A week ago, Bill had a fantastic idea: run a Tuesday night
Malifaux tournament. With only a week notice,
he still managed to pull out 12 attendees.
Not too shabby. We had three
Neverborn, one Guild, three Ressers, three Outcasts, and two Archanists.
The tournament was a 25-stone, fixed faction,
Domination-style format. Strategies were
random Shared. Schemes were unique
through the whole event, and we had 60 minute rounds with 15 minutes in
between. So it was a fairly condensed
format. We had a lot of newer players as
well as some of the vets. Dave, a henchmen
from Rochester who has been visiting DC for the summer, was making his last
appearance in DC with us. Slaz, a local
Archanist player, came out for his first Malifaux tournament (he likes tourneys
even less than I do).
Overall, the tournament did reinforce one thing: I am
glad I did not sign up for a tournament at Gencon. Just playing the three games gave me a headache,
and while I enjoyed the whole tournament, it’s not what I’m going to Gencon to
do. Adepticon next year is a different
story – I’ll be there for the tournaments, so that’s what I will be playing.
I came with Neverborn, taking Dan’s advice and filling
the case I intend to bring to Gencon with the models I intended to bring so I
could see how they’d do.
ROUND ONE – ANDREW (MARCUS/KAERIS)
SHARED DESTROY THE
EVIDENCE
Andrew is one of the newer players who has been coming
for the past few months from Game Parlor Chantilly. He’s a great opponent – a lot of fun to
banter with and someone who legitimately enjoys the game, no matter which way
the flips go.
With Shared Destroy the Evidence, I took Zoraida,
Collodi, Four Marionettes, and the Doppelganger. Collodi was there to get the objective
markers, Zoraida was there to survive and help out with her movement if need
be, and the Doppelganger was there to get me initiative on the first turn. Andrew took Marcus, Kaeris, and three
Silurids. I had Bodyguard (Zoraida) and
Stake a Claim for my schemes, and he had Power Ritual and Bodyguard (Marcus).
I won initiative on the first turn and was able to use
Collodi and the Marionettes to grab the middle objective marker as well as one
of my farther-forward objectives on the first activation. He came in and killed off a Marionette,
failing to kill two of them with an ill-timed Black Joker on the damage. My Doppelganger, Voodoo Doll (on a Silurid)
and Zoraida stuck around the back to hold off against the tide of Archanists that
would be trying to destroy all his Evidence markers.
By the end of the game, my Voodoo Doll and Doppelganger
(with Zoraida’s Obeys) were able to kill off the Silurids before they finished
their job. He managed to use Marcus to
grab a second Objective Marker to get 1 point, got a point out of Power Ritual,
and succeeded in Bodyguard, while I swept the markers and got my two schemes as
well. I advanced with an 8-4 victory
giving me 3/+4/8 (TP/Diff/VP).
ROUND TWO – CJ (McMOURNING)
SHARED DESTROY THE EVIDENCE
CJ is another newer player, though he has become very
good over the last few months. Since we
had the same strategy as before, I took the same crew, figuring on getting a
bunch of VPs and trying to win that way.
CJ took McMourning, Dead Rider, Chihuahua, two Dogs, and three Night
Terrors. I took Kidnap on the three dogs
(two Canine Remains and Chihuahua) and Steal Relic. He took Kill Protégé on my Doppelganger and
Breakthrough.
I won initiative on the first turn and Collodi did his
thing, grabbing the middle objective and then withdrawing to safety. I dropped a Voodoo Doll on the Chihuahua on
the first turn, and he killed off his own dogs for Body Parts, so I was able to
grab Kidnap pretty quick. It was the
last time any of his models would die. I
dropped Zoraida by McMourning and tried to steal the relic, but failed. He Dissected her for 10, and I prevented two
of the wounds.
The next turn I won initiative and Zoraida won the Steal
Relic, then ran away as a Raven. Meanwhile,
Collodi was gathering all the Objectives for me while the bats were gathering
all them for him.
Soon thereafter, though, McMourning killed off Collodi
and the Marionettes after he finished off the Doppelganger, leaving me with
only Zoraida. He also summoned a Rouge
Necromancy and the rest of the game he tried to chase down Zoraida, but she
survived to the end. We both got our
schemes, and I got the center objective marker giving me a narrow 8-7 win. I was now at 6/+5/16 (TP/Diff/VP).
I figured at this point I would be the bottom of the undefeated
players (there were three of us) with my Differential being low at +5. It turned out the other two, Dave with his
Neverborn and Slaz with his Archanists, were both at +4. I would end up facing one of them.
ROUND THREE – DAVE (ZORAIDA)
SHARED DISTRACT
Dave chuckled as he lined up against me, saying that I
knew his crew better than he did. I
finally moved off of Zoraida and opted for Pandora this time around. I knew he had Lilith and Zoraida as his options,
and thumbing through my options, Pandora seemed the safest given the
mission. Zoraida… I was kinda done with
her for the night, so she didn’t really fit in.
And Lilith was a toss-up if he pulled Lilith too. Having played that matchup in the finals at
NoVA Open, I didn’t want to risk losing it this time around.
So Dave had Zoraida, Tuco, Lelu and Lilitu (he played
down a stone) and I took Pandora, Tuco, Coppelius, Primordial Magic, and a
Stitched Together. My schemes were Kill Protégé
on Lelu, and Eye for an Eye. He took
Reclaim Malifaux and Steal Relic.
On the first turn he grabbed five of his Reclaim Malifaux
points while I moved up the board in a line, trying to find a good target
(hopefully Lelu). On the second turn I
was able to get Pandora around to Lelu and killed him with a series of Self
Loathings. I had to start spreading my
crew out a little, not wanting my Stitched Together within 6” of one of my own
models, and not wanting Coppelius within 2” of one of my own models because I
didn’t want to get Obeyed to hurt my own crew.
I managed to get my Stitched around the corner to Lilitu
and kill her off after he had brought his Reclaim Malifaux total up to 7. Pandora lined up against a Zoraida that had
just stolen the relic and blasted her with a (-) flip to DF. I cheated a 13 of crows, and stoned a
12. He flipped the Black Joker on resist
and couldn’t stop it, so he double-moved back to his board edge. Coppelius moved in and tried to Paralyze her
but failed to do so.
On the next turn, I got initiative and Coppelius
channeled his spell to make Zoraida flee.
I cheated the Red Joker to cast it, and Zoraida was out of stones. The only card that could save her was the Red
Joker, and it didn’t come up so she ran off the table. I brought my crew up together, killed off his
Tuco, and then sacrificed my crew for stones to get to Eye for an Eye while
moving Pandora into the deployment zone.
Final score here, 8-2 as he got a point each for Steal Relic and Reclaim
Malifaux. My final score came out to
9/+11/24 meaning for Slaz to beat me out for first, he would have to win 8-0.
FINAL RESULTS
Slaz ended up playing to a bizarre 0-0 tie against CJ on
the next table over, putting him in second place with 7 Tournament Points and
securing my lead. The final standings
ended up being:
Mike (9/+11/24) – Neverborn
Slaz (7/+4/12) – Archanists
Dan (6/+6/19) – Ressers
Dave dropped into 4th place with his loss. There was also a painting contest in which Slaz took the
prize with his Kaeris model.
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