#ToMB2 Bound by Law (Martin Wodehouse) Month 0

Tale of Malifaux Bloggers 2: Intro

My name is Martin Wodehouse, I’m a Malifaux Tournament Player in the UK (although I don’t get to anywhere near as many tournaments as I’d like to!) I’ve been playing Malifaux for about 4 years now and I like to think I’m pretty good at it. I’ve decided to sign up to the Tale of Malifaux Bloggers for several reasons:

1.  I struggle, like many gamers, to find the time to build and paint models, so having a deadline will help.
2. I want to try something new and build a crew from the ground up, experimenting and adapting as the collection of models I have available expands.
3.  I hope I can give some insight to new players (and maybe some experienced ones) on how I approach my games.*

*If I do this right, I should be able to include battle reports (hopefully including photos of painted models!) as I progress.

Now, as a tournament player, starting off with a blank slate may seem like I’m taking less than optimal choices at times but I feel that learning to get the best out of what I have available, is actually going to teach me a lot about models that I may otherwise overlook. I’ve always found I learn best ‘on table’ as opposed to ‘Theoryfaux’, not that I have a problem with it, we all have preferred methods of learning and you should go with what suits best. I still read online tactica but not that much and prefer to think things out for myself as I go.

Where to start then? Well, although I’m limited in expenditure and I want to start with a brand new crew, I also don’t want to pretend I’m right at square 1. So, to start with, I already own all of the current books and arsenal decks, along with plenty of the paraphernalia that goes along with the game (Decks, Tokens and Markers). So I’ll be concentrating purely on buying, painting and playing with models. Those of you that have met or played against me will know that the main Faction I use in games is Arcanists; I’ve taken them to every tournament I’ve played in.

For this project then, I’ve already said that I’m going to try something new. When picking Masters in the past, I’ve always started with a very aesthetic outlook; picking a model I really like the look of as my starting point and building from there. Looking around at the moment, I actually really like most of the current range that Wyrd are producing but one model that really stands out for me is…

Lucius!

Purchase 1 – the Bound by Law box (£29.69 from Firestorm Games in Cardiff)

I think this will give me a nice challenge, both in terms of painting and playing. Win Win!

Lucius is a Dual Faction Master (he can be taken as either Guild or Neverborn), so I can potentially buy models from either range but a quick look at the Crew box shows that the other models in it are all Guild, apart from Lucius’ Totem ‘The Scribe’ which shares his Dual Faction traits. This means initially I will have to play Lucius as a Guild Master.

Taking a quick look through the Upgrade cards in the box, Lucius can take one called Surprisingly Loyal. This allows him to take up to 4 models, with the Guardsman or Mimic characteristic, that are not in his declared Faction. So I can still get some Neverborn models then, great! Looking through the Rulebooks/Arsenal Decks, there are a few potential Mimics but I think my choice here is actually quite easy.

Purchase 2 – The Doppelganger (£6.75 from Firestorm)

For anyone that doesn’t know, the Doppelganger has some awesome abilities in Malifaux, not least of which is the ability to cheat the Initiative Flip. This can be potentially game winning at the right moment. There are other reasons to get her but I’ll go into more detail with that at a later date.

This takes my expenditure to £36.44, leaving just £3.56. Now, I do have a fair amount of stuff in my bits box to use and luckily I remembered that I had some wooden decorations purchased cheaply from Hobbycraft last year. They look like this:

They fit reasonably well on top of a 30mm base and I have about a dozen of each. Anyone who has read the Lucius story in the Crossroads book will know the significance of the one on the right, so I’ll definitely be using at least one of these when basing my crew.

On to the gaming side; I generally play 50SS games and I want to try and stick to that if I can. So first of all let’s add up the models I’ve just bought:

• Lucius (free as he’s the Leader!)
• Captain Dashiel 9SS
• Doppelganger 7SS
• 2 x Guild Lawyers 12SS
• 2 x Guild Guard 8SS
• The Scribe 2 SS

This only comes to 38SS, so straight away I can see I’m going to be using every model and a lot of Upgrades in month 1 but that’s okay, it will help me identify strengths and weaknesses for this crew in the various Strategies and Schemes available in Malifaux. The first Upgrade obviously has to be Surprisingly Loyal, as I need this in order to include the Doppelganger. Before I go any further, I need to have a read through the Lucius card to see what abilities and synergies are going on.

My new Master has a reasonable stat line, with decent Df(6) and Wp(7). He doesn’t have that many Wd(10) and is also a bit slow (Wk4 and Cg6) and of average Ht(2) but stat lines are only part of the story. Looking at the abilities on the front of the card, it becomes apparent that Lucius would probably be most efficient as a support Master for his crew, rather than fighting on the front lines.

Devil’s Deal allows him to spend a Soulstone and then do 3 damage to a friendly model within 6” to get the Soulstone back. Seems quite a bad return on first scan but very in keeping with the background and I’m already thinking of situations where I would do this.

Highest Authority means Lucius can discard a card to give someone attacking him a negative flip. This could potentially be very useful against some beatstick Minions and Enforcers and even against Masters and Henchmen in certain circumstances.

Elite Training gives friendly Minion models within 3” a positive flip to Ml attacks. Always useful and one reason to maybe keep him near the front lines after all.

Commanding Presence is interesting. If Lucius walks, he can make a friendly Minion within 18” and Line of Sight take a TN13 Horror Duel. If they pass they can take a (1) Action. At first glance, this doesn’t look very helpful (although, again it seems to fit the background well). I have played Colette though and know all too well what handing out actions to other models can do for you.

On to the back of the card…

Lucius only has one Attack Action, his Sword Cane. It’s an okay attack at Ml6 with a 2/3/4 damage track. It only has one trigger (on a double Ram, he has one built in) and this gives an enemy model damaged by the attack double negative flips against Minion and Mimic models until the end of the turn. This could be incredibly useful in stopping my opponent’s key models from hitting mine.

Lucius has 3 Tactical Actions:

What Lackey’s Are For is a Ca Action. It allows Lucius to place a Scheme Marker inn base contact, then place himself in base contact with a friendly model within 10” and then place that model in base contact with the Scheme Marker. It needs a 5 of Masks or better to cast and can only be taken once per turn but this is a great movement trick and can get an important or slow but hitty model further forwards.

Guild Intelligence is another Ca Action. It allows friendly Minion models within 6” to take Interact Actions while engaged. It needs a 7 of any suit to cast and I think it’s a great ability to have on your models in Malifaux. I’m certain I’ll be using this spell at some point.

Last is Issue Command, also a Ca Action. This targets a friendly (non-Austringer) Minion model within 8” that has not already been targeted by this spell this turn, and gets them to make a (1) Action. If targeting a Guardsman or Mimic, the range is increased to 14”. It needs a 7 of any suit to cast and has several triggers: a Ram gives the target Focussed +1 prior to taking the action, a Tome allows the target to take a (1) Interact Action (note they still get the action from the spell as well) and a double Mask (Lucius has 1 built in) gives the target Defensive +1 until the start of their next activation. Another really useful spell.

I’m already excited to try Lucius out on the table! Before I do though, I need to select the rest of the Upgrades for the crew.

I’ve already said that I need to take Surprisingly Loyal, so I can have the Doppelganger. It also has another ability which is a Defensive Trigger. On a Ram and a Mask, Lucius can pass a successful attack against him on to a friendly Guardsman or Mimic model within 3”. A couple of things here, firstly it requires 2 suits and Lucius has neither built in, so he will need to spend a Soulstone for one of them. Secondly, the model it passes on to becomes the target. This is very important, as a number of effects still occur on the target model with other damage reduction/prevention methods in the game. I have a few ideas where this will be very handy but will report on it once I’ve used it in a game.

The next Upgrade I’ve chosen is Legalese. This has two abilities, first at the end of the game it allows Lucius to change all enemy Scheme Markers within 4” of him to friendly ones and secondly, it allows Lucius to count a s friendly to the enemy crew for any Aura and Pulse effects that he gets caught up in. I think both of these will come in extremely handy in certain circumstances.

The last Upgrade I’ve chosen for Lucius is Secret Assets. This gives him a (0) Action (he has none on his card) and it is an Attack; Hidden Sniper, which has a range of 12” and a 2/3/4 damage track. If the target is within 3” and Line of Sight of a Scheme Marker, it gets a positive flip and ignores Line of Sight and Cover. That’s awesome! It does need a minimum requirement of a 6 of Rams but has two Triggers. A Ram (which we know we are going to have, as it’s required) for Critical Strike and a Mask (which again means we need to stone for a suit) which, after damaging, allows you to discard a Scheme Marker within 3” and Line of Sight of the target and place a friendly Scheme Marker within 3” and Line of Sight of the target.

It looks to me as though Lucius is going to be messing about with Scheme Markers a fair bit, so I expect him to probably perform better when Scheme Marker based Schemes are available in the Scheme Pool.

Adding the stones for the Upgrades to my crew cost, I’m still only at 42, so I’ve just picked a few Upgrades for Captain Dashiel and the Doppelganger without a great deal of thought. Lucius is the key part of this project for me, so everything is experimental at the moment. My first 50SS Lucius Crew is therefore:

• Lucius (Master 4SS cache)
•  Legalese (1) Secret Assets (2) and Surprisingly Loyal (1)
• Captain Dashiel (Henchman) 9ss 
• Watch My Back (2) and Plant Evidence (1)
• Doppelganger (Enforcer) 7SS 
• Lead lined Coat (2)
• Guild Lawyer (Minion) 6SS
• Guild Lawyer (Minion) 6SS
• Guild Guard (Minion) 4SS
• Guild Guard (Minion) 4SS
• The Scribe (Peon, Totem) 2SS

Total 47SS leaving 3 to add to my built in Cache for an in game Cache of 7SS (the maximum allowed).

In my first update, I’ll let you know how I’m progressing with building/painting the crew and hopefully have a report on how my first game goes.

- Martin (@MartinWodehouse)

The League of Extraordinary Henchman (Saturday)

LoEH: Let the Minions Fight

Previously in Tournament Reports. 

"The Alpha would have however been a huge play and the Black Joker was he exclamation point of the sentence "you've lost!""

...

"Benjamin Crowe took best Outcasts!"

...

"Still, the shirts looked awesome and a good few people really wanted some which does give myself and SMP as tournament organisers some idea's for our future events."

...

"Well that is it for now, I was pleased with myself carefully climbing up the tables at Octoberfaux.

I was greatly disappointed that I did so poorly versus Ben's Leveticus crew but it goes to show how useful knowledge can be..."

The Masters

For some the weekend of the 17th and 18th of January would be a culmination of a years worth of hard work and practice, making the top of the UK Malifaux Rankings and playing off to see who was the best of the best and who would be the new UK Malifaux Master.

I have already wrote briefly about this here.

For thirty other players this was the first chance to get some rankings points in for the 2015 calendar, possibly aspiring to make next years Masters, win some games or just have some fun.

So while Ben Crowe was battling the other Masters qualifiers, Aaron, Austin, Jake and myself of the SMP were taking part in the side event.

However, as tradition states I should talk about the travel or something first.

Choo Choo

Unfortunately getting trains did not make me feel like a male equivalent to Mei Feng, and with Jan on holiday in Australia Aaron and I were relying on public transport.

The issue with public transport to events is three major parts:

1. It costs a lot more than splitting petrol for the most part
2. It takes a lot longer than driving
3. Event halls aren't built into airports and train stations or even bus stops.

The first part I solved by luckily having my tickets bought for me as a Christmas present.

All in all we got cheap trains, but £60 for trains from Poole to London then to Loughborough and back again that didn't include the gaps between was still a hell of a lot more than splitting petrol.

I won't complain any further than that, but realise I am currently unemployed.

Issue two was very interesting as to get tickets that were not going to cost hundreds of pounds Aaron and I left Poole at about ten past ten, the Friday morning.

I have to say though, I was pleased as the trains were all on time and we had no real issues getting on one train and to the other.

I will say that, not even a joke, trains heading North out of London are much worse than the ones going South. Never thought I'd feel thankful for SouthWest Trains.

With such an early start even with an hour wait in London we arrived Loughborough end before 3PM and were in our hotel room by then.

With no one really about it was mostly Aaron falling asleep and myself playing some Smash Bros on my 3DS.

Once we realised that the other SMP guys were not going to be around at "tea time" we ordered ourselves some greasy kebabs and chicken and stunk the room out. Nice.

Eventually the other boys along with Mr James Reeves arrived and we headed off to a local pub for a drink.

Deciding to do the little walk was mostly a fine idea however the freezing cold really wrecked my throat (I'm still suffering a bit as I type) and this was doubly annoying as at events it can be noisy.

Still a good night and once we returned to our hotel we discovered many more Malifaux players were in the building.

But who is David Golden?

Is he this gentlemen or...

Is he the Chosen One?

The receptionist at our Travelodge?

A very tall Gremlin player?

A future Master?

A forum moderator?

A more mature gamer?

A more aggressive gamer?

Dave is actually an awesome bloke and I love this joke as both on my blog and Fools Daily (which I didn't know about) no one quite knew who Dave was when making their Masters predictions.

Well I do now, but do you? (Thanks to Greg for the photos)

Saturday Morning

After a night of discovering quite how bad Austin snores we were up and ready to go.

Austin left with the others who were banging on our doors and shouting "why are you not up?".

Neither Aaron or I were going for breakfast and thankfully Joe Wood who was also at the same hotel was able to give us a lift, as well as Conor Rooney and Philippa.

We all got signed in and received our packs which contained the Strategies, Schemes and smartly somewhere to take note of this things.

Also being a Mike Marshall run event, him and Mr Henchman Lee were selling Bendy Boards goodies.

They've recently just done a marker set for the new Gaining Grounds Strategies.

I was registered and I was ready as I would ever be.

Round 1

I would be up against Garry Burgess of the Black Joker Society, I had met Garry at M2GT and I was glad to get a game in against him.

He was running Guild, I would later find out Sonnia Criid and we were playing:

• Turf War, Standard Deployment, 50ss
• A Line in the Sand
• Bodyguard
• Breakthrough
• Frame for Murder
• Deliver a Message

I have grown to love taking Mei Feng in Turf War as, noted in previous blogs, Marcus using Alpha on Cojo is a valid tactic but one that pigeon holes me and hampers the crew decisions.

Also now that it has been confirmed that Mei Feng can cast multiple Vent Steams and they stack this makes her hiding in the middle against either Sh or Ca attacks (hello Guild) even more solid.

I was afraid about Deliver a Message in the pool, Mei likes to get involved and she loves post.

My crew was roughly:

• Mei Feng
• Arcane Reservoir, Vapormancy, Seismic Claws
• Kang
• Imbued Energies
• Mechanical Rider
• Imbued Energies
• Soulstone Miner
• December Acolyte
• Metal Gamin
• Arcane Effigy
• 5 Soulstone Cache

Garry's Crew was something like:

• Sonnia Criid
• Purifying Flame
• Samael Hopkins
• Francisco Ortega
• 3 Witchling Stalkers
• Witching Handler
• Upgrades and cache

Both of Garry's schemes were hidden.

I took Breakthrough and hid Frame for Murder on Mechanical Rider. 

With Bodyguard in the pool I was hoping Garry might expect that the Rider had that scheme, this didn't work out.

I'm not going to do play by plays, the fact is the weekend has partly blurred together, eight games of Malifaux and lots of travel plus getting a little ill will do that to you.

This game came down to one major thing for me Vent Steam.

Mei Feng railwalked herself on to the Turf had two lots of Vent Steam up with most of my models with in it. This meant no good targets for magic and shooting and a big headache for Garry.

I got the chance to play with a sniper in a tower, or at least an Acolyte who was wounding Stalkers with harpoons causing one flank to greatly slow down and also trim Garry's resources.

The Soulstone Miner dug up on another flank to take on the other and for a while Mei Feng joined in the help.

The two Stalkers the Acolyte was firing on survived badly wounded and one attempted to run interference for Mei Feng, acting as a shield for Sonnia. I didn't go for the run through and this turned out good for me as that pesky Stalker was trying to get Framed for Murder.

Speaking of Frame for Murder, Garry never directed much at the Mechanical Rider, in fact she got bogged right down in the centre and ending up fighting the totem of all things.

The game only lasted three turns, I didn't feel Garry or myself played slow but evidently we must have.

I achieved the two turns of Turf War, with Garry only holding on for one.

Garry had Bodyguard, I for a while suspected this was Francisco, but there was a funny stage where Garry was goading me to kill him, but then asked "Kang is a henchman right?" and other questions to seemingly bluff he had Frame for Murder. He bluffed too hard so I called him on it and really it didn't matter as neither scheme was on the Ortega and Samael was secretly the Bodyguard.

Unfortunately for Garry a rookie error in not measuring how far Samael was from his deployment meant he shot his guns to no avail last turn rather than walking and didn't score points for it.

I only got one marker down for Breakthrough thanks to the Miner but this was enough.

Win 3-1

Again it seems outside of the GT I don't tend to lose the first round in tournaments. That's good by me.

Round 2

This round I would be up against Richard Paltridge, also running Guild but this time it would be McCabe and we were playing a new strategy:

• Headhunter, Corner Deployment, 50ss
• A Line in the Sand
• Assassinate
• Protect Territory
• Cursed Object
• Vendetta

I was still very unsure what kind of crew to take for this strategy, it's very much a variant of Reckoning and it that I take an elite crew of killers to scores points and not give any up.

However, having to kill less but move and pick up the head marker means it isn't all about punching the enemy in the throat.

Still will Vendetta and Assassinate I still felt like an elite crew was best:

• Mei Feng
• Seismic Claws, Arcane Reservoir, Imbued Protection
• Mechanical Rider
• Imbued Energies
• Howard Langston
• Imbued Energies
• Myranda
• Imbued Energies
• Arcane Effigy
• Metal Gamin
• 5 Soulstone Cache

I took Imbued Protection as Mei was going to hit hard and fast and I didn't want to get assassinated.

The effigy is always a good little scheme runner and the Metal Gamin made the cut over a Hoarcat simply due to 1ss being in the pool instead.

Howard, Mech Rider, Myranda (Sabertooth Cerberus) are all hard hitting, fast killing machines.

Mechanical Rider isn't the most offensive but I thought that the extra gamin would do good work at picking up heads and usually take at least two AP to kill, plus, I would hope to not give Rich much of a chance with four big scary distractions.

Richard's crew was roughly:

• Lucas McCabe
• Badge of Speed, Glowing Sabre, Strangemetal Shirt
• Luna
• Guild Hound
• Performer
• Hunter
• Francisco Ortega
• Wade In
• Peacekeeper
• Probably other upgrades and cache.

With no real good Vendetta target I chose to take Assassinate, concentrate on that and leave the Gamin and Effigy to get me Protect Territory.

Richard revealed a Line in the Sand and had another scheme hidden.

This game saw me shove forwards, not too hard as Richard stayed cautious.

Mechanical Rider was stuck a little by blocking terrain but being able to shoot helps here.

I knew I had to hit hard but it was a little scary as bar Luna and the hound Richard kept his crew quite bubbled up.

Early on McCabe Black Flash'd the Guild Hound who ran off. Handed out some upgrades and trotted about.

Going into the second turn the Hunter and Performer went off to what I assumed was go for aLitS.

Myranda shot down towards them and became a Sabertooth very early.

The Cerberus pounced on the both of them and with high tomes in my hand from the imbued energies and original hand I knew I had a pick of a model to delete. I asked Richard if I could look at both cards, gave them a quick scan and realised that I should kill off the Hunter first as both had activated and I didn't want the construct to get a second go.

Pulling apart the Hunter with ease I "cleverly" placed the head behind the Cerberus and left it engaged during most of turn 3 knowing it was no rush to kill the the Performer. I'll get back to that.

Howard and Mei both struck. Fransisco had given the Peacekeeper El Mayor so Langston was going to have a bit of a harder time cutting it down.

Luckily for me the Performer had the armour and the Peacekeeper was holding the sword, which it never used.

Langston used his Imbued Energies to not only nimble and flurry but have one extra hit.

Three of four of my attacks I had rams, this meant Decapitation but so early in the turn (first activation) and only being turn 2 Richard had the stones and cards to use, however, destroying his resources was a key to victory here.

Langston smacked the large construct several times but only got it down to a single wound.

The Peacekeeper afraid to get it's face kicked off by Mei took it's final chance to attack Langston back.

Like two heavy weight boxers, the Peacekeeper also knocked ten tons of crap out of Langston, returning the favour and putting him down to a single wound too.

This was part of Richard's plan.

The Guild hound and Luna came running back, Mei finished off the Peacekeeper and Lucas passed the sword on to the hound (oh Malifaux).

Going back to the cat, the Perfomer simply walked around it and "Don't mind me" picked up the Hunter's head.

I had only just read the card. Why did I not kill her earlier? Silly me.

This however kind of worked out OK, with no real need to kill the Perfomer the Sabertooth used it's Leap to then attack McCabe and pull him off his horse.

McCabe down tried to escape Mei Feng's wrath but thanks to Howard she could simply reposition and took Lucas down.

I had succeeded in getting my full points for Assassinate and while the Rider had now broke through and was fighting off Franscico the gamin and effigy simply hid and placed markers for my other schemes.

Again this was only three turns, maybe I am too slow but I heard a lot of the same from many others.

I had my schemes already and 1VP for Strategy, neither of us got one turn 2.

The final thing for Richard was his sword wielding hound to attempt to charge the already wounded Howard. It turned out the dog was trying to catch Langston and had to come back, 3VP would go to Richard if the dog could take the last wound off of the Enforcer.

However, no hand meant when Richard failed the Horror duel the dog was paralysed and that was it.

Win 7-1

Richard said that the Energies upgrade was powerful, he was right, he did comment that it was especially good if you didn't get the full turns in.

Hopefully this wasn't a back hand comment, especially being that he mostly out-activated me and Lucas passing his toys out takes a bit of time. He was right though, but it is not like I was taking these powerful upgrades for just that.

In fact I don't think I've ever fielded any of those three models without it.

Lunch

Didn't do anything particularly fancy, just picked up a packet sandwich and a drink.
I have to say although I have no clue how I would get to Coalville without a lift from the train station the school (the venue) was nicely placed between places to go grab food.

It's understandable that not all events can give food. September's Curse did not and currently nor will May Feng, however this is fine if there is enough time and places to grab stuff and at the Masters/LoEH there was and were.



Also I have to give a shout out to Joel's son who had baked cookies and cakes to sell for charity.

I have a lot of respect for that and it's nice to see that charity fund raising runs through the Henry household.

Round 3

Before lunch I was informed I was table 1, exciting stuff. My opponent would be Aidan Kirk, I was a little afraid going into this, on two levels and neither being top table. First, he was running Shen Long which I had never faced, so unknown territory. Secondly Aide and I are always giving each other stick on twitter, I could never live down losing to him.

Strategies and schemes were as follows:

• Squatter's Rights, Standard Deployment, 50ss
• A Line in the Sand
• Assassinate
• Breakthrough
• Make them Suffer
• Plant Evidence

It was time for the big man Marcus to step up. Marcus is great in this strategy as he has a lot of tricks in his crew to get on to the squat markers fast.
This would cause an issue however as I was sure Aide would have Henchmen to go with Shen Long and that would mean Make them Suffer would be easy for him to get.
Rather than worry about that I worried about my schemes first:

• Marcus
• Trail of the Gods, Arcane Reservoir, Feral Instincts
• Mechanical Rider
• Imbued Energies
• 2 Silurids
• 2 Molemen
• Myranda
• Imbued Energies
• 6 Soulstone Cache

The large cache would prove useful as I suspected Marcus may be a target, especially with Assassinate in the pool.

Mech Rider can flips Squatter's rights markers and leave Metal Gamin to sit on them.
The Moleman-Silurid tag-teams are extremely quick at getting to the markers as are a Wk8 Marcus and Myranda turning into a leaping monster.

I was worried that Aidan's crew could do the same but faster with all the pushes that Thunders have available.
An advantage for me however was the terrain, there was a lot but Marcus and the Rider are unimpeded and the other things don't Wk as much as the teleport and Leap.

Aidan's crew was roughly:

• Shen Long
• A Peasant
• Sensei Yu
• Kang
• Samurai
• Mark of Jogoku
• 2 Thunder Brothers
• Tengu
• Lots of upgrade shenanigans and around a 5 stone cache.

I was tempted to take Assassinate again, but I didn't want to try and take on a Kung Fu master not knowing his moves exactly.
Make Them Suffer could've been a good shout for me, but with Myranda intending to become an Enforcer I'd rely too heavily on Marcus.
A Line in the Sand is always tempting in Squatter's Rights but with the double Silurids I felt getting the scheme markers down for Protect Territory and Breakthrough would be easy enough so I revealed them.

Aidan took Breakthrough and a single hidden scheme.

Severe terrain was the key to the beginning of this game, while Aidan and his Sensei were pushing Kang and the Samurai around with gusts of wind the fact they still had to walk a little meant they were no where near as fast as the Leap-snap to scheme Silurid-Moleman combination and nothing is as quick as 24" unimpeded.

Like a lot these games where both players have taken similar schemes and Squatter's only requires you to get two markers to score, Aidan and I both took our respective left flanks and the game was all down to denial.

Marcus made a courageous/stupid charge in the second turn of the game, Make them Suffer had been revealed by a poor Moleman getting taken down so the big man charged into a group of fighters, Kang, the Samurai and Shen Long himself.

Attacking the Samurai with all his beastly powers from his trail he was able to take him down in a single turn but was stuck between a Kang and a Shen Long place.
Not the best place to be but I had decided that if they stood there to take down my Master I was keeping two of his scarier models occupied for the price of one of mine.

Myranda was not far behind, taking the middle squat marker Sensei Yu decided to exit Kang from the fight and pick a new one with a Thunder Brother (who had just escaped the Mechanical Rider) helping out.

As the game moved on I had secured the two squat markers to my left, ready to head forth with a swampfiend, where on the right side Aidan had done the same with a Tengu and Bro.
The second Silurid tried to run interference but was too late, attempted to kill the Thunder Brother and Leap on if he failed.

Left alone the Silurid was need constantly targetted with fiery magic from Shen Long and unfortunately for Aidan Shen Long's magic didn't get the job done as quickly as he would like.

In the later turns Mechanical Rider fired her weapon at some peasants, originally I decided to fire into a group containing Marcus and Shen Long (maybe it was Yu) however once randomised I missed.
Next shot I decided to just not be so silly and get those scheme markers down, except I missed, then missed again (after I had popped fast).

This meant that I was reliant of three models to place four markers and importantly, far up enough the board.
It took a few minutes to figure out, the models (a Moleman, Metal Gamin and Silurid) were all fairly close together so it was up to getting a Leap and Magnetism off.
The Moleman went left and planted some evidence.
The Siruid planted a different bit of evidence and...
succesfully did a Leap to place a marker for Breakthrough.
Lastly the Metal Gamin, managing to not Black Joker the Magnetism zoomed up to a fresh gamin (could've been the Rider) walked into a corn field and dropped the final marker.

A super close game that ended in victory for me

Win 8-7

Aide had his left flank Thunder Brother and Tengu score Breakthrough and we tied on Strategy.
Make them Suffer got 2 VP thanks to the early death of a Moleman and an incinerated Silurid.
I feel a little bad as there was a good chance Aide could score another point if we had more time.
We didn't have time but on the flip side my Cerberus had a fairly good chance to start doing some Strategy denial and Marcus and the Rider were doing a decent job of interference.

Well I beat Aidan, and I got the last laugh. Or at least I thought.

This is an image of table 1 with table 2 in the background.

Thanks to Adam Wheeler for the photo.

Round 4

Final round of the day and I was one of the few people who was left yet to lose.
Initially I was announced to be playing Conor Rooney who was on the same VP differential as me.

Not putting Conor down but he was playing Dreamer all day and this was his first large tournament.
Being I seemed to be on a role and my previous experiences against Masters competitor Mark Elwood I felt confident I could take a less experienced player and actually secure my first tournament win.

In the end, that was wrong, someone else was on three wins.

Josh Fletcher.

Josh had a much higher VP diff than Conor and myself and he had been running hot with Colette all day, in fact I'm not sure he even changed his crew selection all day.

We would be playing:

• Interference, Flank Deployment, 50ss
• A Line in the Sand
• Assassinate
• Bodyguard
• Murder Protege
• Spring the Trap

It was interesting to be playing Interference as it's "normal" equivalent is Reconnoitre which Josh and I played against each other in at M2GT where I had actually won.

At first this filled me with a little confidence, could a Ramos crew get me the job done again?

My Crew:

• Ramos
•  Arcane Reservoir, Field Generator, Seize the day
• Arcane Effigy
• Electrical Creation
• Joss
•  Bleeding Edge Tech, Imbued Energies
• Mechanical Rider
•  Imbued Energies
• 2 Metal Gamin
• 7 Soulstone Cache

 I knew that the magnetisms could be good against Coryphee and the like, Joss is also solid against these and a decent Bodyguard target.
The rest is all fairly typical defensive summoning stuff.

My issue with this game was already apparent. The schemes, in retrospect this may not be as impossible as I thought at the time but I was certain I couldn't catch and kill Colette, this would also right off Spring the Trap for me.

A Line in the Sand would've been an OK choice. Bodyguard was obvious to me and in the ended I stupidly went for Murder Protege once Josh revealed his crew:

• Colette
• Seize the day for sure
• Cassandra
• Angelica
• Soulstone Miner
• 2 Coryphee
• 2 Performer
• Upgrades and Cache

With Josh's crew I knew he would take A Line in the Sand, he usually does and Spring the Trap should be easy for him, Colette, Cassandra, the showgirls in general, they love scheme markers.

Due to deployment Josh and I both sent off little parties heading into the opposite corners with a small group heading to the middle.

I had Metal Gamin go up either flank while Josh had Angelica and Cassandra do the same.

I summoned a few Arachnids and Josh got his Coryphee to become a duet early.

This game went very much like the one we had played before, however this time the Duet was super aggressive. At first I started to think maybe Josh had Assassinate, I couldn't let that go down as the summoning engine was the key to me winning Strategy points.

In the end this was just a play to get Spring the trap very early, Josh only got 2VP as I ran models to block him. Still turn 2 he already had 3 VP as I couldn't score and deny Interference just yet.

As the game moved on the Rider and Joss ran up one flank and a horde of spiders went to the other.

I concentrated on trying to engage enemies but this was futile due to prompt. Also 1" melee range didn't really do that great of a job.

Mechanical Rider headed after a Performer which had joined Cassandra, getting a line to charge her after. However Josh sniffed this out fast and scarpered away with Cassandra.

As the game went I eventually scored VP for Strategy while also denying it, but Josh had placed and moved so many scheme markers I couldn't stop his schemes.

Joss in the end had take no damage what-so-ever but if I had taken Assassinate and used him to for Colette I may've been in for a chance. However, I had not, Murder Protege was never happening and we didn't get quite enough turns in for all of bodyguard.

Loss 7-5

I was happy that if I'd lose to anyone it would be Josh. He's a top opponent and a top bloke.

Looking back I had lost this game before we started, I'm sure I could've done more for scheme denial, trying to get Swarms for a start would've helped and I really should've looked into taking things that could run interference early.

In the end though I had a chance to win the event and bottled it.

Results

Well with my 3-1 result I had a heart-breaker of a result as I fell down to 5th.

Graham Allington who played Conor on table 2 won and finished on 3 wins and a draw.

Panzer Harris won his game further down the tables and leapt into a podium position.

Lastly Aidan jumped me, even though I had beaten him early he had a better VP differential and that meant I was below him. Boo.

Team wise:

Jake was 11th

Aaron was 17th on a 2-2 result and

Austin he came 19th and had a big reveal for the rest of the people at the event...

Chris Hay was awarded best painted with this lovely crew:

Final Thoughts

Well while the top players were busy I almost snuck in a tournament victory, I was very happy with this result, especially as I didn't expect much from this event, really thinking it would be a warm up.

Even though I bottled it I wasn't upset about not winning, falling out of podium range was a kick in the teeth but overall I was happy and hope the year can carry on and be this successful.

My best result to date and a nice bunch of rankings points to help fulfil my New Years Resolution.

Team wise I was surprised by Jake, I expected a little more and I really thought Aaron would join me on 3-1.

Ozzie did all right for himself and I don't mean to speak about him like I expect nothing, he's a solid player but unlike the other five SMP members I really don't think he cares about his results at all.

He just fills the hall with laughter and that is much more important than a podium or trophy.

Speaking of trophies, I was disappointed that this event only had some pieces of paper for the winners. 

I understand that the weekend was meant to be about the masters but thirty plus people paying for an event I usually expect at least little tin cups.

Also speaking about Oz making us all laugh, his reveal...

This is the "Worst SMP" shirt, the forfeit for coming the lowest at an event (with at least three of us participating).

It's yellow as a dig at one of the original Malifaux teams, "The Tractor Massive".

If that was too subtle the back clears everything up:

Thanks to Mike Marshall for having a good laugh about it, him playing up to the reveal of the shirt gave a great response and was one of the weekends top highlights.

Cheers Lee and Mike for running a great event and Joel for hosting.

- Ben (@psientologist)

#ToMB Claw & Fang Vol.14

Beyond the Tomb

Continuing with Team Marcus

#ToMB may be over but my time with Marcus is definitely not. Over the past year playing with the Beastmaster I have come to love his play-style and versatility. 

Doing the tale has allowed me to put my thoughts into writing, go back and see how my initial reactions differ now or how certain models have performed for me at different times.

The other thing is "sod's law".
Lots more plastic kits have come out since I started this project and I feel that now would be much better a point in time to start #ToMB in fact maybe it is something that I will look into doing next year, a reason to do a different faction maybe.

This law is so strong that even as I write this I am awaiting more plastic models that will be in my hands soon (maybe even by the time you are reading this) such as the official plastic Rogue Necromancy.

In this, what shall be a last hurrah for this project I will cover the most recent additions including something that is not actually for in-game.

The list

For those that are interested in what it costs for the figures I have acquired for Marcus and will speak about in this chat I will give a list. This time just  Element Games Prices as this is not for a budget.

• Waldgeists - £10.20
• December Acolytes - £11.90

Admittedly the Acolytes are more just a generic Arcanist pick but they are highly useful which I will get to later. Waldgeists are another out of faction minion to join the ranks thanks to their Beast status.

Also later on I will be showing a wonderful product from Bendy Boards, check them out here.

• Model Tray - £15

We'll get back to the tray later.

Also in my collection I have used other things that aren't beasts and I would recommend.

• Mechanical Rider
• Soulstone Miners
• Arcane Effigy

There is plenty more, however for now these are my top picks from outside of what I got throughout the tale and aren't being covered here in this final volume.

Wood Ghosts

Gaming

I will admit that one of the main reasons I had picked up the Waldgeists is that everyone recommended them, I was told they were good.

I've still had little experience with getting these guys on the table and I've actually had very little experience up against them too.

What have I learnt so far though?
Well first of all these guys are fairly tough, Df 5 is decent but the Armour +2  is really what we are looking at.
Sharing the Perfect Camouflage rule with it's beastly swamp friend Silurids also adds to this and Germinate it's (0) action allows it to create terrain which helps it hide.

Germinate and terrain in general helps give the Waldgeist it's tricks.
Blocking areas off from opponents by either stopping their line of sight to certain points of the board or by slowing their movement (but not your own thanks to unimpeded) to keep them from charges, getting to specific spots for strategies or placing scheme markers.

Add to this that these wooden beasts also gain a very important treat from terrain, a huge melee range of four inches.
This allows you to hold things into combat, create pockets of dangerous space on the table which can help a lot in situations such as Squatter's Rights or the new Interference.

Tangling Roots the melee attack isn't half bad either Ml5 isn't insane but 2/3/4 is decent and the triggers are pretty handy.
Dishing out Slow with a Mask or giving out the Entrench condition with a Tome to stick your enemies down unless they can risk taking three more damage.

Bar the previously mentioned strategies I haven't found all the best uses for the Waldgeists yet but at six soulstones they are too much to add in try out in other situations.

Painting

Continuing the video game theme had me once again trying to think of famous characters that would fit the mould. Once again this wasn't too obvious and there were several Pokémon .
The spooky Treveant would work perfectly being a ghost Pokémon or Snover "the frost tree Pokémon" could've easily worked with my snow basing.

In the end I wanted to avoid using Pokémon, through out this project it has been more than easy to lean on 700+ pocket monsters for ideas, especially when trying to find video game animals, unsurprisingly with the amount of monsters there are, Nintendo have managed to cover a lot.

Nintendo though, again these guys came to my rescue for inspiration with a different series.
The Legend of Zelda.

The Zelda series has race of humanoid plants, tree like beings that first appear in The Ocarina of Time.
One of the most famous of these is the Great Deku Tree, a big moustachioed guide to Link and one that I had to make the "bearded" Waldgeist look like.

For the second Waldgeist I ended up looking at a different Nintendo hero for inspiration.
In actuality this tree was the first thing that came to my mind.

The Kirby boss "Whispy" felt like a very fun thing to try and paint and also made the Waldgeist very distinctive from the other and most of the ones I have seen other paint.
A much lighter scheme with red berries, possibly a little too bright but I'm happy how it turned out.

The final piece of the puzzle was the basing. With the swampy nature I gave the Silurids I felt I should probably have the fellow Neverborn matching.

Creating a sewer stream between the legs of the "great" Waldgeist was fun and the idea of "Link" pulling away from the ground also helped the basing not only look OK but show a story. 

FROM THE SHADOWS

Gaming

Where as I haven't had much experience with the Waldgeists since I have painted them I have played with a December Acolyte or two in almost all of my games with Arcanists since I had them finished.

From the Shadows itself could do with its own article, but I will delve in a little bit here.
Deploying ahead of the pack scheme and strategy wise has some, what are probably quite obvious, uses.
Starting on, close to or with a good line of fire to a Turf War area, Squatters Right marker or the other side of the board for Stake a Claim can give you a head start or possibly direct the opponents models to or away from a certain area of the table.
Being unable to interact in the first turn may seem to stop this but strategies are not recorded until turn two onwards anyway so this just gives the model more "set up time" as such.
Scheme wise it's very similar too; corner deployment can give you a huge head start with getting a Power Ritual sorted so to focus on your other scheme, hiding in terrain for Plant Evidence, getting down a Breakthrough marker quick all these things are hugely handy.

The December Acolytes themselves are extra sweet starting ahead because they have Harpoon guns.
If you are deploying second an Acolyte can set up to start opening fire in the first turn of the game or even stab up rival infiltrators such as Friekorps Trappers.

The Harpoon Gun is fantastic Sh6 with a 2/4/6 damage spread is already very nice.
Add in the fact it always dishes out Slow and you're on to a winner.
The fact that a single Acolyte has the ability to threaten dishing out Slow to two enemy models before they even go is very scary for the other side of the table.

If that was nice enough the Harpoon Gun has a built in trigger on a Crow to get your opponent to discard a card.
A perfect first turn means your opponent has only 3 cards left and two models down a few wounds (well dead if it's super perfect) and an AP each.
An Acolyte can also use it's Tactical Action Smell Weakness to have enemy models within six inches lose Armour and Hard to Wound which not only could help the December Acolyte take them down but helps anyone else fighting those enemies.

To round things off the Hunting Knife combat attack isn't quite as good as the gun with a worse stat and weak damage, but it still manages to dish out slow and can allow your Acolyte to push Into Shadow on a Mask.

Overall the Acolyte is fantastic for it's cost, it does have weaknesses, mostly the fact it's 8 wounds and defence 5 has no protection on top, except for the highly useful Frozen Heart.
Marcus may not use these cold models in the way Rasputina does, but immunity to being paralysed and not having to take horror duels is very helpful.

Painting

The first two of the box I started painting in between other units, knowing how useful having them would be for gaming meant I rushed them a little to be able to take to tournaments.

I started off just painting a colour scheme which was close to the box.
My little change was the blue masks, I do like adding the team colour.

However, this was not from a video game, there are plenty hooded characters I could copy Ubisoft have a game a year staring one (even two games this year).

Again though, enter Nintendo.

At the time I had been playing Super Smash Brothers for the 3DS, it made me think about previous games, previous Nintendo characters in the roster and specifically the Ice Climbers.

One blue and one pink.
My good friend Aaron had already taken this idea and painted his puppet wars Ice Climbers just like them.
I had to copy this and thanks to John Wharton at the GT I now can do this mini models later.

I still had one full sized Acolyte left to do, I was inspired which can be a rarity so it was on.
Time for a Pink model.

As well as painting up the Acolyte to be pink with the white trims and boots, something that actually had me giggling and thinking of the pink Power Ranger, I painted up the what is most likely metallic Harpoon Gun to be pale and wooden to match the Ice Climbers hammers.

A small thing but I think it adds to the overall scheme.

Being pink I also think of this model as in the Malifools colour scheme and since @oldmanmyke decided to move on from the podcast I have now dedicated this model to him as "Michelle Marshall".

Bendy Board Display

At my very first tournament, Canterfaux back in May, I bought myself a Bendy Board display tray from Lee Battrick.
With Marcus in full flow this was initially going to be a treat to myself once I got this project finished.

Well I have so here is how I got on with the board.

I started with breaking up lots of pieces of cork to cover the board and match the look of the bases, I also used the flat edges or the cork sheets to line up with the edges of the display board.

After this I added another Mario style pipe to the corner and used sand and PVA to cover gaps add more texture and generally help seal it all. Once that was dried, I sprayed it all Fur Brown spray from Army Painter. Get some here from Element Games.

Next I very heavily painted some Game Colour Dark Fleshtone over the brown base as I had been doing with the basing to give the ground a brick like natural rock feel.

Next was three layers of over to dry brushing of greys, at the time I just started with my darkest, used Games Workshop's Stormvermin fur second as it has some brown in it (the old Charadon Granite if you have that) and finished with a very white-grey.

After the greys were done which was the largest part of the board the pipe was painted to match the Moleman and the Bendy Boards bit at the front was done in metallics to look like a battered sign.

Next I added a few tufts. At this stage I started to plan what would typically occupy the spaces on the display, initially matching tufts but opting to go with more of the yellow ones to help them stand out amongst the models.

Time for snow, lots of snow.
Baking soda, PVA, water, mix up apply, build up. Just like the basing.

Around the pipe I left some gaps, these would be for some sewage streams like the Neverborn basing.
A mix of PVA and green paint was applied to build a layer and then some TCG over the top once that had dried to finish it's wet look.

Finally the board was made a little more presentable, cork being cleaned up and all the remaining wood that was showing painted black.

DOUBLE BONUS BONUS

Due to the fact I didn't get this blog out anywhere nearly as quickly as I would have like I've got two more models to show that I've painted.

Rogue Necromancy

Painting

I'm skipping straight into the painting here as all though I've had some more table time since I wrote about the Rogue Necro back here in June.

The new plastic model is absolutely gorgeous, the detail of the kits is fantastic and I was genuinely surprised that as much was visible as the CAD design.

Videogames. I needed inspiration. Part of me thought about doing the separate bits of this amalgamation of animal pieces like a cast of characters attached together.
Knowing though that let's be honest this thing is really a Chimera, I started there.

I ended up coming across this:

Final Fantasy as a rich history of Chimera's throughout and this was an image of one I had not seen as it was from the second online game FFXIV.

The heads may not be the same, the wings weren't feathered, but the lion part looked great and the colour scheme had me thinking.
If I'm honest the render wasn't actually what made me decide to use it as inspiration, this was:

 I love this art, I'd probably get it tattoo'd on my body I think it so cool.
How would I copy this though, there were a lot of things that would be hard to replicate.

The glow, would it make sense on it's own? The wings, could I change this to feathered?
I love the colours but what about the feathery bird head of the Rogue Necromancy?

The first things when painting this model was I decided I wanted to use that darker blue green from the goat like head of the FFXIV beast for the bird, the goat head would turn full skull but painted in a very not traditional style.

The purple made it's way to the mouthed tail, I attempted to blend the purple into black then to the dark almost-black grey I painted the body.

Lastly was the basing, the thing that made most sense to create that red glow would be "the fires of hell" or simply, just some lava right?

Using an old Skaven themed basing kit I had I got resin stalagmites to surround my tipped cork platform.

Although snow next to lava seems odd it does actually happen, not as close as this base but screw realism against looking cool.
Why worry too much about realism on the base of a monster made of a lion-goat-bird-snake-whatever right?

This model was my first attempt at a lot of things, lava being one and the glowing eyes being another.
Overall I'm pretty pleased with the finished product.

Performer

Painting

This time I'm skipping the gaming section as I haven't even played with one yet.
It does stuff with scheme markers and can reactivate a minion on death... what do you want from me?

Painting wise I got a hold of the lovely limited edition Perfomer over Black Friday thanks to joining in on a group order (which included the previous model).

Apologies for the extremely blurry photos. This as well as the Rogue Necro I wanted done before the Masters. Though in the end I didn't even field them.

I will admit I didn't really think about a video game theme here, I just wanted it painted.

However there is a little bit of Elizabeth from Bioshock: Infinite inspiration.

I have blue running through out my Arcanists where possible, that is their colour after all.

Also however there is a fair bit of white (not just the snow) so I went for a very whitened rose on the Perfomers head.

I'm happy how the lacy tights-like material on the arms came out. Simply adding the flesh colour into very dark grey.

Also the base, I decided to have a "stepping stones" look which I felt worked for the dancing motion of the miniature.

Apologies this model is only 99% finished, the shoes aren't actually done. 

The End

My time with Marcus is far from over and I am happy where I got to with him and his crew.Some bits need touching up and there is always more to do, Marcus himself has dyed some of his hair and gave himself some face paint.

This project itself had some hiccups but I am happy I prevailed and honestly, I think I may go for round two.
Maybe Ten Thunders like I tried to start (at the same time which was a mistake).

Thank you for joining me on this little ride and I hope that I have been able to inspire or inform some others out there.

Again, thank you for reading.

-Ben (@Psientologist)