I've procrastinated long enough, so with some prompting (and light shaming) from 3rd Floor Wars' Criag Shipman, here is my breakdown of the MuseonCon M3E beta tournament, aka the Schemes and Stones open. It was hosted a few weeks ago in Des Moines, and I believe had somewhere between 22-24 people for the first day's tournament. Second day had more like 16, I think, as a large contingent had done an iron-man drive from Minnesota and had then returned the same day to avoid paying for a hotel. Still, to our knowledge this was the largest M3E tournament so far.
I entered having not really played much Malifaux since the early M3E alpha/closed beta. My main goal was thus to learn as much as I could about my faction for the coming year (Ten Thunders) and this new version of Malifaux in general.
Note: I took lots of pictures of the boards from these games. Then the SD card in my phone died. So yeah, that sucks. Sorry for the image light post.
Day 1
Round 1
Deployment: Corner
Strategy: Reckoning
Schemes:
·Detonate
Charges (1)
·Hold
Up Their Forces (6)
·Take
Prisoner (7)
·Power
Ritual (8)
·Deliver
a Message (11)
I wanted to
try a Jacob Lynch crew to see how it worked in M3E, as I had played versions of
it earlier in the testing but hadn’t touched him in a while. My opponent and I
played on a cool barroom board that Kyle had brought. He brought Guild-Lady
Justice. My plan was to get into position to try and apply the Illuminated and
the Shadow Emissary’s Shockwave abilities to attack the opponent’s hand while I
was manipulating mine with Rig the Deck. Also, if you Rig a card on top of the
deck before you perform a simple duel, you can be sure that it goes off without
having to use one from your hand. I thought it made sense, and I thought that,
since I knew Lady J would be in my face ASAP, so Detonate and Deliver a Message
seemed like good ideas. I was partially right, about the Lady J in my face
thing. What I had underestimated was the abilities of models like the Lone
Marshal to shoot off the aforementioned Illuminated while you try to bring them
up into position (they seem a bit softer than in last edition), the amount of
healing Lady Justice and her crew can bring now, and the relative
ineffectiveness of Shockwaves. Maybe it’s a personal thing, but in the games I
play I rarely see to see opponents fail simple duels. That’s why the whole
“Terrifying is good at making your opponent lose cards,” thing has never washed
for me. I like Rig the Deck as a mechanic, but the keyword ability on its own
isn’t enough to win games of Malifaux. I need some tips to learn how to play
Lynch now, because right now I got nothing.
Round 2
Deployment: Corner
Strategy: Corrupted Idols
Scheme Pool
· Breakthrough
(2)
· Dig
Their Graves (5)
·Outflank
(9)
· Claim
Jump (12)
· Vendetta
(13)
Wanted some
mobility for this game, so I looked towards McCabe. This round I was up against
Leviticus, played by Daniel. He referred to this strategy as “Kickball,” which
I thought was apt. Apparently this kickball has rocks in it or something, since
it hurts you to kick it, but close enough. I used a Samurai, because I wanted
to try and employ he and Sidir to protect the backfield with their machine
guns. Hucksters would go forward to move the idols. I wanted to try a Ruffian
out, despite the fact that I’m really not sure they’re worth their points. I
also brought the Lone Swordsman, who I used for Vendetta against the Ashes and
Dust in the enemy crew. The earlier part of the game worked out great, with a
Huckster on my left flank bumping an idol forward and then moving into position
to score Outflank. Lone swordsman darted in to score the first points on A+D
then Mccabe rode in to pull him out and rescue him. The Samurai and Sidir had a
grand time tossing artifacts back and forth between each other to hand out fast
and then machine gun the heck out of things. At one point a fast Sidir killed
A+D then machine gunned a prospector to death in one activation, which I
enjoyed. Unfortunately, the this let the Dust Storm appear next to Lone
Swordsman and kill him, preventing the second point from Vendetta. This did
open up the amusing scene of Luna biting the Dust Storm and dragging it around
the board with her trigger. The ruffian managed to do more damage to himself on
the flanks shooting at an abomination than he did to the abom itself. Some deft
maneuvering of models by the opponent pushed us to a tie at the end of turn 3. I
was confident I could maneuver out of it t4, but then Kyle called time as we
were getting ready to start. So that sucked. I lost my cool a little at this,
and I felt like a jerk for that. Sorry again if you’re reading this, Daniel.
Round 3
Deployment: Flank
Strategy: Turf War
Scheme Pool
·Detonate
Charges (1)
· Breakthrough
(2)
· Harness
the Ley Lines (3)
· Dig
Their Graves (5)
· Assassinate
(10)
Wanted to try out all 3 masters I brought along with me, so
I pulled Misaki. Didn’t bring much of her keyword models, but went big with
Yasunori and the Emissary along with a samurai and some hucksters for Detonate.
I played against Roman with Lucas Mccabe, who introduced me to the wonders of
the M3E Tanuki, who is like Oprah Winnfrey for handing out Focus. Roman made an
epic play using Mccabe’s new henchman, Desper Lareux, to bait my Yasunori into
turning around and chasing him down by bluffing that he was going for
Breakthrough, ensuring that the horseman was out of position for much of the
rest of the game. I learned a lot from this game regarding proper placement of
Misaki shadow markers, the epicness of the Shadow Emissary, how silly the Hucksters’
False Claim ability can get so long as you have an AP to waste somewhere else
on the board to throw down a disposable scheme marker, and how to use Shang to
cheat some extra movement for Misaki. I ended up losing again fairly handily,
but felt I learned the most from this game of all I played this weekend. Roman’s
a great guy, and I hope to have him contribute to Malifaux Musings at some
point in the future (he writes the Versatile model reviews for Schemes and
Stones’ blog.)
So with that I finished at an ignoble 0-2-1 for the first
day. I did however get some cobblestone base inserts that will work well for
some ideas I have for future crews, so not a complete loss.
Overnight, I decided the crew I’d had the most fun with was
McCabe, so I decided on day 2 to go with him exclusively and try to hone in on
how to best play him. Round 1 looked like this:
SUNDAY – ROUND 1
Deployment: Corner
Strategy: Plant Explosives
Scheme Pool
· Harness
the Ley Lines (3)
· Take
Prisoner (7)
· Assassinate
(10)
· Deliver
the Message (11)
· Claim
Jump (12)
I decided to try out this 2 masters business, as Misaki
would make finishing the strat much simpler. Hucksters + Misaki + Mccabe’s
speed should have made it academic. I was playing against Phiasco and his Yan
Lo which, though fearsome in combat, is not overly mobile, so I knew I would
have a maneuverability advantage. Also, we misread the start time and were
about 15 minutes late, so I had a feeling we’d be stopping early, so I would
need to grab all the points I could as fast as I could. I set about doing just
that, hurling relics from Mccabe and Luna to hand out fast (with the assist of
a trigger on the Huckster’s false claim to get an extra scrap marker for them
to use.) Most of the game boiled down to me trying to dance around, drop bombs,
and drop scheme markers on the center line for Harness. Mccabe and Yan Lo delivered
messages to each other on turn 2, which is always amusing. Mccabe picked up the
Whispering artifact and then dropped into tanking position, which I think is a
pretty strong choice to keep in mind for future games. In the end my proactive strategy
payed off, as we didn’t get through t3 and I ended up winning accordingly. First
win of the weekend!
SUNDAY – ROUND 2
Deployment: Standard
Strategy: Turf War
Scheme Pool
·Breakthrough
(2)
·Hold
Up Their Forces (6)
·Power
Ritual (8)
·Outflank
(9)
·Assassinate
(10)
Not having listened to the Schemes and Stones post-Museoncon
episode at this point, I still had it in my head that Turf War was a scheme-y
strategy rather than one that’s essentially Reckoning but more spread out. I
went with a Desper and two Hucksters list therefore to go and do Outflank and
penetrate deep into enemy territory to flip markers. My opponent was the winner
of the Saturday tournament, Landon, using a Crossroads Seven! Arcanist crew led
by Envy. Since Envy relies on Armor and doesn’t have much in the way of wounds,
I thought I could probably use McCabe to try and drop him without too much fuss
after giving him the bladed artifact. That part of the plan was executed relatively
well, but I didn’t get enough damage down to actually kill him. I think I got a
point from Outflank before Pride wrecked Desper and the Huckster that tried to
follow in behind him. Pride is very good, and the CR7 are pretty solid as well.
I think they can be beaten if you have effects like Lure to pull them apart
from each other, and some of the pieces are more important than others (I think
Pride, Sloth, and Envy are most important, Wrath and Gluttony are good, and the
others are meh.) More Luna biting things nearly to death was another highlight,
and I have a feeling a lot of people are going to get caught off guard by her. Ml
5 2/3/4 isn’t that impressive normally, but on a free totem that you can toss a
bladed artifact to it could actually be fairly scary. Despite the loss had a very
enjoyable game.
SUNDAY – ROUND 3
Deployment: Wedge
Strategy: Corrupted Idols
Scheme Pool
·Detonate
Charges (1)
·Search
the Ruins (4)
·Dig
Their Graves (5)
·Outflank
(9)
·Vendetta
(13)
Played against Leviticus in Corrupted Idols. Hmm. Where have
I heard this one before?
This time I was up against Brian “Schemes” Spence of Schemes
and Stones fame. He was pretty tired and frustrated with his weekend, so he decided
to YOLO Levi at the tip of his wedge with the free walk upgrade, sending him
forward on T1 to get Sidir within range and blast him off the board first
activation. I forgot to use stones to block the 2nd two attacks (the
first one he triggered to prevent) so that was a screw up on my part. The rest
of the way was just cold deck on my side of the board, hot deck on his, and well
executed play on his part to step on my crew’s neck and not let up. The game
was completely one-sided, to the point that Brian was apologizing by the end,
which always feels great :P.
But, since we decided it was all over but the counting after
T2, that gave me time to go spy on Landon and Shawn at the top table, where
Zoraida was facing off with the Crossroads 7 for the tournament championship.
Let me reiterate that: the championship game of the Sunday Museon Tournament
was Zoraida vs. the Crossroads 7. If you needed a sign that M3E is going to be
a brave new world, look no further. I didn’t catch a ton of details about Shawn’s
Zoraida, though I did see the Voodoo doll kill one of the band members with
pins. The Swampfiend’s stealth is pretty clutch in this new, more ranged combat
friendly version of Malifaux. In the end, Mama Z took home the win and first
place. I had scored a Lady Justice crew from someone for cheap, so I took some
Domodores to go with her as a prize, and more importantly took home several new
contacts in the area to contribute to Musings and a lot of new info to process for
how to play M3E!