Malifaux – Another game

I managed to get a game at the club today, I used my Viktorias (25 soulstone game, same crew as last time, Vik’s, Taelor, x3 ronin)

I played Von Schill’s crew, against my mate Dave, I had a look through our scenery at the club (of which there is a colossal amount), and found that most of the stuff we could use had been taken up already, so, I dug a little deeper, and found a box filled with old mordheim scenery, for those of you who don’t know what mordheim is, go check it out! it’s a skirmish game produced by games workshop a few years back, set in a fantasy city hit by a meteor, which becomes partially destroyed, warbands battle through the city to find “shards” of the meteor, in some respects, its a heck of a lot like malifaux, but in many, its really really not.

Anywhoo, the terrain looks like this, that link is a google search, and the first image that popped up that has the card buildings from the set, so, at the club we had quite a few buildings back in the days of mordheim, when we were in our old building in Newsham, since we moved a couple of years back the mordheim scenery just seems to have been forgotten, unfortunately, It hasn’t survived very well. However, it is fixable! and next Sunday I will be going into the club, and fixing it up as best I can, as it will be perfect for malifaux, and, hopefully, it’ll even resurrect mordheim!

I picked a few of the less battered buildings, even these however were severly damaged, but it was the best we could get, and I put together a table, and we set up.

Dave flipped for deployment and got diagonal, then flipped for strategies, Dave got slaughter and I got treasure hunt.

Dave deployed first and then we flipped for initiative, I won (Which became a recurring theme throughout the game!) and we set off, again, like the last game against Elazar we both have crews who follow pretty much the standard flow of the game, me only having the viktorias who can companion, and Dave having leader, which lets him activate a model after von schill.

The first couple of turns went pretty quick, with both of us just moving towards each other, then, in about turn three (I think I’m going to write a proper battle report in my next game, and possibly take photos, even if the mini’s are unpainted, as wall of text is starting to annoy me 😛 )  it all started to kick off,

Dave Had a trapper, who started the game out of his deployment zone, on a hill covering he objective, and the majority of his crew moved round one of the flanks, led by Von Schill, this little group was the majority of his force, so I pretty much had to go for them as he had the objective covered, and was close enough to counter attack if I just tried to dash for it.

I decided to attempt to be clever, and move around the board in pairs. It kinda worked, but only on one side.

I moved a ronin up (my) the left flank with Taelor, the two viktoria’s up the middle, and the other two ronin on the right flank.

The ronin on the left flank performed exactly how I had envisioned, after a couple of turns they snuck up on the trapper, and the ronin managed to chop his face off.

Taelor moved up in front and went for the specialist (i think it was the specialist, he had a flame cannon I think), she only managed this after the trapper managed to cause a few wounds on her, no matter, tis only a flesh wound! carry on!

so she did, she managed to smash the specialist into tiny pieces, only to find out that he explodes when he dies. an epic ball of flames ensued, barbecuing Taelor (and her chebs). ah well! she won’t be doing that again!

meanwhile, I had a plan to get the viktorias across the board in double quick time. I didn’t end up using it, as I thought it would end in one of the viktorias meeting a messy end. As it happens, she did anyway.
The plan (as any self respecting commander knows, does not survive contact with the enemy), was to use companion, and “sisters in spirit”, to move the gun toting vik forward once, then swap places with the sword toting vik, who would then charge forward into combat, with the “free” attack for charging, and her additional attack for melee expert, however I felt that this would leave her out in the open, so, I decided against it.

Instead, I left them both out in the open, just slightly furthur back than they would have been if I’d stuck to the plan, where they got the crap kicked out of them. sword toting vik met a sticky end, and gun toting vik took a few wounds, but in return I managed to take out a dude, and cause a few wounds onto Von Schill.

However the librarian decided he would heal von Schill, which I didn’t like. so I went one step better.

The Viktorias have a spell “another one” which means they can sacrifice a ronin (within 2″) and spend two soulstones, to summon a viktoria, after the sword toting vik died, I looked at my control hand and luckily had the card I needed to be sure to pull it off, so, I sacrificed a ronin who just happened to be near death anyway, and moved convinently close enough to set the spell off.

I pulled it off, and got Vik back. who then charged forward. and got owned. again.

She managed to cause a bit of damage though, I believe I took out the librarian with her? or, it might have been the ronin who took out the trapper, either way, the librarian died,

The other ronin, seeing that everyone was ignoring the objective in the middle made a dash for it over three turns, he ended the game about an inch from my deployment zone, which meant that I didn’t get any Victory Points, but on the bright side, dave didn’t get any either, so the game was a draw.

At the end my crew was pretty battered, one of the vik’s had died twice, I’d lost taelor, and sacrificed a ronin, and only one of my characters had not taken any wounds (the treasure carrying one),

Dave still had Von Schill left, who, to be fair, is nails, and could probably have taken out at least what he needed to get some VP’s if he was given a chance, but fate was against us, as we flipped to see if we would get any more turns, and the game ended.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the game, we both lost some models, neither player had the game in the bag at any point, and we both learned some stuff about the game. There were a couple of moments for both players where the cards were against us, and where they were on our side. A nice balanced, fun game.

Just how I like it.

Cheers Dave.

Next time I hope to smash von schill into many pieces. 😉

Chris