Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Malifaux's Greatest Award Show (by default,) the 2015 Musie Awards! Generally speaking, I
tend to focus my thought processes and attention on the competitive side of the
Malifaux miniatures game, looking at it in terms of strategy, crew composition,
and what is most likely to give you a win in a particular stratety/scheme
set-up. There’s a reason my podcasts of choice tend to focus on shows like
Before We Begin and (anything Joel Henry is on) rather than those that pay more
attention to hobby and collecting. It’s not that I don’t like those other
shows, it’s just that I only have so much time and this is the part of the game
that interests me. Perhaps not unexpectedly, as I’m listening to these I get a
passing view of which factions and masters are winning consistently at the
major tournaments over the course of the year. As such, I thought it would be
useful and interesting to look back at 2015’s Malifaux Tournament scene with an
eye for which factions did well in the competitive environment. I focused on
tournaments that either A) had 20+ attendees or B) were a qualifier/golden
ticket event for the UK or US national championship (or, of course, were those
respective championship tourneys.) First, a few disclaimers that will apply to
this first iteration of the awards:
1) I had to have access to the
results, so they focus on those which are available through the UK and US
Malifaux rankings site. Additionally, I turned to the Malifaux public
themselves for some filler data on tourneys I was missing, and I threw in the
Nythera event results because it A) had the most players of any event and B)
probably gave the closest representation of the aggregate competitive level of
Malifaux factions across all of the playing public.
2) I don’t have which masters were
used in each tournament, so I elected to not include that in the tracking. Next
year I hope to correct this.
3) I wasn’t present for any of
these tourneys, so all information has to be second hand. I’ve tried to stick
to only data given to me from participants/organizers, but I’m not ruling out
the possibility that something in here is incorrect.
The final list of events included
in this compilation is: Adepticon, Gencon Avatar of Malifaux tournament, the
NOVA Open, the UK Grand Tournament, The UK Masters Tournament, the Nythera
Worldwide Event, Brooklynfaux II, Live Free or Die Cheating, Captain Con,
Mali-Fest, Templecon, Connecticon, Isle of Faux, Cow Wars, Haul of Eggs, the
Scottish GT, Deliverance, and Play More Games. From a first look at the data,
what do I see? Well, in terms of attendance at the major tournaments, the UK
wins mostly on the back of the 88 people who were at the UK GT. This is just
staggering, and is a testament to how popular the game is in the UK per capita
and, possibly, the advantage of having all of the player base on a handful of
islands rather than spread across the entire continental US. It was impressive
to see that the US could field a similar number of high player base ranked
events as the UK, however, as the disparity between US versus UK events was
only 1 (9.5 vs. 8.5, as I split the Nythera event between the two.) Also
encouraging is the fact that each faction had at least one win at a major
tournament this season, a testament to how wide-open the meta is for Malifaux’s
competitive scene (or, as some might argue, it may just be a comment on the
fact that the meta is constantly evolving and no one has quite figured it out
yet.) But, this is supposed to be an award show, so let’s get on to the awards.
To start with, the Musie for US
faction of the year goes to
…
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| Yer Goddamned Right it does. |
A lot of this comes on the back of
the Guild winning both the Gencon Avatars qualifier and the NOVA Open, as well
as the Nythera event. Hot on their heels are the Outcasts and Resurrectionists,
with two and three major US events each. Two factions (Neverborn and Arcanists) failed to take down one of the major US tournaments included in the
data set. It would be interesting to break things down into smaller, more
localized meta reports for who wins in certain areas, as I would bet the
differences would be pretty significant. Two of the Guild wins that got them
this award were from the same player in subsequent tournaments, but the
Resurrectionist wins were also clumped (around a certain Guy in Suit) so it’s
possible this picture isn’t as complete as it could be.
Next up, the Musie for UK faction
of the year
…goes to the Resurrectionists!
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| Checking into the Rezzers award show party. Update: the party is totally dead. |
The Rezzers put together a strong
resume of tournament wins in the UK in 2015, taking down both the UK GT and the
Masters. The Neverborn ended up with two major tournament wins as well, but I
gave the edge to the dead-folk due to overall population of the tournaments
that they won. Two different factions failed to win one of the major tournaments. One of the missing factions,
interestingly, is the Guild. The disparity in Guild results in the UK versus
the US consistently fascinates me and was probably one of the most interesting
outcomes of this research. What’s the deal here? Are there just not as many
strong Guild players in the UK as in the US? Did the differences in the two
meta-games open the door for a more dominant, destructive Guild list to win out
here where it was countered there? This is worthy of closer investigation, in
my opinion. Look for a future blog post examining that.
Speaking of the UK’s staggering
tournament attendance, it should perhaps be no surprise that the winner for the
People’s Choice Award Musie (combination of wins multiplied by attendees at the
majors) goes to
…Resurrectionists!
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| Currently serving appetizers at the Rezzer party. |
Again, the UK GT
skews this result strongly in their favor, but it says something that the Rezzers
came out on top of a pile of 88 of the UK’s best and brightest. That is a meat
grinder, to be sure, and deserving of respect. Outcasts come in second here,
with none of the other factions cracking triple digits.
The second to last Musie we’re
going to call the Wooden Spooner award (with nods to self-described terrible
Malifaux Player and podcaster Matt Spooner) we’ll give to the bottom of the
pile faction. And really, are we surprised that this one goes to
…the Gremlins!
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| They don't know it's a gag award, so they're still happy. |
This result is
probably the least representative of what the faction can really do, as
I would pin part of this result on the simple fact that, for a large part of
2015, most of the faction wasn’t available in plastic (or at all.) People don’t
like playing proxies, and major tournaments generally aren’t going to let you get
away with using them. Their one win (from the included tournies) was Play More Games, a tournament in Maryland. Look for this to change next year, as Ulix, Ophelia, and Rooster Riders are just one of the many scary things you don't want to see across from you on a table. It is fun to poke
at the perpetual little-brothers of Malifaux, however, and remind them that they still aren't a real faction. I was also surprised that the
Arcanists finished as low as they did, considering they had the Mechanical
Rider and pre-nerf Iron Gamins all year long. The one win included was Martin Wodehouse at the UK's Deliverance tourney (and how Gremlins didn't win that, I'll never know.) Now, they finished on the podium
for a large number of these tourneys, so if I was including this I think they
would have finished stronger. But still, that one really surprised me.
So that leaves us with our final award,
the Musie for Faction of the Year: Most major tournaments won worldwide. If
you’ve been reading through the rest of the article, it should perhaps not surprise
you that the winner is…
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| I mean, really, what other picture could I use? |
The Resurrectionists!
With five major tournament wins
worldwide and strong showings in both the UK and US metas, I think it’s no
surprise that the deadheads are the winners here. Encouragingly, this was not a
matter of the same single master or list winning these tournaments (though
Kirai was well represented in both, as Andrew Weakland and Joe Wood, among
others, have demonstrated her strength as a master quite convincingly at this
point.) Seamus and McMourning were well represented here as well. Runner-up for
the award is the Guild, again coming entirely as a result of victories in the
US meta and their victory in the Nythera worldwide event. Honorable mention
goes to the Outcasts, as Jack Daw and Leveticus led their faction to three
major tourney wins.
Well, that’s first effort at putting together a Musies award show, as
much as I could do with an informal poll after the fact. Next season I hope to
poll the major tournament organizers and winners as the events come along,
giving me better information and making for some cool interviews and insights
from the players on sight. I’d love to attend some of them in person (and that
may happen for Gencon, if nothing else) but I think this is the next best
thing. I’d love to get comments and suggestions from readers on how to improve
these for 2016, and I’m sure some people disagree with the results I have here.
I love to have comments, so feel free. But in the meantime, thanks for reading. Enjoy the post-award show parties. Try not to take too much Brilliance.
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| If you do, the management is not responsible for any Hungering Darkness or Seamus related mishaps that happen afterward. |
