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| I realized, after writing this post, that it was basically a cat poster. So, here you go. |
I’ve played a couple of games recently where I’ve basically
been fighting the deck the entire time. I’m not sure what I did to make the
Malifaux Gods angry (but I’m totes sorry. For realz.) but the bottom line is
that in the last two games I haven’t flipped a
Red Joker that hasn’t been for something like initiative or casting Brillshaper
on an Illuminated and have, in the meantime, cost myself as many as 6 VP in
differential by Black Jokering a flip in a critical moment that I had
previously set up for a win. One turn I drew a full hand of
cards, plus two rush of magics, plus 3 cards from a Wings of Darkness soulstone…and
ended up with one face card in my hand. It’s been a rough week, is what I’m
saying. Also, I’ve not had that many games with Lillith in my time, but I had
the impression that most games Tangled Shadows is a very effective ability of
which many players are afraid. In my hands, however, my opponents seem to
intuitively know which master I’m bringing and either Merc in Anna Lovelace to
shut it down almost entirely or have Sidir nearby to jump in front of it and
block me. These games have left me pretty
salty, and I apologize to the opponents who’ve dealt with my grumpiness while
playing me. It’s a character flaw that I fight against almost every game with
mixed success. On turn 4 of the most recent game I was honestly contemplating
just calling it quits. But…I plowed through, and both games ended…in draws! And
in a way, I’m almost prouder of those draws than I would be of wins.
One was
against Rasputina in a game of Interference with Search the Ruins in the pool.
This was another of those subterranean Vassal boards with small tunnels that
just scream “Put a hungry land marker here and the opponent is screwed.”
Weirder, it also had close deployment ensuring that we were going to be right
on top of each other from the word go. In retrospect, I probably should have
brought Nekima and tried to pounce on the opposing master, but A) I’m still
determined to find out why everyone hates the Mysterious Emissary so much despite
the fact that it’s played a role in the outcome of every game I’ve used it and
B) I didn’t KNOW that my opponent was going to bring the one Arcanist master
who is absolutely the worst for close deployment. So yeah, the crew purchasing
phase was basically a shit show for both of us, and worse of all it became a
slog in the middle with Anna and Hanna Lovelace putting up an 8” aura of “No
Tangled Shadows here” over the opponent’s entire crew (if you’re struggling in
your local meta with a Lillith crew, Anna’s a merc and she’s basically a hard
counter that turns Lillith into a mediocre melee master who can summon trees).
So, that’s great. Then I made it worse by trying to use Lillith to tie the
Lovelace siblings up for a turn, which ended in Lillith getting turned into
paste. For some reason, my hungry land markers think Lillith is super
tasty, as my opponents have Red Jokered her twice in three games now, so that
didn’t help, but all that armor and some less than fabulous flipping to attack
meant I was sans master after turn 3. At this point I started to get a little
desperate, and was basically assuming a loss, but I knew three things. 1) Lillith’s
Illusionary Forest was placed in a way that meant Rasputina was going to be
doing dick for the rest of the game 2) I had 2 Waldgeists hiding well away from
the Lovelaces to go hide from them and score the strategy and 3) Mr. Graves
was tagged as the chump for Frame for Murder, and he was ready and able to
charge in and get beaten up by the aforementioned armored ladies to score me
some points, which he promptly did. In other words, I evaluated the situation,
made myself calm down, and found a way to score enough to stay in it. Hell, if
not for the black jokered damage flip of my ME on the last turn, I may have
even won by denying my opponent search the ruins (it has a tome trigger on its
attack to blow up all scheme markers within 4” of the target.) So, the draw was
earned, and I learned some hard lessons about not using Lillith like I would
use Perdita.
The
next game was even worse, luck wise. My opponent was playing a Jacob Lynch Ten
Thunders crew and taking the “Only bring one minion in Hunting Party” gambit. They
can get away with this, though, when that one minion is a Ten Thunders Brother
who are notoriously difficult to pin down, let alone kill. To counter, I had
brought Nekima for this game and given her Retribution’s Eye to negate the
awesome defensive triggers and give me an opportunity, when I was ready for it,
to pounce and kill it. I jammed the center of the
board up with more forests and Hungry Land, forcing the action around the
perimeter of the board (again, how can a model that affects the game this much
be bad? I really don’t understand.) Sidir had again managed to jam up most of
my transposition antics with Lillith by bouncing in front of the target with
Broken Promises turned on to block that as a tactic all together, but
eventually I got the TTB pulled into melee. Nekima walked up, had two AP and a
hand full of pretty good cards to finish him…and damage flip is a black joker
followed by a second attack that misses. Curse words ensue. Then Nekima fails
three defense flips against Lynch, dies, and brings Hungering Darkness back
into my backfield. The TTB escaped, and then Sidir stepped in the way to
protect it for the rest of the game from any more Tangling of Shadows. And, as
I said, I was honestly considering packing it in at this point. But, I looked
closely at the board and saw that A) I was set up well for scoring max on
Search the Ruins B) No one was going to score much of anything from the
strategy (Headhunter) and my opponent had kind of tipped his hand that he was
playing Search the Ruins as well, while my Emissary was poised to blow up his
scheme markers, and C) He had only scored partial points from Quick Murder. The
door was open for me to at least make a respectable showing. My Doppleganger
and Primordial Magic managed to complete Search the Ruins, despite Hungering Darkness’s
compelling argument that the PM needed to feed itself to some Hungry Land on
turn 5. Hell, I even had a chance to win the thing if I had thought to get an
exposed Illuminated back behind cover to avoid getting finished off by the Ten
Thunders Emmisary to score an easy head marker for the opponent.
This one, of course, is a bit dicey
since my opponent was playing a crew that was not optimized for the encounter,
but the point is simply this: Don’t give up in games. If you get frustrated as
easily as I do, step away for a second and pull yourself back together. Get off of tilt, and get your head back
in the game. It doesn’t matter how bad you’re getting stomped if you’re playing
the scenario effectively. You can still get a good result in a game when you basically bet
your butt handed to you in the combat portion if you can outrun the opponent’s
schemes and strategy efforts.
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