Friday, 14 June 2013

The Adeptifaux Malicon Report: Part One

The next big event for me in Adepticon was the Malifaux tournament.  I steered clear of the large ongoing events, like the gaslight and cake matches, but I was curious to play some Malifaux that wasn’t against my usual crowd of 3-4 different guys.

I arranged a fairly all-round and resilient team from my stash of models and here is what I came up with.  There was 25 Soulstone limit on crew, which seems fairly standard (from what I know at least).  I stuck with a Freikorps crew, as the Viktorias and associated mercs can undoubtedly hit very hard, but I have always had a bit of a problem keeping the Viks alive at the best of times and had a brand new Freikorps Strongarm suit I wanted to test out.

My crew was as follows:
Von Schill
Freikorps Librarian
2 x Freikorpsman
Freikorps Strongarm Suit
Friekorps Specialist

I was quite pleased with the setup, even though it included a couple of wild cards as far as I was concerned.  I’d never played the Strongarm before, due to the model release being fairly recent and my Malifaux games intermittent to say the least.  The rules behind it seemed fairly solid, so I was eager to try it out.  The big uncertainty was the Specialist.  I have seriously barely ever used this guy and the only times I have, it’s been against my mate’s Resurrectionists, particularly with Nicodem as his favorite master.  Those familiar with this particular bastard are doubtless aware that he some really boost his creation with a lot of defence and so ranged attacks get harder and hard to land.  He also really likes his Crooked Men as well, so the few times I use the Specialist I got no use out of him, really, as he couldn't inflict any real ranged damage and was just not maneuverable enough to make his presence felt anywhere else on the board.  But I decided now was the time to give him his moment to shine.  It was hard for me not to put some Trappers in the crew, as I have big soft spot for them, but I was paranoid about not having enough models for the limit.  If I wasn't strongarming it, I probably would have put a couple of trappers in there I think.

Anyway, that’s the list sorted.  Next to no magical ability, and a majority of really low minimum damage, what could go wrong?

Unfortunately, due to my own lack of punctuality when it comes to these posts, I have forgotten most of the specifics of the games, so I’ll only be painting in the broadest of brush strokes for these reports.  Just a few brief points about the game roughly what my opponent was bringing and what I took away from the encounter.


My first game was against, surprise, surprise: Nicodem.  He was packing Molly (who I’d never played against), a couple of Crewligans,a rotten belle and I think a Punk Zombie or two.  The Strategies for the tournament were all preset, so only our schemes were of our chosing, and most of mine were identical.  All, I think.  I had Hold Out, which I kept secret, meaning that I got a point if none of the enemy reached my deployment zone, and I had Bodyguard, which I announced.  This meant I got 2 VPs if Von Schill was alive at the end of the game.  The strategy here was to fill up two fountains with water gathered from a specific area in your deployment zone.  My Freikorpsmen were really useful here, because they aren’t slowed down by terrain and they have a good movement speed.  However, the same could definitely be said for the Resurrectionists, as the Crewligan/Molly combo gives them an impressive amount of speed.  This game turned into a bit of a brawl and wound up as a draw, due to a couple of things.  Molly pulled out an ability that I’d never seen before that meant she completely totalled one of my guys at the cost of sacrificing herself, which was a truly nasty thing to deal with out of nowhere!  I also made a major mistake in target priority, honed by many games against Nicodem-led undead gangs, and Von Schill drew a bead on the old guy pretty quickly, not letting up until he was dead.  In terms of the larger game, he would have been much better tasked doing other things, but I had a little bit of a myopic approach to that game!  One of the best moments for me was probably the realisation on my opponent that my Strongarm can’t be moved about the place, unless it’s by me, so that was highly amusing.  I was happy with the draw, all told.  There was a dead Nicodem on the field, so I took it as something of a moral victory!

More battle reports will arrive on the other side of the weekend, finishing off the Adeptifaux Malicon Report.

So long!

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