My Malifaux Journey

In this post I weave and wander through my history with Malifaux and how and where I am today!

In the beginning....

Seamus was one of the characters (along with Lady J and Pandora) which drew me to Malifaux, as well as the card mechanic which now causes me to sneer at most dice-based games! Through them I got to experience some of the great game design that went into Malifaux and the incredible depth that comes from each model's abilities interacting with each other (admittedly some go off in Wonky directions but no game is perfect) and I just wanted to play more and more. As my friends and I settled on our factions, we each settled mainly on one character that we preferred to others. Andres was Som'er Tooth Jones (with a feck ton of Skeeters!), Jack was Hamelin (with a beautifully painted crew!), James with Lynch and me with Seamus. Our games felt like we were adding to the history of Malifaux (not unlike WFB where our own heroes would battle with and against legends of lore) providing we ignored the Wyrd fluff - which was easy to do.

I still remember some of our great 1st Edition battles. Battle of the Biggest Hat would see Seamus face off against Andres' Som'er Tooth Jones, games that always went down to the wire and provided a lot of fun, as Seamus would try to paralyse eveything he could, while Som'er farted and ruined my control hands!

Pandora was the only Master I could take against Jack's Hamelin and have any success with. I'd ping-pong round the board thanks to fading memory trying to kill his rats, knowing that if I failed even one duel I would face Hamelin's black staff and insta-loss! Those games were always knife edge and we both felt drained afterwards (well... until we got trapped in the infinite loop that was Alps vs Rats summoning on death and decided to abandon the match up)

My favourite game vs James is when we played Seamus vs his Ophelia. It came down to the last flip; a lure from a Belle that would have pulled Francois away from the scoring zone. I had an 11 and a 12 in hand, knowing the 12 would win me the game I decided to play the 11. James cheated in the Red Joker (the only card that could beat the 11) and won by a point. Those kind of moments stick with you far more than the temporary feeling of winning. I'm still happy I cheated that 11 in.   

Fast Forward 4 years and the End of 2016, and after playing Ressurs competitively in Tournaments for all of that period (garnering a 2nd at Gertfaux and 4th in Darksphere as well as several best in Faction honours) I found myself defaulting to Nicodem and one of two crews, depending on the strategy and schemes. Playing in  a Vassal game I came up against a great Swedish player by the name of Joakim Abrahamsson who soundly thrashed my lazy mode crew. 

It made me realise two things: 

1. I had fallen out of love with Ressurs, by defaulting to the 'Best' Master in the faction who I found personally was the most boring of them; zombies have never been my thing, shambling hordes and summoning meant that I was picking one of the 2 lists I created and not caring about the game. This took the character out of the game for me.
2. If I was going to get any better at Malifaux I'd need a new perspective!

So after previously resolving to not buy any more Malifaux in 2017 and feeling happy that everything was painted ready for tournaments; I immediately went out after the game against Joakim and bought my friend James' collection of Ten Thunders!! Armed with Shenlong and Asami I quickly amassed and painted a lot of TT and set about learning a different faction with a goal to do as well in the UK Nationals 2017 as I had done in the previous year with the Ressurectionists (57th out of 124).

The Road to Nationals

The road so far has been bumpy, but satisfying. I attended the side tournaments at the UK Masters this year, enjoying the atmosphere but not my performance. SInce I only had Shenlong and a few pieces painted I lacked for options (including the blessed Emissary Crutch). I finished 24 of 36 on the first day, and 28 of 44 the second. Essentially the bottom third on both days. Nowhere near my Seamus glory days!

It has been a steady grind since then, 60 games of Malifaux later and I am comfortable with the majority of the faction but GG'17 has been a real headache for me as I rarely find a scheme pool I'm entirely comfortable with; I feel that I'll have one scheme locked in but the other is a complete gamble. I think this is something to do with my crew choice, and trying to find my playstyle with the Thunders in addition to understanding the exact game and its objectives set before me (which changes every game as new scheme pools and different crews are played each time!) All that being said, I'm very happy with my 1st Tournament win of the year coming at Som'er Faux up in Northampton. I was able to score my 10 points in rounds 2 and 3, and felt that had round 1 been played faster (vs a summoner but I was slow with my thinking as well) I could have got more VP there; although that might have meant a different route through the rounds and different opponents! I firmly believe you only play whats in front of you, and never think about the next round or the VP difference required. Such thinking distracts from the game in hand and adds pressure you really don't need when trying to win. 

One thing that has occurred to me after my 60 games with Thunders is how I haven't settled on a Master or two that I really like. I have my favourites: Lynch, Misaki, and oddly, Brewmaster but I like the others enough that I will always build a new crew or combo to try out which is very unlike my days with the Ressurectionist when it was very obvious I would be playing either Seamus or Molly when I announced my faction (although at the end it was the Nicodem snorefest).

While I am enjoying the Thunder, and will continue to bring it to the tournaments; Post Nationals I want to get something back that I feel I am missing from the game.

Character and theme.

I feel that most of my lists are designed and played because I think that is the best for the situation (within the narrow confines of my playstyle), but I feel it can lack character. Now more often than not I find myself wondering "Why does the owner of the Honeypot Casino wander around with the Emissary of Fate?!" Answer: Push + Fast and discard an Ace for Focus +2 is amazing! These kind of thoughts, and my own imaginings of the characters portrayed in the game (I would be much more interested in playing Shenlong if he was more like Akuma in personality/sculpt) are the beginnings of my 2018 Hobby quest to bring some of the character and storytelling to my games!

I'll be starting with the Hamelin crew I have from Gencon, building custom bases and a unifying paint scheme to bring out one of my favourite characters in Malifaux - the collector of the lost, the bringer of blight, and the one who knows the only game worth playing is the one which gambles existence itself...