#MCC Saturday
Time for some Malifaux
Bugger.
The weight of the bag had meant water had trickled and pooled beneath it, soaking it from the bottom and making a damp wet rectangle mark on everything near the bottom.
The bottom was my clothes.
I strangely was not in the slightest bit angry or upset, slightly annoyed at most and for me this was quite odd.
I get irritated very easily, at the moment my mind is not always in the best of places but the Friday night was so fun, so relaxing, such a perfect getaway that I simply just shrugged and got on with it.
Thankfully I had a clean shirt on a dry pair of socks, on top of this Mike being the fantastic gentleman, host and friend that he is let me use his tumble drier to sort the rest.
Jan's stuff seemed fine and we were lucky as our shoes did not get wet, putting soaked shoes on is the worst.
We got up and many bacon sandwiches were being made, as well as an eggy mess by Chris King.
It was hot as balls again, but the tiny bits of sleep I had were enough for me to feel energised and...
...let's just get into the campaign shall we.
Teams aka The Sime Time Origin Story
Never forget...
To briefly go over some things which you may or may not know and that I may or may not have even mentioned, out of the 40 players at MCC the 10 lowest ranked (bar Dave Hill from a clerical error) were made to be the captains.
MCC would have us take part in teams that meant a few things.
First was that we would not play against each other and all the points we earned went into a big pool together.
To go back to part of Part 1, the points we would be earning was from Achievements of which there were 50 anyone could get and five per master.
On top of this, the Captains found they had their own but we will get back to that.
Although selecting a team of top players was not as important as it was not all about wins and losses, having the right mix may prove vital.
First off, the four players shared a soulstone cache throughout the event.
The way the initial cache would be created was by adding the starting cache of each player’s master.
The masters would then not have a cache in game as usual but the team could take from this each game if they so desired, and well, if the captain said it was alright I guess.
Another factor that may have been important to keep in mind was over the day Masters could be captured or worse, permanently killed.
The way the capturing would work was as followed:
- Each game A Line in the Sand would be swapped with Take Prisoner.
- Take Prisoner would always have to name the opponents master.
- Once a Master was captured, no player who used that named master regardless of faction would be able to use them.
- The way to get the master back would be to pay a bounty to the bank (The TOs).
- The bounty, well that was the master’s cache taken away from seven and multiplied. By every player who had that master in their pool.
- This was not every team, it was every player.
Imagine each team had all four people with three Seamus (they could not though) 24 stones would be two thirds of their starting cache. That is a lot.
This would mean that less popular masters were great because they were super cheap to pay out, but paying for ransoms would be one of the many fun interactions of the weekend.
"So how do you get more soulstones then?" I hear you ask.
This is where another awesome factor of the day came in, but we will get to that and the contents of some little white envelopes a little bit further on.
SimeTime Assemble
The Captains wait to make their picks.
Every player had three stickers on their chest (or top hat) which showed the masters and stones they had.
Each Captain had a funny party hat on to determine a team name, though I had already been running with SimeTime. The members of their teams would wear the same hats and keeping the silly things on actually was an achievement too. The hats included things such as Red Dino, Farmyard, Cupcakes and Princesses.
The picking of the teams then commenced and it was done in the classic School yard/PE lesson style of the captains taking turns picking people from the crowd.
Team Farmyard
One by one, the players were picked, some captains took friends, others took people they knew, and some may have taken members based on their masters.
Craig was the last picked. A consolation though was he won a prize!
- Ben Crowe, the Isle of Faux boys are good friends from the tournament scene to me already and I had to pick Ben or Austin, Ben however shouting "SimeTime" got my attention early so I picked him. A solid choice, Ben is a highly ranked player and had an interest mix of masters.
- Mike Hutchinson was next, Mike was someone I instantly clicked with at Canterfaux when we had a chance to chat plus we had just played board games the night before, also he had made very lovely comments about my podcasting in the past flattery will get you somewhere.
- Last but not least, Bruno Santos, another gentleman who I chat to on Twitter a lot and had also played Pandemic with the night before. In addition, I think of Bruno as an amazing painter but he is also a greater player.
My team and I scheme away.
The little white envelopes
- The list of Achievements
- A list with each players master achievements
- A malifools coaster
- A special "Territory card" (more on that later)
- and the captain's got
- A team Achievements sheet
- A Veto card (a picture of Danny DeVito)
The Veto card was something that was meant to allow the Captain to take on a different player that another teammate was assigned, with achievements for taking the bullet of a higher ranked player.
This confused a few and was never used, it was definitely a sweet idea but with so many moving parts, it wasn't a great issue that it never got used.
Achievements
First, there were a list of 50 achievements that each player could attempt to score, most of them were funny things to do in game and I guess I will give a little sample:
- "Not Washed Up" - Win a Game - 3 points
- "Bloody Kids" - Lose to someone younger than you - 5 points
- "Red Stain" - Deal damage to a model equal to double it's (printed) wounds total - 20 points
- "It's only a..." - Kill an Enemy Master with a Peon - 50 points
- "It's Thirsty work" - Buy a drink for one of the judges - 5 points
- "Oops there it is" - Flip the Black Joker - 5 points
- "You know it's coming" - Play a game with your hand face up - 20 points
- "It's not 40k" - Win a game without killing any of your opponents models - 50 points
Some changed what you would want to select in your crews, but overall they were funny and changed how each person would tackle their games.
As well as general achievements, each master had his or her own five.
For me this ranged from the interesting like "Not quite Noah - Marcus must hire a model from every faction this game" to the hilarious such as "Rabbit Punch - Myranda must shapechange into the Jackalope this game, which then must kill an enemy model".
Other greats that I didn't have myself:
- "The Cold Never Bother Me" (Rasputina) - Play the entire game with a cold can of drink held to the back of your neck, when it heats up, get another cold can!
- "Why do I have this?" (Lady Justice) - Take the vengeance bullet upgrade as the only upgrade on Justice
- "Give Granny a Kiss!" (Zoraida) - At the end of the turn during Zoraida's first activation, name one model in play. Zoraida must end every turn in base contact with this model. The nominated model is immune to disengaging strikes.
- "Child Services" (Molly) - Use the Touched trigger from Phillip and the Nanny on a ht1 model every turn of the game.
- "Entrance Music" (Von Schill) - Every time you activate Von Schill sing "Another one bites the dust"
Team Owl.
- Diversity - Have a team consisting of 12 different masters
- Big Hat - Keep your hat on the entire weekend
- As well, eight others there were some negative ones...
- Nepotism - Have a clubmate on your team
- Party Pooper - Don't wear your hat
Territories
Earlier I spoke about the soulstone cache, well I said how it started and how we could spend it, but what about filling it up?
Well this is one of the things the "Special territories" did.
Players started with a card in their white envelope that was a place in Malifaux.
Two abilities were on the card as well as how many stones owning that territory would generate each turn.
The captain plus one other teammate would always have to put a territory on the line in their games, this meant that winning was occasionally important as the cache would run dry if all the territories were lost.
One of the twenty beautiful tables at MCC.
However, getting stones was not their only benefit; the two abilities I mentioned that were on the cards would be special rules for that player putting it on the line.
One which they got for definite and a second usually specific to the faction they played.
As, for example the Ten Thunders would be more familiar with protecting "Yamaziko's Dojo".
Here are a few examples:
Hollow Marsh Pumping Station - Arcanist
GENERIC TERRITORY BENEFITS
Models gain Unimpeded.
FACTION SPECIFIC TERRITORY BENEFITS
On the hour, your team must make hip grinding, pumping actions plus gurgling watery noises. If this is completed, then friendly models gain Armour (+1). If your team fails to do this then the territory is flooded and becomes useless. Should this territory be in the "flooded" state when it is won by another, it will be immediately be drained and revert back to its normal state and the normal rules will apply for this territory.
SOULSTONE TERRITORY VALUE: 2
Southgate Station - Guild
GENERIC TERRITORY BENEFITS
While defending this territory, you gain 2 "free" Guild Hound models added to your crew for this game only.
FACTION SPECIFIC TERRITORY BENEFITS
While defending this territory, you gain 1 "free" Guild Guard model added to your crew for this game only.
SOULSTONE TERRITORY VALUE: 3
Soggy Bottom - Gremlin
GENERIC TERRITORY BENEFITS
Minions in your crew gain the Ability Spawn of the Ember Dragon: This model is immune to the Burning Condition.
FACTION SPECIFIC TERRITORY BENEFITS
Minions in your crew gain the Ability Cooler: Enemy models within Aura 6 must discard a card before Cheating Fate, or they may not Cheat Fate.
SOULSTONE TERRITORY VALUE: 4
As you can see these, like the achievements, ranged from funny to interesting and all were quite good.
Most were not back breaking but they definitely were handy, some had Values as high as 5 so they were worth keeping and not staking.
Whilst some were cheap and reasonably powerful.
I would get to know some of these quite well over the weekend, as I stated before Captains had no choice but to stake a territory every single game.
Well I think that covers most of the rules and odd extra stuff that you reading and I when playing have to bear in mind.
Again, this is no normal Gaining Grounds Swiss Tournament.
Round 1
A nice view of the gaming fully underway.
I was paired up against Canterfaux tournament organiser Joe Wood who picked to use Sonnia (his favourite I think) who is known to be pretty decent.
For the first round, I chose to stake the territory "Hollow Marsh Pumping Station" which I mentioned earlier.
The effect seemed powerful for the table I was on which was a cool swampy table with islands and huts.
In addition, the extra armour ability was bonkers but this meant I had to rally Ben, Mike and Bruno all to keep their eye on the clock in the hall, as on each hour we had to thrust or "pump" and make gargling water noises.
This was stupid, funny, and hilarious and set a good tone for what the hell this weekend would be about.
In this game I decided that the Mei Feng specific achievement (yes I had to start with her) I would go for would be fielding a crew entirely of Foundry members.
This one was the easiest to do but I wanted to get it out the way before I forgot. Also in my head it was not too far off a typical crew for me so I could concentrate on doing some odd in game things for other achievement points.
I also wanted to try to get her big 20-point achievement, "I'm Thomas" where she would need to Railwalk from one deployment to the other, but I could see that with only one fast construct and a lot of terrain this may not happen this round.
Killing 3 Guild minions was something to aim for the "I shot the sheriff" achievement as well as "Who needs soulstones?" which I instructed my entire team to get now, it was again simple, do not use soulstones, but I wanted it out of the way.
Glad I had Unimpeded on this board.
Joe and I ended up flipping corner deployment and squatter's rights; I had taken Protect Territory and Power Ritual.
I believe Joe had taken similar schemes but I will be straight with you now readers.
First off, it was a while ago between the day and writing the report.
Secondly, it doesn't really matter, as this is not a showcase of genius strategy and tactical play and apologise if you got this far expecting it would be...
...actually I don't apologise, I already made it quite obvious.
Straight off the bat I realised that I was unable to Railwalk Mei across the table as corner plus the terrain was making it a no-go, I laughed to myself though imagining Close deployment.
I moved models forwards and placed markers with the metal gamin and a rail worker who hung far back.
Deciding "bugger it" I just pushed quite aggressively with the one defensive play of Mei using Vent Steam as there would be a decent bit of shooting and magic coming my crew's way.
Still Sonnia plus blasts and some tight squeezes meant a lot of pain, and here and there, my models were taken down and turned into Witchlings. Four Witchlings were Joe's aim for his own Achievement and four he eventually got.
The other funny situation was he had to get Burning +12 maybe 15 on a single model.
The Rail Golem, well he generates his own Burning and on top of this does not drop it unless he uses is (0) actions.
My aim was to let Joe have this achievement, I didn't mind, but to then just get a crazy Locomotion filled turn with the Golem.
Eventually the Golem charged, did some Rail bashing and then.
Failed.
Locomotion was on negatives because of the stupid Stalkers, something I had totally forgotten and my Burning +24(I think) Golem was still just a big metal giant of fire doing nothing.
Joe won the game, which still gave me the "No Shame in it" achievement as well as my Foundry one; I had played Guild and an older player, flipped the Black Joker and didn't use soulstones.
I got a fair few achievements but I soon realised that this was really not enough and was time to aim for a lot more.
During this round, Mr Benjamin Crowe had gone for some silly achievements meaning he had fielded a two-model crew passed Seamus hat around and got a huge bunch of points even though he lost his game.
Bruno had put a territory up for grabs but not only defended it but won us another.
Mike, keeping us all up to date on when to be pumping also won I believe, but I will admit like my inability to remember a scheme pool from over a month a go I also cannot remember what three other people did for seven rounds of Malifaux.
Sorry.
Between rounds
If your master had died in game, a fate deck was shuffled and flipped.
If the Black Joker reared it's ugly head then that Master was dead permanently meaning no one could use it for the duration of the tournament.
Mei Feng had been killed when I played Joe and I had the most horrible gut feeling that Mei Feng would die, to be honest with Mike having certain achievements trolling me and my love for Mei I wouldn't have put it passed them to stack the deck.
I insisted on cutting but Spooner neglected it.
He flipped a card.
11 of Tomes. Phew, for a few seconds the 11 in the shape of a J had my bum hole loosen.
After handing in my results, I went to go speak to my team.
Then.
A roar of laughter and cheers come from the TO's room.
"What happened?" I ask
"Wong's dead!" somebody cheerily replies as I walk to the door of the room.
Who else would be inside laughing to themselves while also looking a little destroyed but none other than…?
Jan.
Spoilers for the rest of the event, but Jan was literally the single person to have their master permanently killed which didn't make Rob Smith, another Gremlin player, all that pleased. However, he obviously found it funny too.
Added to the hilarity is that one of Wong's master achievements was "Not Filth: Lost a game".
Jan had defeated his opponent; no one had lost with Wong, so there it was proven.
That Wong is one dirty broken master who is broken, even when dead.
After all this the Captains would meet in the TO's room where soulstones (which were represented by Poker Chips) would be paid into the bank and negotiations for prisoner release would follow.
Another awesome table at the event.
I believe at this stage Ramos had already been captured amongst some others but I, at the time, was playing tight fisted with my Soulstones and was never going to pay anything towards freeing Victor at the high cost 28 stones.
With the nine other captains making deals to free masters, spending their money I simply sat near the back counting my chips and keeping quiet.
Finally, (though I did this in the wrong order and was told off for being naughty) we then were given the chips earnt from the Territories we had control of, I believe putting my team up from 37 to 48.
Round 2
For those who don't know of Blind Deployment it is crazy and really fun, you and your opponent count the amount of models they will be deploying, after this each player has a colour (red or black) assigned to them and a mini deck consisting of red cards as one players models and black cards as the others.
This then is shuffled up and it is taken it turns to place these cards face down anywhere on the table.
After each card is placed face down they are all revealed showing the multitude of places where their models can be deployed.
Finally taking turns, each player places a model on a card of their colour until all minis are deployed.
To elaborate this means although for mission purposes you have standard deployment your models start anywhere and everywhere on the table. Some miles apart, some in a bundle, some by your opponent, some starting in charge range, some in the centre, it is simply crazy.
Team Ladybird
My opponent for this round was the ever handsome Mr Mark Sheppard (@gorillawizard) who was playing in the same team as Jan, the Ladybirds.
Strategy wise we flipped Supply Wagon where the Attacker which was determined as Mark would have to have the most models within 3" of the Wagon (a 50mm marker, Ht3, blocking, impassable in the centre) and the if he did, he would be allowed to push the Wagon 5".
By the end of the game, Mark would aim to have the Wagon in my half of the table and for more VPs in my deployment zone.
As the defender, I had to flip a card to see my victory condition.
A crow was flipped and that meant Slaughter, which in simple terms is Reckoning.
For Schemes in Story Encounters, you are allowed to pick any two you like from the usual pool and there are some Faction specific schemes also.
This part made the game feel quite similar to the previous edition of Malifaux.
Mark was running Hamelin and I had decided to again field Mei Feng with my usual Reckoning style crew.
I took something roughly like, Mei, Kang, Mech Rider, Langston and Joss.
Mark's crew consisted of Hamelin, a couple of Rat Kings, Baby Kade, Killjoy, an Obedient Wretch and a Rat catcher.
For Schemes I took Make them Suffer expecting some easy Rat and Wretch kills and also took Plant Evidence, there were lots of small pieces of terrain and added to this I would most likely have some models starting in Mark's table half.
Mark took Take Prisoner for certain and his other scheme I will admit I cannot remember.
With the Blind Deployment done, I had Kang in a fight with Kade and a Rat catcher. Joss starting by the Wagon, Mei up on a second floor and the other things scattered about a bit.
The game involved Kang quickly killing the Ratcatcher and being a Hero fending off Kade and the Killjoy (with assistance from Howard).
The Wagon had gotten pushed back and forth but in the end Mei got involved, used her Scalding Breath to kill two models at once getting me the "Spread the Pain" achievement.
This would help turn the tide as I could now keep the Wagon off my side of the table.
After Joss was done splatting a one wound model for an easy "Red Stain" award, I aimed to kill Hamelin as there was an achievement called "No Power Creep".
In the end, Joss was not doing the job and Mei Feng came in to finish the job with Hamelin on his last legs going into the final turn of the game.
However, Hamelin resisted death sticking around on a single wound and I had just gone messed up.
First of all, Mei Feng was now captured, second of all, I had totally misread "No Power Creep" it just said, "beat a Wave 2 master with a Wave 1 master" not kill.
D'oh!
Mark was a fantastic player to have my second game against, another friendly person from the Tractor Massive who it was a pleasure to finally meet. His crew looked nice and it was a fantastic way to continue the day.
Winning the game got me the "Not Washed Up" achievement as well as "So Lonely", "Blood Money", for beating outcasts and killing 3 minions respectively.
"Red Stain", "Spread the Pain" and "No Power Creep" were added to my collection as I had said as well as "Never liked them anyway" for getting Mei Feng captured and "Unique" for taking a crew with no duplicate models.
Behind the curtains
Nice freebie for me there.
Mei had also been captured in Cathy Winton's game and she wanted her back.
With Mei Feng's name coming up I was obviously looked at and chipped a small part to get her released.
Four stones well spent I thought.
After all the banking had been done with money collected from the territories we were still doing well and now had 54 soulstones in our cache.
Good work Simetime.
Round 3
For me, this meant zilch as I went mono-Arcanist. For others this meant Gremlins leading Zombies, Guild Constructs holding hands with Nephilim and all manner of crazy combos.
Knowing that I would not be able to take much advantage of this, I knew going in I would simply be playing for the silly achievements, using only two models, playing with my hand revealed and never cheating fate.
In this round, I would be up against Stephen Fey (@MalifauxStation).
I had played Mr. Station in a Vassal league a long time before when we were still in 1.5 rules.
I played Mei Feng then, but he was on Misaki.
Team Cupcake
This time he was fielding Lilith and a huge amount of nephilim.
Unfortunate for him that I had decided to go with just Marcus and Myranda tooled up as he intended to do a lot of growing.
With Myranda I wanted to get "Rabbit Punch" mentioned earlier and in the perfect super unlikely scenario take down his master with the Jackalope for the perfect "It's only a..." achievement.
It was made to happen this way.
In the end, it did not.
There wasn't much to report from this game but it was still fun even though I felt a little bad for not giving Stephen a real game so that I could earn achievements for the weekend.
Spoiler we got another game in later so it wasn't all bad.
The table I played on this round.
I got myself a bunch of silly achievements:
- "NPE" - Played Against Neverborn
- "Peep Show" - Play with your hand face up all game
- "Elitist" - Only hire 8ss or above models
- "It's a me, Conrad" - Pay for your master
- "Where did they go" - Start with 2 models or less on the table
- "Pretty" - End the game with both jokers in your hand
- "Power Up" - End the game with at least 4 severe cards in your hand
- "You know it's coming" - Play with your hand face up
- "Omega"(Marcus) - Marcus may not use Alpha, nor take either of his limited upgrades this game. The "defend me" ability can only shift damage to friendly jackalopes.
Bruno was defending territories, as was Mike when needed.
Lunch break and future plans
Achievements were logged and then it was Captain's meeting number 3.
Even though I had paid for Mei Feng's release last round she was captured again, I resumed my sat back sort of shadow villain role but I had been caught.
First off, the other captains had realised that I got away with paying nothing for Marcus last time; due to this, I paid a larger share to free him once more.
Once the discussion got to Mei, Mike decided to word it "so... who wants to help BEN get Mei Feng freed".
Everyone stood back arms crossed, I pleaded, said I would pay a bigger share, explained how I had helped pay for her freedom before and it was someone else's fault she was locked up again.
Still no one was up for helping me out and I just left her chilling in lock up.
As a brilliant captain I also paid for the release of McMourning by request of Bruno who had gotten many achievements and wanted to try to get Douglas' ones.
Each of us had a master or two captured but what was interesting at this point was the ruling that no one could have a player without a master, forcing some other captains to also free a few others and spend their soul stones.
Between round 3 and 4 we had a nice large gap for lunch, the day would go on a little later than originally planned but this wasn't an issue for anyone, most of the attendees were camping and hanging around to play board games in the evening anyway.
Round 4 was going to be a team round, where each team would pair off against another team and not just be thrown into the usual Swiss situation.
The way games would be determined was something a few of us were familiar too but we couldn't plan much until we knew which team we would face.
One thing we were told was that everyone had to stake a territory if the team had enough, this meant round 4 would be more important to actually win games in than any others, as we had potential of losing 4 territories or much better winning 4 extra and having a crazy high soulstone income.
All this meant was I told my team; "next round, you have to win, don't worry about Achievements as much, just worry about winning".
I gave everyone the ok to spend as many stones as they liked, use the absolute best territories for them and just the go to clean house against whatever team we faced off against.
We had a big gap for lunch, but Jan, myself; Austin, Ben, Jake and Mike all decided we would go for a meal after the day had ended.
I chilled out, grabbed a bottle of cider and had a small snack. What else happened during lunch is a blur to me now but I just remember chatting with a few people and relaxing.
It had already been a long and exciting day and it wasn't even over.
Team Monkey.
Round 4
Team Princess
- Captain Ole Larson (@Gorbad13)
- Stuart Cain (@BaconMcSandwich)
- Austin Capewell (@Oathius)
- Chris King (@LemonConstruct)
The player left behind then has a pair put up against them and picks an opponent.
This continues until the four matches are made.
Team Princess' captain would face off against Mike.
Bruno would be up against Stuart, getting to use Guild McMourning.
The Isle of Faux hosts would face off and I would get to finally have a game against Chris King.
One of the simple yet sweetest part of this round was sitting all on the same tableside with the team; I could lean to my left and hear Ben doing an Irish accent for a Seamus achievement.
Lean to my right and watch Bruno hard at work with Dr Douglas.
This created the real team vibe it was meant to.
This created the real team vibe it was meant to.
Finally getting the game in against Chris was a great part for MCC and Chris who had to leave due to injury so he was aiming to get as many achievement points as possible for his team before he departed.
I was just happy that with half the event I did get to be his last opponent.
In this game, I only had one choice in Master with my other two in lock up and it was the Beastmaster Marcus.
I used the territory "Southgate Station" which gave me two free Guild hounds which I thought would be cool with Marcus being beasts.
Thanks to Jake (@01BarlowJ) for lending me the doggies.
Even more photos of awesome gaming tables.
I took a very large crew as Chris and I would be battling in Turf War, I hoped to get "Rabbit Punch" this round and I was intending to aim get "Any which way but Faux" where Cojo would have to use Rude Sign Language every activation and Marcus would have to Alpha him every turn.
Chris acting suspicious said he would surprise me. He did.
He did because he took only two models, Ophelia and Trixiebelle, aiming for a huge amount of achievements including the "Ruin Fantasies" Ophelia achievement of her being Gremlin lured by Trixie but then hit with Slow.
I tried and I tried to get Rabbit Punch against Ophelia, by the end of the game Ophelia would die to poison or the Jackalope would finish her.
He used leap he charged, he missed, then missed again. It was heart wrenching Ophelia was on only one wound and it would've given me a nice 60 achievement points.
In the end, I got "Venomous Bastard" for killing an enemy with poison, but that was only a consolation prize really worth just 10 points.
With Turf War as strategy and me with two free models on top of my crew versus Chris' two model crew. I knew I would not need scheme points, which did get me the "It's all about Skill" achievement of winning without Scheme points.
Not the "proper" game I need to get in against Mr King but I did get the win, reports were coming in from my team and it was good news all around.
Mike defeated ole, Bruno had a tight win against Stuart and finally it was Ben aiming for the clean sweep.
Ben had got to a stage where he and Austin had held back for achievements, which would mean a draw.
By the end, they had made a gentlemen's agreement, but playing the Heel there was only one thing I wanted.
"Stab him in the back at the end"
Ben looked at me with a serious stare "I can't, he'll get pretty upset"
"Do it, get the win, it'll be the funniest thing"
In the end, Ben just could not do it, he couldn't pull the trigger. It was fine though, we got a draw that meant we staked four territories and left with seven plus any we had spare.
Things were looking up our cache on day 2 would be crazy and this meant that for Soulstone Poker I would have a better chance.
"Poker?" I hear you exclaim all confused.
Well that will be on Sunday.
At the end of the day with a sneaky look at the scoreboards, our team would be in second place with a decent size gap between us and first but not one we could not overcome.
However, that was it for Malifaux today and it was time to get some food.
The Evening
Now I tend to joke about "eurgh the North" but one thing is for certain, they cannot do Fish and Chips as nice as where I come from, however in that regard being on the south coast I am pretty spoilt.
The food was terrible but the company was good, it was a nice laugh and a great way to catch up with everyone else's stories form throughout the day.
After eating our food, laughing and some girls in ridiculously tall shoes and low skirts walk around as if they were on stilts it was back to the hall for some board games and booze.
Back at the hall, people were already about and playing lots of board games again.
Mr Marshall was off at a street party so Conrad and Matt were left in charge of the hall and lock up.
I ended up sitting outside with Spoons, the night was dark but the temperature was very high, the weekend itself had been up there as one of the hottest of the year.
Chatting with Spoons was a really nice experience, he and I have actually spoken a hell of a lot over the past months, even though this weekend was the first time I had met the man face-to-face he is someone I would have already definitely considered a close friend.
As an emotional experience that was one of the defining features of MCC for me, although I had gone to Canterfaux this event was the real "Internet meets real life" circle being finished.
If I look at this as positive as possible, it was the road to a fresh start for me.
Life has been at its worst for me over the past year and Malifaux and it's community has been one of the very few things to keep me going.
Spooner may be a mouthy git, but the man has a heart of gold.
A comedic sign was found. "Short Mat".
Sorry Spoons.
While outside, it started to thunder again. Matt and I first assumed that it would pass, but it got louder and flashes started to happen. We were in for a storm again.
I went inside to find that Jan, Ben, Austin and Jake were doing a small round-robin style hardcore set between them, I told Jan about the weather and that we would need to get moving.
Time passed and I was going to leave alone, the rain had started to fall and at first, it was light, Conrad joining me and Matt to enjoy it.
The rain though got heavier and it was time to go.
I eventually lead a big group of people back to Marshall Residence with my torch in hand.
On the way, we had found a straggler.
Someone, I do not remember who, made a turning too early in the dark and they were welcomed by a huge puddle, practically a pond engulfing them. It was too funny and must have been tragic for them but we all were getting soaked so continued on turning at the next (correct) right.
With the storm experience the night before I put a towel triple folded under my bag, moved the position of a fair few objects. Luckily, my tumble-dried clothes were still inside Mike's house.
Jan and I had also repositioned to further avoid the rain and this night I had my quick bed pumped up.
It's nothing considered to my memory foam at home but with a little bit of drink down my neck and a very long day behind me I actually got to sleep fairly quickly.
On to Part 4
The next part will most likely be the last, Sunday the final day of #MCC, it's results and a brief roundup of my thoughts, feelings and anything I realised I missed in the other three parts of this blog series.
Thanks for battling through; I hope you are enjoying what you have read.
-Ben (@psientologist)
No comments:
Post a Comment