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)