqOKT6W26bq8-GiS-AHCqPZXb0reUvmRi6zZuDiqcWaBSughHl2KWTXSzppExw/s1600/brurur.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtXF88CtOPbykR0KBAndEv3orHoSJ57WzmMyHCXEfxw3QAPZ6pq5WYjxZB7frpsXgp__HKv22hV7ZQVIqOKT6W26bq8-GiS-AHCqPZXb0reUvmRi6zZuDiqcWaBSughHl2KWTXSzppExw/s400/brurur.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />(Pro-tip, if my Gf ever has free reign to do anything without consequence, don't piss her off.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's these stories that stay in our mind and proliferate in our discussions of gaming memories with friends and strangers alike. These creations of nothing more than our own imaginations getting a jump-start from rule sets and game designers; something you don't get in such magnitude from video games or movies. It's a great thing that stimulates the mind when you get together again with friends old and new. This is what, in my mind, makes C.A.H such a resounding force of getting complete strangers to get together, that simple joy of sitting down and creating "happy" memories.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That and generally allowing everyone to be an awful person without consequence or blame. "What would Grandma find disturbing, yet oddly charming?" "Big Black Dick" What? It's Cards against Humanity!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Don't let the demons get out and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-20986929967626626872016-05-16T19:00:00.000+01:002016-05-16T19:00:07.777+01:00Where I explain why I'm such a Hipster<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A friend asked me a question the other day: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Why are you so against playing Pathfinder?" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He asked assuming that I'm a hipster who avoids popular media (Kind of true). My answer was thus:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"I'm not against Pathfinder (or D&D etc etc) if there's a game running and I can make it I'm in. The thing is, is that I <i>Know</i> that Pathfinder is good. I want to experience other systems and find out if they are as good, or if I'm being hopeful, better."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This is true for most of the media preferences I consume (As in RPGs, Anime, Fantasy novels and some games, depending on price naturally), I will find myself walking into a shop and literally judging a book by it's cover. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">...and by that I mean reading over the synopsis.</span></span><br />
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</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnLD916AWPG4vGzsllk0-_wwqu7mmT6nEkC5I3PM7pn5W8KCDItXenOD9LQtQz_q8lFhGQlWXxB6ugYkHaMbne0ZwMQ0wLKBMVUz3FzYlTrsWP9KfSXTxZBc5ZutbcxShfuWVV5pw-r08/s1600/RDJr+wink.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnLD916AWPG4vGzsllk0-_wwqu7mmT6nEkC5I3PM7pn5W8KCDItXenOD9LQtQz_q8lFhGQlWXxB6ugYkHaMbne0ZwMQ0wLKBMVUz3FzYlTrsWP9KfSXTxZBc5ZutbcxShfuWVV5pw-r08/s200/RDJr+wink.jpg" width="200" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As shallow as it is (and it is) if you want to get me to buy your product you need to hit 3 criteria:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">1./ A reasonable price</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">2./ Some well-done artwork</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">3./ An excellently worded synopsis without going all 'buy this buzz-words'</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Some of my favorite books and anime I've found by this process, where they hit those 3 points and I've picked them up. If I had looked up reviews of "<i>Speed Grapher</i>" or Scott Lynch's "<i>The Lies of Locke Lamora</i>" beforehand, I might have not gave them a second glance. This is because I enjoy the risk of trying something out without the hands of preview chapters, PDFs or Netflix tainting my view of it. If I've put down £20-£30 on something, I'm at the very least going to complete the experience rather than the Netflix problem of having no reason to continue if the first 10 minutes didn't capture me. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For example: Paranoia Agent, an anime I had no knowledge of before buying has THE SLOWEST START to an anime I've ever witnessed, the opening is weird and if not for putting down £30-ish quid I would have left it early on. I continued to watch though, through the box set and suddenly the anime opened up and the preceding story made a lot more sense and foreshadowed following events and I was struck with the euphoric moment of "I'm so glad I kept watching!". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Had I stuck to watching the well-known and popular titles, I would watch them saying that yeah, they're okay; I wouldn't have that fist bump moment because the hype surrounding it has peaked to the point of hating it or loving it because of it's over-exposure before even viewing it.</span><br />
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</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigi24ifS69V93Cx-x_sFMnYdGNi8H-4BuK8VDJ1y7A1VHPJKKmrkS8qHkfxqcZwjdEpI0tJTTZAL9iZ_lBHUyln_wrS6EMqrWt0csNDbHIuj6UO4lDBQauQua_zcd6kk4xMs3uNKQzjus/s1600/sansaan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigi24ifS69V93Cx-x_sFMnYdGNi8H-4BuK8VDJ1y7A1VHPJKKmrkS8qHkfxqcZwjdEpI0tJTTZAL9iZ_lBHUyln_wrS6EMqrWt0csNDbHIuj6UO4lDBQauQua_zcd6kk4xMs3uNKQzjus/s200/sansaan.jpg" width="200" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Undertale</i> I've never played nor wish to at this point. I KNOW it's an amazing game and the internet has done a fine job of making sure everybody knows about the last boss or the opening scene or the scenes in-between ("<i>Don't you dare kill Goat Mum</i>"). With so much attention, it's now impossible to go into <i>Undertale</i> blind unless you simply do not have internet access.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This of course extends to tabletop miniatures as well, with the caveat that people in my area need to be playing the game for me to invest a lot of time into into it. With 40k I could have gone Space Marines and won more games but again, I knew they were good, I wanted to see if the other factions were any good as well. Try being a modern 40k player without consulting MEQ stats (Marine equivalent) for every single model choice you make and understand that I didn't foresee it being fun to play the faction that everyone assumes the opposing player is playing. In my whole time playing 40k I only faced Eldar and Orcs once, every other time it was Marines, it's boring. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With Malifaux it's less apparent now because unless one is strictly keeping to one faction, players are likely to gather any crew they enjoy the mechanics of so a power fence isn't brought up to face that one faction that<i> everybody</i> plays. Luckily Malifaux doesn't have 'The one Awesome faction'; one could argue Guild, but then someone will pipe up and say Neverborn then behind that person, another player will say Outcast, then in the back an old veteran tells everyone in the room the tales of that time he faced Gremlins etc etc</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But I still went in relatively blind and chose the Ice Mage because I have a fondness for Ice Magics.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">D&D, Pathfinder and the RPGs everybody "knows" is at a point where anybody interested in playing a tabletop RPG knows it's good and likely wants to play it first because "I don't want to waste my time on something bad" but here's the thing: With the right GM who </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUobExuD38Y38F9gmSDlfgOGnyve44J-zgh6UWNMH3LvA4SPKiJXvqgXj85Z9SveP2h_SW7Rpg0wuEpchTuaZ-kNfIHRuWrtIBwEE5i15exS24xrivcaA0cuF7r0TBJ-3KdKGD4RvBn5M/s1600/didce.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUobExuD38Y38F9gmSDlfgOGnyve44J-zgh6UWNMH3LvA4SPKiJXvqgXj85Z9SveP2h_SW7Rpg0wuEpchTuaZ-kNfIHRuWrtIBwEE5i15exS24xrivcaA0cuF7r0TBJ-3KdKGD4RvBn5M/s200/didce.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">knows the rules and manages them seamlessly into a story, it doesn't matter if you're throwing D6s, D20s, D100s or playing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_(role-playing_game)" target="_blank">Jenga</a>. What it well and truly boils down to with many RPGs is what you character creation options are and the mood of game you're playing. For me, I'm looking for a good time, not to narrow my options down to the global opinion that X, Y & Z RPGs are the only ones worth playing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">To go back to my friend's original question, I don't shy away from the cool kid's games and media because I hate them or have a disliking towards them necessarily. I have a un-healthy amount of love for Bleach, Fight Club is my most favorite and most watched film of all time and I really enjoy the current Marvel Cinematic universe. My point was to my friend was that I don't want to simply find the mass majority thing that the world has agreed on is the best ever awesomesauce and add to the pile, I want to find the stuff that people haven't necessarily found or maybe have skimmed over due to the other brands hype. Hell, I'm not even doing that really, what I like doing is taking a risk on the unknown and finding out for myself if it's worth my time and something I enjoy. Again, some of my favorite books and anime were found by me skimming a synopsis and dropping some pocket money on them, I wouldn't be playing AMP right now if not for randomly picking it up next to Feng Shui 2. It's the simple joy of Discovery.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Make sure life is exciting and have fun out there.</span></span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-57925570978250869032016-05-09T19:00:00.000+01:002016-05-09T19:00:02.306+01:00AMP: Year One - First Impressions<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Despite what the past *counts* 32, blimey 32? My oh My....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Despite what the past 32 posts concerning Malifaux may lead you to believe (and rightfully so) I did originally mean this blog to encompass </span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">all</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> my tabletop gaming; due to absolutely </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">fore</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">seen circumstances however, I found Malifaux a lot more fun to talk about than my latest </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Magic the Gathering</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> modern deck (3-colour Clues), what new card rotations have happened in my Commander Blink deck (Less tax, more actual Blink) or games of </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Cards Against Humanity </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">("Bees?..." being the most useful white card in the whole box).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I've been interested in running or playing tabletop RPGs for the last couple of years but finding a group was always the problem in actually </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">playing </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a darn game.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I'd pick up a system that seemed interesting, read the book cover-to-cover learning the mechanics, create a character or two, write a campaign and think to myself </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Yeah, it looks like I got the start of a good game here".</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I would then run into the once, future and assumed-always brick wall and continue the thought with </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Shame I 'aint got anyone who wants to play it".<br /><br />D&D</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> is a thing, </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">D&D</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> is what everybody on and off planet earth thinks about when a lone soul utters the phrase </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Wanna play an RPG?" </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Newborn babies have an instinctual 'I know that name' when it comes to </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">D&D. </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Aliens planning on visiting earth know about </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dungeons & Dragons</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, it's a force to be reckoned with.</span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I myself have played one intro game and a one-shot encounter where I had a bunch of fun playing Might Guy from Naruto disguised as a 1st level Monk and I enjoyed it.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Trouble is, I'm one of those hipsters who wants to play just about anything else.<br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Trouble Trouble is, to strangers or friends-of-friends-of-mates who want to play an RPG, what they really mean is: They want to play D&D 3.5/Pathfinder; so when I roll up with "</span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anima: Beyond Fantasy</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">", "</span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">OVA: The Anime Roleplaying Game</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">" or "</span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Legend of the Wulin</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">" to try out, I get the stink eye and then told elaborate stories of their previous combos or misadventures in </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Path-D&D-Finder 3.5.</i><br />
<i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Shadowrun</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> also gets love at my local but that's beside the point...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Not learning my lesson obviously, I still pick up RPG systems based purely on art and how good the synopsis is at one of my kinda-local gaming retailers. The latest RPG that I assumed would get the backhand because it's not Dee-undee was AMP: Year One, a supers RPG with a fancy "duel-skill combo" D20 system and a greater emphasis on the human side of supers rather than being the Hero/super Villian. What makes AMP different from my other books is that I've found players who have a lot of fun playing it. Playing a system rather than talking about it in theory sounds better for me for a First Impression. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My love of X-men back in my youth never really went away, my loathing of graphic novel prices was just stronger. AMP re-lit that love being that it's setting is very much about normal people gaining powers and how they and the world around them react to it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The book goes into great detail about the hows and whys of these newly discovered powers that random people are getting and for the first time, I got really involved in the story and setting AMP was putting forward. Too often with other RPGs, I really enjoy the mechanics of the game but rarely the setting or story told alongside it; With Year One (and my love of Marvel's Merry Mutants) however, it's story gripped me and really got the creative juices going in how I could run a RPG in this world. Very impressed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The character creation is just the right balance for point buy games for me, not so simple as to throw a handful of numbers on the page and add dice to them, not so crunchy as to require a member of MENSA in mathematics in order to make a character a well-rounded one. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The super powers are vast but not an all-you-can-imagine range. Super-Sense, Speed, Strength are the typical ones and there are also Teleportation (Either willed or via Portals) and even a degree of Time control powers (You can stop it but can't travel through time for instance). You have control animal powers, absorption abilities, bolts of energy and enhancing powers alongside some nice non-combat ones such as memory manipulation, dream walking, future sight etc etc. It's vast enough that with the ability to choose up to 3 to combo off of each other it always makes for a fun, well-rounded character but not always the character you want or envisioned. This isn't necessarily a bad thing when lined up with the setting in my mind. <br />Odds are, if the everyday Joe were to gain random powers one day, they wouldn't become Dr. Strange, odds are they'll have the ability to talk to plants (Also a power in AMP). Remember, it's not a super hero game in the strictest sense, it's about what would happen if a normal person were able to use portals or read minds, what they would do with such power and how regular non-powered people would react to them. So a campaign featuring a nutcase who asks plants for details of a crime scene can exist and not feel out of place when they are standing next to the 8ft tall Speedster Hulk and the </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">other</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> nutcase who talks to bees and who can fly...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> The day-to-day skills are generalized without being rather ridiculous, It's what you would expect with some common sense vague-ness but this is where the duel-skill combo check comes into play. For example: "<i>Crafts</i>" is a skill that allows one to build/take apart objects, something mundane on it's on but when paired with "<i>Stealth</i>" one can create hidden traps, with "<i>Performance</i>" one can build theatrical props, with "<i>Beast Handling</i>" one can design a muzzle or a cage fit for the chosen animal. <br />W</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">hen a character is jumping between rooftops during a chase scene, it's not a simple Athletics check, it's an Athletics + Speed check simulating maintaining a fast pace and using that momentum to jump. <br />Want to intimidate someone? How are you intimidating them? With your strength? Intimidate + Might for example. <br />With your knowledge of Cheese? Intimidate + Knowledge (Specialty: Dairy Products). <br />In a world full of RPGs trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to adding dice to a number, it's a system that allows greater ease when describing an event to a GM and so long as that same GM puts a rein on it, some interesting ways of dealing with situations occurs. One of my players has a doctor who uses acupuncture needles, she has no fighting stat because, well she's a doctor so when forced into combat she asked if instead of using a fighting skill combo, she would be allowed to use "<i>Marksmanship</i>" + "Medicine" combo instead to simulate accurately hitting pressure points to take down her opponent. It made sense in my mind so I allowed it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It does have it's flaws mind you, a player and myself discussed that if allowed, Knowledge + Speed can check for everything in the game, for instance:</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">"Mad Mike takes aim and fires his rifle at you"<br />"I'll use my Knowledge + Speed to calculate the trajectory of the bullets path, rush him and with Knowledge + Speed again, attack using pressure point systems to stop his heart"<br />"Right *</b><i style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">sigh</i><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-weight: bold;">* With Mad Mike taken care of, you can now attempt to calm down the hostage"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-weight: bold;">"Using my know-how of human psychology and wanting to calm them down quickly I use Knowle..."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-weight: bold;">"Big rocks fall..."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As far as game breaking goes, it falls on the GM's shoulders as it does in many games. "<i>Time Freeze</i>", a power that allows a character to stop time for 10 in-game seconds can become ridiculous with other power combos (Such as "<i>Teleporting</i>" to, without a defense reaction allow a character to insta-gib a single opponent). <br />This is balanced somewhat by the Juice system, the chemical balance of adrenaline in one's own bodies that in essence 'pays' for the use of powers, stopping players from doing bonkers maneuvers more than once in most instances, <i>although</i> with powers that can lead to gaining Juice from energy absorption, two players can without much effort work as a team to shut down every threat you put against them outside of </span><span style="font-family: 'courier new', courier, monospace; font-weight: bold;">"Big rocks fall"</span><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">.<br /><br />Give players a supers system though and they will break that system over their knee if they desire, players gonna play, so don't take this and the above check as a game breaker, just something to nip in the bud </span><u style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">very</u><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> early. The two-skill check is great for flavoring what your checks are actually doing but sometimes, no two skills makes sense or you can't think of a combo right away, you can substitute the two-check for "Skillx1.5" which is a good fix for times it comes up.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />AMP also has the standard advantages/drawbacks alongside bonus points to further customize your character, nothing out of the ordinary but I do enjoy how some combined can make for interesting archetypes. One player has a drawback that everyone recognizes him for being in jail, but with the advantage that he has a large amount of respect among the criminal underworld. So whilst he might be screwed trying to get past a security guard, he can always call in help in other ways to hack into a system or drive him somewhere.<br /><br />All-in-all the power system and the way the skills are created make for fun games and something I'm really enjoying running, even if it is showing me the darker sides of my player's personality. How does one make the power "<i>Accelerate Sickness</i>" out to be anything else but absolutely evil, especially when the same character has been a chain smoker for all their life and have a power which can transfer disease from themselves to others?...<br /><br />May your adventures be full of ass-kicking and good times, have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-75738673658375940342016-05-02T19:00:00.000+01:002016-05-02T19:00:34.581+01:00Ending the Tale EarlyI had high hopes for the Shifting Loyalties campaign. Even with the bad fan-fiction, it was a joy to work out my writing muscles and I do love a Slow Grow.<br />
Things don't always go how one plans however, adding more rules to an otherwise well thought out system, at the start, sounded good. It got the creative juices flowing in terms of narrative driven game play and the potential for plain ridiculous upgrades and extras all sounded like a party in Malifaux.<br />
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Its just that it stopped being fun.<br />
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Week 1 went off without a hitch, I got two games in for a win and a loss and both of us walked away with upgrades and currency in our pockets. Week 2 was a disaster and left my crew penniless and chock-a-block full of injuries. Week 3 I missed out on because work and that's fine, it happens but then the idea of going into Week 4 with a crew that I wasn't happy with and using my teeth to climb Mt Everest in working my way back up just didn't appeal to me. Even assuming no injuries, an all-comers minion list is gimicky at best and was a struggle to make work. Despite the synergy that was everywhere: Komainu getting suits from Toshiro who gave <i>Fast</i> to Shadow Effigy who gave <i>Remember the Mission</i> to Dawn Serpent who charged into Pathfinder's Clockwork Trap victims, lots going on on paper but never as effective as it should have been. This may be me trying to play Ten Thunders like Arcanists but I can't seem to make the Thunders "work" for me when I work plays to their strengths. Let me try and get to a point.<br />
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My Toshiro led list was consistently working with Max hand size 3 in all games I've played in and out of this campaign. I needed a 6 Tomes+ for Pathfinder to set his trap, an 8 (preferably of crows) for Toshiro's 'Beam of <i>Fast</i>' and a 10 card for Shadow Effigie's Mission Remembering. For me, that's a lot of effects to save cards for just to make my models do more than stand and score. Sure Mei Feng likes 7s for her Rail Walking, Kaeris likes her Tomes but that that's one card for one model, so it doesn't hit me as hard; with or without the Reservior option, My personal favorite Arc Henchmen: Snowstorm can push and maneuver 'Hearts without saving cards, Firestarter doesn't need to ditch cards to get an additional Ap and Joss doesn't need to spend cards to add to the scrap pile. This isn't to poo-poo on Thunders, there's obviously something I like about them if I'm so drawn to them but as a primarily Arcanist player, I'm in another world when it comes to saving cards and summoning.<br />
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As far as strictly the campaign, whilst I love a Slow Grow, the campaign is set up where your 26ss list (after henchman cost) is your primary core for the greater part of the beginning. Whilst I don't feel like I made a junk list with Toshiro, Dawn Serpent and friends, it was a list that the scheme and strategy could easily ruin. Some model choices only come up with certain S&S and some I would never take. Shadow Effigy is a model used for throwing up markers here there and everywhere, what does the Effigy do when it isn't a marker based scheme pool? He counts as a scoring model and that's about it. Pathfinder is great at disruption but sometimes I want to hire the traps rather than save cards to ensure summoning them, it's a big investment when the only Tome in hand is a 13 and I have to use it to summon ONE 2ss model that doesn't activate.<br />
In a Slow Grow, the only restriction was the reduced soul stone cost, one might struggle to make a 26ss list for Reconnoiter but it's possible. One certainly wouldn't make the same 26ss list for Reckoning or when Make them Suffer is in the pool though. Limited options, yes but one could tailor them to the schemes and strategys. In the campaign setting, not so much until later on. If I'm waiting until later for the game to be fun, I might as well play a 50ss game of Malifaux rather than trudge through a grind to get there.<br />
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The first question I asked: would this be an altered yarn if I took Arcanists instead? Snowstorm leading Frozen Hearts, Joss leading Constructs, Firestarter leading a flock of Fire Garmin? All good options, all great on paper but it doesn't change the static list build of the early weeks. In a game where it's a necessity to play the scheme's strengths rather than individual models, having a set list with no way to swap in and out models leads to games of un-needed stress, doubly so with the injury system making bad tables worse. It isn't something I want to do just to see a Dawn Serpent with <i>Flurry</i>.<br />
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So ends Shiro's mission for freedom, a sad non-starter but still a hero in his own way. Have fun out there.JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-88987203049078819502016-04-25T19:00:00.000+01:002016-04-25T19:00:02.373+01:00Center Stage Focus - Coryphee Duet<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Outside of models I've truly never used before, there are some were I have to congratulate Wyrd on the flavor and abilities of when it comes to their models. Being the mainly Arcanist player I am, the first thing to come into my head when thinking of impactful non-Masters is the Coryphee and the Duet they become.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Back when I first started Malifaux, I had a very real problem with Scheme runners with Rasputina. With little experience with the Ice Witch and at a time where not even all the masters crew boxes were released, it was hard to generate a list for Breakthrough/Plant Evidence etc etc, Frozen Heart back then just didn't have any runners.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My first inclusion were the Mole Men and for a while they were great, that is until they were attacked or, for instance, they had already dropped more than enough markers. They have a <i>Very</i> focused job and can't really diverge from that role, I needed something else.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a new player I brought both Arsenal decks for Arcanists just so I knew what everything did (This also being when Crossroads wasn't released, dark times indeed) and the Coryphee appeared to be exactly what I was looking for: Fast models who were able to attack but more importantly could leave combat and not get charged in response. The Duet looked insane and rightly so for sacrificing two 7ss models. So I set about a proxy of the dancers and took them to the table.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">... And subsequently got them killed before turn 3 every game I had them. As a player in general I have this idea that new models exist in another dimension where opponent's will let them do exactly what they want and watch in awe as they do their home run lap. I can't fault my opponent's actions, I was playing the Coryphee dumb. I ran them in range of Anti-Armor which destroyed them quickly, if I had planned to run the pair separately, I would panic at the loss of 2 wounds and try to duet them only to have them standing out in the open. In games where I duet'ed immediately I would use them as pure scheme runners rather than assassination units so spending 14ss to be backfield doing Mole Men's job (forgetting that with their speed and 3ap, they could achieve a number of base rulebook schemes on turn 5). <br />I would either play too cagey or too aggressive, but as I came to learn, there is a delicate nuance of balance to the puppet's role on the field.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fast forward to modern day, the Coryphee are released in plastic now and by budgetary reasoning, I've magnetized them to properly duet together. I know now not to run them into big nasties but rather assassinating smaller models. I almost never run them as a single unit anymore, the first turn is hopefully a double walk into a <i>Dance Partner-Dance Together</i>. Why not duet immediately? Summoning a fresh model that still has 2ap left to use up to 17" into the table is veritably useful, especially in dealing with well-placed <i>From the Shadows</i> models or taking down an early minion who safely assumed double walking was a good move. Picturing two marionettes gracefully spinning across the battlefield and effortlessly taking down a Guild Pathfinder is a thing of beauty.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I have found despite this that Rasputina still doesn't like the Duet. Not being Frozen Heart and not having much synergy in the crew leaves the puppets in the box. Mei Feng on the other hand loves them. Fast constructs that can keep up with her, that can get her out of trouble via <i>Rail Walk </i>and being able start or finish a fight alongside the Rail Boss is amazing. The Duet's main weakness against range becomes silly when they are within the protective <i>Vent Steam</i> and having another 3ap model dancing beside a master and the often 3Ap Firestarter provides fantastic opportunities for Vp gain. <br />With only one game with Kaeris right now I don't know if they have a place but in their one game with her they provided a means to draw an optimal hand turn one before duet'ing and acted as bodyguards to the rather frail Kaeris saving her Ap to use her burning effectively.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Judging the Duet on it's own, having Auto-everything in attack and defense paired with <i>Agile</i> and <i>Disguised</i> make the dancers impossible to pin down with melee attacks alone. Hitting them with conditions or ranged attacks is preferable but to get through Df/Wp6 with a built-in positive, it's an uphill struggle. This is not to say they are invincible, far from it but so long as I keep them away from tables that can focus anti-armor rounds, avoiding charging them into more than 2 models who can wear down those 7Wd OR being in a position where models around the Duet prevent them from escaping then I'm confident they will always make for an memorable game and an additional challenge to my opponent. It's 14ss that I don't regret spending to include them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dance like no one is watching and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-13609175264920641432016-04-18T19:00:00.000+01:002016-04-18T19:00:26.531+01:00A Tale of Souls and Swords - Week 2<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Shiro was musing his past again, perhaps his present wasn't something he was happy with, how philosophical. Taking ground in his past life was his preferred method to gaining information and setting up a base of influence in an unknown area. Other methods were sometimes faster, other methods got you killed much faster but setting up a base of operations first before cracking heads together yielded much better results than rushing in(and being able to retreat units to a protected stronghold when jobs went south gave the men a much needed morale boost).</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>After the Gremlins were forced out, it was time for Shiro to extend his influence further out and that required scouting out the surrounding landscape. Summoning forth Ashigaru retainers and his faithful Komainu, a newly acquired ability he obtained from his resurrection, he sent them to scope out more of Lambs Breath Nord. They would either return with information, or never return, presumed destroyed, both results gave Shiro a clearer vision of his surroundings. He allowed his current entourage time to get adjusted with the local fauna; that was when Jack appeared.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>"I... want YOU... TO hit me... AS HARD... AS you CAN!..." it screamed, twitching it's head and flexing it's monstrous claws towards Shiro. Shiro was in awe rather than angry, how such a beast got past.... a puppet, a bored dragon and a sleepy sniper.... oh; Shiro seriously needed more footmen. Summoning was arduous.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Shiro responded to this challenge by near knocking this creature's head clean off, it seemed to have the effect it was looking for. Shiro named him "Jack", short for "Jacked-up S.O.B" and left the fool where he lay, smiling in near-unconsciousness.</b></span><br />
<b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Later when Jack had re-awoken, it made Shiro a deal: keep finding it pain, and Jack would fight by Shiro's side. </b><br />
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<b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Well, with so much pain in Shiro's future yet to come, it was a safe bet.</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Pain indeed. This weeks match was brutal and left me wondering if I can still compete. Absolutely devastating.<br /><br />The game in question was: <br />Standard Deployment Reckoning<br />Protect Territory<br />Breakthrough<br />Make them Suffer<br />Frame for Murder<br /><br />This weeks campaign bonus: Players get 2 script, up to a maximum of 6 for every scheme marker that's on the opponent's half of the table that isn't being used for scoring Vp.<br /><br />My opponent brought with him:<br />Sebastian w/ Those Are Not Ours!<br />Rotten Belle<br />Rafkin<br />Nurse<br />Night Terror<br />2x Guild Autopsy<br />Malifaux Child<br /><br />Things went off to a good start turn one, the both of us moving into position, Shadow Effigy and Toshiro making the whole crew drop scheme markers in place for bonus script and Protect Territory. Sadly after that it all went to the bleedin' choir invisible.<br />It turns out, charging Illuminated into 4 models that can poison and then boost the damage of said poison turn end is a terrible idea. Rafkin and Sebastian being to blame. Toshiro joined the fray but ended up the same way, the Dawn Serpent got badly injured, badly poisoned and then got chased by Sebastian killing it turn 3 whilst turns 4 and 5 had Komainu and Effigy bite the dust too. My whole crew sans Dawn Serpent flipping injuries. It was a complete and total thrashing and one I can't blame anybody else but my lack of poison manipulation experience (I'm normally immune to it or wiping it with Chiaki/Johan/Arcane Effigy) and once again thinking a model is immortal when it is merely difficult to kill.<br /><br />My first game with Illuminated was less trial by fire and more trial by 200ft drop without a parachute. <i>Armor +1, </i>2 forms of healing and a decent amount of wounds made me believe the junkie was this god among men and infallible to the attacks of said peons in his wake.<br />Sadly whilst being very consistent with damage and having bonkers threat range, he is no Viktoria. 7ss vs 22ss is a bad match-up no matter who's at the helm. History repeats.<br /><br /><i>Sigh</i><br />No matter, with my whole crew in bandages, it means my next game will be one of careful moves, knowing my opponent's models inside and out and scoring full Vp where it counts. With Week 5 closing in fast, I need to complete this bounty, and have enough script to buy Mr Yan Lo and his Soul Porter mate.<br /><br />It only hurts when I laugh, regardless, have fun out there. </span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-76007869611598124902016-04-11T19:00:00.000+01:002016-04-17T13:05:27.095+01:00A Tale of Souls and Swords - Week 1<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>In a previous life, Shiro was audience to a friendly rivalry between two members of his clan, the lean Stringbean and the rotund Eggplant. They requested a non-lethal battle in order to show Shiro who was greater in combat, Shiro allowed it.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>The fight lasted 3 seconds.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>The moment Stringbean charged, Shiro knew the battle was over. Eggplant weaved under the first katana swing, parried the counter swing with his own, throwing Stringbean off balance, before kicking his leg and slashing accurately between the armored joints of his skinnier opponent's protective gear, ending the fight quickly and efficiently in a wobbly blur of expert motion. Stringbean's sword resounded on the ground shortly followed by the thud of his own body. Eggplant resumed his previous slouch, bowed, apologized for his rudeness and returned to the cheering celebrations of his peers. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Shiro was in awe rather than angry. Such unknown skill in his own ranks. Stringbean was allowed to live but forced the indignation of training under the tutelage of "Master Eggplant" when he recovered thereafter.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>In the present, Shiro required a base of operations. Standing in his wake were the inhabitants of the bayou screeching and hollering as usual, no doubt calling to attention every guild guard in earshot. An excellent strategy; if the green ones meant to do it.</b></span><br />
<b style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">One could mistake the mindless chattering and clumsy demeanor to denote little combat experience in the gremlins but Shiro wasn't about to let this section of town slip from his hands and he made absolutely certain not to underestimate his foes. He ordered the Pathfinder to scout ahead and summoned his pet to side.</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>This fight won't be over in 3 seconds.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My first game on campaign road was a Squatters Rights game vs Gremlins then a second game of Reckoning right after, another faction I've been wanting to play more against.<br />This weeks weekly mission: After turn 2, players randomly place 4 Guild Guards down, at the end of any turn after the 2nd if there are no Guild Guards on the table, a Peacekeeper is placed in the center. Guild Guard give out 1 script, the Peacekeeper is worth 5 script but lets face it, other than an average damage spread from Lightning Bug's attack, neither of us were capable of taking down a 11Wd Armor +2 monstrosity without taking casualties in such a small game. So the pair of us avoided killing the last guard.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Toshiro was facing:<br />Trixiebelle<br />Lenny w/ I'll love it and pet it...<br />Slop Hauler<br />Burt Jebson<br />Lightning Bug<br /><br />For an all-comers list, I liked my opponent's choices, Trixie for mobility and a ton of slap attack actions next to Lenny, almost everyone benefiting from Lenny's Rams aura as well as a small amount of summoning, the ever present Slop Hauler to heal everyone's <i>Reckless</i> and the offensive choices of Bug and Kurt Russell.<br /><br />My List:<br />Toshiro w/ Command the Graves<br />Dawn Serpent<br />Shadow Effigy<br />Pathfinder<br />Komainu<br /><br />My choices were more role-for-role, Komainu for his ability to tar-pit and pass out <i>Slow</i>, Pathfinder for Clockwork Trap disruption and sniper-esque attacks from range, Shadow Effigy for the ability to make scheme runners out of everyone and Dawn Serpent for being the greatest minion in the game (In my opinion). Toshiro ties everyone together passing out attack buffs, <i>Fast </i>and the very rare<i> Focused</i>, then summoning off of Dawn Serpent's targets. A neat little package that I desperately need to add some offensive power to in the near future.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For Squatter's Rights we were evenly matched, Lenny couldn't get any Piglet summons off but neither was Toshiro close enough to any markers. Pathfinder on the other hand was able to summon 2 Clockwork Traps but that didn't stop my opponent from laying down squat markers elsewhere. I won the game 9-7 ensuring Shiro was able to set up base in this part of Lambs Breath Nord.<br /><br />For Reckoning, it was another story. We both played fairly cagey with the pair of us choosing <i>Frame for Murder</i> and <i>Distract. </i>It was a very close game but once Toshiro finished off Kurt Russell and Lenny Pig Missile'd Pathfinder (Both <i>Frame for Murder </i>participants) We both had the hard choice of Distract or Murder. With such a small game, it was either one or the other yet my opponent won out last turn when a summoned Komainu was unable to finish off his Slop Hauler thus getting distracted alongside an activated Toshiro and Dawn Serpent. Very well played. He won this game 7-6 but not without Lightning Bug taking an injury roll, the Gremlins proving just how distracting they can be whilst Shiro's crew were trying to evict them from his new grounds.<br /><br />For my efforts, Toshiro now has Ml7 on his Katana strikes and Dawn Serpent is now immune to <i>Slow</i> and <i>Paralyze, </i>No doubt from hitting so many Gremlins around and having to duck and weave out of the way of thrown Piglets. With 5 Script taken from the dead Guild Guard's pockets, my crew is looking healthy with no injuries. Next week is going to be a slobberknocker!<br /><br />The Campaign system is a great way to introduce another way to do a Slow Grow in my mind. Models increase in strength every game as well as saving Script for crew additions makes for games where sometimes you want to go for more script for later games rather than earning just one more Vp.<br /><br />On the theory side of things; as with all Slow Grows, a small (or large) amount of summoning is a boon; especially when in this mode of play, models can take on severe injuries that can take them out of your arsenal completely (until re-bought). Having models that "don't exist" for the purposes of game play gives more of a reward to the risk of going up against a more killy crew.<br />Another thing that crossed my mind was list building itself. Assume for instance, I didn't hire Komainu and gave myself 5 Script on top of 5 Soulstones in my first game, knowing that the start of week two I can hire whoever I wanted with the 5 stone discount. It gives one more options but I felt it redundant when the first thing I would hire would be the Komainu for free anyway. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have my next model to think about. With 5 Script, I can afford any 10ss Ten Thunders model. I need more aggression that's for sure, The Daimyo can dish out hurt, the Pathfinder <i>can </i>take away a lot of wounds but no one is really completely focused on the act of murder. Tosh for one is moving into position to get his minions buffed and trying to summon or give out <i>Fast</i> and Pathfinder is just trying to stay alive.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With my latest purchase of <i>Dark Debts</i>, Illuminated appear to the best choice for a minion focused list. Other models for consideration include Kang, for his buffs to go alongside Toshiro's. Yin, the Penangalan for a more defensive model to guard Warring Turfs, Protecting Territories and generally getting in the way and Katanaka Sniper for some needed range in games where rushing into models is a bad idea.<br />Illuminated is likely to win this week though and it gives me spare Script leftover in order to save up for future purchases (Skills and Upgrades come to mind). Going to be fun trying to figure out how a violent junkie high on tyrant heroin is going to work with Shiro in a way that makes sense.<br /><br />Enjoy my average fan-fiction and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-28402263514744593322016-04-08T19:00:00.000+01:002016-04-17T13:05:07.003+01:00A Tale of Souls and Swords, Eternally Retold<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Apparently alone with nothing but a pocket of scrap and a Pathfinder (who obviously wasn't bothered being lead and accompanied by an un-dead feudal samurai) Shiro still felt the eyes of the Ten Thunders watching his every step. The Dragon and the strangely compliant Puppet riding on it's back flying high above him enforced his paranoia and were both no doubt keeping his betters updated on his whereabouts and goings on... Somehow.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>No peace.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Paranoia notwithstanding, with so many successful missions, even with his accidental possession of the once head of the Katanaka Clan, Shiro (Toshiro always felt to formal) could respect the Ten Thunder's way of leadership. Shiro had first hand knowledge, he lead the same way, once.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Failure was met with harsh and all-too-often fatal retribution yet victory came with vast benefits.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b><i>Such as continuing to move and think un-aided was a good one</i> he joked.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>It took some adjustment and quick thinking but Shiro was 5% sure he was getting away with the act. If the Ten Thunders knew, they obviously found him more useful alive than dead.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>Shiro looked upon his prosthetic torso and his Katana skillfully artificed to look more akin to a Bokuto and grimly smiled. Come rain, snow, magical hurricanes or what was now plain abusive heat, Shiro was going to find what it was he sought, not for the Ten Thunders but for for himself. It's not often Fate hands one a second life after all...</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Welcome to Lambs Breath Nord! My first Shifting Loyalties campaign and something I'm very excited to play! It's always been a want of mine to create a narrative within the games I play but I always struggled with the implementation of doing so. Yeah I could spin a tale of the mighty Rasputina rushing towards the enemy ruins to demand a refund on the blender they sold to her but then when I get near-table wiped, it sort of ruins the story I was planning on telling.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><b>The Silent One fell to her knees, the receipt for the blender fell from her hands and danced out of reach in the harsh wind.<br />"<i>Unfortunately, we need a receipt to refund this item, please get in touch with our customer service hotline</i>" said Leviticus.<br />All was lost.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Within the Shifting Loyalties rule set though, this isn't a problem and creates games where you have a past, a goal and great way to connect together all the random match-ups one gets when playing Malifaux. It also allows me to stretch out my average fan fiction muscles when I have little to go on when it comes to Malifaux fluff.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I decided on playing Ten Thunders with Toshiro, the Daimyo leading the first wave of games. His buff to minions and summoning plus giving me pseudo 3Ap in his (0) actions gave me more options than if I were to run Kang (too slow) or Ototo (just as slow). Alongside him I hired Dawn Serpent (because as a minion able to be buffed by Tosh, the Dragon is ridiculous); A Shadow Effigy for easy scheme running, a Komainu and a Pathfinder for more summoning and disruption. All minions, all the time. Giving myself no script (the campaign currency used to hire and to buy upgrades) first week might be bad but for such a solid Vp focused line-up, I was happy to earn it from scratch. Plenty of opportunity out there.<br /><br />Follow me as Shiro sets foot into the idyllic town of Lambs Breath Nord in order to find the Black Soulstone to free himself from his Ten Thunder masters and be a free, un-dead man. I can already tell its going to be a lot of fun.<br /><br />Create legend on the stage of history and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-53317108175403943332016-04-04T19:00:00.000+01:002016-04-04T19:00:00.256+01:00Season Review - Winter<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Since the start of the year I've kept a record of all 50ss games I've played noting the Win/Loss, the strategy and whom I played with and against.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I would keep track of schemes chosen, Vp total, crew member selection frequency and how useful each model was to the game in question but keeping it simple seems to work better for me than updating an excel spreadsheet on the fly. Maybe someday I'll gain the ability to gather data like a <b>BOSS</b> and detail every Ap spent and Vp gained by every model I use but for now, I'll settle for a straightforward Win/Draw/Loss with X master.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Without further ado:</span><br />
<b><u><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
</u></b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><u>Most played Strategies:</u></b> <br />- 1st Place - Reconnoiter - 5 Times</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- 2nd Place - Squatter's Rights - 4 Times</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- 3rd Place - Guard the Stash - 4 Times</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Despite randomly flipping the strategy each game, my favorite strat came up 5 times in the course of 3 months, even Squatter's and Stash I find enjoyable. It's almost like telling the universe what I like playing pays off. Strange.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><u>Most played Masters:</u></b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> <br />- 1st Place - Rasputina - 12 Times</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- 2nd Place - Mei Feng - 6 Times</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- 3rd Place - Misaki - 3 Times</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span>- Participation Award - Ironsides - Once</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- Newcomer Award - Kaeris</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lady 'Tina is no surprise whatsoever this season, every game I play it's a case of really wanting to play another master but then Rasputina shows up and pushes everyone around with her Frozen Hearts getting up in everyone's faces. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ms Mei getting half of Raspy's total games is a given at this point but the Rail walker has shown me that she can rock the house just as well as </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rasputina; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">favorites are favorites though so it'll be tough to gain the discipline of not auto-taking the Rasmus for every encounter; or going the other extreme and not taking Rasputina when I really should.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Misaki sneaked in for bronze due completely to the Growfaux leaving Ironsides with little more than a little flag saying "Everyone's A Winner!".<br />The last game of the month saw Kaeris wining her inaugural match and she shows a lot of promise. Not as killy as the Ice Queen, not as brutal as the Oybun Metal Worker but rather a master with a lot of ways to deal with any given situation. Watch this space.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><u>Most games won:</u></b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> <br />- 1st Place - </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mei Feng - 4 games</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- 2nd Place - Rasputina - 3 games</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- 3rd Place - </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Misaki - 2 games</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mei Feng got in a trio of close game wins on the last day of the month hence her resurgence to the top of the leader board, facing Nicodem's mass summoning in non-recon/interference games will do that though (<i>Hunting Party, hallowed be thy scheme, Coryphee Duet's will be done, on table, as it is in Malifaux</i>). What this also means is so long as I don't play Feng simply to play her and choose my games carefully, she is a very good choice in good match-ups, dare I say, better than Rasputina. I'll be very interested to see how next the season plays out.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rassy only winning a quarter of her games is a little sad but when my local meta is full of champions of malifaux as mine is, you roll with the punches besides, if I had decided to use Rasputina for my final three games, I'm confident her score would have been better. Playing many games with experimental lists such as "Team Mega Buff" and the abysmal "Casting Gunline" and I should expect nothing less than a bad on-paper score.<br />Misaki fares better percentually (<i>Is that a word? It is? Really? Nice</i>) winning two-thirds of her games much like Mei but considering that Growfaux was all about trying out new masters and models, the results are a little skewed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><u>Masters played against by faction:</u></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>- Outcasts - 8 games</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- Viktorias - 5 times; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Jack Daw - Twice; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Levi - Once</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>- Resurrectionists - 4 games</b> <br />- Nicodem - Twice; Yan Lo - Once; Seamus - Once</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>- Neverborn - 3 games</b><br />- Pandora - Once; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Collodi - Once; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Dreamer - Once</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>- Guild - 3 games</b><br />- Sonnia - Once; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lady Justice - Once; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Perdita - Once<br /><b>- Arcanists - 2 games</b><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> <br />- Rasputina - Twice</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>- Ten Thunders: - 2 games</b><br />- McCabe - Once; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mei Feng - Once</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>- Gremlins - 1 game</b><br />- Ulix - Once</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Viktorias appear to be everyone's favorite right now in my experience, with many people either slaying with them or attempting the subtle chess game of early turn blitzkriegs. Viktorias might be top but the impression I get from many players is that they are one-trick-ponies, they either get the job done and get killed with ease; or fail to do anything and get killed with ease, which I sense frustrates more players than it intrigues. Otherwise a pretty even spread throughout. Some late games against Resurrectionists supercharged their faction to silver granting my wish to play more against them. Talking of which, I played against Yan Lo! Which got me very excited to play the old man once again. Maybe I'll pull him out of hibernation for a certain casual event starting in April.... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Season total:</b>- 23 games<br />- 9 Wins</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- 1 Draw</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- 13 Losses</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So draws a close to this seasons games, with half of my games being lost I have to really buckle down and start taking my own advice. I'm slowly but surely getting to grips with what every master in the game does as well my own models strengths and weaknesses. Here's to closer games next season!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Continue to kick arse in a sportsmanlike fashion and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-81887133466350554452016-03-28T19:00:00.000+01:002016-03-28T19:00:05.052+01:00The Immitation of the Sow<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The first official tournament I attended this year was <b>B</b></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>oarfaux</b></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, hosted by Warboar's Paradise Bar. A fantastic venue and only really cramp because of the 30+ people that attended thus contributing to their biggest Malifaux event to date. Terrain was set up wonderfully and the T.O was clear, concise and kept players up to date with amount of time remaining. Everything you want in a tournament, casual or official.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6QBxB6Wm4yyHCaXl_GMMl3R6mgKLJN6A7OoaGwv8dT42ogp7ewlyII6UlTiv56GxucxOecLlLoPbGJtNWRhyphenhyphenAOm6VeDIWbmfG2l87aJj6rK5b5X2msJ6T1qmY3LjgwgUzNByfRPpjh4/s1600/Venue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6QBxB6Wm4yyHCaXl_GMMl3R6mgKLJN6A7OoaGwv8dT42ogp7ewlyII6UlTiv56GxucxOecLlLoPbGJtNWRhyphenhyphenAOm6VeDIWbmfG2l87aJj6rK5b5X2msJ6T1qmY3LjgwgUzNByfRPpjh4/s320/Venue.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I finished in the top ten, which is rather strange because I lost 3 games out of four... oh oh wait, had the results upside-down... I actually placed 26th. A result I'm pleased with as the talent and sportsmanship of players that attended was magnificent to say the least. It also highlighted that I need more games against the Viks and to actually study their threat range but more on that later.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4_qlV-s-xmuWHud2kjHjlRPdQzH_iODgWOnJmNH2wyMPz623LvCrqCUpCSEyicaO0oxRsO6VM5tuWbE6whnEBvZNzgEDXZwIjQKBhqMK0x2xRSH7Ncj9cLQw37ysyK-hhGKYauqPnDkQ/s1600/Venue+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4_qlV-s-xmuWHud2kjHjlRPdQzH_iODgWOnJmNH2wyMPz623LvCrqCUpCSEyicaO0oxRsO6VM5tuWbE6whnEBvZNzgEDXZwIjQKBhqMK0x2xRSH7Ncj9cLQw37ysyK-hhGKYauqPnDkQ/s320/Venue+2.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /><br /><br />I opted for Arcanists and brought with me Mei Feng and Rasputina. As usual Absolute Zero Sabrina took most of the limelight but Rail Walk Rihanna got a closing game in and played very well despite the disadvantages. Only knowing the opponent's faction means that I had to take into account that almost anything could be on the opposite side of the table, so I took the all-rounder in my stable unless Arcanist or Guild were sitting across from me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /><br />Game 1 - Rasputina Vs Dreamer - 4-2 Loss</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Standard Deployment - Guard the Stash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Convict Labour, Show of Force (Mine), Leave your Mark (Opp), Search the Ruins (Mine), A Quick Murder (Opp)</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggsZW5neMmZ1fsTJNAgDT67yQXs84xJx1pt8v4rovf03jmXHk-oAWEmSD8wCwWts8h608F6edBgxJ-qPDDACIQWPl44eqaGdDvMC6QnIjNW4ZvfG9LPqn1-22AmrS73Ojrosyp0Fwu1VA/s1600/Game+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggsZW5neMmZ1fsTJNAgDT67yQXs84xJx1pt8v4rovf03jmXHk-oAWEmSD8wCwWts8h608F6edBgxJ-qPDDACIQWPl44eqaGdDvMC6QnIjNW4ZvfG9LPqn1-22AmrS73Ojrosyp0Fwu1VA/s320/Game+1.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Announcing</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Neverborn in my meta normally means Pandy, Lily or Collodi. Lynch being mainly played Thunders together with Zoraida and Lucius being panned for being sub-par or plain boring. Imagine my surprise when Dreamer hit the table.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've played against Dreamer exactly zero times but I know his card well enough and about his particular summoning/healing mechanic. It didn't really help in the long run but at least I wasn't clueless. As it was my first game I took: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rasputina w/ Armor of December, Child of December and Cold Nights (6 cache)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Joss w/ Imbued Energies</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Snowstorm w/ Imbued Energies</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wendigo, Arcane Effigy, 2x Hoarcat Pride, Ice Garmin.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With a flying summoning Dreamer and armor ignoring Teddy across from me, I knew I had a tough match ahead of me. My general plan was to have Wendigo and Raspy throw out walls to slow the advance of models drawing closer to the stash markers, if I obtain 1Vp over my opponent then all I needed was full points on schemes and I was set. Rasputina easily took Teddy down but failed to do anything of consequence for the rest of the match whilst Joss tanked hits admirably. Attempting to do the same with a Hoarcat Pride and Wendigo on the other stash marker simply wasn't working. The late game saw two damaged, reactivating Stitched Togethers Gambling for life 8 times total absolutely ruining the rest of my forces and closing the game. I scored nothing for Stash and 2Vp for Show of Force to my opponent's 2 Stash Vp and 2 Quick Murder Vp. It was brutal but at least it was a close game.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Game 2 - Rasputina vs Viks - 7-3 Loss</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Flank Deployment - Squatters Rights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Convict Labour (Mine), Hunting Party (Both), Exhaust their Forces, Set Up, Undercover Entourage (Opp)</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMx1pDdIXL4gkbz6OAHs9ZCK8ssHKCJsQK3gQhrjQWkAiHNvzzJYm1X8-WaJG-miOSwpu-LYtHTbfmF_mWwt8w5pRENaZuTiNRgTqzXsvyrGRsJMmq0t_NxdxmurnVqrZ7ppyA6NrA_tk/s1600/Game+Squatters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMx1pDdIXL4gkbz6OAHs9ZCK8ssHKCJsQK3gQhrjQWkAiHNvzzJYm1X8-WaJG-miOSwpu-LYtHTbfmF_mWwt8w5pRENaZuTiNRgTqzXsvyrGRsJMmq0t_NxdxmurnVqrZ7ppyA6NrA_tk/s320/Game+Squatters.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>*NOTE: Not my game</b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If Outcasts are named, it's normally Viks, Levi or Daw. Knowing what Viks are like in competitive play, I assumed the Sisters were coming to play but for whatever reason this didn't click in my head and I failed to give the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sub Zero</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> upgrade to anyone. Taking five damage to the face is <i>slightly</i> more tolerable when it ends the activation, prevents <i>Whirlwind</i> and leaves a master that spent the turn buffed to the teeth in the clutches of frosty death. Sadly, as I don't use the upgrade nearly as much as I realistically should, I opted instead for:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rasputina w/ Armor of December, Child of December, December's Pawn, Decoy (6 Cache)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Snowstorm w/ Imbued Protection, Decoy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Blessed of December w/ Killswitch</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wendigo, 2x Hoarcat Pride, Ronin</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In hindsight, ditching the cats and <i>Imbued Protection</i> for a pair of Silent One and <i>Sub Zero</i> would have proven better in the long run but I have a weakness for the felines, something I need to plan a use for rather than starting every ARC list with "Two Hoarcat Prides with...".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The game started well enough, the Viks were being cagey for the early game which didn't help me out as my models were behind blocking terrain on brown alert waiting for the </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuklVDTynEpRXnHBSlYnj_Z4mLFdtlTcJ82TeEL4tLf5ZRYkMv6hhCaKzTiwXY0D4rYPfPQHri7t8DRbwJjJ5RoCYA0vovP0yhuyVY8_YYBN1_5SLVOtWHxFgBNeQjhsZcTwzArWrlBvw/s1600/Office.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuklVDTynEpRXnHBSlYnj_Z4mLFdtlTcJ82TeEL4tLf5ZRYkMv6hhCaKzTiwXY0D4rYPfPQHri7t8DRbwJjJ5RoCYA0vovP0yhuyVY8_YYBN1_5SLVOtWHxFgBNeQjhsZcTwzArWrlBvw/s1600/Office.jpg" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">impending beatdown. Wendigo and Hoarcat Pride took early Squat markers but then I just couldn't catch a break. Turn two my opponent brazenly puts the Viks out into the open on the last activation so turn 3 came down to Rasputina destoying her or the Viks killing Snowstorm and Ronin then tying up Rasputina. Initiative comes and he flips a face card....Kay.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I struggled for the rest of the game, the Blessed, bless her heart, failed to place enough markers for Convict Labour so tried to zero in on the Malifaux Child, needing only one hit to kill him scoring at least one point for Hunting Party, first attack wiffs and the second misses the trigger leaving the Child with wounds to spare. My opponent takes this time to walk Vik of Ashes over to my deployment and then uses the Malifaux Child to heal up to full with a top-decked 7 of Rams into a Red Joker heal. Blessed gets killed revealing Killswitch finishing off the child and at least scoring something. Final results, I only got 2 Squatter's Vp due to my crew being murderized, 1Vp for Hunting Party to my opponent's 3Vp in Squatters, 1Vp in Hunting Party (surprisingly) and full points for Entourage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Game 3 - Rasputina vs Viks - 7-4 Win</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Standard Deployment - Headhunter</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Convict Labour, Take Prisoner (Opp, Silent One), Leave your Mark (Mine), Neutralize the Leader (Both), Public Demonstration</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioEtuz80gQQDKQ5CS4QGvWLK664DZiufmUWfVi-pz2eSqYznmSj4uoktD0NRes10HHZbArQDDCh-Jo80tPm_dOiv9v_ShTAVnTxEml-aUu3Qhcj_MS-QeuZnAwsoa1uAeU0cbieRt85Is/s1600/Game+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioEtuz80gQQDKQ5CS4QGvWLK664DZiufmUWfVi-pz2eSqYznmSj4uoktD0NRes10HHZbArQDDCh-Jo80tPm_dOiv9v_ShTAVnTxEml-aUu3Qhcj_MS-QeuZnAwsoa1uAeU0cbieRt85Is/s320/Game+3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Outcasts again and again suspected the Viks and AGAIN didn't think <i>Sub Zero</i> was a good idea. With how much fun I found Blessed in the new Gaining Grounds schemes, I thought she would have the task of either backfield shenanigans or at least pick up some discarded heads. My list was as follows:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rasputina w/ Arcane Reservoir, Armor of December, Child of December</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Blessed of December w/ Imbued Energies</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Firestarter, Snowstorm, Silent One, Hoarcat Pride, Wendigo</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With how often the Viks fail to kill important targets in one swing (which I say is outright strange) some healing was in order and after the beating I took last game, I thought it prudent to at least give the Viks a means to get distracted by some terrain hopping firethrower guy alongside a spattering of Silent One healing. In that beloved hindsight, I could have taken almost ANYONE ELSE instead of a Hoarcat Pride and Wendigo as they did nothing this game. The game once again started cagey as I was hiding and my opponent was hiding whilst getting into range. Blessed leapt up the board to start leaving marks everywhere whilst I was hoping and failing to bait out one of the sisters with a tasty hoarcat. The reckless Firestarter jumped out, gave the Vik of Blood <i>Burning +4</i> then dived back behind cover only to be reminded that Viks have like 60" threat range and was beaten to a pulp by Ashes. Next turn Blood wisely flanked the Hoarcats and went straight into Snowstorm who was hanging out playing cards with Silent One. With Arcane Reservoir and some dead lucky top decking and soulstoning, Snowstorm survived only taking 4 wounds. Silent one attacked the Vik for weak damage and got off her healing trigger then healed SS 2 wounds bringing him back to full.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rasputina then unloaded Frozen Hell into the melee and finished off Blood leaving S'torm and 'One on a single wound each; something my opponent said afterwards that he never expected me to do, which is why he was so brazen. Ashes seeing her chance, rushes in and kills Snowstorm forgetting that Storm explodes after death, damaging Ashes and killing off Silent One, heads falling everywhere like a pinata victory. Rasputina finishes the job and pushes to pick a head up. Thus after the upkeep of final turn head collection I scored 2vp for Headhunter, 2Vp for Leave your Mark, and full Vp for Newt Leader. My opponent scored 3Vp for Headhunter but only managing to score 1Vp for Neutralize.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Game 4 - Mei Feng vs Seamus - 9-6 Loss</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Flank Deployment - Reconnoiter</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Convict Labour, Hunting Party (Opp), Exhaust their Forces (Mine), Covert Breakthrough (Both), Occupy their Turf</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Haven't had much experience vs Seamus either, but again his gun, teleporting and belle summoning are well known. I decided on Mei Feng if only because I wanted a game with her rather than choosing the right master. Mei Feng is well documented in being bad at summoning Recon but with Breakthrough and Exhaust on the table, I presumed I could at least get 6 points. The list:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mei Feng w/ Seismic Claws, Imbued Energies, Imbued Protection (5 cache)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Blessed of December w/ Imbued Energies</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Howard Langston w/ Imbued Energies</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">2x Fire Garmin, 2x Hoarcat Pride</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I really need to find an alternative to the cats. Either way, the game was a great back-and-forth with every turn after the first being a chess game of activation control and Reconnoiter denial. I managed to deny my opponent the first recon point but failed to grab any myself and the rest of the game his models were either exactly where they needed to be or Slow Belles were summoned to walk over the thresholds. Whilst I did a great job at Exhausting and laying scheme markers down, so was my opponent in killing my Cats and Garmin and laying his own markers. I wouldn't ever call it a close game but it was a great end to a day of Malifaux goodness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The day as a whole was incredibly enjoyable and facing new opponents and new masters is always welcome in my casual eyes. Dreamer is an absolute blast to play against and Seamus is such a tricky bugger that you never know where a game is going to take you when he's across the table from you. Facing the Viks twice in a row was harsh but it was a arse-kicking reminder that I should learn their threat ranges and (If playing the Rasmus) bring along <i>Sub Zero</i> when I'm facing Outcasts. I spent the majority of the early game activating and passing the turn because of the Viks reputation rather than what was actually on the board and that obviously doesn't help me win games.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rasputina played a healthy game of Malifaux and I was glad to bring her along to her first tournament. I feel had I not been on brown alert all game against good Vik players, she would have easily brought me more victory points. Mei Feng, despite me dropping her AGAIN into a Recon game vs Summoning, completely smashed the scheme pool and if I had more knowledge of threat ranges, could have easily gone toe-to-toe with the Viks or at least Soulstone Prevention-Leapt Aside to score more Vp than I did.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">More knowledge to bring to the next event. Keep aiming for the stars and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-79140271097212424342016-03-21T19:00:00.000+00:002016-03-21T19:00:20.292+00:00The Value of Sacrifice<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Other titles in I had in mind were </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Frame for FUN" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Just, Just Go Sit in a Corner" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">& "Guys? Control Hand? Guys!?". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The more you know.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What I've found out and touched upon late last year was, sometimes in a game of Malifaux, some models just plain don't matter anymore. A recent game had Snowstorm face down the fury of a very angry Mei Feng but with activations remaining and the necessity of getting past opponent's high cards and the rather likely <i>Vent Steam</i>, I felt it best to leave it to fate. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A very sad, possibly in slow-motion, Snow and Storm, with a single tear running down both of their faces to the sound of a resonantly somber song, stand defeated. They both stare at Rasputina, no hatred in their eyes but rather tearful regrets.<br /><br />Time stops. If only for a moment.<br /><br />They smile as a suitably aggressive heavy metal music slowly fades in followed swiftly by Mei Feng's <i>Tiger Claws</i> destroying their very essence rending them asunder...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />I want the thank the academy....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What actually happened far, far away from imagination land is Mei Feng flipping higher numbers than Snowstorm's numbers, my decision not to cheat higher, then removing the model depiction of a fictional character from the table.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The above prose sounds better in the grander scheme of things mind you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's a skill that beginner players learn to adapt into their games and it took me quite a long time to consider that with only a finite resource of control hand available for semi-assured actions, using them wisely and knowing when to "not bother" for certain models is not only reserved for just for when my control hand is empty but I don't want to repeat what I previously said in "<a href="http://jodenthe13fates.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-devil-makes-work-of-idle-hands.html" target="_blank">The Devil Makes Work of Idle Hands</a>" for hand management. I want to talk about those times when your one of the remaining 7 or 8 models is just not worth keeping around. They've lost that glow, they aren't the same model you've hired anymore and you want to move on and concentrate on your work. You're in different places and you feel a </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Oh good they're dead, man it was getting to be a drag being with that model dude</b></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've had it happen in many games, turn four rolls up and I'm either winning or drawing with a chance at a comeback and my opponent activates and concentrates their fire on some dude who is out of position who's not ever going to score this game and who can only really attack for no gain. The rest of my models are protecting schemes, scoring for strategy or in a position where they can end the game where they need to be. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This guy <b>This Guy</b> though, he's getting nowhere in life, riding the coat-tails of my more successful models and not keeping up paying his half of the rent. If my opponent is courteous enough to, lets say, <i>Evict</i> this particular individual from my life; well I suppose I'll look the other way during this, shall we say, <i>Intervention</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sometimes you have to take advantage of your opponent's blood lust by being Zen and accept losing a model in this instance is a natural part of tabletop life. If they cheat cards in order to hit the poor individual then all the more better. When I'm on a speculative 7-6 victory and only really need those 4 models around to ensure that assumed point total, models 5 and 6 better be stopping the opponent's Vp or else they get no control hand to assist them with breathing. It's late game and the loss of a <b>Key</b> model is brutal so if my opponent wants to throw their fate at a small fry, so be it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is of course assuming I'm winning. When it's likely that loss is on the cards (and with a year's total win/draw/loss standing at 5/1/10, for me its certainly likely) getting to even decide what models live and die is sadly out of my hands. Most of my models by game end are either engaged or 12ft under, so I have absolutely no choice in letting a model die, most likely I'll need all of them to have a chance at a draw. In these situations who do you save cards for and who do you give the face cards to? They're all required to score! <br />Quite honestly, without the game in front of me, I can't give a general answer. If the strategy is low, focus on your guys who can score it and if a scheme is score-able, let your guys who have a chance take a shot I guess.... <br />If both are low (as what most happens to yours truly, look I don't follow my own advice all the time, okay) then the fate deck will have to unfortunately cover you. I've had scoring models who have taken a LOT of heat and lived much longer than they had any right to by top-decking fate. When a Sister at the chapel of Viktoria takes more than 4 swings to take down Joss with all her relevant buffs and all I <b>had</b> were those lucky top decks, I call that a win even if it resulted in Vp, model and game loss.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then there's the time the deck screws you and the models you'd expect to be able to take a series of hits and stay standing, are left as little more than dust in the wind. It happens. How many of you have suffered a face card vs Black Joker only to see a Red Joker in the damage flip? Devastating.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've learned in my recent games to plan for eventualities. It's not always clear but by the middle of turn 3, I can roughly imagine how things are going to go down and what the score is likely to be by game end. What me and my opponent can do to change that can be at least assumed at this point also. By the end of turn 4, I have a detailed idea of what points are left to be scored so I attempt to make key models in advantageous positions long beforehand, which in turn (presuming my opponent is doing much the same) creates closer games than if I were to attempt purely last turn Vp gains. Gaining Grounds 2016's new schemes has leveled this out somewhat by allowing players to score throughout the game rather than the all or nothing at game's end that was the base rule book schemes but even so, with enough Malifaux experience, you get a gut-feeling how scores will go down by mid-game. It's shown me greater depth of forward planning and knowing what models are most likely to achieve that objective. And also what models are best left as bullet sponge punching bags.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Keep calm, remain Zen and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-88072181802380531172016-03-14T19:00:00.000+00:002016-03-14T19:00:11.894+00:00Me? Deny your Vp by Support? No Mr Bond, I Expect You to Die!<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I once had a very short and prompt discussion on the topic of Support masters versus Killy masters, with both of us agreeing at the time that Killy masters on the surface appear to have the advantage in terms of gaining and denying Vp; whereas a support master can easily score 10Vp but maybe have trouble against preventing the opposing players.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In my relatively limited and casual experience, this seemed to be the case. Yan Lo can and will score 10vp unless his crew is taken out to the point where it's no longer possible. Any common model (read non-peon) can score marker based schemes and every faction has a tanky model to stand and take hits whilst accomplishing interact actions or protecting future Vp investments but after that? How are you going to deal with your opponent scoring just as well with their models? It's something which killy crews can take advantage of easier than support masters</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Most players I've pitched this question to have stated that masters being denoted as simple Death-dealing or Support is much too black and white which I stand to agree with. Rasputina is very killy but with <i>Ice Pillars</i> and handing out <i>Armor +1 </i>with Silent Ones healing alongside the fine <i>Freeze Over</i>, one could easily argue that hand-in-hand with sheer unadulterated death, that she's also great at supporting her crew allowing them to win games.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nicodem is very supportive but with all his summons being buffed to the teeth and a general disregard for them un-living for too long, his crew can also be described as killy. Ramos creates spiders and does a bunch of Ap-oh-who-cares (I'm not a fan) but when his spiders are positioned with care, taking down a Df3 or less henchman with constructs having every buff they need is a simple job. Thus it comes down to what scheme pool is on the table and taking it from there.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How often does a table wipe happen in your meta? Many out there might be in agreement that winning a strategy with no one left across from you turn 3 onwards is the easiest thing ever (in most of circumstances mind; Collect the Bounty with a bunch of schemes requiring interactions or keeping your opponent's models alive will more than likely result in a tie) but really how often does it happen? Every game? Every one in five? If it happens a lot then either there's no terrain whatsoever or your opponents are making a lot of mistakes often. It's hard to come back from massive out-activation yes, especially when the Viks have <i>Whirlwind</i>'ed any model that's vaguely threatening from the table early game but, even if it's the most flukeiest luckiest set of circumstances ever, you could still win with nothing more than Wk4 significant models. Without living in a dream world though, facing down perfectly positioned death squadrons is tough without knowing exact threat ranges and a small amount of card counting, thus why Perdita, Levi, Sonnia, Viktorias are normally met with an audible "ehh" from new to advanced players.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On further musing, in my meta at least, the same "oh jeez, really?" can also be said about Dreamer, Collodi, Colette and Jack Daw. Masters and core crews that don't strictly rely on murder but still absolutely mess with your models to the point of stasis. </span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOSihkBadNyfbDAHskhxeDgknUQ6rjo-cKcXWd3q2gxa9UqhoO4lK1u1LnJWFS5ixBeqGOK25geQRKbA0S-Uqn5n4cg4EULqt7dXawdmVpHFIDElxjDRhheDiw5mB5-2stDtBBHrcgOw8/s1600/sawsa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="105" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOSihkBadNyfbDAHskhxeDgknUQ6rjo-cKcXWd3q2gxa9UqhoO4lK1u1LnJWFS5ixBeqGOK25geQRKbA0S-Uqn5n4cg4EULqt7dXawdmVpHFIDElxjDRhheDiw5mB5-2stDtBBHrcgOw8/s200/sawsa.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Jack Daw for instance isn't what you would call a damage dealing god, but being able to (effectively) shut down 3 models with basic ease, he doesn't need to be. He doesn't kill your models, more he gives your models the opportunity to kill themselves. With so much control on the board, your models don't have to be dead to stop doing what they need to do in a game.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Collette isn't killing any master but with enough experience playing Colette, she and her crew have free range of the table. Her showgirls and doves can pretty much be anywhere on the board and get out of trouble fairly well, interacting and placing scheme markers regardless of what's in their way. Hell, in emergency situations playing a purely thematic list, <i>Prompt</i> a Showgirl thrice, handing out 6 poison, then give the 8th posion and <i>Siren Call</i> them to <i>A Sip of Wine</i>. It's not perfect but it's an option (Or yaknow just <i>Prompt</i> Coryphee Duet a bunch and make me hate you).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It shows you just how much a mainly-support master can turn the tides when played well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thus I'm at an impasse, Killy masters can kill everything to win games, Support masters can tank that very same damage and win theirs. On the surface of things, Murder-makers have the upper-hand but looking deeper, I've found that it's simply not the case when looked at as a whole. Yes board wipes will win the game more often than not but getting to that point is a hard won battle if facing a support master with experience under their belt. Outside of not knowing the crew you're facing, a total party kill just doesn't happen that often.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From a new player perspective though, or even from the perspective of someone who has exclusively played killy masters until choosing to play a more control/support master, it may well seem to be that killing half the opposing crew seems the solution to all of life's problems. It's that clean-up duty that tweaks the details. A friend of mine has a fast support crew which typically runs up first turn to drop necessary markers, then second turn and beyond uses those models to tar-pit and drain Ap. They leave one or two models aside to gain Vp outside of combat with back-up summoning and the <i>Slow</i> condition being thrown everywhere. A Killy master still kills everything sure but can't always do that all important clean-up step to win the game when the dust settles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So who wins out in the end? Both really. If you are pure kill-crazy, you lack ways to deal with <i>Slow</i> or <i>Paralyze</i> or an illusionary forest popping up. On the other hand, pure support only works for so long until you've gained board control but lack ways to do anything but deny some more. Solution? Have both. Joss in a Collete crew is synergistic well with her <i>Prompt</i>, whilst a Showgirl in a Ramos crew can get key models in very tough situations. Zen and Balance ladies and gentlemen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Keep those cogs in your mind moving and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-89019105323474530252016-03-07T19:00:00.000+00:002016-03-07T19:00:00.400+00:00How Do You Solve a Problem Like Toni?<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With Rasputina recently dominating my stable of Rasputina, Rasputina's BFF and Rasputina's close friend I decided that another master should take the limelight in playing Gaining Grounds games when the scheme stars line up for her </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(which honestly, I'm playing by default now)</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">. Ironsides having a part of my heart that enjoys Tar-pit masters who are consistently singing Tubthumping whilst cracking skulls.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then I hit a wall, a wall I told myself that I wouldn't bother smashing my head against unless I had proverbial cause and reason to. The last game I played was Guard the Stash with Convict Labor, Take Prisoner, Exhaust Their Forces, Search The Ruins and Occupy Their Turf and I couldn't for the life of me find a reason to take Ironsides over Rasputina. Guard the Stash requires models to stand in two places and tank hits which to be fair any Arcanist master can do, it's the schemes that forced Ms Toni back into the box. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Take Prisoner is awful for Ironsides as she's the prime target for it and giving away 3Vp when both Feng and 'Tina can simply railwalk/push out of combat is plain silly; Exhaust Their Forces is even worse as Toni welcomes enemy models into combat, even when she's not trying, so now I'm 6Vp down. Quite frankly, taking Rasputina and choosing Search the Ruins and Occupy Their Turf was the better call and despite losing against a very good Jack Daw player, he was clearly struggling and only scored 3vp more than me by luck of the draw and expertly hiding what schemes he was doing until the very last moment. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We had a discussion after the game and I mentioned my wanting to play Toni Ironsides more but the scheme pool just wasn't great for her, he then asked me the sensible questions of: What scheme pool is Ironside's scheme pool? Like what would you put in a scheme pool that Ironsides would clean house with?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I honestly couldn't answer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Not out of thinking she is terrible in all schemes but more so that I've never asked that question myself: What does Ironsides excel in? So I looked deeper.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Out of the strategies I would only take Toni in Extraction as the middle is exactly where she wants to be and enemies have to take part in the royal rumble in order to score. Feng would still do well, as would Rasputina but in terms of who I would prefer, Toni is better for it in my eyes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Those of you with keen eyesight may well notice that Extraction is one out of four common strategies, thus my first complaint, I can't see myself wanting Ironsides over Raspy or Mei in the majority of games I play and that's a big problem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Onto the schemes. Out of the suited/always available schemes that I would pick Toni over the other two for, I simply wouldn't. Toni can do Exhaust Their Forces but then my opponent can do exactly the same back causing Zero Sum. Convict Labor and Leave Your Mark I would prefer Mei Feng for as as much as I have wild fantasies about Toni being this vortex of aggression, for the most part a savvy player is going to stay the heck out of the way increasing the chance that my markers aren't going to be able to score. Show of Force any master can do but I would prefer Feng or 'Tina to lead an upgraded crew into battle and Hunting Party is much easier to do when you're not bogged down by two models and can pick and choose death targets.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Again, a massive problem as now I'm playing a master who can play one strategy and who won't be able to take half of the scheme pool made available. Need I go on?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My first thought was why I even liked Ironsides so much back in the day if with this improved scheme pool is so bad for her? Maybe it was beginners luck or playing against players who were unaware of how lethal Toni can be if you feed her models to ramp up her <i>Adrenaline</i> but maybe it was more due to her potential greatly outshining her actual presence on the table.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You see, when Toni was first revealed in Crossroads and even in beta testing, forums and players alike were saying how mad broken she was and what insanity she could perform when she got her adrenaline engine going. How she could break the game with <i>Hand Picked Men</i> and the combos that could outmatch Mei Feng.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The realization set in fairly quickly once the fog of giddy theoryfaux faded away. <i>Hand Picked Men</i> always seems to fall short no matter how one sets it up and Adrenaline?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There's never enough Adrenaline.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Make all your arguments, tell me how Mouse and the Captain are supposed to pull models into Ironside's melee range allowing her maximum Adrenaline when she activates; but even with maximum models in melee with her, everything you want to do becomes a detriment. Want to combo into Toni's <i>Uppercut</i>? Lose 2 Adrenaline, Want to combo again? Lose 2 more. Wanna move to another target? Lose 1 more. Heal? Lose all of it. Trying to save it for future turns? Lose one every turn to heal a single wound.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Even if you weren't to focus on Adrenaline, a 2/3/4 vanilla damage track even at Ml7 is lackluster and whilst I love <i>Uppercut</i>, trading a whole activation for a (2) action to do 4-5 damage and give out <i>Slow</i> simply isn't enough especially when it's Ml4 base before <i>Adrenaline</i>.<br /><br />Let me be fair, what happens when the perfect set up happens? Allow me to share:<br />Toni is next to an enemy she charged last turn and is sitting on <i>Adrenaline +2. </i>The Captain then <i>Airbursts</i> a target into melee with Toni. The opponent activates and nimble + charges The Captain who takes damage allowing Toni to discard 2 low cards for <i>Adrenaline. </i>Other activations happen during which time the opponent activates the models in melee with Ironsides and activates <i>Good Shot, My Turn </i>thrice. Ironsides activates and with her defense trigger and <i>Protective </i>alongside the two enemy models within 2" she has <i>Adrenaline +7. </i>She opens with <i>Brass Knuckles </i>using the trigger to combo into <i>Uppercut </i>killing the first enemy model<i>. </i>She does the same with the second enemy and uses her final Ap to lure The Captain's opponent into her melee range and then uses her <i>Stand Up, Stand Tall</i> to heal 3 wounds in order to tank the next turns damage.<br /><br />Again, perfect set up. To actually achieve this set of unfortunate events you needed to have Toni end a turn on <i>Adrenaline +3 </i>(Which requires you to discard cards, stone for the non-in-built trigger on her attack or pitching Tomes to her def trigger, a lot of resources that no one else can use). The next turn having the Captain be in range to grab a critter then conveniently take non-lethal damage twice within 6" of Ironsides (which she has to pitch more cards to) THEN having both enemies wound but-not-too-much Toni forcing more Tomes or Stones and then being on life totals that allow 6-7 damage to finish them off. Then, luring another model into the fray which may result in needing to cheat a card taking more damage then seeing Toni on little to no wounds after three models worth of attacks and forcing her to dump her <i>Adrenaline </i>so she stands a chance next turn. To those counting at home, 4 discards (two of which need to be Tomes), 2 high Rams/2 Soulstones then a medium to high card in order to ensure the lure. In other words, your whole hand and this is the <b>perfect</b> set up. You might ask "You don't need that much Adrenaline", you do if you want to actually hit with <i>Uppercut. </i><br /><br />"What about <i>Hand Picked Men?</i>" Okay, another way to play Ironsides is as a luring support piece. With models preventing her from taking the damage by standing in charge lanes and other friendlies getting in nice and close with auto-focus attacks. Great on paper but with proper terrain lay-out models are going to get stuck on corners or be out of LOS more often than not. If I wanted my whole crew to be focused all the time I would play Shen Long or Collodi. If I wanted to stay in Arcanist then Marcus or Collette can do exactly the same Focus/Lure tactic and have a LOT more options in a game in terms of mobility and winning Vp. Trying to make a master like Toni work by erasing 80% of her card is not going to win any hearts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I won't go into what changes I would make as that's a slippery slope that leads to "Ml9 on every stat and every model in her crew gains Focus+2 when they activate" and quite frankly outside of an ENORMOUS errata, none of what I or anyone else says or suggests would make much of a difference. Toni is simply too much of hassle to play competitively with.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">She is a great looking model and one of the few stories I really enjoyed reading in the books, alas, whilst I can rave all day about how she's this great threat in mosh-pit melee, when I look at cold hard facts and table experience, she just doesn't do enough. She wants to be in the middle of a brawl but lacks the capacity to survive within it. She wants to deal lots of damage to lots of models but once she hurts the first target, she suddenly becomes unable to do so to others. It's a sad sorry state of affairs to be in Toni's steel toe-capped boots.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As much as I really want Ironsides to be the great model that I once envisioned her to be, it's simply not meant to be. I could conjure up lists and ways to make her more manageable or find ways to make her "work", adding M&SU models haphazardly or adding models that I hope get ignored to score Vp but when I play a game and say to myself "I could be earning Victory Points so much easier if I had taken <i><b>anyone</b></i> else" that's a sign of a bad master.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's a strange day when I would prefer to take Yan Lo of all models over Toni Ironsides. The old man's constant fidgety movement removing targets from areas they need to be is unfortunately more likely to score Victory Points more often than the brawlers rooted punching. Even Ramos with how dreadfully boring he is can at least fill the board with mobile scheme runners.<br />Fortunately, the remaining masters in my stable of champions I'm having a lot of fun playing and with Ironsides no longer being forced into games, it means at least Mei Feng is able to get the games that she deserves against more than just a gunline. Alas, Toni will have to join Ramos in the case of un-used masters for the foreseeable future until I find myself in the mood to playing inefficient or plain dull crew leaders. <br />Stay true to yourself and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-41818604067437793752016-02-29T19:00:00.001+00:002016-02-29T19:00:10.652+00:00A Rose by any Other Name<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So far my stable of Arcanist masters are performing admirably well although a distinctive podium has occurred where Rasputina is tippidy top, Toni is taking silver and Mei is hanging onto third place by default. This is most likely due to the Ice Witch being my favorite master in Malifaux to play and her weaknesses not being so blatant as the other two. Having a master who straight up kills fools as well is pretty handy as a strength and one I have missed, playing a lot of Yan Lo and Mei Feng; Yes, Feng's <i>total</i> damage is up equal or dare I say higher than Rasputina's but December's Chosen is a lot more consistent with it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bad habits have formed mind you, the inclusion of Wyrd actually releasing Wave 2 tech in plastic for all our consumer needs, particularly in the advent of the Effigys, has not helped me in terms of good decisions in list making. Brutal Effigy is almost in every Guild list I face now and my own use of Arcane Effigy is absurd. Shadow Effigy being in "Mei Feng" place for most useful out of the seven. My game has suffered and not due to age old rantings of "this master is fun but struggles against <i><b>Blank</b></i>". No, my Win/Loss total in January sitting at an eerie 1-6 loss with 'Tina has shown me that despite the AWESOME POWER of a Winter Goddess at my disposal, I need to step back and rethink my strategy. Let me explain:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lately, I've been running Rasputina as the core of my crew, to a degree it works and why Vp gets awarded to me but the problem now is I narrowed the focus too much and use more than half of my crew to simply buff up the Lady of the Tundra. Essence of Power gets pushed alongside Raspy by The Captain in order to use it's <i>Amplify</i> buff, then an Ice Garmin wanders up and with <i>Bite of Winter</i> buffing her damage followed next activation by the Arcane Effigy giving out <i>Arcane Radiance</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Theoryfaux smiles greatly at this as now Avalanche Alice is Ca8, getting double duty out of her soulstones, a 3/5/6 damage track and has discard-or-burn attached to her already fairly aggressive attack options without relying on fragile ice mirrors being pushed so far up the board.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Theoryfaux can taking a running leap!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you read back to my Mei Feng rundown <a href="http://jodenthe13fates.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/getting-back-on-track.html" target="_blank">here</a>, you might notice why your humble writer putting all his hopes and dreams into a single model is a bad idea no matter how magic or kung-fu that model is. Cassie Cold spending 4ss on upgrades, 4ss on cache and then another 24ss just to spend a turn buffing her up is sheer lunacy in retrospective, especially considering that the opponent can see it coming 3 activations beforehand!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I try to be good at this game guys...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">All these buffs are all well and good but thinking back, does Rasputina really <i>need</i> them? More damage is great. More out of my soulstones, neat. Sacrificing half my list to do it is insanity though and being an Icy death incarnate anyway, being death incarnate +1 seems overkill <b>if</b> it wasn't telegraphing every activation being so. Surely I have better things to spend points on than a dude who does nothing, a dude who does nothing and can explode, a dude who has nothing to do if no one has a condition and an old feller who helps all the useless dudes out before taking to midfield and effecting the actual game.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One game had Levi destroy Winter Wanda after I threw caution to the wind and nuked two Waifs that were in range. I felt at the time it was a good play, it put Levi on the backburner and stopped him from <b><i>bamf</i></b>ing around the board wherever he wanted, then I sat back looking at Essence of Power posting C.Vs looking for a new job, Arcane Effigy lost in the woods with nothing to do and The Captain, bless his heart, pushing them both to tar-pit enemies. It was shameful to say the least and didn't give a great reason for Snowy Sandra (I'm running out of nicknames...) to stick her neck out. Even if it did hurt Levi's effectiveness in the long run, without that support to back up her noble sacrifice, all it did was rend an already tentative synergy with her models asunder. Without casters nearby, EoP literally does nothing, without a leader, the effigy is left as a defenseless medic all the while the shambles of the rest of my list were left with toothpicks to fight sharks with.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, I put a new plan into action, no more "Team Mega Buff", no more un-cooked omelette sloshing around a basket, I set aside what December Diana could <i>potentially</i> do and started asking what she could do <i>alongside</i> her crew.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What is Rasputina good at? Blast damage, paralyzation and board control in the form of her Ice Pillars. Against crews that struggle against armor, she can boost the longevity of the models around her. So a good all-rounder. Who helps alongside that?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My totem of choice for so long: Essence of Power has been my go-to because of it's Ca and soulstone boosting. It has made recent games of "Malifaux Bowling" a treat, yet even with it's toted ability to increase Rasputina's soulstone use, most of the time it's hoping that Icy Alison doesn't move so it can give out it's Ca boost. My Rasputina moves basically the whole game, getting into range, getting around corners, moving in and out of cover, getting out of melee. A 3" push is a snails pace I agree but it's all Snow Mountain Maggie needs to be where she's required. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sadly this puts E-O-Pow in the position of doing little else but double Tundra Tina's soulstone use, which is fine if not for her other totem: Wendigo doing a lot more for her as a whole.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wendigo I never really got on with at first, he's frozen heart, a fast significant bugger yes but he's also Def4 with 6Wds. Very easy to kill and just the right amount of Wk6 non-peon that trigger fingers everywhere start getting itchy because of. The Essence is a insignificant peon, apart from adding to activations (something it doesn't even really use) it's pretty much a non-scoring, non-threat to all non-blast players.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So what does 'Digo give me? Is it even worth taking? Well lets take for example, Essence moves towards the Rasmus then she does her thing. Now lets do the same with Wendigo, instead, Frosty Florence (I guess I wasn't running out of nicknames) does her thing then passes the torch to Wendigo as a chain who then moves to a better location and copies a spell at Ca4. Ca4 doesn't set galaxies on fire but it's still extra pressure on the opponent or an additional buff, plus in a pitch he can at least charge and throw some fists on a near-dead dude. Devour is a powerful threat in a crew that can so easily paralyze.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Next on the agenda was greatly lowering the amount of buffs <i>unless</i> they effected more than just Rasimir Putina (the nicknames just keep on rollin') Ice Garmin has a very good 12" diameter buff that effects Frozen hearts so it's an option for more Frozen heart heavy lists but if Garmina del Ice isn't out buffing at least 2 models a turn, it's not worth using outside of thematic lists, or explosion spam which I enjoy sometimes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When these lists aren't so chock full of Slush Puppy Valentines, or I'm potentially facing a lot of conditions, the Arcane Effigy is grand. More focus on it's (1) action is required as the Discard-or-Burn is nice but leaves the Effigy twiddling it's thumbs otherwise. The slow condition being used against DJ Ra-Ra-T's already plodding team is a nightmare and something the effigy is great at removing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After <i>that</i>, it's really just a case of playing more to Sub-Zero Sally's strengths rather than avoiding her weaknesses. For a while now, I've been playing general Arcanist crews and placing Raspy (or Feng) in the center without any clear synergy or thought. Joss is great, Mole Men are great, Coryphee are glass cannon all-rounders yeah but when it came down to master activation, it could have been anyone. So I decided to populate lists with more frozen heart choices dedicating pieces not to Ice Mirror fonts of power but rather making every model be aware that 16" paralyze ray is a thing. Allowing in-crew synergies that didn't rely on Rasputina to use a (1) action to create as well was a boon. Snowstorm can push or can fire freely into F-H melees, Silent Ones heal F-Hs as well as using Ice Mirror herself and Ice Garmin being able to buff more than a single model making December Acolytes <i>even more annoying</i> and giving Snowstorms damage track some actual bite. Nice little things that I had left behind because of this narrowed down focus on making Rasputina the greatest thing ever. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The closer you look, the less you see.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With these old tricks re-implemented <i>Freeze Over</i> becomes a real pain for my opponents, engaging Frozen Hearts to stop the Ice Mirror is a well-known tactic but when that same frozen heart steps into base to base, slaps your model in the face and watches Gloria Glaicia paralyze you without even a chance to defend against it it's a work of art. With help from Snowstorms base size, even if she's engaged, she can pull other friendlies base to base just outside of melee engagement and have Ice Stalactite Stacy use Ice Mirror no problem. Wendigo being on protection duty by setting up really annoying walls messes with opponents movement plans and Ice Golem spreads slow as well as being a primary target, allowing the weaker parts of my crew to get where they needed to be.<br />as for non-Frozen Hearts, I've found great success in Hoarcat Pride, being another font for <i>Devour </i>allows Rar-Rar-Rasputina to do her paralyze thing and rely on more than Wendigo to finish the job.<br /><br />And Joss, because Joss.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Every activation, Rasputina uses her "full" Ap, no more does she Push 3", make someone Frozen Heart and deal two damage. I still use Joss when Armor is prevalent but with more sense of synergy now, my games have gotten a lot more tighter and closer than if I were to rely on these general lists. <br /><br />Never forget your master isn't the only model in your crew and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-36575641410273862312016-02-22T19:00:00.000+00:002016-02-22T19:00:00.948+00:00Joden is in a Stable Relationship<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After fixed master events, you tend to run into the problem that the master you chose kinda sorta gets killed on certain tables. It's nothing new but in these situations the Perdita's, the Levi's, the Lilith's and others get called OP or "Beginner mode" masters simply because their presence on a board requires an action that they are (mostly) very well defended against regardless of the scheme or strategy. Lilith and her crew doesn't NEED to be killed in Squatters Rights but when the Waldgeists have severe soft cover near Lili's dense severe soft cover on top of Squat markers, that whenever you get near or in, Nephilim keep pushing you out of, you sort of have to answer the question which that master is proposing:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />Misaki in Growfaux did remarkably well as a whole. Having a master so dedicated to two things: Movement and Death, means that the only weakness she has is bad positioning, which to be fair, I'm quite proficient at. At the same time though, she was very basic. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Her main theme seems to be having a lack of soulstones and more crew options because of it. Sadly, my Ten Thunders collection is lacking in any sort of defenses or ability to deal that mad damage yo. So when Misaki or Mei Feng take the wheel, they are wholesomely the center of my crew's damage potential, which means even when the heavy hitters: Izamu, Rail Workers, Torakage etc etc get to where they need to be, they are taken out with relative ease and then the master has to charge in anyway. At some point, buying the <i>Dark Debts</i> box for Illuminated, buying the tag-team of Mr Tannen and Mr Graves, then buying the <i>Temple of Dawn</i> box for Sensei Yu and hoping and praying for Ten Thunder's Brothers to come out in plastic means to extend my options in Ten Thunders would take a fairly large chunk out of my wage packet to play Master's that are fun but I have tremendous trouble winning even games with.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Really though, what this event has shown me is that I am so very tired of bad match ups that I bring onto myself. I've tried the single master ideology and it sort of worked with Yan Lo.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Forcing myself to take on every challenge as the underdog; it was with the goal in mind to find a way to make Yan Lo work and in essence I achieved that and gave a more narrowed focus on what his strengths and weaknesses are. With Mei on the other hand, I already know what she does well and what she doesn't so I'm not learning her so much more that I'm re-defining my own tactics that I bring to the table with <b><i>any</i></b> master. Simply having one master to bring to a game means I need to have a master who is a good all-rounder to avoid that bad match up occurrence, staying with a single crew leader is normally to my disadvantage and this fact is cemented even more so with the advent of Gaining Grounds 2016's scheme pool.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Mei Feng is primarily good at two things, defending her crew from ranged threats and chip damage in melee. Her secondary role being mobility and displacing enemy models yet so far, with a well distributed terrain layout, most of the time she's forcefully planting her limbs across a targets vital organs whilst they lean against a wall. With Vent Steam, whilst it's a great deterrent, the moment a model comes within charge range, it's up to those models to either deal with the threat or have Mei Feng rush into melee thus moving her away from the ideal location to put up the steam and many players know this to be the case. Sure they'll take a whole bunch of damage but they've traded one model to put the crosshairs on the rest of my crew. Ten Thunders Mei has Yamaziko to lead a hand for this, Feng Venting and Yama bracing, protecting each other's weaknesses but outside of Captain pushes, Arcanist lack a way to deter charges other than with the reply of the 5 point palm exploding heart technique.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's a balancing act.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKA3AAr2rveVKfwY1-0WajUNf6OXEHWTOE6rF4xA12hvega2wGpid7j_uQHpyGxaIIc0ntqm4rYRA_fu6hFb9hBYb1CdhZhZWSPEnTCiOPKtWl1qZ3onYt9KiVPIWGtXwrZkdmXU1bXFo/s1600/3acd41d82fdff00c41fb37acfa386355.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKA3AAr2rveVKfwY1-0WajUNf6OXEHWTOE6rF4xA12hvega2wGpid7j_uQHpyGxaIIc0ntqm4rYRA_fu6hFb9hBYb1CdhZhZWSPEnTCiOPKtWl1qZ3onYt9KiVPIWGtXwrZkdmXU1bXFo/s200/3acd41d82fdff00c41fb37acfa386355.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Reading back on past posts, you know who gets mentioned the most? Ironsides and Rasputina, more than likely due to those being the masters I played a lot with before Yan Lo but all the more because the high points of my time in Malifaux have these two masters kicking bottom and taking no notice of names (whilst being out of gum...). I had loads of fun with them and really wish I could have them back in the limelight.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQj7PvuaG8bgBpb4QzwgtE2RxOpwHT5cXY0NZ69nmtKTphYgLT6JgnNoRskIfK5deThR0k5MzwMz0kICHhFElwHoJhoEKBMYPi8Q0pq_CTW_zUpRV_DDZr6MbR5h5sjzvu3cbXUKs3wRE/s1600/triforce.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQj7PvuaG8bgBpb4QzwgtE2RxOpwHT5cXY0NZ69nmtKTphYgLT6JgnNoRskIfK5deThR0k5MzwMz0kICHhFElwHoJhoEKBMYPi8Q0pq_CTW_zUpRV_DDZr6MbR5h5sjzvu3cbXUKs3wRE/s200/triforce.png" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now I could start playing purely Ironsides or purely Rasputina but quite frankly, I've grown tired of the aforementioned bad match-ups. Those games where I've chosen my master beforehand and then you flip those strategies and those schemes and voila! Before the game has began I've already lost 4Vp. Negativity aside, having a well-rounded stable of Masters, in this case The Defensive Mei Feng, the Offensive Rasputina and the Stasis Ironsides, stops poor match-ups from happening as frequently. It means I only have my own skill to comment on when it comes to victories or defeats as I'm wiry of saying "Welp <Master> is no good in this game". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If I get my face kicked in, I don't wanna be the guy who laments on what could of been if I had only brought <list of models> instead. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Being able instead to say "I'm bringing this master and these models because they have the greatest chance of winning" is more logical to me than "Well I've made my choice, I'd better place my head on this grindstone". If I were to face Molly again, would I bring a master who struggles against one wound models or do I bring a master who is immune to black blood and can handle a crowd. If I were playing Turf War with Deliver the Message and Distract on the table would I bring a Melee threat or keep everyone dead at range? If I'm playing Squatters against a superior ranged opponent am I going to use models that have a hard time against that or bring a master who can protect them from it? Logically speaking, why would I gimp myself just to remind myself that in bad match-ups, a particular master is bad? I already knew they were! A player gains no further knowledge by repeating the exact same action again and again and expecting a different outcome. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFwTQsiU6nIh_Nr7fevedwhhX1Oevz23OCrMvndBpZyN56gI432VkskP_IncZ6vPyZtO-pyR-ihTudmlbhvl2mdympHfnoAaAyS3-4z6Vtgy3OkgacAW8-T4UzIjCVxaPrzZnmF-Z6fbY/s1600/Vaas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFwTQsiU6nIh_Nr7fevedwhhX1Oevz23OCrMvndBpZyN56gI432VkskP_IncZ6vPyZtO-pyR-ihTudmlbhvl2mdympHfnoAaAyS3-4z6Vtgy3OkgacAW8-T4UzIjCVxaPrzZnmF-Z6fbY/s400/Vaas.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Have I ever told you the definition of using only one master?</b></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Toni and Rasputina have their fair share of weaknesses like Mei Feng as well to be sure.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ironsides hates schemes where the opponent benefits from the master staying in one place and any amount of pushes are her bane as it means her well crafted Death Metal Mosh Pit turns into a quiet sunday Pub Lunch. If Toni can't tarpit, she can't get Adrenaline and then she's "simply" a taunt/luring master. This does mean the opponent has to deal with Toni in order to effectively do anything within a 24" inch diameter bubble that isn't attacking Toni but she's happiest when she has 3 models in the thick of combat and kicking absolute royal behind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rasputina is harder to talk about when it comes to weaknesses as I've played her enough to circumvent her most well known ones. Melee is nothing to be feared when Snowstorm or Armor of December can be used to righteously punish a would-be attacker after sub-zero shuts them down. Engaging her Ice Mirrors is also well known but I personally don't rely on mirrors for this very reason, I keep my plans to 12" range and expect the added 10" only as a bonus. Range attacks and de-buff auras are a problem but that's where the Ice Pillars come in or keep in mind that the typical range of these threats are also 12" so the Raspmas can still attack back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is hard. Back in the day all the above really bothered me but, as above, I "fixed" them so they were more manageable. Okay, try-over, lets start again:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Summoning that aren't cluster summons can really drain Rasputina's killing potential, as at least 3/4's of the time, it's a toolbox summon and spending even 2Ap dealing with them is beneficial to my opponent's single Ap to summon it. If my opponent is able to summon an "effect when model dies" or 3" de-buff aura next to Rasputina, that pretty much end's her as they're no longer attempting to tar-pit 'Tina or using melee attacks against her. Willpower spam she also has a hard time with as if <i>Counterspell</i> isn't helping, it takes it toll.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Summoning and auras there we go, they're weaknesses. Moving on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So far as Mei Feng goes, I see her more as a defensive master so if I'm facing guild for instance, Feng will likely appear if I feel Rapsy and Toni can't deal with the damage output. Vent Steam x2 is tricky to get through for anybody at range and so long as I don't stand in one place all game in the cage of hands I've created myself, I would at least have a chance. Mei Feng can and has dealt with a whole range of non-armored foes but if she can deal with them, Rasputina and Ironsides can do so better.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's easy to see Rasputina as an all-rounder but Ironsides is better at pure shut down and out of the three it's clear to see that Feng has the best crew shield. If 'Tina kills a Crooligan after it's dropped it's breakthrough markers, it will take a whole lot of Ap to pick that one marker up. If on the other hand Toni has charged it head-on or taunt/lured it before that time, she has successfully shut that model down from doing it's job. Facing a marker-summoner? The summoner in question will love it if you killed that 4ss model so they can summon that 8ss model from it. Toni will hold them in place without necessarily killing them having the summoner provide their own rather than saying "Thanks for the easy summon mate". If I'm facing that wall of gunfire and casting though, Feng steps in and makes card flipping that much harder, as well as being able to scout the board once the pieces are in place. In essence all masters covering for the other's weaknesses, like a good stable should.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Time will tell how successful I am. Keep those tactics sharp and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-36396951589500320182016-02-19T19:00:00.000+00:002016-02-19T19:00:16.674+00:00Fast Dragon, Slow Grow Week the Final - Betrayal at the Summit<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The final week of GrowFaux. Can Misaki find victory against this last opponent after her defeat at the hands of the Star Theater production? Game four is against the traitorous McCabe who finds himself between a Rock and a Dragon Place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This game unfortunately gives full on example of why the base rule book schemes and strategies needed improving. This being a standard 50ss scheme pool meant that the easy options are revealed Breakthrough and revealed Protect Territory. You <i>could</i> attempt the all-or-nothing Take Prisoner, you <i>could</i> lay down 3 scheme markers and attempt to lure out the master into them; but lets face it, having one or two scheme runners run back field and lay down 4 markers during a game is so much easier in the long run.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">50ss</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Flank Deployment</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Reconnoiter</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A Line in the Sand</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Breakthrough</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Spring the Trap</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Protect Territory</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Take Prisoner</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'm facing a master who simply speaking, makes his whole crew better. Being able to hand off armor, nimble, regen +2 and a sword which ignores most common defenses; all of that on top of nasty reactivates and 4" pushes with a master who can slow and paralyze pretty much at will. Facing down a master like this will be hard work, facing down McCabe who gets what is practically an extra life when you "kill" him is just work. Like most masters out there, unless you spend all game doing so, McCabe isn't worth taking down unless you have some heavy firepower, which I do not unfortunately.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Being that I'm playing Flank Deployment with Reconnoiter and going with game standards Breakthough + Protect Territory revealed, I can play a more cagey game and select targets who have strayed too far. My opponent though can do exactly the same, this is a game that planning can only do so much in.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic_L7Cg-6DTAVganqQC6ns6OsQCUJ0MZ6CtwM-Z3YIphyphenhyphen57xjUsK01FwBFn6qEu4NcbzAKsAjTU_tjHhtHRIK0D5gt_8ImyzXd3oOAvvdUvglc9toQ2_5zaYIy5ofea78sYbEcY8BaPDc/s1600/Mispatse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic_L7Cg-6DTAVganqQC6ns6OsQCUJ0MZ6CtwM-Z3YIphyphenhyphen57xjUsK01FwBFn6qEu4NcbzAKsAjTU_tjHhtHRIK0D5gt_8ImyzXd3oOAvvdUvglc9toQ2_5zaYIy5ofea78sYbEcY8BaPDc/s200/Mispatse.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Misaki this time has <i>Disguised</i>. <i>Stalking Bisento</i> is great for more aggressive games but after last week, running up to the middle of the board without a plan made for a tasty Misaki </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Paste. I didn't </span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">need</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">to use </span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">Disguised</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">but being able to prevent charges on a master does limit sacrificial tar-pitting minion's threat ranges. With that I ran </span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">Untouchable</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">as to not feel forced to down all of her soulstones in one go. To that I've added </span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">Hidden Agenda</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">to get some extended use out of my Oiran. Loyal retainer Shang returns giving a nod of approval to the sheer amount of Last Blossoms in play but giving nothing else but an extra card in the draw step and a friendly smile. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Misaki is joined by Old Lady Yamaziko holding the Last Blossom's <i>Smoke and Shadows</i>, two Torakages, two Oiran, two Komainu and a Shadow Effigy for luck. That's a count of 10 activations in a Reconnoiter game, even if it ends up being an awful idea having so many minions it'll be a great send off to have Misaki run with her thematic crew.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />My opponent played a strong list of McCabe with <i>Glowing Saber</i>, <i>Badge of Speed</i> & <i>Promises</i>. Theme standards Luna and two Wastrels joined Chiaki, a Dawn Serpent and Ototo with <i>Recalled Training</i> and <i>Hidden Agenda</i> (For the sole purpose of always having an upgrade on him for <i>Promises</i> Buff). So a four person team for scheme running and two heavy hitters to sweep up my 10 model advantage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">First turn I got initiative and gave the first turn to my opponent who activated McCabe, gave Dawn Serpent <i>Reactivate</i>, the <i>Badge of Speed</i> and <i>Glowing Saber</i> pushing him towards Yamaziko, and an Oiran. For some reason unknown to even me, I activated Shang and passed the turn...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My opponent seeing Yamaziko without Brace decided to charge in and killed her with two swings evening up the activation order. The Oiran responding by hitting the Dawn Serpent for 1 damage and a single poison setting up <i>Unbeknownst</i> effectively tar-pitting the Serpent. The Serpent activates again and with little else to do takes 2Ap walking out of combat and sets fire to a Komainu and dealing 1 damage to the nearby Shadow Effigy with <i>Breathe Fire</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Effigy used to under-utilized ability all models possess to take away the one burning from the Komainu then failed to make the stone dog <i>Remember the Mission</i>. The Komainu charged the Dawn Serpent dealing two lots of weak damage and <i>Slow</i>. Everybody else in the turn walked up to their future destinations whilst Misaki triple walked up the board ready for a 2nd turn kill.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yeah, a lot happened turn one. Two fast masters will do this in Flank Deployment.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Second turn and my opponent gets the inititive ordering McCabe to give the <i>Badge of Speed</i> to Ototo and charging the Torakage placing him on 1 wound. The Torakage responding by running 12" the hell out of dodge via <i>Agile</i>. He then activated the slowed Dawn Serpent doing absolutely nothing to the Komainu who responded by dealing Severe damage and weak to kill the Dragon before it got the chance to reactivated. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A Wastrel seeing his opportunity for glory focus fired his <i>Pocket Handgun</i> at the Torakage missing completely. Misaki activates and takes down the very same Wastrel making sure not to be within Ototo's walk and melee range. Ototo activates, discards <i>Recalled Training</i>, <i>Nimbles</i> (!) towards Misaki and discards a card for <i>Flurry</i>... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Misaki dies... Like closed casket funeral dies... Like forensic scientists would have trouble identifying the corpse dies... It's a sad day for Misaki. I messed up.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK4rzwWp-0fjGjPwRnfwUPGjkaS25-IWp0uQPR814JV6GgcLSj0BSzZPYIBXEPLL3_OLpjKhqpWdq_MoVnmpi_4PVWniJKhKmn_EBjM5-dG9ILD3y_hZdPnKOkUlQcITqZzJ-pgjRVtzA/s1600/DeadParrot.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK4rzwWp-0fjGjPwRnfwUPGjkaS25-IWp0uQPR814JV6GgcLSj0BSzZPYIBXEPLL3_OLpjKhqpWdq_MoVnmpi_4PVWniJKhKmn_EBjM5-dG9ILD3y_hZdPnKOkUlQcITqZzJ-pgjRVtzA/s1600/DeadParrot.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b style="color: #111111; font-size: small;">Misaki's off the twig! She's kicked the bucket, she's shuffled off 'er mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!</b></td></tr>
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</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">At this point I maneuvered the rest of my crew in such a way as to at least achieve Reconnoiter whilst denying my opponent his. I also made sure to have the 1st Fast Oiran place down a scheme marker along the 2nd Komainu's marker whilst the second Oiran strode up and snatched the marker my opponent's Shadow Effigy laid down from under his nose. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Turn three and the last turn bell rang (playing tournament standard time with 18+1 activations with Flank Deployment leads to slower turns, the more you know) The Oiran-Komainu tag team set up Protect Territory and Breakthrough whilst the remaining Torakage laid down the second Breakthrough marker guaranteeing my 7 points. My opponent re-maneuvers and kills the wounded Komainu and the center Oiran and puts down enough markers to score full Breakthrough and Protect Territory, leaving me with 4 models to his 6. Alas, the game was called and we ended a tie game 7-7.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What a fantastic way to end the Slow Grow, with such a tactical game being played out with quick murder and game turnarounds happening almost each activation it was hard to keep track of something as trivial as Reconnoiter. It was a rough game for Misaki proving that once again, when a real melee threat enters her zone, she falls down like a house of cards in a hurricane next to 10 excitable puppies.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Using Oiran for the first time and I'm really impressed by their scheme running abilities. Being able to tar-pit enemies by frankly telling them "Go somewhere else" on top of their upgrade giving them easy access to Fast (So long as the holder doesn't die second turn), being hard to hunt down with <i>Defensive Stance</i> and <i>Disguised</i>. They make fantastic scheme runners in the same vein as Firestarter. I really enjoyed using them this game.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Komainu once again proving that they can dish out some real hurt with Wp attacking slow and burning triggers on their attacks. They sometimes wiff their defense rolls, Df4 being the worst thing about them but when they do a job right, they go above and beyond.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My opponent showed me why McCabe is just so fun to play with and against. Being able to selectively give benefits to pushed targets and <i>Reactivating</i> your favorite minion is hard but fair to face across the table and really gave the Dawn Serpent an extra reason to be a real threat on the table. It was great fun and a master I look forward to facing again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So we close the book on the Slow Growth of Misaki. Quite frankly she is a ton of fun and really very deadly when she's given the opportunity to be. Alas my problem with her and Ten Thunders Masters in general is that my current collection of models within the Thunder's faction is lacking in ways to deal with some threats out there outside of avoiding it or having only the master being able to take care of priority targets. If I'm facing armor or pushers then I only have Kang (if they are Constructs) and the Guild Pathfinder to deal with them (If I get the trigger), whilst my options in Arcanist are a lot more pronounced.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The only downside to "Growfaux" was my first two games being landslide victories, not to fault my opponents of course but I never really got to see Misaki in a even game because everything was so much in Misaki's favor. Then my third week's game being a testament to my own illusion of Misaki's toughness had her mashed into paste. The final week was where I saw Misaki's true potential being a hunter of minion/enforcer models but even then my complete lack of positioning skill lead once again to her quick demise. I'm simply not used to fragile masters, Ironsides takes a whole crew to take down, Rasputina doesn't get into combat or murders those that do, Yan Lo is nigh un-killable in 5 turns and even Mei Feng takes a lot longer to take down if only due to her <i>Leap Aside</i> trigger. Misaki being basically dead in 3-5 decent attacks is a 180 of what I expect in a masters survivablity. And when I fear for my master's life to a 2/4/6 damage track on any given turn, I end up making either bad plays or ballsy plays hoping a defensive stance will be enough (It isn't).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I think for the time being, my Ten Thunders experience will have to be postponed until I find myself in the Ten Thunders mindset. That is, having models who won't last to a round of good ol' fashioned beating. TT have models that can do almost every role <i>except</i> stand still and tank hits and unfortunately, I'm currently in the mind set of assuming a model will be around for a turn and a half of non-master attacks. We all have a playstyle. Mine is having models that stay on the table unless I kill them myself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Have a great game and have fun out there.</span></div>
JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-4464204804267665062016-02-15T19:00:00.000+00:002016-02-15T19:00:05.459+00:00Fast Dragon, Slow Grow Week Three - Cabaret Beatdown<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Game the third for First Lieutenant of the Oyabun, this week she faces down the glamorous, seductive and deadly Collette Du Bois and her showgirls.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The femme fatales faced off against each other in the following:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">45ss</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Standard Deployment</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Reckoning</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A Line in the Sand</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Assassinate</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Murder Protege</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Protect Territory</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Power Ritual</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Knowing that Colette, outside of a board wipe, is pretty much untouchable, Assassinate was out of the question. Misaki can kill masters more than some masters can but it would be an uphill struggle for little to no gain. I decided to go with the more suitable Murder Protege and near-auto take Protect Territory. Knowing that the showgirls will no doubt take the scheme marker schemes and win them with or without my interference meant I had one job this game: Score full on Reckoning without letting my opponent. List time, baby!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Misaki alongside mainstay <i>Stalking Bisento</i> now has <i>Servant of the 5 Dragons</i> to ensure I have the best chance of not being lured to my paralyzed/poisoned doom. Wp8 is a tough hurdle even for a Rotten Belle so the Performer's Ca6 lure shouldn't be a problem. Shang tags along because I really like choosing 6 cards out of seven at the start of my turns.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yamaziko enters also with <i>Servant of the 5 Dragons</i> ensuring she never ever loses a willpower duel, she is also carrying the sole Torakage's <b><i>Bamf</i></b> bombs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Dawn Serpent re-enters the fray as the aforementioned <i>Regen Ca</i> (Name changed due to Foreshadowing) it has against the high number of Ca means it should take a lot more Ap to take out. Equal Wp to lure Ca means I have to play my control hand tight in order to have the dragon be where he wants rather than what the opponents want.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Joining the crew are a pair of Katanaka Snipers to take long range soft cover ignoring pot shots at whomever is in range, with showgirls not known for their high amount of wounds, not needing to travel any further than the center line means a ranged threat that can shoot outside of Colette's influence is helpful to say the least.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My opponent played Colette with <i>Cabaret Choreography</i> and <i>Nothing up my Sleeve</i>. Alongside her was the ever faithful Cassandra, two Coryphee and a Performer. Joss was also there as he was in the Star Theater at the time and tagged himself along for the fun.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Geez.... My whole battle plan was so narrowly focused on being slapped around by Performers that I had wholesomely discounted that Arcanists have any heavy hitters whatsoever. Willpower 8 didn't help me in the slightest this game. With so much <i>Armor +2</i> on Joss and the future Coryphee Duet, my min damage 2 hitters weren't doing anything.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Theoryfaux can once again take a running leap.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Turn one started out well with a Sniper taking out a Performer with a severe critical headshot. Torakage failed to <i><b>bamf</b></i> and everyone else moved up, including Misaki...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I must point out at this juncture that, at this point in time, I thought Misaki was untouchable (Not the upgrade) and that <i>Stalking</i> and then running 15" into Joss and Cassandra <i>at the time</i> felt like a good move. Tank some damage and then <i>Assassinate</i> the pair of them next turn, job jobbed. Turns out...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Turn 2 my opponent gains the initiative and Joss clocks Misaki in the chin with a <i>Pneumatic Fist</i> dealing moderate damage and <i>Choke Slamming</i> Misaki paralyzing her. Shang bounded up and healed Misaki for 2 wounds which then Cassandra knocked down to a single digit off an auto-Defensive but lacking in life saving soulstones Lady Dragon. <br />Dawn Serpent activated and not wanting to give away Reckoning Points, killed it's master... Handing Colette an easy Assassinate. Well this game is going well. A Coryphee Duet tangled with Yamaziko and a Sniper with the Torakage who couldn't find his Tele-<b><i>bamf</i></b> cards, wading in. Surely three models can deal with a duet?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Turn 3 and Dawn Serpent thinks he can tangle with Joss, assuming <i>Regen Ca</i> can tank the hits; turns out a single heal flip doesn't help against 4ap + 3 Prompts of attacks, thus dropping the Serpent. The duet finishes off Yamaziko with ease and puts the Sniper to his final wound from <i>Hard to Kill</i> scoring Reckoning, leaving me with a poultry Sniper, a soon-dead Torakage and Shang. I called the game the turn after with no way to murder Joss or to safely drop scheme markers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I hoped for a beating and got my monkey paw wish from the Star Theater's number one act. I had a feeling it would come at my most cocksure and sure enough, this </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjofI6AQBzzFzrMuHedbnh9v2i2DpPMNaQiFaokbRciJgMD1aD_vnvwxyX49h_pG1Tk5N5-KfzkCQBTUuYhr5c93AhZUreDD-eDOfj1rvSyWTYIWal90fgM_8Yv3KCJRBClf0YkIjpiLE4/s1600/Cropped+Collala.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjofI6AQBzzFzrMuHedbnh9v2i2DpPMNaQiFaokbRciJgMD1aD_vnvwxyX49h_pG1Tk5N5-KfzkCQBTUuYhr5c93AhZUreDD-eDOfj1rvSyWTYIWal90fgM_8Yv3KCJRBClf0YkIjpiLE4/s400/Cropped+Collala.png" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Reckoning game proved just how paper-in-the-wind Misaki is against another melee combatant. Had Joss not paralyzed Misaki, having a 12 wound model knocked down to 4 in one attack is hard to survive for much longer on anyway. With so much to lose being that darn close to Joss and Cass, I didn't allow myself the time to get my opponent to use up his control hand in order for <i>Assassinate</i> to be an actual threat. It's the same mistake I made a hellova lot of the time with Yan Lo's <i>Misdirection</i>. Discarding 2 cards is only a tough choice when the opponent has 2 cards left, otherwise it's a high cost to otherwise severely damage a master who has it as their only defense. <i>Assassinate</i> is a killer, and has been, <i>only</i> if the opponent is out of cards, otherwise , it's an almost non-trigger.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A first turn activation Misaki might be necessary for <i>Stalk</i> but she is best left to an opponent with a depleted hand (obviously) on all turns subsequent. Otherwise Misaki is a Ml7 auto-focus Melee expert with an above average damage track. Still deadly but with no soulstones and only auto-defensive to save her from wound taking I need to ensure the target is already bloodied before Misaki wades in, finishes them off and then pushes to the next target or to the safety of cover.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Torakage I need to position better, they are superb when they first charge or <i><b>bamf</b></i> into an enemies face and auto-focus attack but in this game I found that another model was always in the way or needed assisting and turned a potentially threatening model into "Weak for 1 damage" fodder. 6Def 6Wds is respectable but they need to get in, kill, get out. I learned how to pilot Rasputina with a fundamentally weak crew and I need to do the same with Ten Thunders models.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Another day and another defeat. Lessons are learned, now it's time to ready myself for the final event: 50ss. <br />Discard ya hand so I can Misdirect and Assassinate ya and have fun out there. </span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-33410379419865480232016-02-08T18:18:00.000+00:002016-02-10T01:07:55.067+00:00Fast Dragon, Slow Grow Week Two - Zodiac Calender Brawl<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Game two for Misaki and now she's facing down the Tyrant of Plague: Hamelin.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This game allowed another style vs style game, being able to choose between a killy list and a more defensive list and both being valid strategies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">35ss</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Flank Deployment</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Squatter's Rights</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A Line in the Sand</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Bodyguard</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Make Them Suffer</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Protect Territory</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Outflank</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Facing down a master that is known for flooding the board with peons, Make them Suffer was an obvious choice; with the sole way of shutting me down being running a Malifaux Rat FAR away from Misaki and then never using Blighted or accidentally summoning off of his own models. Which lets face it, shuts Hamelin down. 3Vp in the bag easy. My next choice was either between the ever present Protect Territory or risking Bodyguard, I decided on the latter due to Rat King being well known for eating all of the scheme markers. <br /><br />Onto the list:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRjfj8_mfTwky7e5CULsOhm23tTdok1LEqOUIeTBrIqZh2V7M5w_9GaPwleww3bswIx86Eu2wC_B6qr1tmfw_rxNtRlDsN9j62cNIWTSRF8upEd3X0_pVn2E0d56E_SBAh89CWqpRcuIo/s1600/Nightcrawler_bamf.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRjfj8_mfTwky7e5CULsOhm23tTdok1LEqOUIeTBrIqZh2V7M5w_9GaPwleww3bswIx86Eu2wC_B6qr1tmfw_rxNtRlDsN9j62cNIWTSRF8upEd3X0_pVn2E0d56E_SBAh89CWqpRcuIo/s1600/Nightcrawler_bamf.jpeg" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Misaki retained her pet Shang and <i>Stalking Bisento</i>, adding <i>Smoke & Shadows</i> for the (future) two main-stays: Torakage. Being able to relocate a model who's safely buried until end of turn means, if I have the suit available that is, having no wasted turns trying to get up the board to assist. In this game and the couple of 50ss I've had playing it, it's always helped being able to <b><i>Bamf</i></b> a ninja to either far outside of combat or to wade in getting that sweet sweet <i>Works Best Alone</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">As I was deeply afraid of my models becoming slightly more English (<i>Blighted</i>), I added in Chiaki, the Neice in order to save the team from being wiped out by the black death. Being able to remove any possible <i>Blighted</i>, alongside <i>Paralyze</i> or the dreaded <i>Sick in Bed</i> condition. <br />Also being out of the way and never really stepping up to front lines means I can bluff Protect Territory whilst safely being away from deployment scoring fairly easily for Bodyguard.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Taelor I hired because <i>Welcome to Malifaux</i> scares summoners. Sometimes it doesn't matter, sometimes it creates bad plays and sometimes it gets Taelor dead. In this game she had the added benefit that she could be within 7" of Hamelin and garner the "Oh yay, Relic hammer" response (Walk + Hammer) forcing a move or getting anything in the way of her if the Stolen are taken care of. I didn't mind what happened so long as Taelor was able to get into combat and be the biggest target to deal with, allowing the Torakage a bit more wiggle room and keeping Chiaki safe from attention.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My opponent played a defensive list of Hamelin with his Anti-Charge aura (safe bet against Misaki), The Stolen, 2 Malifaux Rats, Freikcorps Trapper, Freikorps Librarian, and Ama No Zako, he revealed Outflank and Protect Territory.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">First turn I got initiative and made Misaki lay waste to a <i>From the Shadows</i> Trapper to stop him taking pot shots at my fast-yet-weak crew. <i>Stalked</i> feels wasted when the upgrade gives you a (0) attack but auto-focus on Misaki's <i>Bisento</i> attacks is brutal no matter how many there are. I don't know weather my opponent planned for this to happen to get Misaki far away from the action but regardless the Trapper was a threat that needed dealing with.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My opponent spent the first turn making Ama No Zako walk and place a scheme marker, sacrificing the Stolen to summon 2 rats next to the two hired ones to create a Rat King to then Gnaw the placed scheme marker and move toward the second closest Squat marker to ready a claim next turn. My crew moved into positions that allowed them to next turn Walk-Interact second closest marker on my side and head up to the center. I normally hate Flank Deployment but having to play it so much recently I've come to respect it despite how it messes with my standard deployment ranges game.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Second turn was the marker claim turn. Misaki claimed the marker she wiped the Trapper's blood from and <i>Stalked</i> Ama No Zako. Ama No Zako claimed a marker and then walked to the furthest marker on his side. The Rat King was placed just outside of Hamelin's bubble allowing Taelor to take it down in one activation. Hamelin responded by Summoning two Stolen and then <i>Obey</i>'d Ama No Zako twice to walk up to and then take the Squat Marker. One Torakage took the second marker and walked towards the incoming melee whilst the second killed a Stolen that for some reason walked up to him, scoring the first <i>Make them Suffer </i>Vp.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This was a sticking point for me as it happened all game, The Stolen running into my models. I asked my opponent about it afterwards and he said that the Stolen are good at three things: making Rats, giving Blighted and handing out paralyze checks. But if he was giving out Make Them Suffer, why not flood the table with Rats? If he was avoiding giving Vp away, why run Stolen in to be murdered? I don't know if the easy Blighted and Paralyze check was worth it personally.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Turn three was the turning point, with Squatter's Rights safely in the bag for both players, it was time for murder, or at least attempted murder. Ama No Zako waded into the center of a Torakage, Taelor and the second Torakage and threw up some <i>Miasma of Boils and Flies</i>. Taelor killed a Rat that appeared scoring Make them Suffer and hit A.N.Z for weak. Torakage hit twice for weak one damages but the second <i><b>Bamf'd</b></i> out burying for the turn. The Librarian then healed Ama a decent amount resetting the clock.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hamelin then <i>Obey</i>'d 'No Zaka to <i>Focus</i> then <i>Obey</i>'d her to attack Taelor... hitting a black joker. Man for a 1-in-54 chance, that black joker shows up at the worst moments. At the end of Turn 3, Torakage <i><b>Bamf'd</b></i> into the Librarian's face ready for face smashing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Turn 4 the Torakage smashed academic face as promised. Misaki finally got into combat and Red Joker'd an Assassinate trigger into Ama No Zako (who once again Black Joker'd her focus attack, poor Oni) leaving Hamelin in the incredibly rare position of being out-activated. Another Stolen was killed and a marker was taken forcing a submission from my opponent. Chiaki being in place for full Bodyguard and full Make Them Suffer Vp to his 2vp from Squatters with no way to climb back, it would have been folly to continue other than seeing a board wipe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It was a rough game. Facing Misaki with Make Them Suffer in the pool is hard enough for a summoner but trying to play a master like Hamelin without the Rat engine put the final nail in the coffin. The post game chat revealed that if he had played the game 3vp down knowing I'll be gunning for the Rats and the Stolen before other targets, the Rat engine would have overrun my non-blast list and tar-pitted the crud out me whilst he scored Outflank and Protect Terri.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is what Slow Grows are for though, to be put into difficult situations and learn from them. What do you do when your master is blatantly giving away points? What happens when you can't do the one thing your master is known for and forced to do their secondary role? <br />My opponent realized in this game just how powerful Ama No Zako can be looking back at her presence in the game. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If Ama didn't run into the black joker (twice) Hazardous Terrain with two lots of Min-damage 3 attacks and a zero obey to use other models to hit their allies would have ENDED my crew. Ama tied up two Torakage and Taelor, if she was able to hit already damaged Taelor twice it wouldn't be a long shot to expect Hazardous Terrain to finish off all three the next time they activated. Next turn, tank the damage take out all three with an <i>Obey</i> action on top of two attacks, heal up, job done.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Alas, I didn't learn much of anything with Misaki this game, due to the landslide nature of the game seeing Misaki kill stuff could have been safely assumed. Had the Rat swarm happened and branched out, Misaki and Taelor <i>might</i> have been able to dash around the table but until I get a re-match against The Pied Piper it will all be theoryfaux.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Onto my next game on week three, where I'll be playing <<i>Sigh</i>> Reckoning... Well all I can do is hope for a bad match up in order to really get the feel for Misaki's weak points. Until then, avoid that black joker at all costs and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-67195406172480765062016-02-01T19:00:00.000+00:002016-02-01T19:00:00.177+00:00Fast Dragon, Slow Grow Week One - New vs Cold<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My local game shop earlier last week started a casual tournament Slow Grow: "GrowFaux", rules being that you could only enter with a master you've played less than 3 times beforehand.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This gave me a choice, as your humble writer loves a Slow Grow. I could either assemble a scissor welding spirit herder as now Kirai's summons are actually trickling out, stay with Arcanists and try out herding beasts instead with Marcus or go plain budget and stick with the, until now, un-assembled Misaki. As Xmas kicks the butt of all people great and small, I decided to stick with what I had and ran the Lady of the Thunder.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My experience with Misaki has been mostly watching my girlfriend play her and having a couple of matches between ourselves. She always seemed to be either safely scheme running in the background or bouncing off models to get to where she needed to be so I wrote her off as "Fast melee scheme runner". I then once got ruined by Misaki in a Squatter's Rights game where the guy I was facing was being a whole hellova lot more aggressive and planted Mei Feng into the ground whilst a Dawn Serpent went around snacking on Metal Garmin and healing to full each turn. Both styles work but that game always stuck with me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The first game appeared tailored to show just how many options Malifaux has in terms of winning Vp:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />26ss</span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Standard Deployment</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Turf War</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A Line in the Sand</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Assassinate</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Deliver a Message</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Breakthrough</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Vendetta</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A bit of killy, a bit of interact and the standard getting to a place a slapping down a marker.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Luckily for me, my first game was against a first time Rasputina player. My opponent has been playing since 1st edition and has basically every master, he had great trouble actually finding a master he hadn't played less than 3 games of but Rasputina fit the bill. With prior knowledge of the Snow Queen being opposite me I built a list that contained some anti-casting tech:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Komainu I have already stated how useful they are, having them as a summon and general pest in Yan Lo worked out great and their Wp attacking slow triggering is plain nice. What I took them for this game was for their "Guard the Soul" action allowing them to make free Melee attacks to anyone casting within 6" of the dog. With most Frozen Hearts and Arcanists in general having Ca actions, I thought it was a good pick for some board control.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Next up, Dawn Serpent who I borrowed and wow, Wk6 Flight, Ml7 in Melee and range, decent damage spread. I took him for Counterspell but the Serpent is so much more. What I found out later as well was with half of my own list having Ca actions, Dawn Serpent had what I affectionately call <i>Regen All</i>. Having that many casters surround him ensured that even if it took damage, it was back up to full health next activation. Sweet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">With the limited soulstone pool I decided to play it safe and chose a Torakage, Shang for hand filtering and Misaki with <i>Stalking Bisento</i> has her sole upgrade. 5 activations and 2 soulstone cache I felt was best for such a low stone game and knowing what Rasputina can throw out, I was prepared for a showdown. A <i>Snow-</i>down if you will...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My opponent played a strange list but I could see where he was coming from. Rasputina had Armor of December (because it's the law) Child of December and Sub Zero, a Coryphee, Ice Garmin, Performer and Willie. I forgot to ask him the reason for his choices but in my own mind, Coryphee was for speed, Garmin for damage buffs and slow, Performer to drag Raspy along and lure someone for message delivering and Willie because... Willie.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I chose Breakthrough revealed because why not and Deliver a message. Why I chose Deliver a message is beyond me but obviously I thought Komainu was going to be near 'Tina at some point and use his teleporting zero. My opponent revealed Deliver a message and nothing else so I assumed Assassinate as Coryphee was the only combat model that could score full on Vendetta.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I started the game stalking Willie and through a combined effort of double walks and lures from both parties, I ended the first turn nose to nose with Performer and the demo man. Somehow I got initiative and went <i>Assassinate</i> trigger crazy throwing out a bunch of damage and absolutely ruining his hand and soulstone pool. Willie dropped but I gambled the assassinate trigger over pushing away with the Performer and my opponent discarded his last two cards to prevent death. Next activation: Deliver a Message. Luckily, a combined effort of Komainu and Dawn Serpent took care of Coryphee and left my opponent with very little on the field for Turf War. I piled into the center with my remaining models and due to a Torakage being a pest and Dawn Serpent stopping easy <i>Overwhelms</i> going off it led the game into a 7-4 win to me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A very unfair game as I had built my list tailored to beating Rasputina, I believe my opponent was unaware of the sheer speed of Misaki and the amount of auto-focus attacks she can throw out on stalked models. With Shang on hand for emergency healing and having a god-darn DRAGON attacking his ranks in the mean time it meant his force of control pieces couldn't stand up to her in a fair fight. My hand was amazing which helped, cards not being used as I was Ml7 against Def5 or less combined with <i>Rush of Magic</i> allowing me to filter my hand meant despite the wholesome lack of stones, I was fairly confident that I had the defense available to be so aggressive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's hard to say in such a small game but I'm really enjoying Misaki's play style. Auto-focus on stalked targets is wonderful when you can throw out 4 attacks with threat of <i>Assassinate</i> to then leave combat last attack to bother someone else. Killing a performer with a (0) action <i>Bisento</i> to then charge over my own models in order to finish off a Coryphee is what lead to preventing my opponent from scoring Turf War, something none of my other masters could do so easily.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don't know what my next game will bring but hopefully Misaki gets to shine again. Remember, when in doubt, use a dragon and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-13560269707358903872016-01-25T19:00:00.000+00:002016-01-25T19:00:13.702+00:00Go with the Faux<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Human beings have this urge to remember things in their past much more fondly or worse than they actually were. Think back to your favorite christmas or your friends back in secondary school. Maybe your first heartbreak or your first car crash. How much of it was as bad or as good as you recall it being? How many of us miss our school days having a laugh with our mates and the stupid stuff we did in our youths? When really, at the time we were bored out of our minds in classrooms being taught things we haven't the foggiest recollection of or reason why it was imperative that we knew them before going into the "big wide world" by ourselves. Utter nonsense.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My generation, if you can even call it a generation, it's unclear, are absolutely sold on the idea that the 90's were the best ever awesomesauce where we all had the most fun. It was a colorful time full of original ideas and haircuts, lots of haircuts. Really though, our memories of it are the 1% highlights whilst we ignore the 99% shocking terrible-ness of it. Our minds are hardwired for survival despite the very real reality that the mass-majority of us are "basically" safe. We don't have to stand guard at our loved ones beds, we don't have to fear being killed by roaming gangs of aggressive gnomes, we are "basically" safe yet our minds are still hardwired to protect us. Thus our memories of things being gleaming bastions of the good ol' days or the worst thing to ever happen. That or we were bored. These are the three options with memories and science has even found out that every time we recall an event in the past, we start making stuff up and adding or subtracting things. It's all lies! They're not even square!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That amazing segment segways into the point of this post, how I came to love and enjoy my favorite tabletop game: Malifaux. It's a long road of highs and lows and a LOT of money. Or I was busy drawing with crayons and my mind is simply replacing pictures of clouds and farm animals with the Eldar Craftworlds of the 40k universe, it's hard to know for sure.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">My earliest memories of gaming was Magic the Gathering. My mother for whatever reason tried to play it, failed spectacularly and handed me and my brother a selection of cards and said, very lovingly "you work it out". What I remember is a pure and honest butchering of the rules as myself and my younger brother attempted a game we had very little meta knowledge of. At some point we both got bored and returned to our mega drives and playstations.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Skip forward and I'm on holiday to America for the first time and, being a marvel fan I find Heroclix and buy a few. Again, no one else to play games with other than my brother so once again, a full on butchering of the rules and eventual boredom. Two for two so far.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fast Forward to my late teens and I'm on holiday in Spain. I stumbled upon english Magic the Gathering, the Kamigawa block to be specific and fell in love with the world and the mechanics. This time I got my friends involved and even hit up local shops and entered a community. It was a good couple of years, games around the dining table and friday night Magic as well as the sunday casual tournaments my local shop. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Good times.... Good expensive times. My stint in Magic created as it does with all MTG players, drawers and drawers full of cardboard that inexplicitly cost money. Sorting out cards like an obsessive compulsive squirrel. Seven books sorted into colour, type, cost and every new booster box or theme deck I bought to grab those few rares I told myself I <i>needed</i> resulted in having to reset the whole system and reorder everything. I spent 5 hours at a time doing this just to keep on top of a mountain of pictured flash cards. I don't know when I broke but I said to myself, instead of storing these precious cards in boxes and books to be hidden in drawers, surely it would be better to have a game where I could display what I had and create dioramas when I wasn't playing the game. Enter Warhammer 40,000.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">40K brought with it more reasons to hate money as I was starting from scratch in miniature wargaming. Paints, brushes, models, more models, no wait you can only have a small game with those models, buy more to get the full game experience and then buy more models to combat that one dude who is kicking your behind up and down the store. Dice, you need dice and circles and measuring tapes and a large carry case because you've outgrown that tupper-ware with foam in it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Something tells me if I had saved all this money, I would be living in a flying doom fortress in the shape of my face swimming in my own currency like Scrooge McDuck and renamed the internet "Joden" by now. Hindsight 20/20... </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I started out with Tyranids. The idea of swarming the board with a never-ending wave of H.R.Gigar ripoffs really sparked excitement in me and I built up a sizable collection. The problem now was finding players. Friends that were happy to play with MTG cards back in the day balked at the idea of spending a metric crap tonne of money on a product they had to paint and construct themselves, it didn't appeal to them. So I was left with a local club that met every weekend. The problem being that this club had myself, two guys in their late 30's and about 10 pre-teens with their bored parents in the background. The trouble with children that age in wargaming is they have no gaming etiquette. If it wasn't their turn, they would walk off to another table or get bored and start playing a whole other game whilst getting constantly called back to roll dice or move troops again. That kind of thing grates on me as a player, I can't stand facing someone who doesn't want to play, it wastes both of our times. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sadly, had to drop the game and hobbying altogether at this point. When I was met with the realization that I spent all this money, spent all this time learning rules and checking forums and getting invested in a game only to find no one plays it; it was disheartening and puts you down in the dumps on even bothering. Every game that looked awesome or had an interesting spin to it I had to ask the question "Who will actually play this game with me?" If I couldn't name 4 people who were as invested as I was, I didn't bother. Bad times.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One day much later on, after moving house across London, I was coming back from work and I spotted a local Games Workshop that I kept on passing. An idea lit in my head and a long forgotten passion reignited in me. I had the money now, I already had all the supplies making start-up a whole lot easier and it was on the way back from work so I wasn't even wasting time and finding a player base is hella easier when you're going to the store players are routinely meeting up for games in. I restarted 40K with Eldar and started enjoying games with players around my age bracket who more importantly, wanted to play the game. It was all going great, but then 7th Edition happened.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rules change, I get this and a business like GW is going to change things up in order to obtain a fresh customer base and influence more sales from current players. It's a business, I get it but man, 7th killed all excitement I had for the game. Having a "Magic phase" meant that instead of tactical application of spells in movement then in combat, the player with the "Magic army" spent a turn rolling dice when 95% of the time, you could just simply declare that this spell was in effect with the sheer ease of casting. Then there was the army codex changes that fundamentally changed troop rules and how they were played, on top of options being taken away being replaced with sub-par ones. It sounds juvenile to say but I liked it back in my day when the rules were good.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yet my joy of wargaming continued, alas it was no longer being sated by Warhammer 40K. I briefly attempted Warhammer Fantasy but every game I had turned into two armies running into each other and then both players throwing dice for an hour. I came to the conclusion that I needed more from a game than the goal of a table wipe every time.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL43EIDKV4oR7c5oWEerHxM1i-ktZqAUpmjvpcp07SfacjnOx3wICl4dtfLn6-iHPco6QNgZRN3ByC_XtCk39NgPI8rUL2Ioz4wVKopOjJ5l3fdBTLdmn-GJIkdNSDUvJ5blR0zZvCbCY/s1600/dood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL43EIDKV4oR7c5oWEerHxM1i-ktZqAUpmjvpcp07SfacjnOx3wICl4dtfLn6-iHPco6QNgZRN3ByC_XtCk39NgPI8rUL2Ioz4wVKopOjJ5l3fdBTLdmn-GJIkdNSDUvJ5blR0zZvCbCY/s200/dood.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I stumbled upon Infinity and loved the idea of both players being involved in each turn and the game being set up with missions and objectives rather than a slobberknocker of "kill the dudes dood" and the fact that a starter box and maybe one blister was all you needed to play a typical game helped out as well. I played a few games and got hooked.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">...Then the honeymoon ended, the fog machine breathed it's last and the mixtape got chewed up and my eyes were open.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The thing is about Infinity, it's very easy to play a game where you either stay bolt in place in order not to get one-shotted or spend the whole game navigating alleyways in order to press the use button on a console or objective. Fire fights weren't these dramatic what ifs, they were more like coin flips and if you were in a range bracket that benefited you, but not your opponent. <br />Having every piece in the game die to 2 or less hits kills all the fun I tried to have with it and whilst customability exists, you picked the same this-or-that loadout and every model felt the same. This guy shoots. This guy shoots but with a template. This guy is a marker (that can shoot). I can't recall a single model from infinity other than the snipers and I couldn't tell you what their names were.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I was on the right track though, smaller skirmish games were better for me than large 60 model count games and I wanted the objective game play with models I actually gave a damn about who were different from each other. This is when I found Malifaux.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now I noticed Malifaux when I first got into Infinity but due to the lack of youtube support for it (I was following an episodic Infinity batrep at the time) I brushed it off as a steam-punk try hard. How wrong I was.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After Infinity, I managed to get in contact with an organizer for Malifaux and got a demo game with him. I hit the books as I do with all games. I learned as much of the rules as possible and went about researching what crew box I should take. My love of Ice mages lead me to Rasputina so I checked out her guide and luckily, the fellow giving me the demo had the models and set me up with the starter box to demo with. Somehow I managed to win that game (The henchman not being a player who lets newbies win just because) and got hooked. The rest is history as they say. The community is the best I've known and having an organizer who puts his own time down to make sure players new and old have games every week is amazing and I've never looked back.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Will history repeat itself where a massive rules change comes into effect and "ruins" the game, I don't know but I'm riding this wave whilst it's here and damn is it a lot of fun. Being a wargamer nowadays is much more gratifying than it ever has been and it's all thanks to a great community and a solid game. Malifaux having such a diverse range of characterful models is a testament to how it should be done in this sort of game. This blog wouldn't even be here if I felt this game wasn't worth talking about. It revived my passion and is something I feel giddy planning and getting a game with every week.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But enough talking about the past, we loom ever closer to the future and what mysteries it might bring. Get the mode of transport of your choice up to 88mph and have fun out there!</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-19534497131607127442016-01-22T22:51:00.001+00:002016-01-22T22:51:27.560+00:00Gaining Grounds 2016<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Having just been released to the general public I thought I would include my thoughts on the new scheme pool Gaining grounds 2016 has offered us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gaining Grounds I have not had much experience playing, due to most players having the base rule book and the exceptionally helpful Schemes and Strategy deck Wyrd released not having including them, it was easier and simpler to play base strategies than keep a webpage open for the GG strats.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That being said, Gaining Grounds did indeed take the default strats and make them better. Extraction is better Turf War, Interference is better Reconnoiter, Headhunter and Collect the Bounty are better versions of Reckoning and Guard the Stash is basically what your doing in Squatters Rights but with more tactical application. I hope to play more of them in the future but alas the above reasons still exist.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What caught my eye the most though was the new scheme pool and by the holey britches of Zoraida, the base schemes needed re-tailoring and from what I've seen, GG16's look pretty damn good.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First things first, taking away the 5 common schemes and replacing them with Bizarro Protect Territtory (Convict Labor), Improved Distract (Exhust their forces), Non-Master Make Them Suffer (Hunting Party), Tactical Breakthrough (Leave your Mark) and my absolute favorite because it actually forces both players to build a list around it, Upgrade Utopia (Show of Force). None of these are auto-includes in my eyes which greatly interests me as whenever Breakthrough-Protect Terri were on the table, EVERYONE chooses and reveals them. All five are fun and have their own place as strong and weak for different factions and masters. It's not easy for Rasputina to place a marker down on the enemy half of the table every turn, but for Misaki or Collette, its so so easy. Cutting LITS completely means it's no longer there for the few masters who can actually do it or (by my own fault and admission) a trap scheme when you can't do 3 of the 4 others. Replacing it with Convict Labor means Recon/Interference bubble of no-score has a purpose and can make for some really exciting choices.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The other new feature is that all schemes now are un-revealed until you score from them which is fantastic. Voiding bonus points and actually making you work for Entourage or Breakthrough is magnificent and makes for a greater range of guessing and subterfuge that Malifaux was sold on but never really had because why gimp yourself on points doing a "hidden" breakthrough when it was obvious you were doing so and revealing it is and always has been the correct choice? Making it so "Johnny 3ap" turn 5 can't lay a scheme marker-move-lay a scheme marker anymore means having actual risk when trying for it. Yes some model choices will still score it amazingly easy as they always have but at least keeping them to 2 markers rather than 1 is doable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Having the schemes hidden and some of them remarkably similar also continues the bluffing game. What the heck is the opponent trying having so many minions near your master? Are they there for Take Prisoner? Frame for Murder? Neutralize the Leader? Set Up? Mark for Death maybe? It has to be Public Demonstration then surely? or is is all a ruse so that MUCH EASIER OUTFLANK (Inspection) can be scored? Or, oh it might be Occupy their Turf?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Having so many schemes look sinister-ly like themselves might sound convoluted but to me, it looks to be magic. Something as pointless as placing a scheme marker down can now be seen as a threat in the right scheme pool.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So much hype. But is there a downside?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The negatives to an un-revealed scheme pool are small, the excitement of actually being able to bluff a scheme in order to ensure another is something I've been looking forward to but at the same time, it's easy to look at all the interact schemes and marker schemes always being together but sod's law will occasionally have the pool being very distinct and thus the element of surprise is lost. "Neutralize the Leader" in particular basically gives the middle finger to Leviticus who will simply give the opponent 3Vp if played in that scenario, making fixed master events plain silly if you are a Levi or Dreamer player and "Set Up" being the scheme of choice almost every time for Arcanist players. Also, whilst I see it as a good thing; with greater focus on the schemes affecting crew builds sometimes being too much for a single master, players with a range of masters they play well with are going to have a better scope of winning than new players who only have one or two, which has a slim chance of dividing the player base somewhat...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Time will tell, but overall I feel these new schemes will bring about a LOT more focus on building your crew for the schemes. So many games nowadays have players safely running an all-comers list that swap out Scheme-y Runner-y for Punch your Face-y because the main four are just too easy to do for every faction. The scheme pool now has a much greater hand in making smart crew choices and leaving some masters on the shelve for some games. This might mean players with more masters have the upper hand but that will have to be seen. As the game was always intended to be this way, it should come as no surprise that more masters means more avenues of victory.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Keep your models and masters fresh and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-45296364396704204722016-01-18T19:00:00.000+00:002016-01-18T19:00:18.629+00:00That's Numberwang<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My local game shop late last year had a player enter who did what any new player does and chose their favourite looking master. Then that player went on to have a fantastic winning streak and became infamous from new and veteran players alike. He played Perdita Ortega.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perdita is what some would say is a "beginners" master, looking at her card, you can understand why. Def7, Wp7, a "free" 8" push each turn and a pretty decent def trigger in <i>Quick Draw</i>, a near sniper level range with Sh7, an obey action, a mulligan and if there's nothing better to do, a condition that punishes charges and shoot actions in a 24" bubble.... and this is not to mention her upgrades.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXVLnbA2a0Sd8K-a3Jn1KUoVuiaVk2bWHGFrJYDGbfZ6qloOQ0pQ9jYu9sY2yQGKr7rMDG9UADign6zjZl74P5XBwTht63htzma76OEqUiQg0kpVjr6N7ciqI3ZR7ixcwleaEsyDK6n-s/s1600/twen1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXVLnbA2a0Sd8K-a3Jn1KUoVuiaVk2bWHGFrJYDGbfZ6qloOQ0pQ9jYu9sY2yQGKr7rMDG9UADign6zjZl74P5XBwTht63htzma76OEqUiQg0kpVjr6N7ciqI3ZR7ixcwleaEsyDK6n-s/s320/twen1.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Having a crew who have similar sky high stats who can further boost those stats within each other and incredibly cunning movement tricks makes for a hard game if you haven't memorized every single number, threat range and done a far share of theoretical number crunching. How many high cards have you seen? How many have came from that players hand compared to their deck? How many cards remaining and who's activated? A very hard skill to practice without a hellova lot of games under your belt.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I think about numbers in most games but without spending every game being perfectly silent, forcing my opponent to reveal all cards flipped and allowing me to note them down to "read their deck" is too much work right now and sort of kills the social mood in casual tabletop gaming. <br />I'm in it for fun not for crushing my enemies, see them driven before me and hear the lamentations of their women.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When a Ml6 goes up against a Def6 the defender still needs to flip or cheat a card that's value is +1 higher than the attacker to at stop being hit. Perdita with her Sh7 against say a Def5 means to avoid a shot in the T-Zone the defender needs to flip or cheat a card 3+ what Ms Otega flips or cheats. With the average defense being 5 in Malifaux, it means Perdita has a high if not very likely chance of always hitting, or at the very least shrugging off misses as the low margin that it is. With El Mayor in place as well, it is very intimidating as a player trying to prevent damage from her as well as even hit her back for any significant effect. With such base stats in place, you can see why she's seen as such a threat (at least from a casual viewpoint).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Wille is a model I've always wanted to use but never had much success with, this despite his Def 6 with average Wp and Sh6 that ignores armor peppered with Blast. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It's a numbers game though. If an opponent wants Wille dead, they will punch through that defense and go through his 7 wounds dropping him. Someone with a single charge can put Wille on the ropes and face no fancy horror duel or armor or defense trigger guarding his life doing so. Then he drops like a sack of potatoes (which explode). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The explosion is good don't get me wrong, 3 damage in the right spot can hurt but with his limited survival rate out in the open he usually goes 6ft under and plants moderate damage on his exterminator or, more likely, a threatening patch of dirt. Not exactly world ending. My problem is this very weakness, his frail nature leads me to either jump out in the open and get ripped apart or stay in restrictive cover in fear and throw out Sh4 attacks. That said, if for instance I knew exactly what my opponent was using and their individual threat range and stats, Wille would stand a chance at laying down some real threat; 10" range is still outside of the average threat range of melee chargers after all. This will give my opponent a reason to send forces to rid them of annoyance rather than kill an easy target. Thus allowing me to either let him sleep with the worms in an advantageous position or plan to save cards over for his continued existence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My most hated models and the ones that disrupt me the most right now are Rotten Belles/Performers. Why is this? It's purely because I haven't read their cards enough to know the number game. Off the top of my head I know they have a ranged Lure that targets Wp with a decent CA8... or is it CA6 for Performer? That's it. They could have Def3 or Def6; I don't know without looking and that gives me a massive disadvantage in planning a turn. If I'm facing down these Lurers, I don't know the ranges involved so I dread everytime they activate, they either pull my models to their deaths or transport team mates. Both options hindering my plans of Vp denial. If I knew these numbers, I would have at least a clue on how to proceed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Other things hinder my game, such as the aforementioned Manipulative. I've been out-activating an opponent but it nearly cost me the game because instead of waiting for the Manipulative model to activate thus lowering it's shields, I've targeted it and had to cheat in order to do basic attacks. Other games where it's been more even, I have had no choice but to target a non-activated Manipulative model. Now again, if I knew the numbers, I would obviously choose the right model for the job rather than again, the closest or the strongest.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Can my lowly Fire Garmin get past Howard's Terrifying 12 to knock off that final wound or is it better to send in a higher Wp model just in case? What even <i>is</i> Howard's defense?!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If I knew the numbers, it would be an easy call.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On the flipside, I once faced a Mei Feng crew with Rasputina and used my full knowledge of my opponent's models to easily play at range and keep his killy models either dead or busy. It was also the first game I truly saw the power of the December Acolyte. Being able to read your opponent's models without having to ask for stat cards or be surprised by a particularly high stat can mean the difference between victory and defeat between players of similar skill.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Homework is required, if you want to be the very best like no one ever was then get to the books and remember every single thing every Malifaux model does. Why don't I do this? Well for one thing, again, I'm in it for the fun. It sometimes makes for better games if a model can surprise you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That said, being a blind man dodging arrows only because my eyes are tightly shut is no way to improve my game. How will I ever deal with a summoned Hanged if I consistently ignore his page in the rule book? How many times has a lone upgrade been the reason why I couldn't grasp a draw game? Balance is needed obviously, I still want to have wonder and excitement when it comes to games but I also don't want to be slapped by a model I should have sent to the cleaners. That's Numberwang for ya. Have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6869072026305495300.post-57424920068704226352016-01-11T19:00:00.000+00:002016-01-11T19:00:15.514+00:00The Devil Makes Work of Idle Hands<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gunsmiths. Amazing aren't they? Using 3ap to cut through armor, prevent soulstone use and dealing blast damage all the while having double positive attack flips.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Johan. Amazing right? Ending all conditions and swinging a giant hammer, what's not to love?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Howard. Amazing. Decapitate on flurry? World-Ender.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rail Golem. Has tons of burning and can locomotion for days with it's 5/6/8 damage track.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Oh how times have changed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Once upon a time I would have agreed with everything said above, it's on the card, they can do all these things. You'll always have the suits you need in your hand... Right?...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5xnk4IHCuso795oHTeM98wuyXmYYXFE7cwFauBedmW8jxcmwjuFZm0Y5GJmGn9ojIX2noNwI64jE6a-fH7nB0ZR7qDajvoy26fusbYe5RtB2xO6JH06WR3feB2ag5zpihQVhsepfMtXM/s1600/david+tennant+shake.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5xnk4IHCuso795oHTeM98wuyXmYYXFE7cwFauBedmW8jxcmwjuFZm0Y5GJmGn9ojIX2noNwI64jE6a-fH7nB0ZR7qDajvoy26fusbYe5RtB2xO6JH06WR3feB2ag5zpihQVhsepfMtXM/s640/david+tennant+shake.gif" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">These days I never rely on the actions of models who require suits unless they are henchmen or masters and I REALLY need a trigger to go off in order to achieve my goals. In my more recent games I've found that taking too many of these models which use non-built in triggers rapidly depletes my options if I'm taking them for those triggers. I remember taking Pathfinder back in my Ten Thunders days, assuming that a 6+ Tomes would be in my hand EVERY turn for summoning Traps. Some turns they weren't, most turns it was a high card which I needed to use for his trigger or for general cheating purposes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In some games I've NEEDED Johan to get rid of conditions but for some reason I didn't have 4+ Rams, a card one reasonably expects to have in their hand every turn but no, sometimes you have no Rams, sometimes you have the 2 of Rams...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gunsmiths. I can't tell you how many times my Gunsmiths WEREN'T Fast and cutting through armor and instead had to "just shoot" because, unless you're stacking the deck, having a low or high Rams plus a low or high Tomes for every activation isn't a guarantee. Even if you have these cards, are you willing to give up half your hand for one models activation? As if you are, that model needs to win you the game! I no longer rely on them to always have fast and always have that trigger for anti-armor, what I can rely on is them to have Sh6 Rng:12".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thing is, even when you have these cards in hand, most of the time your opponent is putting enough pressure on you to force you to use those very same high cards to prevent that very same model from kicking the bucket. It's a dilemma and one you will face many times during games of Malifaux. Yes Hank's Decapitate trigger is great but if cheat in that 11 of Rams and your opponent dumps that 5 and 3 that were basically blank to them, you've pretty much discarded a way to keep Mr Langston alive for another turn. On the flip side if your opponent is low on cards, forcing a discard-or-die decision can lead them to make a difficult choice but are you willing to save that one card in order to it? Is Howard going to be alive long enough for your opponent to have little to no hand left? It's a tough one.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trigger distribution is something you learn from experience playing Malifaux, no one tells you about it in the start but sooner or later you ease into your personal style and find out how your lists are sometimes harder to manage than they should be. Back to Gunsmiths, great ranged threat but this myth that they will always have fast and always get the trigger they need in either a low discard or having that high card in hand is folly at best. Discarding for a suit doesn't automatically mean they hit nor does assuming you'll have that soulstone prevention trigger on the next turn to end that henchman. They are great triggers in the right scenarios but don't think for a moment that you'll always have the right one in hand, probability or no.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lets take another view, lets say you do have that 12trigger-suit in hand, at some point during the turn you want to ensure that trigger goes off right? But then the target inexplicably dies or your model gets pushed out of range or is hit by a de-buff. Do you hold onto the card you can "no longer use" for next turn or do you use it for defense this turn? Is that trigger going to help the game move along next turn and is worth waiting that turn to use? Or does it's effect not affect the big picture as a whole. Are you hurting Lazurus because he's wiping out your guys or are you killing those Molemen who are about to lay down too many markers to prevent?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Personally (for the time being) I've been taking the practice of saving cards face down for certain models effects that NEED to go off. A life saving condition wipe, a defense breaking trigger, to guarantee that slow trigger hits that model with flurry, that high card to leap or to make absolutely sure Railwalker goes off once. You have to choose your battles though, saving more than two cards like this means that when that inevitable duel rears it's ugly head, you're too busy saving for that slow trigger when another model is getting sacrificed because of it. I've had bad flips in duels which forced my hand and made me use the card I was saving to ensure I won an important duel but at least I made myself aware that had it not been for that 13 against my 4, I would have made that original play I was saving a card for and ensured it happened. It sucks when you start an activation and realized only too late that that minion last activation really didn't need to prevent 4 damage on it's 6wds by using the card you actually needed now for your henchman/master.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In one game my opponent decided (a choice he later wondered why he made) to put a bunch of poison on a Fire Garmin of mine to ensure Expunge killed him in one shot. I let it happen.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now I could have prevented it, very easily in fact I was blessed with a hand of 8+ at the time but I saw that the Garmin wasn't defending anything, I still had a sizable force on my side and my scheme runners were steadily making their way up the flanks. This Garmin standing around and not defending, preventing or gaining Vp from it's presence wasn't worth ending my hand for, so I let the cards flip as they may. Later on in the turn I ensured my runners were defended and made sure Mei Feng had what she needed in order to hunt down bodyguard targets. Yes it was a shame I had to sacrifice a good shooter and provider of blast burning but I made the right choice and (unfortunately for my opponent) took advantage of his bloodlust.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">How many different suits does your crew require? Three? Two? Just the one? Who needs them? Minions, Enforcers? Henchman, your Master? How many Soul stones will you need for stoning for cards, damage prevention flips, the rare yet sometimes crucial initiative flip? Are you using them every turn? What triggers are absolutely necessary each turn vs those that are kinda nice to randomly flip into?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Captain has burning on his pushes but it's not something I would ever save a card for.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Shadow Effigy on the other hand has a really useful "Remember the Mission" ability which basically requires you to save a 10 for it to accurately happen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rasputina is my most stone hungry master. She wants Masks every attack for the ever present Overpower and because I love a bit of Shatter action I need either Masks or Rams to get the most out of my (0). Due to this dependency on specific suits, the rest of my crew has to do without the aid of Soulstones or sometimes even high cards if I require a particularly devastating activation. So when building a crew with Ms 'Tina I have to keep in mind that she will be using every stone available, so I have little in the way of henchmen which rely on prevention flips to stay upright or have suit dependent models in her games.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yan Lo on the other hand has no such suit requirements or even high cards really, his upgrades and Chi do everything so saving cards for other models becomes a whole lot easier and makes for lists that *can* have a high density of models that rely on stones or saving of cards to do what it needs to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Start with your master and their upgrades and take it from there, what abilities do you NEED and which ones can you blind flip and not worry too much about? Then it's all up to the luck of the draw that affects what each turn brings you in terms of options. Don't let attachment to non-key models ruin your game plan, and ensure you have a plan when that bad flip happens or if you need that key card to be used for survival instead of death dealing. Keep that poker face and have fun out there.</span>JodenThe13Fateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12711302018542879985noreply@blogger.com0