ToMB2 - Jonah's Month 1 (A little late and a little under ...)

OK, first up I'm a little late with this as the title suggests.  Only managed to get these done yesterday and they're not based yet as I need to wait to get some basing materials.  I have also managed to get the crew box done rather than the full £40 worth as should have been done this month.  Hopefully the kind souls running ToMB will show lenience on me and let me make it up next month.  Anyway, enough waffle, here are some pictures of the finished Torch and the Blade crew box:

Here it the Witchling Handler that I am converting from TTB stuff.  I had planned to get her converted and painted for this month but ran out of time.  I couldn't make what I really wanted as there were no appropriate swords in the set so I decided to go for something a bit different and make this.  I thought the flaming hands would represent her Aura.  I'm not entirely happy with it and have been told about licensed casters coming with Wave 3 so it might make it as one of them:

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;)

Jonah's ToMB Month 1 - Some more Ropes

As I said in my original post for ToMB I am cheating a little bit as I am wanting to learn Guild as a faction rather than just focusing on one Master.  As such I've got a couple more games in but I've switched it up and used Perdita for both of them.  First was a game of Headhunter against a Lucius crew and second a game of Extraction against a Collodi crew.  These were both really good learning games as both my opponents are new to their crews (I think I was only the 3rd/4th game for Lucius and maybe only 2nd for Collodi) and playing the new Gaining Ground strats which none of my gaming group have much experience of (it was my first time playing either of these strats).  I managed to pull out victories in both of them (8-6 against Lucius and 9-6 against Collodi).  I had pretty similar plans for both the games which was to target all the minions to reduce the effectiveness of the Masters.  In the Lucius game I made the decision to give up easy Head markers so that by killing off the minions I could stop him scoring ALiTS and in the Collodi game I also took MTS.  In the Collodi game my opponent thought I had taken Assassinate so spent the last turn running away with Collodi when in fact I'd taken Take Prisoner against his Beckoner.  This was partly a risk because Beckoner's tend to hang back but she was also the less destructive part of his crew and wasn't a priority target like Collodi's puppets.  Nevertheless I got quite lucky as I engaged her with Perdita in the final turn (killing a Stitched Together who would have meant me only getting 2VPs) then my opponent focused to Lure the Judge away from the Extraction marker which stopped me scoring for that turn which would have made the game a 6-6 draw had I taken Assassinate.  Fortunately she pushed towards my Brutal Effigy who had yet to activate and ran over to engage her.

My crews for both games were pretty similar.  I took Perdita, Francisco, Nino, Pathfinder, Rifleman, Enslaved Nephilim, Papa Loco, Papa's Taxi (Death Marshal) in the game against Lucius.  Nino got to use Hair Trigger first turn against an opposing Rifleman but then the second Rifleman my opponent had took a double focused shot courtesy of Lucas and one-shotted him for the cheek of killing his mate!  Never really got Papa going  as once the DM let him out he just picked up a couple of Heads!

Second crew was Perdita, Francisco, Judge, 2 x Riflemen, Enslaved Nephilim, Brutal Effigy, Pathfinder.  Judge didn't do a lot but hang around a lot though he did go a bit mental on an Arcane Effigy which burnt a lot of cards (not many from my hand though) but scored a VP for MTS which was worth it.  I like the Judge though as he seems very difficult to put down (see comments below on Francisco), has some good utility with being able to make other take Ml attacks and his own attacks can be devastating if you have the cards/SS.  He'll definitely be getting more of a run out.

Things I'm learning:

I find Guild quite slow.  This means I've yet to take Breakthrough or Entourage which are schemes I used to find easy to score well from with my Resurrectionists.  I think this is partly because I've not used things like Hunters or Watchers yet and a Hoffman box is probably going to be my next purchase (I've also not played McMourning as Guild or McCabe yet who are both quite manouverable crews that suit those schemes better IMHO).

Related to point one I find Perdita and friends a lot more manoeuvrable than Sonnia.  The Nephilim plus Perdita's own ability to push as an ability and Francisco's upgrade to pull people around with him too means her crew can move around to where they want much more easily than I found with Sonnia.  This is something that I need to get used to as I want to play Sonnia as I do enjoy using her.

Francisco is not invulnerable!  From reading things about him and looking at his card(s) he seems pretty durable but  even with HtK the fact he is Df5 and Wd8 means he goes down pretty easily.  I keep putting in him situations to fight things or hold things up and as a result he gets put down pretty quickly.  He has gone down to McTavish/Gator, Hoffman, Dashal and a Rifleman and Collodi meaning he's met his demise in every game, sometimes quite early too.  He's a solid piece and definitely worth his SS but I need to be more cautious with him and pick his fights.  See also Nino and the need to protect him.

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...

Jonah's ToMB Month 1 - Learning the Ropes

Sonnia has hit the table twice in the last two evenings so thought I'd report back on my early findings.  Both games have been Guard the Stash from Gaining Grounds 2015 tournament rules.  First game was very slow as we were playing the new strategy for the first time, I was playing Guild for the first time and my opponent who was also Guild was playing Hoffman and his Power Loop shenanigans for the first time.

I took Sonnia (with Cherufe's Imprint), Samael (with Witch Hunt), Francisco (with Wade In and Hermanos De Armas), 2 x Witchling Stalkers, Guild Pathfinder, Brutal Effigy, 2 x Guild Hounds

Opponent had Hoffman, Mechanical Attendant, Guardian (I think, one with the big shield!), Metal Gamin, Rail Golem, Watcher, 2 x Hunters

Schemes were Spring the Trap, Breakthrough, Entourage, ALiTS and Distract.  Figuring that Guild are pretty slow (and my crew in particular) I opted against Breakthrough and Entourage and took ALiTS and Distract.  My opponent took Breakthrough and Distract.

Ended up 9-8 to my opponent (I scored 3 for ALiTS, 3 for Guard the Stash, 2 for Distract.  My opponent got 3 for Guard the Stash, 3 for Distract, 3 for Breakthrough).

Was an odd game for Sonnia as couldn't do her blast shenanigans because of the Mechanical Attendant and because of Power Loop my opponent was able to just choose Wp5 so that I couldn't get (+) flips.  There wasn't a lot of killing though I took out the Rail Golem early thanks to Sammael and his extra damage against burning.  He was also helped by the Pathfinder doing 5 damage with a focused shot hitting his trigger to ignore armour.  Just from his card Samael doesn't look very good as he's 11SS with his upgrade and looks like he'll fall over in a stiff breeze but he was pretty effective for me this game by handing out Burning (combined with Sonnia's condition so that Burning isn't removed).  I failed to score Guard the Stash one turn when I could have easily so that was a bad mistake and one of the Guild Hounds got killed early in the second turn which messed up my plan to have them running around together dropping scheme markers for ALiTS.  I also learnt not to let Hoffman take a swing at you as he crushed Francisco in one activation.  My opponent pulled off a very nice move with the Mechanical Attendant on the last turn where he used the RJ to disengage from Samael then discarded an upgrade so that he could lose Insignificant for a turn to drop a second scheme marker to score max VPs for Breakthrough.

Second game I took a very similar crew except I dropped the Hounds for an extra Witchling Stalker and an extra SS.

Opponent had Gremlins with Ophelia, Franciois, Merris, MvTavish, Mancha Rocha, 2 x Gators

Schemes were ALiTS, Make them Suffer, Protect Territory, Bodyguard and Vendetta.  We both ended up going for Make them Suffer and Protect Territory.

Lots of killing going on this game and Sonnia really got her damage on although there was a lack of Blasts again because they were spread out.  But she took out Ophelia and Francois (in combination with other stuff) and landed the finishing blow on Mancha although the big green wrestler also did 9 damage to her from a charge which was pretty gross (and gave her Paralysed though I removed it with a Witchling) before killing off a crocodile and Blasting onto the second one.  I struggled to score MtS because my opponent only had two Minions and kept them back so I only ended up scoring once for it.  It was a mistake taking this having seen the crews as I was giving up points quite easily by having so many minions and I should have gone for Bodyguard on Franscisco (he did die but mainly because  put him in trouble, I could have protected him easily).  I thought I'd be able to take out the minions easily then score automatic VPs for him not having any in play.  Ended up losing 8-5 (I scored 1VP for Make them Suffer, 1VP for Protect Territory and 3VPs for Guard the Stash, opponent scored 3VPs for Protect Territory, 3VPs for Make them Suffer and 2VPs for Guard the Stash).

Both games were good fun though and I'm starting to feel like I'm getting a grip with the Guild.  I'm still not sure Samael is a good investment at 11SS (he seems useless without Witch Hunt and I'm loathe to put LLC or anything else on him and make him even more expensive) but I think I'll probably continue with him a bit to get used to Sonnia's crew box some more.  I also want to try out Witchling Stalkers although I need to convert some from the Female TTB figures which my FLGS didn't have in stock (but I have ordered).  I'll hopefully be playing full crew boxes + some extras against Mick who's BLOG I'm sharing soon as we're both doing ToMB.

Nevertheless I still have a 100% record with Guild right...

Jonah's ToMB2 Month 0

My friend Mick has very kindly agreed to host me on his BLOG so this is a new experience for me and I'm hoping I'm not breaking it!  For those who don't know what Tale of Malifaux Bloggers (ToMB) is you can check out the details here.  The Tale comes at a convenient time for me as I've just decided to take a break from my Ressers and start a new faction - namely the law making scum known as the Guild.  A lot of my stuff has already been purchased but I've built it all since the Tale launched and I've had a frenetic spraying session today to get them ready for painting.  I will point out now that I am going to cheat a little as the idea is to mainly focus on a single Master but as I want to learn the Guild more thoroughly I'll probably branch out into more than one (especially as lots of the things I want to include come in crew boxes anyway).  Having said that I've decided to start with the Guild's resident witch hunting pyromaniac Sonnia Criid.  I've chosen her because she seems quite easy to learn, her crew box is quite easy to paint to get my initial pledge completed, and FIRE!!!  I will be adding Two Witchling Handlers to bring my initial commitment up to the month one total of £40 (Sonnia's box is £27 RRP and I'll be converting the Handlers from TTB miniatures but based at their RRP that equates to around £40).

I've run a PLOG on Warseer before but have never done one that also focuses on gaming as well as painting so am looking forward to documenting my progress.  The commitment is once a month but I'll aim to update the BLOG every 7-10 days depending on how frequently I get games in.

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