Sunday, April 14, 2019

The Other Side of Adepticon




            I left on Thursday morning to travel to my first Adepticon, my vehicle loaded down with clothes, painting supplies, and my newly magnetized Other Side miniatures in a black metal toolbox. Other than my cruise control quitting on the way there and the discovery of how atrocious the tolls are on the Reagan tollway, the trip was uneventful, just the way I like them to be. When I arrived at the Renaissance Schaumberg center the parking lot was starting to fill up, so I ended up parking around the back of the building. I left my things in the car and came in to find my friend Phiasco and pick up my badge.
            Ostensibly, the point of the tournaments at Adepticon were two-fold: say goodbye to M2E and run the first official tournaments for The Other Side. I was primarily interested in the latter, as I haven’t played a game of 2nd edition Malifaux since joining the Alpha for M3E over a year ago. As such, I wasn’t much interested in the farewell tournaments, and I was ok showing up after the first Henchman Hardcore was underway. Phiasco, on the other hand, was putting a well-honed strategy of non-violence to work in a tournament that is essentially built around killing. Utilizing Low-River Monks, Sensei Yu, and Sun Quiang to throw enemy models out of the center ring or make them insignificant, Phiasco managed to Win or Tie every game of the tournament without inflicting a wound on the enemy models. I told him he needed to tell his opponents “Namaste” after the games ended. I forget how he ended up, but I know he placed.



            After that finished up, it was time for the first TOS tournament of the convention, a Titan Smash. The rules packet for it can be found here, but the short explanation for the scenario is that you play king of the hill for a couple of objectives while in a battle-royal style game with up to 7 other Titans on the same table. You score for being near an objective at the end of a turn, with a bonus point for the titan who is closest to the center point. Additionally, every time you knock an asset off of a titan, that scores as well. If one of the titans reaches 10 points at the end of a turn, all other Titans that haven’t scored 10 die instantly. The winner is the last Titan standing.
            Obviously, I was bringing in my King’s Hand. I attached the Armor Piercing Machine Gun, the Big Drill, and replaced the head-slot assets with the special one for the scenario that gives an extra tactics value. I left the usually standard issue Symbol of the Realm off, as I was thinking that going into Glory may not be all that important for this type of game (though in retrospect that may not be as clear-cut as I thought.) This game was played with four titans squaring off: my King’s Hand, Ariel with a Dreadnought, a man whose name I didn’t get with another Dreadnought, and Steven with an Alpha Crawler. Early on Ariel and I traded shots and danced around the right-most Objective Marker. Steven took a turn to wind up his Alpha Crawler into Glory with a bunch of reinforcement tokens while the other Dreadnought took a commanding spot on the second Marker. Once the crawler was ready, he barreled into the second Dreadnought and did what damage he could, but by that point I’d been scoring 3 a turn from shooting off assets and squatting on the marker. The drill paired with the Dreadnought’s relative lack of offensive capability let me hold it relatively uncontested. As such, I hit 12 points at the end of Turn 4 and caused the other Titans to pop. So, in the first “tournament” run by Wyrd Games for the other side, victory came for the King’s Empire. *cue God Save the King*

I felt left out that my King's Hand box didn't have a Horomatangi in it by mistake, so thankfully the Titan Smash remedied that.

            Despite my intentions to not play any M2E, there was an Enforcer brawl that first evening and
the choice was either to play in it or go home. I figured I knew enough of how to play the game to at least get by. If you’ve never played an Enforcer Brawl, imagine the Royal Rumble from the WWE and you’re not far off. If you die, you respawn on your initiative but lose points (and give points to the enemy model that killed you.) Phiasco let me borrow Yasunori, who can kill a lot of models but costs a lot (there are bonuses for killing more expensive models.) He’s not the right choice, frankly, but he’s pretty straight forward to run so who cares. First game I ran into a Peacekeeper, who is not a great dance partner for Yas due to his high armor. I managed to chop it down, but then the entire battle ended up respawning on the other side of the board, leaving me stranded. So that sucked. Second round went much better at first, with me jumping up 8 points early on in the game. Third round I discovered that Burt Jebsen with Dirty Cheater can’t actually be killed without blasts or passive damage, so that blew. All in all, the format was a laugh and I enjoyed it. I just want to try some different models next time. I think the format should still work fine for M3E, so I’m excited to try it again in the future. With that done, we headed home to rest up and give Phiasco time to get three colors on his Abysinnia models.


            The next day, I threw on my newly acquired “The British Are Coming” shirt and went forward to do battle in the King’s name. The tournament packet was published ahead of time, so I had a good idea what objectives I would need to complete and which models I could use to do it. My garrison consisted of:

Kassa Okoye-Bigger is Better
Margaret Belle-Rapier Wit
2xMotor Scouts-Toughness
2xRRC
2xInfiltrators
1xKing’s Hand-Symbol, Armor Piercing Machine Gun,

Strategems-Overwatch, Medic, Behind Enemy Lines, Capture the Flag, Defensive Formations, Bloody Their Noses, Perfect Accuracy, Keep Calm and Carry On

            First round saw me go up against Jeff in Scavenge with Confrontation deployment. The hordes crew was led by the Storm Siren and was built around sending some of the armored whelks to squat on objective markers on the flanks while tying my company up with Eels and Karkenoi. The board effectively funneled all the action onto my left flank due to a large impassible terrain piece (this led to the tournament organizers electing not to use that board for any of the other rounds of the tournament). Both sides forgot a large number of rules during the course of the game (resummoned units come in with one fireteam, not all of them. In scavenge the team that’s behind can use a tactics token to remove a turf marker at the end of the turn. Motor scouts have engagement ranges due to the bayonets rule. Etc.) I jumped out to an early lead and then dove Margaret Belle into the backfield to tie up the Stormsiren for most of the game. I decided to try out something I’d heard of online and buy the Overwatch stratagem on Turn 1, effectively giving me an extra set of activations for the rest of the game. It’s kind of a hefty cost to pay (starting with one card in hand and no tactics tokens is rough) but so far I think it’s worth the investment. The Hordes came back over the course of the game, however, and ultimately managed to take a 1-point victory over me. The day was off to an auspicious start.

            Round 2 paired me against Steven (from the earlier Titan Smash) with…more Gibbering
Hordes. This time we were playing Pitched Assault in Corners deployment. I wanted to bring Kassa out for this one, as I hadn’t had a chance to see her in action. They were accompanied by one squad of RRC and one squad of Infiltrators. I knew Pitched Assault is a tough game for the Hordes to play, as their “eat my own stuff to flip my units to glory” tactic feeds VP to the enemy. There are essentially two ways to look at this from the Hordes’ side, either A) Ignore the usual methods and just go all-in on trying to kill the enemy with base units or B) Stick to the normal plan, let the opponent get a lead, and then come back and overwhelm them. Steven went with the latter idea, bringing Horomatangi, an Alpha Crawler, Eels, and Armored Whelks to use as food for the rest. The theory behind his army was to spike the Crawler up with reinforcement tokens and glory then send it barreling into the enemy, fill out your numbers disadvantage with multiplying eels, and have the whelks get eaten then respawn somewhere the enemy doesn’t want them. It’s a good plan in theory, and probably works fine in most games. In this one, however, I seized both objectives while he was powering up/feeding me VPs. My infiltrators took the left objective by themselves, essentially trying to bait part of the enemy to go deal with them while allowing me to keep most of my forces together to resist the Titan team when they came in on me. I learned the delights of Kassa allowing you to actually have cards and tactics tokens to spare (leading me to question my earlier assertion of Margaret as undisputed champion commander, but that’s a blog post for another time.) Ultimately, on turn 3 my Rifle Corps demonstrated why they are the pride of the King’s Empire, withstanding a full assault from the Horomatangi while my Titan shrugged off the Alpha Crawler, resulting in my jumping to 12-0 at the end of the turn. Since the Decisive Victory rule was in place, that meant the game ended immediately. Not exactly what I was expecting, but it put me back in contention for the tournament so I wasn’t complaining.

            In round 3, I faced yet more Gibbering Hordes. There were other Allegiances in the tournament, I assure you, but I guess I’m just lucky. I hadn’t faced them before in any practice games, so I got the full seafood buffet in the tournament. Thankfully, my opponent (Andrew) was bringing the Frenzy for this game, so I got to see all the different faces of the Allegiance that day. As the game was Set Traps, Margaret was the clear choice. I strongly considered bringing Kassa instead, as I’d had a taste of what a KE company with card access could do, but elected to stick with my gameplan all the same. Andrew’s company featured the aforementioned street shark commanders, along with Yarazi, Karkenoi, and some Crawlers I think. They tend to blur. I deployed my forces in two groups on the outer edges of the board, splitting my two units of Rifle Corps with a tough Motor Scout in both places. Margaret was on the left. First turn, I focused on shifting the right Rifle Corps unit back towards the left, creating a sort of Refused Flank to try and pick a hole in the enemy line and then roll it up. I don’t know whether it really worked or not, or whether it’s even possible to do that against the Hordes when they can just respawn and reinforce as fast as they do, but it helped ensure I wasn’t facing the whole of the enemy force at one point. I underestimated the Frenzy, not having faced them before, and tried to use Margaret to tie them up. But without enough tactics tokens to protect her, she was quickly devoured on T1 or 2, leaving me with no commander for the rest of the game. I was tilted, but knew I needed to do something to try and slow the Horde down. I was able to accomplish this by sending the Motor Scout on my left side deep behind the enemy lines with a Rush order. Andrew either had to send the Frenzy back to go and deal with him (the option he chose) or leave me with a free hand to plant explosives at will behind him. Since his Frenzy went chasing after the Scout, that gave me a turn to shoot at them with a Gloried Rifle Corps, filling them up with Pinned tokens to slow their return (they still got back into melee the next turn, but it required them to eat one of their own to get into Glory first.) This, plus some fancy footwork on the right side by the other Motor Scout and some very fortunate card flips managed to get me the win.

Why is Adepticon trying so hard to get me to play CotBM

            In the final standings, Phiasco tied on tournament points with the winner, who was playing Cult of the Burning Man, but was behind on strength of schedule so he got 2nd. I came in third place and got Best in Faction for KE. The Faction badge was my goal for the day, and ultimately I felt my first round was winnable as well, so all-in all it was a successful day.

            That was the end of the official events from the weekend, but I did have a chance to play some pick-up games with an old member of my former Club later on. It was Supply Cache, and I learned that 1) It’s important to actually understand the objectives of the game you’re playing before you start 2) Abysinnian Mechanized Infantry are a nightmare that have to be removed ASAP and 3) Field Intelligence Corps in Glory are kind of gross in this Operation, as they can place markers within 6” of each other rather than the minimum 8” from the rules. Additionally, I played a 2 commander game with Phiasco later on, wherein I was able to deploy my Dragoons. Overall, I wasn’t extraordinarily impressed with them on their base card. Maybe in Glory it would be another story, but unless there’s something I’m not seeing they seem expensive and brittle. While we played, there was a 4x4 game featuring one of each Allegiance going on, which was terribly exciting. Ultimately, that one was decided by how stupid the Burning Man’s Rhinos are, and I got the impression that they will likely be getting erratad soon, so players of other factions can rejoice.


            All in all, I would call it a successful launch of TOS official tournaments. I came away with enough Cult of the Burning Man to get a start on them as a second Allegiance (after using my booth credit from running Through the Breach to get their starter box), which will be important for letting me run demos in the future. I came away with the impression that the game itself is strong, despite starting out awkwardly from the less than optimal roll-out. I think TOS is a better tournament game than M2E and possibly even M3E (I won’t know for certain until I try one.) And ultimately, I think I enjoy it more because I don’t feel as exhausted after playing it as I do when playing Malifaux. Even some of the more vociferously negative voices I’ve seen online seemed impressed with The Other Side, having seen it in person. I don’t know anyone who has a problem with the game itself, so much as frustration with how Wyrd has deployed it. Hopefully that will be overcome with time, as I think the game has some real legs to it.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

It's The End (of the Open Beta) As We Know It, And I Feel Fine!






            If you pay attention to M3E beta news, you know that the end of the test is coming soon. Actually, at one point it was scheduled to be done already, but then they went and broke the Journalists and so they had to push it out to another update. In any case, the Beta process should be coming to a close in short order, which makes sense for Wyrd to move towards a Gencon hard release of 3rd edition (IE actual books coming out, models, etc.) Some of you gentle readers have likely been participating in the process, playing a lot of games of M3E. Others (like me) may be giving the game a break to rest and solidify before you put a large amount of mental bandwidth into learning rules that may change next week. Either is fine, let me emphasize. But, if you fall into the latter category, you may want to start getting ready for the switch-over, and might appreciate some guidance on resources you can use to bone up on the new rules and strategies.

            As such, I thought I’d do a quick sweep of the internet, highlighting some of the resources available to get you up to speed.

Wyrd Beta Forums and other web tools

            The most obvious source of information, of course, is the still open Wyrd Beta forums. All the files are there for your reading pleasure, including the rulesets, models, and upgrades in printable pdf formats. Additionally, there is a great deal of discussion occurring regularly in each of the faction sub-forums as well as battle reports. If you’re looking for the most direct source of information on M3E, this is the place to go.
            If you don’t want to read through all of them, or are looking for an easy way to throw crews together, a handful of web tool developers are completing the herculean task of developing them and keeping them up to date with each release. This one lets you put a crew together online. There’s an analyzer of the beta files that can be adapted to let you make some printable cards.

Third Floor Wars

            These guys, I would say, are the superstars of M3E content at this point. Led by Craig Shipman, they’ve been steadily churning through the new crews one master at a time to discuss what they and their themed crews’ models do on the tabletop. They started out with the Guild and have (I believe) gone through all of them at this point, moving on to the Ten Thunders now. These are presented in small, bite-sized bits of content, so no need to sit through a long 2 hour ramble to get at the bit of info you really wanted, making them useful to put together a general idea for the very large meta of Malifaux. Best of all, it’s available in multiple formats. You can go to their Youtube channel here, or listen to ports of the videos on the podcast feed here (at the time of writing, the videos are ahead of the podcasts.)

Schemes and Stones

            Kyle took a bit of a break/detour into ToS for a little while, but he’s come back to Malifaux with a vengeance since then. The S&S posts have hopped through various topics, starting with a discussion of introducing the Open Beta materials, discussing a couple of different crew keywords and how they play individually as well as how they play against each other. They’ve taken a look at Euripides vs. Mccabe and Infamous vs. Transmortis so far. Most recently, he and a cohost are taking on faction breakdowns, with the first episode discussing the Arcanists in total.

Other Podcasts

            So the other casts have been hit or miss thus far. The break between editions has been rough, driving most of the casters into hibernation (we miss you Arcane Reservoir). However, since the Open Beta, some peeps here and there have started to be heard. The Flippin’ Wyrds, hosted primarily by Jamie F’N Varney have a few episodes on offering. They were aiming to increase the frequency of their releases, and predictably they seem to have failed to do so (I kid because I love, guys.) But they deliver great content, so whenever you put something new out, you should listen. Additionally, a preview episode of Max Value with Travis and everyone’s favorite coffee slurper came out back in January. They can be a quick way to hear some assorted opinions from around the world of Malifaux. The thing is, we know these guys make great content, so if they (or any other Malifaux casts) are on hiatus, keep an eye on their feeds to see if they'll be making a comeback with the release of the new edition.

And quickly before you go...

Adepticon is coming! And Malifaux Musings will be there!

            I intend to make the trip down the road to Chicago in a couple of weeks for Adepticon, one of the most consistent tournament conventions nationwide for Wyrd games. There’s going to be a handful of Titan battle royals, a The Other Side one commander tournament, painting competitions, and a farewell to M2E tourney. You can find tournament packets there. Additionally, I’ll be bringing along M3E cards for my crews and will be looking to get in as many pick-up games of The Other Side or Malifaux as I can. And, if you beat me, you will receive one free “IOU A Blog Post” marker from me, allowing you to pick a topic for a 1000 word Malifaux Musings post in the future. Not enough for you? Then you should sign up to play The Other Side, Fatemastered by yours truly. If you survive, maybe you can pick a blog post topic too!