Friday, April 8, 2016

Adepticon Field Report

Editor's Note: Last weekend my friend Jon (you'll remember his name from numerous battle reports on the blog) went up to Chicago to test out his Ten Thunders might versus the wider Malifaux field. He lives in Atlanta, which is sort of the birthplace of Wyrd anyways, and he's played at Gencon basically every year since becoming a Malifaux player, but this was his first trip to Adepticon. He was texting me the results from his game, and I said "Hey, how would you feel about writing up a report on the con for Malifaux Musings? He said yes, and this was the result. I look forward to doing more of these in the future, as a bachelor man like Jon is much more free to travel and compete than I am. So, this will be our first field report from roving reporter, Jon. Hope you enjoy!

Pictured: Not Jon. But definitely the image of him I'll be using in this article.

***

So where to begin…  for me this was more a spur of the moment type trip I was fully unprepared to take.  I logged into the Adepticon site a couple weeks ago for giggles to see what in all was going on.  The draw was they had an X wing worldwide event in 8 cities in 8 different countries and I was going to try to get a game in before I went. I have lots of ships but haven't played anyone, and I don’t want to be the guy that shows up to a tournament who has never played even.  I would play X wing on Friday and Malifaux on Saturday and maybe the story encounter Sunday.  So I found someone on facebook to split the expenses with me (who just so happens to be Wyrd's studio painter) and the plan was in motion.

So then the Easter sale dropped.  Now I have models to paint!  And anyone who knows me knows this is kind of an Achilles’ heel of mine.  So I spent almost all my free time the week before assembling and painting (skipping that x wing game I wanted to get in but it wouldn’t matter because I probably needed all day Friday to paint as well).  I ordered bases and they came in Tuesday (I was lucky to keep refreshing the Easter sale every 10 min until it went live so my order was close to first in the queue.)  My label generated Tuesday at 4, so I thought it would go out that day. Turns out Fail-Ex had different plans. Left Wyrd on Wednesday at 2 and I got it Thursday during work hours before I was set to hit the road. So thus began the comedy of set backs.  First up I get a call at 2 (estimated time of departure) ‘I have a flat’… so this set us back an hour.  Between rush hour and the rain we lost probably 2 hours in the commute.  Got in at 2.30am. We didn’t reserve Thursday because when we made the plan he was gonna drive Friday morning, but this changed because of his crystal brush contest.  So that hotel did not have a room for us.  We went over to the convention center to see if registration might be open because the swag bag was suppose to be worth it.  No such luck.  So he made the suggestion we could just nap in the car which I can totally do.  Turned out he cannot.  So after an hour we went in search of a hotel room.  We get that sorted and Friday was bearable.  Got there about 11 after the swag was gone.  Then we set up shop and paint.  Usually I do ok on 6 hours sleep so I paint until 2 am.  Then the fire alarm goes off at 4.30 am…  When I wake up I’m so tired and kinda in a hurry I couldn’t figure out how the coffee dispensers work so I left the hotel without and it was snowing.   How many signs of the apocalypse do I half to encounter just to play some Malifaux? So now that you have an understanding of where I started Saturday morning and that I don’t normally record games in any way to do battle reports, take this with a grain of salt.  And I didn’t bother to take any pictures because my camera is blurry and I need a new phone.
Editor's Note: I like to imagine it looked something this.

I declare 10 thunders
Game 1:  Lynch v Ramos Woke up                                                       upgrades for Ramos that probably did nothing Rising sun Expert Cheater Huggy w addict and recall training         Joss w Imbued Kang w recall training                               Howard w imbued Yu w wandering river style                      Johan Depleted                                                     Brass arachnid
Low river monk                                          mobile tool kit
2x 10 t brothers

I don’t know if anyone snapped any pictures of any of the tables but this one was a wrecked rail yard.

Stat and schemes: recon, convict labor, detonate the charges, exhaust forces, neutralize leader, take prisoner.
Deploy: Standard

I took convict labor and detonate. He took exhaust and take prisoner on Yu.
The game didn’t really go as expected.  He used his beaters to guard Ramos behind cover and sent spiders to contest recon.  Me not being awake at this point in the morning was too slow to counter this.  And I should’ve taken Torshiro.  And while I understand the function of depleted, getting them to work is another animal.  I score one for strat and 3 for convict labor.  Lose 9-4.  I go grab a soda for some much needed caffeine.


Game 2: Lynch vs Ironsides
Woke up                                                   upgrades
Endless hunger
Huggy w RT                                              captain w/ imbuded
Yin w/ smoke grenades                         envy with imbued
Pathfinder                                               mouse
Low river monk                                      Johan
2x illuminated                                         2x gunsmiths
2x 10 t brothers

This was table 18 with carnival terrain.

Strat and schemes: Extraction, convict labor, catch and release, hunting party, leave your mark, and search ruins.
Deploy: Standard

I took convict labor and search ruins.  I think he had hunting party and I know he had ruins.  This one was kinda meh.  We traded pieces until I had yin, both brothers, the pathfinder and lynch and he had captain and mouse.  And this is where I misread and thought center line is where the markers needed to be.  So I won 7-4.  I had a ton of unmolested AP to score 10 and this cost me at the end of the tournament.

Editor's Note: Jon's models when he told them where to put the scheme markers.

Game 3: Lynch V Levi (Kyle from Schemes and Stones podcast)
Woke up                                                   iron
Endless hunger                                       I think there were other upgrades
Huggy w RT                                              2x waif
Yin w/ smoke grenades                         Strongarm w/ oathkeeper
Pathfinder                                               peace keeper w/ oathkeeper
2x illuminated                                         taelor w/ oathkeeper
2x 10 t brothers                                      necro punk

Table 13 was kinda like a valley with a few pockets of trees.

Strat and Schemes: collect the bounty, convict labor, quick murder, occupy turf, show force, leave mark.  
Close deploy.

I took convict labor and mark.  I think he had show and mark.  He sent the strongarm and a waif up one flank, necro up the other and everything else up the center.  I sent a bro up each side and sent yin and huggy to deal with the strongarm and the rest move up to deal with the host.  Yin put the minus wp debuff on the strong arm and then locked down his walk/charge.  Huggy came along and caressed him once to give brilliance and then the rest of the tentacles sodomized him for red joker 11 at the top of round 2.  Managed to kill the PK relatively easy.  The necro got 3 for mark.  Levi shot one bro, buried, then reversed field and killed the other one.  I scored bounty twice and got 3 from labor.  I think this ended 5-7 or 8 bad guys (this ran up to the timer and I was still kinda in zombie mode).  If taelor didn’t joker an Illuminated last turn I could’ve sprung her to tie this game but it was well played on his side.  I should have ignored the necro and used the pathfinder on the main host.  That might have made the difference in killing stuff to get me the win.

Game 4: Lynch V Ironsides (again ) (Tyler? from Malifaux's Most Wanted podcast I think (could be wrong))
Woke up                                                   
Endless hunger                                       upgrades
Huggy w RT                                              Johan
Yin w/ smoke grenades                        mouse
Kang w RT                                                2x gunsmith
2x illuminated                                         2x oxford mage
2x 10 t brothers                                      firestarter

Table 13 was kinda like a valley with a few pockets of trees.

Strat and Schemes: reckoning, convict labor, exhaust, frame, public demo, show of force. 
Corner deploy.

I took convict and exhaust.  He took exhaust and ? (this game was before the dinner break so hunger and fatigue made this game a blur but I remember both of us were laughing most of the time and he had Kang down to 1 wound for the entire turn 3 and could not get the last wound to score reckoning.  I may have cheated and red joker and told him got to work harder than that. I more or less rolled his forces as I advanced behind Yin with his double – to hit.  I think I won 8-3

Game 5: Lynch V guild mcmourning
Woke up                                                   
Endless hunger                                       upgrades
Huggy w RT                                              frank
Yin w/ smoke grenades                        sebastain
swordsman w RT                                   chihuahua
2x illuminated                                         abuela
2x 10 t brothers                                      nurse
                                                                  Watcher
                                                                 2x austringer

Table 7  town square

Strat and Schemes: Guard stash, convict labor, hunting party, inspection, set up, take prisoner.  
Standard deploy.

I took convict and Take Prisoner Frank,  He took set up and ? (I honestly don’t know).  This game started well enough.  I move up using building for cover.  He had abuela, nurse austringer and a watcher on 1 side, and the rest to the other side.  Turn 2 he shoots at the approaching swordsman only to faceplam when he remember I had bulletproof 3.  Huggy then told her to shoot the austringer and she said sure thing and smoked him.  He manages to throw mcmourning in lynches face then huggy, yin, and illuminate counter charge and remove him.  Then frank and Sebastian come up and try to avenge their master and this is where the game went sour.  He had sebastain behind frank but I still had line of effect to sebastain (I will concede he was very close to being hidden but he was not) So I attacked sebastain and he didn’t hear me and assumed I was going after frank.  When I get this sorted when he had frank on one wound, I had him move all those wound over to sebastain.  Then I thought he was gonna flip the table on me.  He was throwing his pieces and everything. At this point all I did was pass with all my models but only to take bare minimum to score 10.  I won 10- not 10(I think 5).  I think he was kinda ok after the game after I showed him I had take frank and that why I didn’t want the wounds on him.  But that was a sour game.  But I learned I need to be rested and pay more attention to what my opponent is doing.  I should’ve caught that before it became an issue.

Editor's Note: Or, just follow this advice.
But I am happy with my 10 (should have been 8th) place finish.  I had fun for 4 ½ games.  And I can’t wait for gen con and to go back next year.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Potpourri


I had a few different topics I wanted to wander through that didn’t necessarily have the weight of a full-length post behind them, so I decided to lump some things together. The first subject comes from the Adepticon tournament having completed the previous weekend. The winner of the tournament put together a massive post (linked here) that explains his run-up to the victory and his general strategy in the tournament. He also puts out a call-to-action that Wyrd needs to take a look at the strategy he employed in his crew and do something about it, or this will be a problem for them in tournaments going forward.
Now, what does this crew do that is so powerful? It’s really just about using the ability to take the actions of Malifaux rats individually, then combine them into a rat king, then break down the rat king into a rat catcher and a rat. This chews up basically all of the actions of the opponent’s crews, letting you see what they’re doing and setting up the next phase, wherein Nix gives that remaining rat Haunting Memories to give it reactivate and then sacrifice it at the end of activation two, at which point Killjoy will be summoned. Typically, the result of this is that you have KJ in your deployment zone or attacking your critical models unopposed (because you’re in all likelihood activated out at this point, remember) while the rest of the Outcast crew moves to support him, typically in the form of some other critical alpha strike. The player in question would either slingshot the Victorias across the board, a move which has always been around but was very risky in the early turns because it typically left them exposed and vulnerable to counterattack, or used Leviticus and Ashes and Dust to cross quickly and cause disruptions. I think the cleanest example of this going the way it should comes from his battle report in the first round against Dan Johnsons of Before We Begin, where Nicodem starts the turn doing Nicodem things, and then gets killed at the end of turn 1. The phrase “I then killed the rest of his crew” coming in turns 2-3 against Resurrectionists isn’t something you see very often, and underscores the potential power of this setup.
Now, does this need to be shut down? Probably, but not for the reasons you’re thinking. I’m like you. The first time I heard about this I was thinking it was too strong and needed to be nerfed for competitive balance reasons, and maybe that’s true. If you go talk to Joel Henry (as I briefly did on Twitter) he’ll inform you that a ranged caster like a Sonnia or Rasputina can mess up the rat engine and that Pandora simply wrecks this crew. Ok, I don’t know enough to say whether that’s true, but even the person running the crew pointed out that an opposing Outcast crew built to deny charges can cause him trouble as well, so the combination of models is not unbeatable (as we all know nine belles and Leviticus is.) But why then do I think it needs to be nerfed?
The first is that this isn’t the game working as intended. Stalling through the first parts of the game to avoid the back-and-forth nature of the activations followed by a burst combo that knocks your opponent out and leaves them unable to respond are very anti-Malifaux. It’s not fun to play, and it’s really not fun to play against. Also, if the combo falls apart early and the crew gets overextended, you can find yourself in the opposite situation where now the matchup is slanted hard in the other direction and will likely be not a particularly fun game for either player. Is a boring crew enough to warrant an errata? Well, if you were around for M1E and were conscious of tournaments after the second book came out, you can probably recall not seeing Hamelin very often. Hamelin could do this sort of activation control every turn of the game (rather than just early) and was widely considered to be a negative play experience for this reason and was (rightly) shunned by the majority of the Malifaux world. Combine that with not being able to play even close to the whole game in a timed environment against an opponent that was running a Hamelin list, and it was a terrible option for a tournament that was largely ignored. This example doesn’t apply exactly to this situation, as running over time could often be as costly for the person playing the crew as their opponent, but it gets the point across that NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY AGAINST THIS, and often people don’t even want to use it either.
The other problem allows me to hearken back to one of the first gaming “this is unbalanced, we need to do something” situations I can remember: the Black Summer.

Settle in close, kids. Grandpa’s going to tell you a story.

Way back in the late 1900’s, there was a Magic: The Gathering deck that used a card called Necropotence to trade your life for card advantage. This combination wasn’t game breaking like the rats are being argued to be, but what it did do was let you vastly outdraw your opponent and speed them down in an early phase of the game when there weren’t practical ways to stop it with a normal deck. Decks could beat Necropotence, but they had to be specific decks like Turbo Stasis that could lock them down and keep them under control (which, ironically, is more like the rats, but I digress.) And that created the situation in the 1995 Magic: The Gathering known as The Black Summer, a period where to compete you had to either have the Necropotence deck or its counter, and nothing else could realistically win at the highest competitive levels.
Now, this isn’t quite that situation, but it has the potential to turn into that. I will be the first to admit that the Outcasts are one of the factions I know the least about, so I can’t comment from a position of authority whether this rat list is really The BestTM way to play them, but let’s say for the sake of argument that it is (the field at Adepticon appeared to think so, as most if not all of the top end players were running a form of it.) Now, let’s say the trend continues and competent Outcast players are all going to be running this because its objectively better than what else they could bring, AND you know that you have to tailor your list to beat it or it will just wreck you while leaving you no way to respond. You’ve brought, say, Hoffman because you like that list, but you know that a Victoria crew that gets to launch itself into you at the end of the first and can ignore the armor of your constructs will essentially leave you no chance to win. Are you now forced to change you crew around completely to give yourself a chance, say by switching to Sonnia to blast the rats and screw up the activations on the first turn? And if so, is that a good thing? To a degree, you do this every game when your opponent declares their faction (oh, they’re running Ressers? Better bring stuff with high minimum damage and willpower) so this isn’t a complete change. But, the difference is that bringing your standard crew rather than changing the list to react to your opponent against those Ressers means that you might have a somewhat tougher game and may have to work your way uphill to win the game. If you are unprepared for these rats, it appears you are most likely going to lose and be unable to stop it. That’s the difference here, and that’s where there’s reason for concern.
Again, this is not an unbeatable “win button.” Things can stop it, and not knowing what you’re doing while running it will still cause you to lose. However, the original poster made no bones about the fact that he doesn’t consider himself to be that good of a player, but the combination is too strong and needs to be addressed. I think something should probably be done, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. In any case, if your opponent is playing Outcasts, be aware that this exists and be ready. And, also, feel free to contribute to the discussion.

***

Second, I’m still thinking about things to do with the Wrath of Nature crew. Some models from outside the theme will be pretty helpful to include, I’m thinking, so I may have to loosen things up a bit. I think Mr. Graves could be pretty helpful in both phases of the game, largely due to his movement tricks. He could help with moving some models that aren’t that quick upfield early and then throw enemy models into the hazardous terrain later. It should be good times. And he’s a Nephilim, so why not work for Lillith? Also, Tuco might be useful to hold parts of the board away from the terrain ball, deploying with From The Shadows. Also, this would provide some ranged combat to a crew that effectively has none.
Here’s a picture or two of progress so far on painting and assembly.



***


Finally, there’s an announcement to make. My old buddy and Malifaux partner Jon has written a guest post for the blog to discuss his experience playing at Adepticon. I’ll be posting it soon. This opened up an idea for me to let others write for the blog from time to time as well. So, if you have something you’d like to get off your chest about Malifaux, can put a sentence together ledgibly, and want to see it published to literally dozens of readers, drop a line to malifauxmusings@gmail.com and let me know. I’m happy to have you! 

Oh, and I finally put my order in to get my henchman "welcome package." It has a mystery box in it to give away if I can ever put a tournament together (ha ha.) But, the foil card they included for me was pretty nice...
It's like they packed it for me personally.