Malifaux, Winter Edition

Over the weekend Bill put together a Malifaux event for the folks at Huzzah. Rather than a tournament he put forth a massive battle with everyone taking 25 points of whatever master they wanted and facing off on a huge ice-covered table where we could fight over points that our masters could activate to grab cards from a poker deck, and by the end of the game, whoever had the best poker hand would win the event.

There were also two other prizes offered. Each player started with one Red Joker and one Black Joker that they could give out over the course of the day. The Red Jokers were supposed to represent good events, and the black ones unfortunate events. Whoever collected the most Red and whoever collected the most Black would also receive prizes.



The board was designed to allow for the most chaos possible. Whenever a model moved, it would slide along the ice a random distance based on a card flip. At the end of every turn, the wind would blow and any floating models would be blown a random card flip in a random direction. There was a massive river with a few ice flows on it that we could try to use to cross to the other side of the board, but any model who slid off the table or into the water was removed entirely.

Finally, whenever the Black Joker was flipped in a duel, every model on the table had to test against a WP 10 or become Slowed. With as many models as were on the table (we had about 8 players on the table), often one Black Joker would trigger multiple more Black Jokers, and the flips would start going crazy. Most models were slow half of the game.



The game was chaotic with fighting happening fast and furious from the get-go. Alliances were formed between players and broken constantly as people tried to set up their own schemes and create avenues towards their goals. Within a couple turns, we had several multiple-player fights going on, while other people were trying to avoid fighting and reach their goals as fast as they could.

Pretty quickly, some of us figured out the easiest way to travel across the river and actually complete the objectives would be to die and respawn your force on the other side of the river (since, as Leviticus found out on turn one, an unlucky flip on the ice could turn your careful movement into a slide straight off into the river and automatic death). With movement as unpredictable as it was, people tried to find clever ways to control it. Fighting became less about killing opposing models and more about cutting paths to the objectives.




After my Dreamer in my first crew was killed when a Ceberus Tiger randomly spawned near him and leapt on him, killing him (parts of Rasputina's crew would randomly join the table, fight the closest opponent, and then disappear), I knew my crew was not long for the world. I joined forces with the nearby Pandora crew momentarily, mixing our respective Neverborn Twins for maximum damage on a nearby Perdita crew while Lord Chompy Bits ran over for a second card and Pandora tried to wrestle with Leviticus to grab her second card. Lord Chompy Bits made it to his goal but received a blast to the face from Perdita, taking him from full to dead quickly. My poker hand was pretty sad at this point, with a 9 and 7 of Spades.



Left with two Lilitus and a Daydream, I ran my Daydream to Leviticus' Teddy and asked if Teddy wanted to chomp down on him. He did. My Lilitu's, meanwhile, blew over the river and fell into the drink and died. I jumped back in with Lilith on the ice flow in the middle, ready to grab that point.



I caught sight of a nearby Colette rushing towards the middle ice flow and struck a quick bargain with her player. Lilith grabbed the ice flow point herself (drawing an off-suit 2) and then used Transposition to switch places with Colette, bringing her to the point she was trying to grab and putting Lilith closer to the fourth card point. Colette grabbed her card, and the Mature Nephilim tried to attack her. Unfortunately I had used pretty much my whole hand trying to keep a few key pieces from becoming slow when the Black Joker showed up, and failed to hit her once. Colette flew one of her birds near another point, getting ready to swap places with it. But the Doppelganger had different ideas. It copied the Mature Nephilim's Wing Buffet and proceeded to knock everyone except herself and Rusty Alice off the ice flow into the water, killing them all. I earned two Red Jokers from other players for that, and then the Doppelganger followed them off the edge, sliding into the river on the slippery ice. I was down to just Lilith out of my second crew.

Lilith started running towards the fourth activation point and soon drew the attention of both the nearby Lucius and Pandora crews. After successfully shrugging off two attempts by the Lawyer to keep her from walking anymore (that would have sucked), Pandora rushed up her way and passed her, reaching the point first. Lilith broke free from combat and reached the point, drawing my fourth card (another 7 - I now had a pair). But I was in the midst of a huge Lucius crew that had been on the board from the beginning.



Time was running out and we were down to our last turn. I looked over the board and found there was no way for me to reach the last point before the last turn, so I charged Francisco (who was with Sonnia Crid, not Lucius or Perdita). I wasn't able to kill him, so slid my way off the table at the end, ending my reign of terror.

At the end of the game, we all revealed our hands. I was one of two pairs in the game, the other belonging to a new player (I want to say her name was June, but I could be making that up entirely). Her Seamus crew fought nobly and claimed a pair of 10s, and won her the top prize of a boxed set. She ended up picking up the Lilith box. I approve of that decision.



For the Red and Black Jokers, Dan (Leviticus) and I (Dreamer/Lilith) tied in the Red Jokers with two a piece and Jay (Lucius) and Chris W. (Pandora) tied with two Black Jokers a piece. We each won a prize of one blister or deck of cards. Having everything I currently needed, I picked up a new deck of cards since that was something I was planning on getting in the next few weeks anyway.

Overall, was a fantastically fun time. The game had some wacky moments and some brutal moments. With as much randomness as was happening in the game, it helped take the seriousness with which we were taking it down several notches, and from my take, the less seriously you took the event, the more fun you had with it. After watching my Dreamer nearly slide off the table with a bad flip on the first move, then get eaten by a randomly-spawned tiger on the second turn, I realized there was no point in making long-term plans and just to do whatever seemed the most fun when your turn started. Ryan made a pretty accurate observation during the game: those who tried to do the best with their crews actually ended up doing the worst in this format. Players had to adapt to the wacky rules and just get into the mix of things.

Thanks very much to Bill for running this event - I had a great time playing and watching the craziness ensue, and I appreciate that a non-tournament event got run at the store. I look forward to the next one and hope there are just as many random rules.