Second Best Master in Malifaux

My playgroup laughs at me because I believe that Colette is the strongest master in the game. It’s an opinion I’ve held since near when she was released and I have not been swayed by that opinion. It’s not an opinion that anyone else in my playgroup holds, and when we bring up the idea of the power masters and I mention Colette as being number one, my playgroup laughs at me.

Of course, they also laugh at me when I lose a game I should have won, or when I win a game. Or when I just show up at the store for my Tuesday night gaming. Heck, I was sick last night and didn’t make it out to game and they texted me to laugh at me instead (okay, they were yelling at me since there were an odd number of players that night with my absence, but still).

Frankly, they laugh at me for just about anything. It’s all good though, I laugh at them with equal measures. It’s just the way out gaming group works.

But back on topic, I have always known what I believe to be the strongest master, but I’ve wrestled with the second place. Is it Hamelin? Pandora? Many say the Dreamer’s number one, but I don’t think he even tops out the Neverborn masters. Regardless I think I’ve finally settled on the second best master in the game: Kirai.

Now I’m only three games into my experiment with Kirai, the last Resser to see playtime, and already she’s rocketed up to be one of the best masters in my eyes. After and 8-8 tie against Colette in the first game, Kirai’s won two games fairly handily, and in neither of them did I feel threatened. Kirai has so many ways to throw out new models, so many ways to bypass defenses, so many ways to achieve her objectives, and so many ways to keep herself alive it makes my jaw hit the floor.



She can summon a host of new models, from Gaki up to Shikome, giving you everything you need at a moment’s notice. Need a new Significant model? Just swap your Seishin for a Gaki or Onryo. Need some hitting power? Grab a Shikome. These new models are destroying your Seishin (but you can make new ones pretty easily), and they give you wounds (but you have several ways to heal). Plus she’s got a melee beast in Ikiryo that pops up exactly when you want her (with your Seishin you can essentially delay the turn until your opponent is all activated-out). Worried about all the extra points in Slaughter? Don’t summon too many spirits other than Ikiryo – she’s not going to give your opponent any points when she dies. And if she doesn’t get killed… all the better. Ignore her at your peril.

She’s generally got exactly what you need for the crew your facing. Bunch of fast folks? Don’t worry – you can summon 12” away and your movement tricks are insane with Into the Spirit World and Swirling Spirits. You have a couple of models that can bypass armor, and a lot of your models can target the worst of DF or WP. Facing some heavy armored guys? Drop Datsu-be and Ikiryo on them. Who cares if they kill Ikiryo, and if Datsu-be is getting hurt, Swirling Spirit her back, heal her up, and get her back to the front lines.

Objectives that require her to reach certain points are simple for her. Your opponent should never take Holdout if they know you have Kirai coming up. A 12” summon on the last turn will generally stop that quick. Or if that’s not enough, move a model twice towards the deployment zone, then swap it with another one with Swirling Spirits and move twice more. Or heck, just have your Insidious Madness (don’t leave home without one) double move and cover near half the board. She can summon models onto objectives pretty easily, and when she needs 2 actions to trigger a point on the board, just have one spirit move where you need to be and swap her with another unactivated spirit.

And forget about trying to kill her (though I still think as an opponent you have to try). She’s usually farther back, so that’s a problem. If you can reach her, you’re facing a WP duel with Pitiful (if she’s already activated, she can put Pitiful back up during her activation). If you pass that, and manage to hit her, she can shunt it off to one of five possible Seishin near her. If she’s already activated, she’s also likely a Spirit from Into the Spirit World, which means you want to hit her with magic. But she can shunt that off onto a Seishin too. And if she sacrifices a Seishin at the beginning of the turn, she and all the Seishin she owns ignore Blasts, Auras and Pulses. Plus she’s got her stones too, which she doesn’t tend to use for much else since she’s not slinging spells at opposing models much. If get through all those defenses, hopefully you’ve already killed the Lost Love or she stays on the table and permanently becomes a Spirit. If you manage not to kill her, she won’t be where you want her the next turn, and will probably be healed back up with the plethora of spirit-healing her crew has.

I have yet to score fewer than 8 points with her, and each game relies on me preventing my opponent from achieving their goals. I still don’t put her above Colette, but she’s easily slid to the top of the other masters out there. Next step: figure out how to beat her.

GeoCaching: Congrats to the Wife!

I'm already about a week late on this, but my wife just found her 100th GeoCache last weekend as she and I trooped about in the cold mud. She's already found another 20 or so. I'm quite a bit behind having only 8 to my name, but I've been enjoying the adventures.

For those unitiated, head over to this site to find out more. Basically there are small caches hidden all over the world, and using a GPS or your smartphone, you can track them down. Some are tiny caches that are hidden, others are large caches that hold a bunch of goodies you can swap stuff for. But all in all, it's a great way to go around outdoors and enjoy nature.

Thanks to Skill-less Brian and his family for introducing us to this.

Kirai vs. Hoffman, 35 Stones

Now that Kirai's crew is all painted up, I got to put her out for the first game (I did borrow Dan's crew once before to try her out, but this is the first time I used my own models). Brian and I stopped by Huzzah with his son, Ben, in tow. Ben spent the afternoon building his own towns out of terrain while we fought against each other for supremacy.

We had time for only one game, so we went with 35 stones. I flipped Turf War and Brian flipped Destroy Evidence. Our terrain was Diagonal.

Crew: Kirai, Lost Love, 3x Seishin, Jack Daw, Insidious Madness, Datsu-ba, Desperate Merc, Canine Remain, 6 stones
Strategy: Turf War
Schemes: Breakthrough, Assassinate

Crew: Hoffman, Mechanical Attendant, Peacekeeper, Guardian, Large Steampunk Arachnid, 2x Watcher, 8 stones
Strategy: Destroy the Evidence
Schemes: Breakthrough, Stake a Claim

Brian put his eggs in one basket tossing the Stake a Claim terrain piece in my deployment zone. Getting it would likely mean getting both that and Breakthrough.

I took Breakthrough because I figured I could summon a model close enough to his deployment zone late in the game if I needed to, and I was likely to outnumber him anyway. I also took Assassinate because I figured I wanted to see how much damage this crew could do and how better to do that than try to kill his master. Especially with Hoffman, since that usually meant I had to plow through several other models first.

We had a couple of unfortunate matchups. My Jack Daw was not going to do much to his Immune to Influence models, but on the flip side, Datsu-ba and Ikiryo would be better as they cut through his armor.

Our table was littered with small houses, walls, etc. There were very little long avenues with LOS. Against a normal Guild crew, that might be a bit more of an issue, but Brian's crew didn't rely as heavily on ranged attacks. This also let him hide the Evidence Markers and essentially leapfrog his Watchers behind cover to them.



TURN ONE - HOFFMAN INITIATIVE
This turn was pretty funny for me as I did just about everything possible to kill my Canine and Desperate Merc. I had the Merc activate, Defensive Stance, and then attack the Dog. The dog returned the favor. Then a Seishin gave the Lost Love a bonus to attack and it dropped the Desperate Merc by another wound. The Insidious Madness did some attacking and finally both were left at one wound remaining.

Meanwhile, Hoffman didn't do much. He moved out towards the center of the board with his crew sans the Watchers. Those two started flying the flanks to get to the Evidence markers.

Finally, Kirai activated, summoned an Ikiryo out about 5" from the Peacekeeper (I took the extra wound for that), then cast Into the Spirit World. She gave herself a healing flip and inched forward, staying near the two living models. Datsu-ba Weighed the Sins of both models, killing the Desperate Merc (which healed Kirai) and the Canine Remains. Weigh Sins brought out a Gaki with a Corpse token for each, and Kirai summoned two Seishin to bring her to full. Finally, Ikiryo moved up to the Peacekeeper and hit it for 2 Armor-ignoring wounds. He ended by bringing all my spirits 4" closer to the fight, and the Gaki each moved up behind him to get ready for the next turn.


TURN TWO - KIRAI INITIATIVE
Brian originally won with a 7 but I spent a stone and flipped a 7. We reflipped and I got the Red Joker, going first. Ikiryo started off and swung three times, hitting all three and killing off the Peacekeeper. I had to cheat my only Severe card in hand, but it was worth it. Unfortunately, I was left with a mitt-ful of cards 7 or under. Killing the Peacekeeper healed Kirai her last wounds so she was back to full.

The Large Steampunk Arachnid charged Ikiryo, but some good flips on my part kept Ikiryo at 1 wound left. I had my Insidious Madness double-move up to block one of the Evidence markers, but I was out by about 1/2". Brian activated Hoffman who Machine Puppet-ed the Large SPA to kill Ikiryo, then had the Guardian activate next. It moved up after one of the Gaki but couldn't attack it yet.

The Gaki both activated and swung ineffectively, but that was okay. Jack Daw zapped the Machine Puppet, making it ditch two cards for Heart Stopper. He was left with one card, and I had a bunch but nothing good. Jack Daw ended by putting up his no-cheating/no-stoning bubble, catching both the Guardian and Large SPA. Kirai stayed where she was and cast Into the Spirit World again. Luck had it that I flipped the Mask I needed. She summoned Ikiryo by using a Soulstone and a low Crow between the Large SPA and Guardian, then used a healing flip on herself and swapped the places of Datsu-ba and the Gaki in the front lines. No one up there could cheat anymore, but Datsu-ba and Ikiryo killed off the Guardian.

Brian's Watchers both moved after objectives. One was set to flip it the following turn, and the other one, near the Insidious Madness, was just out from destroying it this turn.


TURN THREE - KIRAI INITIATIVE
I had an 8 on my card, and Brian tried to stone into an initiative, but failed. I started with Ikiryo and killed off the Large Steampunk Arachnid leaving Brian without any more heavy-hitters. Brian activated his Watcher near the Insidious Madness and destroyed the objective, then moved around the building slightly. Datsu-ba walked through the house and attacked the Watcher but didn't do much. The Mechanical Attendant moved up to Hoffman, then moved on to the Watcher and brought Hoffman with him.

Ikiryo wasn't dead. Kirai couldn't resummon her. I know I could have had her swap places with a nearby minion, then eaten her and resummoned her, but that's a lot of actions. Plus I don't think I had the crow in hand to make sure it would work. Instead I had Jack Daw fly over near the scrum but did not put up his no-cheating bubble. I was afraid I'd catch Kirai in it. Kirai didn't really succeed in doing much this turn, but got herself positioned and healed up.

My Insidious Madness tried to get away from melee but couldn't, and the Watcher destroyed one of the objectives and moved on to the last one.


TURN FOUR - HOFFMAN INITIATIVE
The Watcher next to Hoffman took off and got away from my models trying to block him, carrying Hoffman out near Kirai. Kirai looked at the stack of 7 or 8 scrap tokens worriedly. I wasn't sure what Hoffman could do to me, and I wasn't sure what I could withstand, so I took no chances. Kirai went, sacrificed two of her Seishin to create a Shikome a bit farther away with Hoffman as its prey. Then I jumped into the Spirit World snapped to a Gaki farther away from Hoffman. Finally, I healed myself up and moved away from the Gaki, getting myself some separation.

The Mechanical Attendant tried to get away unsuccessfully and the Shikome moved towards Hoffman with Nimble, then charged him. With the extra action from gaining Fast near her prey, the Shikome dealt a good 2 wounds a two poison to Hoffman, and drained him of two stones. Hoffman had the Watcher Machine Puppet into the Shikome, but only dealt four wounds total thanks to Spirit.

My Insidious Madness ran onto the last objective point and the Watcher there tried to bash him a couple times, but was mostly ineffective. Only got one wound in the trade. Of course, my Insidious Madness didn't even get one wound against the Watcher with a couple of Bashes.

I moved Jack Daw towards Brian's Deployment Zone for Breakthrough, and brought the other models back. Except Datsu-ba. She managed to Weigh Sins on the Mechanical Attendant and make a third Gaki.


TURN FIVE - HOFFMAN INITIATIVE
Brian sent his Watcher near Hoffman over to Kirai, carrying Hoffman with him. I looked over the board and knew I could probably get Kirai away, but might risk leaving my Seishin behind to do it. Besides, with my Lost Love still alive, I felt in good shape. I had the Lost Love double-move out of sight of Hoffman in case Brian had some crazy plans that could kill both Kirai and the Lost Love.

Hoffman activated and I sacrificed one of my Seishin to make sure Kirai and my last Seishin were immune to blasts, pulses and auras. Hoffman Machine Puppeted himself and whacked the Seishin. He turned attention to Kirai and whacked her, failing the Pitiful check and taking two wounds for it. He gained Fast at the cost of his Watcher gaining Slow, and then attacked again. The last hit pasted Kirai, leaving her dead, but she remained courtesy of the Lost Love.

My Shikome moved in and charged Hoffman, leaking more stones and putting up more wounds. My Gaki tried to attack and another one double-moved to get close to Kirai. The last Gaki moved up to get near the Watcher on the objective marker. Kirai dropped both Gaki near her to summon a second Shikome, also hating Hoffman. That Shikome killed Hoffman leaving Brian with two Watchers to face down my spirits. We called the game here.


FINAL SCORE: 8-2, Kirai wins



Kirai is difficult to kill. Very difficult. She has so many layers of defense it's ridiculous. She's got her Pitiful, her Seshin, the fact she's usually a Spirit, and then the Lost Love. I got lucky with a few heal flips and becoming a Spirit with Into the Spirit World, but she is quite a pain to pull down all her defenses. Even without getting more spirits from killing living models, I was still doing fine with Seishin.

Ikiryo was on fire. She only really did anything the first three turns, but in that time, she killed the Peacekeeper, part of the Guardian and part of the Large Steampunk Arachnid. Being able to teleport Datsu-ba up to the front lines and add some more hurting and potential summoning really helped too. I have a hard time seeing the dislike for Datsu-ba that I seem to read about on the forums.

Overall, a good debut for Kirai. Though I did end up having to proxy a third Gaki and a second Shikome during the game. That meant only one thing - on the way out I bought my 3rd and 4th Gaki and my 2nd Shikome.

Updates and Kirai

It's been a while since I've updated on how my gaming is going, so here we have it. Work has been really busy of late so I have not been able to get my battle reports put up. Sadly today's going to be no different. No time for battle reports today either.



The last of my Resser crews, Kirai, is just about ready to field. As part of my new years resolutions, I vowed not to put any unpainted Malifaux stuff on the table, so I'm trying to plow through the last of the crew. I have only 4 Seishin and 2 Gaki left to paint before I feel ready to get them out and on the field. I'll be ready to roll with Kirai, the Lost Love, Datsu'ba, Shikome, 5 Seishin, 2 Gaki, 2 Onriyo, Jack Daw, and 2 Insidious Madnesses. I'm missing the Hanged and Drowned, and possibly more Gaki and another Shikome. But it's enough to get a start. I figure I'll have the last of the crew painted up this weekend and put her up on the table by Tuesday.

Got two games in last Tuesday. The first was a game against Dan. We played a quick 25 stone game: Dreamer with a couple Teddies and Daydreams against the Vikis with some Ronin, Sue and the Student of Conflict. We both took Assassinate and we both took Kill Protege. It wasn't really the plan from the outset, but we ended up with one of the most brutal games I've played in a while. By the end of turn two, I had achieved Assassinate and Kill Protege and he had achieved Kill Protege. By the end of turn four, his army was wiped and I had LCB with a couple wounds left, the Dreamer, and both Daydreams (one of which was buried and the other was too far away to do anything). Hilarious match, especially when we were both just throwing down to waste a little time and ended up playing our entire game in the time it took Brian and Bill to do a couple activations in their game going on at the same time.

Second game was against Tim, a local Neverborn player. I took Seamus and his Avatar and he took Lilith with the twins and Black Blood Shaman. It was a long-drawn game. I hit a couple bad patches with my Dead Rider getting the Black Joker on damage to try to finish off Lelu, and then Avatar Seamus flipping the Black Joker on damage later on at the end of the game. But he had a rough flip of the Black Joker in defense for Lelu when aSeamus finally pasted him. In the end, I couldn't quite get aSeamus to frighten everyone away and lost the game 2-6 when Lilith stuck around my Claim Jump marker and I had only aSeamus left.



Almost got a game of Warmachine in too. I used to play way back in MK1, and when everything moved to MK2, I was getting very excited by the way Cygnar were in the playtest. Then, when the book was released, a lot of what Cygnar did well had been stripped from them and they're back at the bottom of the totem pole again. Still, I love the way the models look and I own a bunch of them, so I brought them out for Slaz to borrow for a game against Dan. If timing was a little different, I would have given them a whirl. Maybe later. I did end up picking up Wrath to thumb through. I'm very excited about the IK RPG coming out soon, and the video on the Colossals looks fantastic. Jay is running a WM league at the store so I might have an easier time finding a game. Just got to pack up three bags of miniatures now instead of one when I head out - one Malifaux and two Warmachine. That's a lot of metal.

Building a Malifaux List

I tend to be a fairly scattered person. My friends constantly tease me because I never seem to be able to make and stick with a decision with games. When we sit down to a new roleplaying game, I am the guy who comes away from the table with three or four characters made before I decided on one. In our most recent league, the line that said “Faction” has a few of them written and then scribbled out before I finally wrote “Neverborn, I guess” at the top.

It used to be easy to start a game of Malifaux. I had only one faction, so I would always announce that faction. Now I have essentially three factions so I have to already start narrowing down my options before the game even really begins. I hate having to pick my faction before knowing my strategy, but I do manage to do so.

Once I get down to creating a list to play though, I tend to have a very strict set of rules I follow to create a list. Assuming that I did not come into the game specifically intending to play a certain master or certain minions, and assuming that I did not come into the game with my opponent having asked to face a certain master or certain minions, there are several steps I take when crafting a Malifaux list.

So I’ve decided on my faction. Let’s say it’s Neverborn.



There are certain points in the list building process where I have to narrow things down, and at each of those points, I have a little more information about what I’m doing and who I’m facing.

Before Strategies are even flipped, I already know four things:

1. I know what player I am facing. This only really helps when playing against people you know well. I know, for example, what Bill favors versus what Dan favors. I know some tricks I’ve been able to pull against different people and have take those into account. I might know what my opponent is strong against. Even if I am very good with Dreamer, I know Dan can beat the Dreamer, so he might take a step back.

2. I know what faction my opponent is playing. This limits my possible opposing leaders to five, and gives me an idea of what matchups might not work. If my opponent chooses Ressers, I don’t want to play a list that relies heavily on Terrifying.

3. I know what faction I am playing. This is a pretty obvious one, but it limits me to five choices for my leader, and dictates what kind of tricks and tactics I can utilize.

4. I know what the terrain is set up to look like. Are there are a lot of open areas where guns can shoot me? Are there perches for flying models to reach and keep relatively safe? Is there a spot where Zoraida can start the game with a nice view of the opposing army? All of these things should play part in crafting my crew. If there’s plenty on the field to cover LOS, maybe I don’t need the Stitched Together’s cloud.

Next, Strategies are flipped and I learn two more things:
5. What am I trying to do?
6. What is my opponent trying to do?

Often I find that people forget about this second part. When starting to play, people focus heavily on what they do and forget that even if they get max points, their opponent can still tie them. It’s important to not only max out your points, but also to minimize your opponent’s points.



So if my opponent flips A Line in the Sand, for example, I know I want a lot of cheap models that can quickly get to his objectives and flip them back over. If he flips Supply Wagon, I know I need to get to his wagon somehow without it being in melee and hit it. Maybe a Mature that can fly over his crew and just needs to tap it 3 times, or maybe a Terror Tot that can speed its way from way back and toss a Severe to wound it. Thinking about how to block your opponent’s mission is just as important as it is for you to figure out how to achieve yours.


Now we’re finally to the point of creating lists. There are a couple of other things I also take into account here:
7. What schemes should I take?
8. Do I have the tools to stop a fair number of his schemes?

Generally there are a few facets of an army that I try to make sure I’ve shored up. It’s nearly impossible to cover all the bases, but it’s good to get as many as possible.

Melee power – This is pretty straight forward. Do you have something in your crew that can land a hit in melee? There’s a lot in the game that hinders ranged attacks, and odds are solid that something is going to end up in melee at some point. Can you put a hit down that your opponent will feel?

Ranged power – This is not quite as straight forward as Melee. Ranged power can come in a bunch of forms – spells with blasts, guns with high damage, something that has a great trigger. Paired and Hunter are great abilities on shooters because it allows you to bypass the annoying cover some models get.

Speed – For my playstyle, this is king. The game is about grabbing victory points, not about killing things, and most times your speed will get you victory points better than your ability to land a punch. This becomes especially important in Shared strategies where the first person to achieve something gets a bonus. When you know you’ve got Shared Destroy the Evidence, you should have a way built into your list to at least contest the center objective marker on your first activation if not to outright destroy it. If you have Shared Deliver a Message, if your list can reach your opponent’s master on turn one with actions to spare, you’ve got a nice boost.

Durability – Sometimes just getting to an objective is not good enough. You have to stay there. If I am playing Claim Jump, I’m less likely to take something like a Terror Tot and more likely to take something like a Stitched Together. Durability can come in more than just having a lot of wounds or high defense. The Hooded Rider is durable against certain crews because in Night Stance he can’t be shot.

Activation Control – Simply put, can you outactivate your opponent. Collodi is king here, giving me 4 Marionettes for 8 points, and also letting me alpha strike with those dolls if I need to. Being able to out-activate your opponent means that you can force him to finish his turn before you’ve gone with your key pieces.

Non-conventional Attacks – Some models are great against basic attacks. Bring in something that will target WP or CA instead of DF. You want to have a varied set of things to strike. Don’t go all-out with Stitched Togethers who excel against WP. Your opponent might be Immune to Influence and then you’ve got some unhappy sacks.



Building the perfect list for me is an impossible goal. It’s one of the reasons I love playing at 30 soulstones. I can never reach that ideal of covering all my bases. It forces me to play better to cover my deficiencies. But when I sit down to create my list, I try to take into account all the information that’s provided to me and build what I believe to be the best choice given what I know.

Breaking Bad

For Christmas my wife bought me the first two seasons of Breaking Bad. Well, actually I bought them myself, then handed them to her and she wrapped them up and gave them back to me for Christmas. Over this past weekend, Laura was off skiing at a bachelorette party, so I was left to my own devices. With nothing better to do some of the time, I popped in the show and started watching.

The show had been recommended to me by an old college buddy, Adam. The basic premise is that a high school chemistry teacher turns 50, finds out he’s got inoperable terminal lung cancer, and decides he needs to make money to leave his family, and quickly. His brother-in-law works for the DEA and he sees him on TV and sees how much money they had recovered from a drug bust. His brother-in-law invites him to go on a drug raid with them (as an observer safe in the car, etc.) and he finally agrees to take him up on it. There he sees how most meth dealers operate and figures he can probably do this too. He spots one of his former students who escapes from the raid and tracks the guy down and the two start going into business together.



The show is fantastic. While the premise feels a bit stretched, the exploration of all the characters has been great through the first season. Watching the teacher try to keep his drug life and home life separate, watching the former student realizing he’s getting in over his head working with the teacher, etc. The whole story continuously has the teacher put down a new line that he will not cross in his quest for money, but each time he finds a reason that… well… it’s not that bad THIS time and pushes the line just that much more. Once you’re to the end of the season and see how far he’s gone, and how delicate his situation is, it’s crazy, but as you’re taking each step with him, it does seem somewhat reasonable given what he’s going through.

I just ordered the third season, and I think the fifth season is on TV now (or will be starting up soon). Really looking forward to watching more of this one.