Rail Golem and Archie

I was asked earlier this year to do a sculpt of Archie. a wave 4 Malifaux model for a friend, and as he had generously given me a lot of Dropzone stuff before this it seemed a fair swap, I sculpted him with a mix of milliput and plasticine for the core, with green stuff  and milliput mixed for the details. I found this worked a lot better at holding its shape than many techniques I've used, it would have certainly saved me a lot of time with my Ogre army!, here's a few shots of the finished piece-

I'm pretty happy with him, I even sculpted a hand (the big one, the little ones are from my bits box because I hate hands) he is huge, and way out of scale as I messed up on the picture- I scaled him based on the guys in front, but forgot they were kneeling.. You can see him in the back right...

I've also been asked for a few close ups of Babe Ruth, my Rail Golem- so here are a few from my phone- not the greatest as my poor photography skills are once again coming to the fore. I also noticed a chip on his finger after the photo which needs picking up. It's odd that Babe was one of my earliest Malifaux models, and the first scratch build I'd done for a long time, and Archie is my latest and another scratch build, though using totally different techniques, yet I am pretty proud of both of them:) - 

 

All of the proxies!!

Finished some arcanist proxies this week- not for Tomb but they will possibly see some table time with Mei-

Scratchbuilt Arcane Emissary (wave 3)

I'm not 100% happy with this guy, I extended the torso to fit the extra set of arms in and it looks too long now, not as squat and powerful, also I still can't paint metallics to save my life, really need to sort that. happy with the sculpting in general though, especially the head. though it doesnt look great from head on.

Coryphee (from Beckoners and Miss Step)

Large Steam Arachnid (from a Brass Arachnid, Howard and Miss Step)

I refer you to my earlier 'I can't paint metal' comments.

Tomb2- Micks Mei Feng game number three

Played my third game with Mei this week, against the same opponent as my second (which I didn't write up here as I was so enraged at my own stupidity I couldn't type... suffice to say I lost pretty badly) and was really hoping he wasn't playing ressers, unluckily he was and Molly (same master as last time) turned up for a scrap with Mei.

Strat- Reckoning, standard deployment
schemes- Assassinate (ben), Bodyguard (Me/Kang, Ben/Philip) Frame for Murder (Me/Willie) Deliver a message, AlitS

My Arcanists Mei feng- 4 pool
Vapourmancy- (slipped under the table, forgot I had it, twit)
Seismic claws (auto include, made up for my missing everything)
Kang- Imbued energies
Lazarus- Imbued energies
Willie
Gunsmith x2
Metal Gamin

Theory- gunline to stay away from his stuff while picking them off, Mei to vent steam and protect from Lures, Gunsmiths rather than mages are they are tougher and can switch to melee mode if needed) no-one can resist killing Willie so he's good for frame. and hopefully I can keep the almost indestructible Kang alive (this time)

Ben's Ressurectionists
Molly- 7 pool, gorgons tear, spirit summoning nonsense
Phillip and the Nanny
Toshiro
Nurse
Belle
Chiaki
Datsue-Ba
probably some other irritating upgrades

Theory- Molly and Tosh do all the hard work, Datsue Ba sneaks around and every other model just supports Molly like those weird guys that stand behind rappers on stage shouting 'Yeah!' and 'cmon!' except more dead. Summon everything really easily. win.  

I deployed first, I took a stance in the west with Lazarus on his own out east, Ben countered with a strong central force and Datsue-Ba facing Laz.

Turn one
Laz decided Datsue Ba was more effort than she was worth and regrouped to the west, The arcanist blob advanced together (stupid move) with Vent steam covering them all, Willie pushed the furthest up with the gunsmiths to the rear. Tosh and Molly advanced to the centre where she spent pretty much the rest of the game (with some help from the belle) but the rest of the ressers just walked a bit and dropped a scheme marker for phillip to card spam with. Phillip card spammed. Molly summoned a necrotic machine across the front of the arcanists, catching three models and wounding one, willie passed with flying colours, and the two gunsmiths gained fast so one wound was fine, molly gave the necrotic a shot a gunsmith and wounded him more as well as getting off the infectious trigger, then companioned him for another attack that luckily missed

Turn two. 
The slightly more wounded gunsmith (el pedro) shot the living shit out of the machine, Then the Arcanist blob spread out a bit, an Onryo and a shikome arrived up close (more fast for the two GS) after another round of Molly throwing her weight around. I managed to smash the Onryo with Kang which gave out slow to a Gunsmith countering his fast as well as willie. for reasons I simply can't understand I charged the metal gamin up to stand next to Molly, he missed his headbutt twice (both Ben's defence flips were higher than I could possibly score, even with a RJ, not sure what I was thinking) Tosh made something fast and stabbed the Gamin to death, the rest pretty much did exactly what they did the turn before, more scheme markers, more cards for philip. Laz bombed the living fuck out of Tosh and Molly for a few wounds each with Imbued and Flurry, Mei decided to try the 'punch ressers in the face' advice and went hell for leather at Molly, some average luck and some wasted SS meant with a few misses and a few combos I reduced Tosh to one wound and Molly to two, without cards in hand Ben still pulled off two full heals from the nurse and one condition removal on Molly to undo all my hard work. (dammit!)
I scored 1 for Reckoning. (1/0)

Turn Three
(My memory is shakier from here on in as the cold got to me, my right hand stopped working and Ben was kind enough to shuffle my cards every time it was needed) Being in melee and surviving another round of Mei punching (back down to three wounds) didn't stop Molly giving mei [-] flips, as another Onryo/Shikome combo popping up and removing Willie from the game and scoring me frame for murder. I dropped them both with combined fire from the gunsmiths and Kang, but El Pedro was left on one wound (and fast). The other Gunsmith (dirty rosewood) was lured into Datsue Ba's charge range and they got into a fairly minor scuffle with a few wounds on both sides, the gunsmith got fast again. Tosh gave Mei a stabbing while she was at negative flips. lazarus fired into the Molly/Mei scurm but only managed to give mei a push away into the nurse/belle/chiaki/phillip support team. {this is where I made my biggest mistake- Afterwards Ben pointed out I should have taken the hits on Mei instead of triggering and dropped the blasts on Molly, she couldn't reduce so she would have been forced to use her last soulstone, If I hit her twice she could only survive on a Black joker} I scored 1 more for reckoning, 2 for frame for murder. (4/0)

Turn Four
Mei activated first and started throwing punches and kicks at the surrounding support mob, but only really managed to push them away and do a wound here and there with some terrible flips except one quite startlingly good punch to phillips head which would eventually deny him full VP on bodyguard. The return attacks from Toshiro, the nurse, Chiaki (who flipped the red joker for damage) and the belle finished Mei off with some extra attacks and fire support from Molly who ran around the tree in the centre, {second big mistake- I used my last SS reducing the red joker damage when I should have accepted Mei was going down and saved it for bodyguard points on Kang} El pedro charged Datsue Ba with some aura from Kang, and between the two reduced her to one wound, she in turn stripped Dirty rosewood to one wound. Laz blasted Tosh some more for a handful of wounds, but other than the death of mei this turn was largely quiet. you will be stunned into surprise to hear that Phillip another marker for a card and moved up for bodyguard, which Kang also claimed.
Ben scored 1 for reckoning, 2 for assassinate, Both scored 1 for bodyguard (5/4)

Turn five Best to call this the turn of Datsue Ba, Molly summoned something near kang to tie him down then gave Datsue an extra Ap and companioned her, Datsue then went apeshit on the Gunsmiths, killing them both and raising two free Gaki, one then ran up to Kang to try and stab him, Laz charged up and dropped the thing Molly summoned (a Shikome perhaps?), The gaki took a chunk out of Kang, so Kang thumped the Gaki back, dropped imbued energies and sprinted into the wild, {mistake number 3- I got bodyguard confused with Entourage, rather than running into a nice safe bush I ran him into the enemy DZ, within sight of the Belle) Tosh made the Belle fast who then dragged Kang back into the scrum, the combined weight of every model on the table pounding him (plus another red joker damage flip) took it's toll and down he went.

game ends due to tournament rules

Ben scored 1 for bodyguard (5/5)
 
Thoughts- still need to remember Mei is not ironsides, she cannot survive in the same situations and needs more backup. Kang I'm starting to get the hang of, just need to get him in the ruck a bit more. Need to not lose my focus on the schemes, particularly when bodyguard is on Kang I need to save the SS. The gunline was a good call for Reckoning as it gave me early points, that said the summons were in my face so much maybe some beaters would have worked just as well, luckily Gunsmiths do both jobs well:)

My hands were without fail abysmal, I had only three cards higher than an 8 over the entire game, those being one red joker, the 11 of Masks and the 10 of Tomes. This didn't even balance out on better flips as I always seemed to flip a face card with an ace or deuce for every negative flip, one triple neg I even managed three face cards and a four. that said, without those three mistakes I could have taken the game, so I can't blame the cards here, though a little luck would have been a nice buffer;)

Mei- dogged with terrible hands and terrible flips, Mei still managed to shine and throw out a good 5/6 attacks a turn, I am looking forward to the day I get the cards and flips to see what she can really do. Vent steam is a great way to piss Belles off;) wish I'd not forgotten Vapourmancy as I still have no real gauge on it?

Gunsmiths+Kang is an ace combo, they are super destructive, especially when they are almost always fast:) they do seem a good counter to Molly as his summons extra AP is countered by the (potentially multiple) fast i was gaining, though in this game I feel Ox mages would have served me better against all the damn spirits.

Metal Gamin- I'm not sure what the hell I did here, first I gave protection to willie (already DF6?) then tried to take on Molly and Tosh in melee, should have bought a raptor and had an extra in my cache.

Lazarus- did more wounds to Molly and Tosh than any other model in the warband, bust up a summon to free up Kang at the end. blasted everything he could and survived on full wounds. He is truly my favourite malifaux model:)

Willie: always a good FfM bet, his wheel barrow took two summons out in two turns, maybe I could have got more from him. I won't be taking FfM against ressers as much as their masters (and henchmen) tend to let others do the dirty work!

  next time you evil witch summonabanch fargin icehole... {Edit: of happiness and rainbows... apparently}

Mick's ToMB2 Month 1 challenge complete!

So I finished on time (just), although  no faces as my hands are shaking too much for fine detail this week, but there will be, and tattoos.. oh yes... (a final note- none are as shiny as my crappy photography skills make them appear)

Here's the whole month one purchase:-

Kang and the boys- (named Jason, Lucky and Scum) these will definitely have tattoos, kang's wrist has an obvious join I missed that I can hide behind some ink, and I think the rest would benefit from some yakuza meets work-gang style ink. modelling wise they were fon to build, with some alternate arms (and leg) but very gappy for non-posable plastics, the first time I've had an issue with a wyrd model not fitting flush, but I know these are older moulds so hopefully it'll be my only experience too:)

Next (rather inexplicably) is my wind gamin/Tengu proxy, made from a malifaux raptors wings and my spare Metal gamin, he's running as a metal gamin for now, but I wanted something a bit different in the crew and this seemed to fit:) annoyingly one of his claws fell off at some point between painting and photography, I'm going to blame the cats...

The small guys- Two Metal Gamin (silver and gold) and the Emberling. all pretty straight forward builds, to anyone making the Gamin I would suggest attached the skirt to the front of the larger Gamin before it's arms, as it was a bit tricky after. no real gap issues with the gamin, but I did miss a massive line around the base of the emberlong, which I'll fix at some point, It's so straight it couldn't be hidden easily so watch out for that when you are building your own rail crew. 

The boss- again I missed some obvious gaps when filling (what I get for doing it so late at night) mainly her left shoulder, but I'll add some tats to mask those. I decided that her whilst her wood smashing base was very cool and in character, it wouldn't ft that well with the rest of my M&SU on the quarantine zone industrial rubble bases, so I knocked up a giant exploding cog base instead, mounting mei on a pile of flying debris in the centre, this came out pretty well, even though I cant paint metallics well at all (so why base my entire army on them? who knows...) 

I've played two games with them, a close 8-6 against Jonah's Sonnia (see below) and a not close at all 10-1 against Ben's Proxy Molly crew, in which I conceded turn 3 after making some really REALLY stupid decisions (and he summoned 4 Students of steel in a row against my almost entirely construct crew, to be fair to Ben he built a staggeringly efficient Molly crew with Molly and Toshiro summoning, Phillip and the nanny generating extra cards, one each of the nurse, belle and canine for claiming recon if he didn't summon and Chiaki and the arcane effigy buffing the summons/summoners, it was horrible, and as I'n never even read molly, let alone played her, I bunched up and was quickly taught a lesson in Resser 101). I learnt different lessons from each game- 

Firstly- Mei feng- is not survivable, I can't just throw her into a mob like Ironsides and expect her to walk out again unscathed, nor can I start popping spiders to heal up fast like Ramos, she goes down fast without her trigger, and Molly's crew in particular had so many extra attacks it didn't take them long to put her down at all. she is quite punchy, but not reliably so, in Jonah's game she took 5 attacks to kill a witchling, and in Ben's after three attacks vs Chiaki I caused all of 3 wounds. her ML of 6 is easily neutered by good defense, and my utterly crap hands in both games meant I was unable to get the 13's I needed to hit at all. Her strengths are her speed, her chained attacks against lighter opponents, and her defense trigger, against Ben I should have stoned for the trigger at least once, but I am too shy with SS and still need to improve there. 

Kang is great, very hard to put down, especially if you can save a SS for late game, pretty hitty and very threatening to undead, so threatening in fact, that when I tried to use him as entourage bait vs ben he completely ignored him as he was worried about the damage Kang would inflict... Doh! Imbued defense made him even grittier, and although he needs a bunched up crew to get the best from him, he performed well enough in both games for me to consider him a good henchman for Mei.

Rail workers- slow, low wounds and no ranged attack made me consider these models pretty poor before I fielded them, but with that mental (0) action, and the buff from Kang, they were amazing at killing undead, if they could pass the WP test ever... I like them, but am unsure what role they play, they aren't fast enough to run schemes, or killy enough for reckoning/headhunter, or survivable enough for protect territory, for now they seem a good all rounder, but not specialised enough at anything. 

The Emberling- 3ss for a non-insignificant model that can drop scrap for Mei, set things on fire and be a legit railwalk target itself is awesome. an amusing trick I used against Ben was to hire an Ice golem, Throw the emberling, activate it next to drop scrap and move, and create a nice big chain for Mei very quickly. 

Metal Gamin- enough has been said elsewhere about the amazingness of these ubiquitous models, a great 4ss investment, but I must remember magnetism more, I undervalue it and it could have turned the tide against Ben had I utilised it more against his students of Steel. 

Next months purchases are a bit of an issue, I already own a fair bit of the M&SU and arcanists (I have my custom Rail Golem, Willie, Union miners, Ramos crew, Ironsides crew, some half built coryphee, molemen, Rasly box, Marcus box and a range of other bits) So to pick up new models I am thinkingI may have to go Mercenary:- Silent one or Friekorps librarian for some healing, an Arcane effigy for some condition removal outside Johanna, and maybe a friekorps trapper or Hans so snipers don't ruin me quite as much as they do now, any thoughts?

ToMB - Mick v Jonah

This past week Mick and I decided to play out our first ToMB against one another.  Here's some of the details first:

Deployment: Corner
Strategy: Interference
Schemes: ALiTS; Power Ritual; Deliver a Message; Protect Territory; Breakthrough

In the spirit of ToMB we each took the full crew boxes plus the rest of our commitment for month one and some extras.  This worked out as the Rail Crew, 3 x Metal Gamin and Johana for Mick with Torch and Blade, Witchling Handler, Brutal Effigy and Pathfinder for me.  Mick with his Arcanists chose Deliver a Message and Protect Territory and myself with the Guild opted for Deliver a Message as well and Power Ritual.

We both felt a little constrained by our crew choices as neither of us would have chosen what we had with the strats/schemes on offer (I had a (theoretically) great plan to take Nino and the Pathfinder and put them in opposite corners to drop scheme markers on turn two with some Hunters running up to support them (plus take the corners for Interference) but it worked out as far too many SS).  I felt like it was a difficult match up for me because of all the armour and practically everything in Mick's crew having Hard to Kill but with me being able to splash Burning around I did have the perfect counter so it made for an interesting game.

With the Witchling Handler I felt a little quicker than usual although one of my Witchling's did nothing except start off dropping a scheme marker in my own deployment zone then spend the rest of the game trying to play catch up (though the Handler also died fairly early - see below!)!  The Pathfinder did well by taking down a Rail Worker early in the game (I cheated in a Mask to ignore armour after Mick had cheated in a Tomb for +2 Armour which was a sly kick in the teeth!) plus was generally frustrating by chucking out and moving Traps and also dropping my second scheme marker for Power Ritual.  My Brutal Effigy ran to the other adjacent corner and dropped a third scheme marker and also managed to take out a Rail Worker (which had previously lost two wounds to an exploding Witchling!).  He also managed to hold up a Metal Gamin in the late game to keep the scheme marker in place.  The rest of the game as mostly moving around the centre staying more than 6" away and trying to move into whichever quarter our models were needed.  Samael impressed once again despite all my reservations about him and I'm thinking that I need to take him more often.  I ran him without his upgrade this time as I couldn't afford it but he put some hurt on Kang (who promptly healed four wounds because it was turn four!), took out the Emberling and also acted as a big deterrent in the part of the board he was in.

Mick lost a lot of duels early in the game although it was only the one Rail Worker who felt the wrath of the Pathfinder and the Emberling who died until end of the game when Sonnia took out both Kang and Johana and the Effigy took out another Rail Worker.  He made a mistake in the first/second turn by putting Mei Feng in Sonnia's face to Deliver a Message without realising that Master's couldn't do it.  I had moved the Witchling Handler back and she was engaged with Mei at the start of turn three when I flipped a 12 for initiative and thought I was on for the three VPs for Delivering a Message.  Mick took a risk in burning a SS to re-flip initiative and came up with a 13 (Seize the Day helped with this).  It was a risk but a well calculated one that won the game in the end (see below) but also meant the Mei took out the Handler in one hit!  I cheated a RJ for her first Df flip then an 11 but Mei did 4 moderate damage then pushed the Handler back into Hazardous terrain and did another 4 to kill her - ouch!  Mei was mostly irritating otherwise but on turn three Kang and Johana also discarded Imbued Energies to get engaged with Sonnia.  Mick won initiative next turn which allowed Johana to Deliver a Message.  My other Witchling Stalker eventually went down to the combined efforts of a Rail Worker and Metal Gamin (though there was some bad luck with a BJ damage flip in there) who went hunting the Brutal Effigy.  At this point the Pathfinder was mostly hiding so that I could try to hold the corner it was in for Interference which meant a Metal Gamin and Rail Worker could go about dropping scheme markers for Protect Territory with abandon!

The game finished with a 8-6 victory for Mick (Mick scored 3VPs for Protect, 3VPs for Deliver a Message and 2VPs for Interference; I got 3VPs for Interference and 3VPs for Power Ritual).

I'm enjoying Guild and there's more things I want to try out but the more I play Sonnia the less I enjoy her.  She feels a bit of a one trick pony who isn't particularly effective at that one trick.  The few games I've played with Perdita I find her to be a lot more flexible.  I think it partly because I've yet to really get Sonnia going so I'll definitely persevere with her some more.  I think she definitely benefits from some help with movement with makes Francisco almost an auto-take for his 5" Push.  Pathfinder's and Brutal Effigy's have definitely been my two most reliable minions so far.

I'll let Mick edit with his thoughts on his Rail Crew (or post a separate thread).

(A charitable write up there, was an interesting game, I'll add my thought's later for now here's some blurry photos... Mick)

Jonah let me deploy first, so I took cover from what I expected to be a flamey death line

Sonnia had spotted my utter lack of ranged attacks however, and just wandered blithely on

The table was pretty balanced, not too many firing lanes, not so much cover I'd be free to jog around, and one puddle of useful dangerous slime. The pathfinder is in the top right, behind the red roofed house. the git.

Couple of pics from the end of turn one, before I inevitable got too excited/stroppy to take pictures;)

Mick's ToMB- month 1 quick update

I have built my month 1 purchases, the Rail crew box plus one set of Metal Gamin (one of which is now a flying Wind Gamin proxy) I'm hoping to get them painted by the deadline- looking shaky and I think there may be a forfeit coming...

Mick's ToMb2 post month 0-

As you can see from the post above- I have a guest blogger for the next few months (or as long as he sticks around) in the form of Jonah (or Jonahmaul on the Wyrd Forum) Jonah is a long time hobbyist and friend of mine and is unfortunately much better at pretty much all wargames than me, (he does all these weird things like remembering the rules, paying attention during the game and reading FaQ's and forums to answer complicated rules queries...) however as we both wanted to do this Tale of a Malifaux Blogger thing, it seemed like a good idea to combine forces, by working on the same blog we can give each other a kick up the backside if we start to slack or miss deadlines, and it means we're guaranteed to have at least one opponent to play those all important games:)

I'm going to adding to my M&SU for ToMb, with Mei Feng as my master of purchase (I bought her at the start of the month and have so far done.. nothing, best get a wiggle on...) The starter set cost me £20.40, so I'll be adding a set of Metal Gamin to it at £12.70 for a total of £33.10, I don't want to completely overload myself painting so I'll save the other £6.90 for next month.

It says to highlight money saving tips here so I'll add something that has helped me quite a bit in recent years- doing favours. I have done a fair few favours for my local gaming store, as well as friends and local companies like Great Escape Games and Model Display products. these favours range from helping out at shows, making or fixing terrain or sculpting and painting models. Regardless of what your particular skillset is there's bound to be something you can contribute, even if it's just time, and helping other hobbyists out in your local area is a great way to source unusual bits for your bits box, or just get a few freebies (like Malifaux lessons from Dumb Luck). In this particular case I sculpted some bases for MDP a while back (these ones actually) and in return I get free resin base offcasts, which I can always fix up and saves me a ton of both money and time, I've been using the Industrial Rubble bases for my Arcanists and I have enough for Mei Feng and her boys too.

Mick

Malifaux battle report- The first war at the Docks.

Malifaux battle report- The first war at the Docks.

The Oxford Mages look on as Lilith corners the infatuated Willie...

As Ben was an absolute star last weekend at getting more of the docks painted than I could have managed on my own, (my lovely wife helped too) I was able to spare the time for a game on Thursday, as I'm a bit under the weather at the moment and could do with playing at home we decided to give the table it's first outing to give me an idea of scatter terrain and the interior layout at the same time.  

50ss Arcanist vs Neverborn

My Crew

Ironsides with Seize the day, Challenge the Crowd and Warding Runes

Lazarus with Imbued energies

December Acolyte

Johanna

Willie

Oxford Mage- Blood Ward

Oxford Mage- Doom Ward

Mobile Toolkit

Ben's Crew

Lilith with some upgrades (wings and fears given form and another...)

Primordial magic

Doppelganger

Lilitu

Widow Weaver

Coppelius

3 Tots

Deployment- Flank

Strategy- Turf War

Schemes- AliTS, Breakthrough (both announced) Bodyguard, Cursed Object (both), Deliver the Message.

Ignore the unpainted terrain in the factory, it does not exist...

Turn 1

The tots spread to the flanks, two jogging acros the long bridge towards the toll booth,  the one in the east scuttling through the factory supported by coppelius, The Ox mages headed along the gremlin skiff to the supply boat, trying to stay within ward range of the boss whilst hitting the flank. Widow Weaver skittered out though the main dock door in the centre and dropped a web, seemingly safe for next turn, but after the toolkit tinkered with Lazarus' bullets a little, he dumped Imbued energies to gain fast, stepped up and Rapid fired into the nightmarish beast, forcing her to use two SS for prevention after some meaty damage flips. The Acolyte hidden round the sdie door of the factory was less successful against the tot, missing clean twice (Ben's hands were strong due to 2x rush of magic). Willie and Johanna headed over teh crane into the small dock in the centre only for the lilitu to draw willie across the dock and onto the transport barge towards her, the Doppelganger morphed into another lilitu to keep willie moving until he was close enough for Lilith to fly through the dark factory windows onto the barge and threaten him next turn (she also raised trees between WW and Laz to stop his surprisingly efficient barrage), this forced Ironsides to move up in support- Ironsides also got some small vengeance on the Lilitu, taunting her in and dumping her into the filthy water by the boat.

Them tots are FAST

Turn 2-

Initiative was won by the Neverborn- the Doppelgangers ability to cheat the initiative beat Seize the day hands down every turn this game (until she died), at best it could be said that I was draining good cards from his hand.  Coppelius stated the turn off by beating the tar out of the acolyte in the doorway with a severe slap followed by an entirely unnecessary red joker to the face, gaining two eyeballs in the process. The toolkit sharpened Laz again, but he couldn’t get a clear shot at Coppelius or the Tot so instead he jogged along the wooden jetty to the turf war zone, hoping his armour and self-heal would keep him scoring for a while. The two Tots on the bridge sprinted through the customs house, across the barge and into melee range of the mages to tie them up for a turn, which is when I discovered that the Oxford Mage of Blood (who was leading the way) is a horrific combat wombat- furious casting plus the (0) action gives a total of 4 melee attacks in one activation, I splattered the first tot with Elemental bolts then when the other tot rushed in using it’s brood rule Blood’s Elemental Strike dumped severe damage out (with flaming strike) to end the little sods day. This did unfortunately leave the enraged Blood standing slightly singed in a pool of black gore across the only path between boats, forcing Doom to swim across the gap and climb up the side of the barge to advance any. The primordial Magic floated though the factory wall and made Willie insignificant (as Ben had quite accurately guessed I was about to hit Lilith with cursed object) Whilst the Doppelganger (who was now bereft of anyone to copy) ran into the factory toward Widow weaver.  Ironsides took some damage from fears given from, cursed Lilith  then decided it was time to press the advantage and used a point of adrenaline to jump into B2B with the surprised Lilitu in the water, then punched the Demoness into paste with a flurry of savage blows, Lilith retaliated by slicing Willie a new blast hole, only for the resulting explosion to carry all the way across the water and slay the primordial magic, ah Willie, how I love thee. Lilith then went and had a slap at the damp Ironsides, but not a much came of it. Widow weaver was far more effective, tearing chunks out of poor Lazarus (who knew she ignored armour?) so Johanna stepped forward ready to help out next turn, the Tot in the east moved in to smash the toolkit next turn and it was looking pretty balanced so far- both sides scored for Turf, I scored for Cursed., 2-1 to me

One of the reasons I love both Malifaux and Bushido- turn two is always glorious!

Turn 3-

Initiative came down to dirty stinking Doppelganger cheating again (not the sneakiest thing the ganger was going to do this turn) and Widow Weaver had another crack at Lazarus on the small central dock, I got lucky with my flips and her pointy teeth only scraped the paint a bit, Lazarus first self repaired then retaliated by sticking his bayonet into the wounded spider woman a couple of times, once for severe which Ben reduced with another soulstone. Johanna stepped up to give a the Doppelganager a whack with the hammer (can you see my mistake? I didn't) wounding the shapeshifter who then decided that a relic hammer was a fine idea, promptly morphed into the confused Johanna's form (doh!) and began wailing on the even more confused Lazarus, that hurt a lot and left the leviathan on one wound, owch.. over on the rickety gangplank by the barge the pair of Masters continued their dust up, with more punches, black blood, Fears given Form, regeneration and soulstones being burned into the ether, the only noticeable difference being that Atkins remembered to hit Ironsides with cursed object after I'd activated her (Blood was just out of range to make her immune to it too, pants...) speaking of blood, the two mages jogged their pathetic 4" move twice to try and get in on the action (why are the M&SU so sloooow?) whilst I cunningly disengaged with the toolkit and jogged up to Lazarus- I had a plan... The Tot decided it would rather score VP's and ran off to drop a breakthrough marker by the fruit cart, but Coppelius bounded round the corner and up the jetty (he is a nippy one) and engaged both the toolkit and Lazarus, this could get sticky for my favourite mercenary, but we'll see.  we both scored for turf war again, and Atkins scored for Cursed. 3 all.

Unusually Ben was actually playing the schemes whilst I was too focused on killing- this is a reversal of our usual games. 

 Turn 4-

The bloody Doppelganger cheated again, and I needed my SS, so I reluctantly let Ben go first, predictably Widow weaver (who had been pooing webs every turn, i forgot to mention it but they are around...) went for the big guy but missed her first attack, then bit Lazarus last chunk of wounds off, stopping stage 1 of my cunning plan, but not stage 2- hehehe... The toolkit gingerly stepped around Coppelius to get within 3" of all three of the neverborn in the centre, (and inside the trees so everything could see it) I used my one good card to pass the Horror Duel (I needed a 10 with a web nearby and wp3 on the little robot) and then self-detonated, If you aren't familiar with this action, all models within 3" must pass a TN11+ the turn number defense duel, or take damage equal to the turn number- this would have left the Weaver on one wound, coppelius on 6 and killed the Doppelganger outright, of course letting it off so early in the turn he would probably be fine, but at TN15 I hoped to strip a few cards from his hand, it worked better than expected though as he had a poor hand for once, and only had a high card to pass one duel, choosing to keep the doppelganger alive and take the hits on the other two, awesome (plan A was to assimilate the same action with Lazarus, then do it again with the toolkit:) big bada-boom). after picking himself up from the oil and blood-soaked cobbles Coppelius made with the eye candy (hoho) and gave the Weaver a hand before moving up to Johanna for another cursing. Ironsides went next, teleporting over to the far side of Lilith to get within range of buffing the mages and Johanna, before punching the mistress of malifaux a few more times (yes, despite literally just being cursed I totally forgot to curse Lilith... again...).  With the M&SU bonuses kicking in the wounded Johanna easily squished the Doppelganger, but not before it mimicked one of the weavers attacks and took her down to Hard to Wound, she also failed to remove the curse marker (dammit Wk4!) yet more failures occurred as the mages attempted to volley fire into Widow Weaver, Doom bottled it after failing his horror duel, Blood came through again though wounding the spider lady, the Tot in the corner kept up his scheme dropping shenanigans, on the ore barge this time, probably glad to be out of the Clusterfeth in the middle of the board.     another Turf War each and another Cursed for Ben. 4-3 to Ben

You can tell its Turf War by the fact that bad things happen more often in the middle...

Turn 5-

It was time for drastic action if I was going to claw back any VP's and the only man for the Job was- The Oxford mage of Blood! he charged acrosst the barge and into lilith, then promptly kicked the black blood out of her (magically, i mean he didn't want to dirty his feet or anything), The Neverborn Master spewed some black blood around but it wasn't enough to stop the Red Joker finally finishing her off (I only had 2 red jokers all game, one to hit Lilith with ironsides, one to damage her)  his companion finally made good on the 'doom' front though and killed widow weaver at last, removing the web markers that had dogged my warbands horror and manipulative duels all game, (Weaver is surely a must have for Turf War?) Coppelius wasn't about to give me the last laugh though, and an eyeball plucking later Johanna went down. Ironsides was now free to skip into the breakthrough zone and drop a marker whilst the Tot popped a third into my zone and started to head back just in case, with only one Mage and Coppelius in the rather battered centre dock neither of us were scoring for turf this turn, and with Ben having 3 turf, 2 curses and 3 for breakthrough vs my 3 turf, 1 curse and 1 breakthrough it was looking like an 8-5 victory to the neverborn, I desperately needed a turn 6...

The Tot on the Ore barge later retired from a life of terror and took up a pleasure boat business in the Bayou...

Turn 6-

And I got it! The Oxford mage of Doom in the centre could (just) drop a curse token on Coppelius if I could act first... initiative flip- two two's! The doppelganger was clearly cursing me from beyond the grave... I didn't even have a soulstone to reflip, and the eyeball snatcher gibbered off happily into the darkness across the jetty. my mage tried to fire a few paltry bolts after him but I failed another horror duel despite the lack of web markers and the [+] for the nearby master.. (the highest card in my hand was a 5...) this also meant the paralysed gimp was stood in the way of blood at the very edge of the Turf scoring area, meaning I couldn't even get in there for another point that way! Doom is going to get a Gibbs slap to the back of the head when we get back to base... Ironsides did nail down two more Breakthrough markers on the main road though, so at least I had pulled it back to an 8-7 to Ben. ah well, it could have been worse... 

run away little coppelius...

Thoughts

Some games are learning experiences due to what happens on the table, and some due to what happens before the game even takes place. About halfway through turn one I realised I had completely chumped this up, I took breakthrough with a warband where half my models were walk 4, Cursed object vs a neverborn crew with a high Wk across the board who outnumbered me to boot, and my crew selection was based on fear of the unknown rather than why I knew worked, the only reason Ben won by such a small margin was because it was his first time playing Lilith, he certainly out-Malifauxed me across the board from the moment we flipped for strategy.lessons learned; Crew selection> very important> taking the right scheme> very very important!

The revelation of the game for me was the Oxford Mage of Blood, I usually take him as my second after Nemesis as the immunity to conditions is very powerful, but I don't worry too much about the ability to use his (1) action in melee, this game showed me how deadly that can be- with furious casting I can get three 2/3/4 hits off (with burning+1 usually) at Ca6, followed by a (0) of 1/2/3 which can either gain me a soulstone, up to 2/3/4 as in this case, or even insta-kill! my tactics using this fellow are bound to change after this game. Ben's eye-opener was the mobile toolkit, he's only ever seen him sharpening stuff for Lazarus or Howard, or making Joss armour +3, and usually he gets splatted early on for Ramos to make scrap, but as he survived to turn four in this game I had the opportunity to show how deadly his explosion could be, at TN15 even his DF6 models struggled to dodge it, and it probably kept me in the game when things were looking grim, not bad for 3ss;)

Thematically the two masters stood on the rickety gangplank above the water punching the crap out of each other for three turns is a brilliant image, between us I used four of my five soulstones on damage prevention, all on Ironsides, between that and the adrenaline heals plus the Regen given by Doom Ward Ironsides took almost twice her wound count over the three turns from lilith's attacks and (more frequently) Fears Given Form, Ben also spent six of his seven soulstones of prevention, 3 on the widow weaver and 3 more on lilith, in the end it was only a big hit from ironsides for severe damage and the heroic actions of Blood Mage that took her out, although it almost killed the mage in the process and   finally took Ironsides down to hard to kill!  (edit- I have since realised that in Blood's proximity Ironside's would be immune to stinking black blood, so she probably came out shinier that i thought by a long shot)

Ben is known as a Proxy king (amongst other things) in our gaming group, he loves to try out new ideas and new crews, which is great for me because I get to play against everything you can imagine, it's like having four more players in the local meta, and I learn a lot from our games, the fact he is a fair bit better than me at most wargames balances out the fact he's usually using a crew for the first time, it does mean i don't take too many photos of our games though as the proxies do look a bit odd (in this game a knight models harley quinn stood in for the doppelganger, a cyberpunk devil ronin stood in for Lilith and a Bushido Hebi monster for the Weaver) but next time I play on the board it will hopefully be finished and I'll get some in game photos:)

Until next time... *shakes fist"